Rare GPUs / Unreleased GPUs

[Fouquin]

@Fouquin https://www.ebay.com/itm/RX-Vega-64...277350?hash=item1aa27d6826:g:QHIAAOSwNxxfVTlV

So basically $1,000 for a dead chip you can get off literally any old Vega. Wow what a deal.

 

[bobbybluz]

My former Voodoo 5 5500 before it was shipped off to a customer in Europe a couple of years ago (7-27-2018). I bought it new in 2000. A few years later it was totally worthless. I ended up selling it on Ebay auction for nearly twice what I paid for it new.

 

[lexluthermiester]

@Fouquin https://www.ebay.com/itm/RX-Vega-64...277350?hash=item1aa27d6826:g:QHIAAOSwNxxfVTlV

That seller is smoking something seriously wack if they they think they're going to get anywhere near that much in this economy...

 

[OtterSpace]

Hello everyone this is my first post here at techpowerup. I found this thread while looking for information on some rare cards and thought I should share from my collection.

The card in this post is a non qualification sample ATi Radeon HD 3870 with the same shroud that featured in many of the reviews of the 3870. However, when this card was released to the retail market the same shroud was used but without the ruby print.

Attached is a zip of the bios and some images.

The card was sold as defective along with a 8800 Ultra and 7900 GTX and was purchased from eBay around a year ago. Shipping from Australia was more expensive than the three cards. Thankfully this card can run 3DMark06 loops all day and therefore is fully functional.

 

[Fouquin]

Hello everyone this is my first post here at techpowerup. I found this thread while looking for information on some rare cards and thought I should share from my collection.

The card in this post is a non qualification sample ATi Radeon HD 3870 with the same shroud that featured in many of the reviews of the 3870. However, when this card was released to the retail market the same shroud was used but without the ruby print.

Attached is a zip of the bios and some images.

The card was sold as defective along with a 8800 Ultra and 7900 GTX and was purchased from eBay around a year ago. Shipping from Australia was more expensive than the three cards. Thankfully this card can run 3DMark06 loops all day and therefore is fully functional.

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Very nice! Interesting that it's got a 3870 S/N sticker. Have you checked the bin and date code on the ASIC? Looking for an earlier date code than on the PCB (pre 0739) and maybe the batch number 215-0708004 if it's a really early chip. There's a few of these 3870 samples that cross the line into the HD 2950 XTX phase of development and they're not very common.

 

[OtterSpace]

Very nice! Interesting that it's got a 3870 S/N sticker. Have you checked the bin and date code on the ASIC? Looking for an earlier date code than on the PCB (pre 0739) and maybe the batch number 215-0708004 if it's a really early chip. There's a few of these 3870 samples that cross the line into the HD 2950 XTX phase of development and they're not very common.

The asic is 215-0708005. I have not looked through the bin but it is attached in my previous post.

Given the items original location of Australia I'm guessing that this was a review sample for the 3870 for an Australian website or publication. The rarer stuff would likely come from Canada and California as that is where the development and testing of samples likely occurred.

 

[Darthgrey]

Same card was sold on ebay about 4 month ago, it was US seller. I saw a NQS sticker too late, it was only 15$.

 

[Fouquin]

Given the items original location of Australia I'm guessing that this was a review sample for the 3870 for an Australian website or publication.

It's been 13 years; things have had time to migrate.

 

[TOMCAT]

Let me add some pictures of HD3850's, one sapphire for comparison and one ES



ES label is missing, Asic P/N 215-0708003, Bios date 10/01/07 (info from lost label)

 

[KLiKzg]

Here's one I had, HD3650 AGP version.

Sold it for $60 in 2016.

 

[OtterSpace]

Hello again.

My next card to share is a nVidia GeForce PCX 5900 128mb. This card is one of the last iterations of the FX series and the first nVidia PCI-e consumer card that hit the retail market. It was released just a few months before the 6000 series and was not produced at scale.

This is just a strange card historically. It doesn't perform well and I don't ever remember hearing about it when it was on the market so its not an imfamous card by any means. If I had to charaterize this card I would call it a forgotten card. However, it is a nice card that I'm glad I have for my collection.

Its bigger brother the nVidia GeForce PCX 5950 likely never hit the retail market and is a grail card for many collectors. However I have yet to see anyone prove that the card exists today.

I purchased this card last year for 29,99 euros.

A similar quadro card (Quadro FX 1300) can be purchased cheaply with good availability at the time of this posting.

 

[Fouquin]

Hello again.

My next card to share is a nVidia GeForce PCX 5900 128mb. This card is one of the last iterations of the FX series and the first nVidia PCI-e consumer card that hit the retail market. It was released just a few months before the 6000 series and was not produced at scale.

This is just a strange card historically. It doesn't perform well and I don't ever remember hearing about it when it was on the market so its not an imfamous card by any means. If I had to charaterize this card I would call it a forgotten card. However, it is a nice card that I'm glad I have for my collection.

Its bigger brother the nVidia GeForce PCX 5950 likely never hit the retail market and is a grail card for many collectors. However I have yet to see anyone prove that the card exists today.

I purchased this card last year for 29,99 euros.

A similar quadro card (Quadro FX 1300) can be purchased cheaply with good availability at the time of this posting.

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Very nice! I have the same one with the smaller double finstack HSF. They are a very neat little bullet point in nVidia's history. The introduction of the HSI and final outing of NV3x as a leading lineup. There aren't a ton floating around but surprisingly they did sell in some quantity. The PCX 5750 and 5300 were much more common, with the 5300 getting into at least one OEM contract.

The PCX 5950 as far as anyone knows was only sampled to vendors and not sold publicly. It's entirely likely that the demo units were not functional, or cards could not be made due to DDR shortages in Q3 2004 (leading to the available high-speed DDR for the upcoming NV40 alone). Other factors may include lack of NV38 cores and the initial failure of Intel's 925/915 PCI-E chipset to take over the market from their own cheaper 865PE platform.

 

[OtterSpace]

The PCX 5950 as far as anyone knows was only sampled to vendors and not sold publicly. It's entirely likely that the demo units were not functional, or cards could not be made due to DDR shortages in Q3 2004 (leading to the available high-speed DDR for the upcoming NV40 alone). Other factors may include lack of NV38 cores and the initial failure of Intel's 925/915 PCI-E chipset to take over the market from their own cheaper 865PE platform.

Good info on the PCX 5950 thanks for sharing. I never heard that info about the display models that multiple vendors had which as far as I can tell is the only time the PCX 5950 was shown. It makes a ton of sense if they were just mock ups as the cooling that the those models had didn't seem sufficient for those clocks when you compare it to the GeForce FX 5950 Ultra. But also who knows what final clocks they would have targeted if they released the card.

 

[basco]

wow this cooler looks small for a 5900 card !

 

[Fouquin]

wow this cooler looks small for a 5900 card !

And it's got the larger of the two variants Gigabyte shipped! Truthfully they're clocked a lot lower than the standard 5900, and have the slowest VRAM.

 

[ExcuseMeWtf]

Didn't see this gem in the table:

KFA2 GeForce GTX 460 WHDI Graphics Card (1GB,DDR5) : Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories

Buy KFA2 GeForce GTX 460 WHDI Graphics Card (1GB,DDR5) at Amazon UK. Free delivery and return on eligible orders.

www.amazon.co.uk

This also counts as rare for sure:

ATI Radeon HD 4860 Specs

ATI RV790, 700 MHz, 640 Cores, 32 TMUs, 16 ROPs, 512 MB GDDR5, 750 MHz, 256 bit

www.techpowerup.com

 

[pavle]

Hello again...

By the way: GPU-Z reports wrongly the number of TMUs in GeForceFX 5900 - it is 8 and not 4; so 1.4 GPixels and 2.8 GTexels.

 

[OtterSpace]

Before I post my favorite card tomorrow I want to post a few uncommon cards that are all connected to the same theme. What theme is that you ask? The evolution of GPU cooling. I love this topic because card designers were clearly struggling with a problem and their solutions were often times odd and half baked with tons of quirks.

Initially video cards didn't need any cooling at all but as power draw kept climbing first simple heatsinks were added and later fans in the center of the heatsink over the GPU core.

Think of this as the baseline although it was by no means the first card to feature this type of cooling which predated the GPU. Most GPUs continued to use a similar cooling style on flagship cards for many generations as designers struggled to find a better cooling solution:

With each generation power draw continued to rise and overclocking gained in popularity exacerbating the underlying problem of cooler inadequacy. Leadtek and eVGA both started to shift from the older baseline designs in search of better cooling performance.

Below is the Leadtek WinFast GeForce2 Pro which was the first card with offset cooling where the fan isn't directly over the GPU core.

Below is the eVGA GeForce4 MX 440 which was the first card to feature offset cooling and a shrouded heatsink to direct airflow. Although eVGA also claims that this was the first asymetrical cooling system even though the card above came out well before this one.

Leadtek also came out with the first dual fan design, as far as I can tell, on their GeForce 4 Ti 4600 card which is pictured below.

Meanwhile eVGA iterated their ACS cooler to incorporate the first use of a heatpipe in a consumer desktop GPU on their GeForce 4 Ti 4600. Unfortunately I do not own this card unlike the others pictured above.

 

[OtterSpace]

I'd like to introduce my favorite albeit deeply flawed GPU the Abit Siluro GF4 Ti4200 OTES. The Abit 4200 OTES was the first card to feature a blower style cooler and oh boy was it a loud one running at a fixed 7200rpm.

OTES stands for Outside Thermal Exhaust System. The design of this cooler was so innovative that nVidia latched onto it and used the same fan part to cool their now infamous 5800 Ultra. Clearly designers still struggled with how to correctly deploy a blower cooler for many years to come before settling on the designs that we know today.

I would like to plug an article written on this card that tells the story far better than I can: http://www.geekometry.com/2015/07/abit-siluro-geforce-ti4200-otes-why-so-special/

There are at least three versions of this card the initial release black pcb 64mb and a blue pcb 64mb and 128mb version. I own two cards a black pcb 64mb in box and a blue pcb 64mb. Both cards work in 3dMark but I am getting system freezes when launching GPUz. If I can get GPUz to launch I will add the bios and GPUz screenshots.

 

[TOMCAT]

Very nice story from OtterSpace, let me add another early dual fan GF4.

 

[OtterSpace]

Very nice story from OtterSpace, let me add another early dual fan GF4.

Thanks for the kind words.

I've never seen such a variant before thanks for sharing. Its hard to know which design came first. Personally I haven't investigated the timeline of this design too much.

sparkle also released a dual fan card which can be found on page 13 of this very thread which is worth a read on this era of cards. https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/rare-gpus-unreleased-gpus.176929/page-13



Soltek also has one


Such cards are an abandoned branch of GPU cooling through the 6800 series where tons of small fans were added to nVidia cards with seemingly little thought. All of this is connected with the same story of GPU manufacturers trying to figure out how to better cool cards and cater to the enthusiast crowd with features and sometimes useless bling. Personally I love this era due to the chaos, beauty, and creativity of designs along with a heavy dose of nostalgia. Eventually this style would displace the blower cooler but it would take a long time for TDP, heatsink mass, fan size, vrm design, and case cooling considerations to reach a large enough scale to displace the blower cooler. Artic cooling was big in advancing both styles but I will return to that topic on another day and share more of my cards. I also will keep that post brief as artic cooling were so successful that it is hard to consider their coolers rare.

On page 13 of this thread Fouquin also discussed a likely unreleased eVGA ACS3 Geforce 4 Ti 4600 that was the first full cover card as far as I can tell.



As a quick note I do not own any of the cards in this post and therefore linked stock images.

 

[Outback Bronze]

OTES

I remember the OTES cooling on my old ABIT IC7 - MAX 3. This set the tone for the latest and greatest. The board also has a HSF on the Northbridge Chipset. Very advance cooling for its time.

Nice card mate with box and all! Congrats

 

[TOMCAT]

I've never seen such a variant before thanks for sharing. Its hard to know which design came first. Personally I haven't investigated the timeline of this design too much.

sparkle also released a dual fan card which can be found on page 13 of this very thread which is worth a read on this era of cards. https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/rare-gpus-unreleased-gpus.176929/page-13

Yes, very good info on page 13.

Searched for reference pictures or other info, but I found nearly nothing, so I postet it here.
Think it is a Sparkle and something between the reference design single fan version and the blue platinum version.
No further info, card crashes after bios screen when starting OS.

 

[Mr.Scott]

Thanks for the kind words.

I've never seen such a variant before thanks for sharing. Its hard to know which design came first. Personally I haven't investigated the timeline of this design too much.

sparkle also released a dual fan card which can be found on page 13 of this very thread which is worth a read on this era of cards. https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/rare-gpus-unreleased-gpus.176929/page-13



Such cards are an abandoned branch of GPU cooling through the 6800 series where tons of small fans were added to nVidia cards with seemingly little thought. All of this is connected with the same story of GPU manufacturers trying to figure out how to better cool cards and cater to the enthusiast crowd with features and sometimes useless bling. Personally I love this era due to the chaos, beauty, and creativity of designs along with a heavy dose of nostalgia.

I'll add one to your link.
My 5950 Ultra

 

[TiberiumCommander]

Hi all, first post for me been a long time lurker.

I noticed the FXs and PCXs on display so I thought this might be relevant. Splinter Cell ready!

Not the best photos sorry. I'll take better ones one day.

The Gigabyte marketing for the NX59128DP: "GV-NX59128DP, the Turbo Force edition of GeForce PCX 5900 series, has up to 19% greater performance than other GF PCX 5900 graphics cards available on the market."