Unreleased Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 variant with 20 GB of VRAM breaks cover for the first time

It is no secret that AIBs often sold large batches of graphics cards to cryptocurrency miners back when Ethereum/Bitcoin prices were high. Zotac even advertised its graphics cards as mining ready and to nobody's surprise, got a lot of flak in return. Now, a Twitter leaker has shown off an entirely new Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 SKU that was supposedly sold only to cryptocurrency miners. The graphics card in question are on sale for an unspecified price, but there are only a 100 units up for grabs. 

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 model in question had a whopping 20 GB of VRAM, double the amount found on the base variant. While its entire specs are unknown, it ran a GA102-250 GPU. Even the GPU in question was not free from controversy, as Nvidia was found using it on some GeForce RTX 3090 graphics cards when it was originally intended to power the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti. Hence, one can assume that the GeForce RTX 3080 20 GB model being referenced here is some form of a low-bin GeForce RTX 3080 Ti variant.

What makes this SKU more interesting is the fact that MSI only made a handful of these and possibly sold them all to one firm. That said, the chances of the cards being part of a failed test run are more likely. That could be why they're only good for cryptocurrency mining. The GeForce RTX 3080 lineup was already pretty confusing with two memory configurations, and a third one would only have muddied the waters further.

Buy the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti on Amazon