Rare GPUs / Unreleased GPUs

[DFX87]

Early G200 ES card with special cooler and some bodge wires:



Looking closely, you can see that the green "Nvida logo dash", no idea what it's called, is not printed on the front of the cooler cover, but is made of semi-transparent green plastic. I suspect that at some point in development it was planned to illuminate this. On the PCB of every GTX 280 card, I believe GTX 260 card as well, there is a two pin connector labeled "LOGO LED" in the lower right corner next to the connector for the fan.

 

[Darthgrey]

One more G200 ES card, I was thinking that it's Tesla C1060:



But I was wrong... Yes, it has a Tesla cooling system and no video outputs, but on PCB there are only 8 memory banks from each side, memory is HYNIX H5RS5223CFR N2C - 1200MHz; 2400Mbps/pin; 512Mbit. So 16 x 512 = 8190 Mbit = 1024 Mbyte.



GPU was made on week 8 2008, NVIO on week 13 2008, cooling system was delivered on 2nd of April 2008:

 

[Fouquin]

Those are both fantastic examples of A1 test boards. i believe both of my P651 samples are A2, which is significantly less cool. The in-set green stripe setup for illumination is another addition to the "what if" category of shroud design that nVidia never used. It goes in the same category as the original GTX 480 closed shroud with green window and LED logo, GTX 580 and 570's black and silver chevron printed shrouds with LED logo, and GTX 690's black plastic. Certainly a very neat look behind the various stages of development on what didn't ship!

@T4C Fantasy These are great candidates for adding to the database, at least adding the G200-ES-A1 silicon to the Tesla 2.0 generation.

@Darthgrey @DFX87 If either of you can upload a BIOS, or validation via GPU-Z from these cards that would be very interesting to see.

 

[Darthgrey]

If either of you can upload a BIOS, or validation via GPU-Z from these cards that would be very interesting to see.

Will do, when PCI-E test rig will be running next time. For now one more G200 ES card:



This one looks like usual GTX280, except one thing - on the back panel it has Displayport instead of second DVI:







PCB made in China, memory like on retail cards - HYNIX H5RS5223CFR N2C, total 1024 Mb.



GPU G200-300 A2 made on week 21 2008, NVIO made on week 13 2008. This card works fine, except that only in PCI-E 1x mode, some caps are missing above PCI-E, easy to fix, but maybe next time).

 

[DFX87]

Will do, when PCI-E test rig will be running next time. For now one more G200 ES card:

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This one looks like usual GTX280, except one thing - on the back panel it has Displayport instead of second DVI:

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PCB made in China, memory like on retail cards - HYNIX H5RS5223CFR N2C, total 1024 Mb.

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GPU G200-300 A2 made on week 21 2008, NVIO made on week 13 2008. This card works fine, except that only in PCI-E 1x mode, some caps are missing above PCI-E, easy to fix, but maybe next time).

Very nice card!
Here is another special G200 ES card. It has a mini DisplayPort:



It is a GTX 260 card, although there is a G200-300 chip on the card, which usually sits on GTX 280 cards. Furthermore, the card also only has 896 MB of RAM (14 RAM chips).

 

[80251]

896 MiB of VRAM, it seemed like only Nvidia ever had cards with such odd amounts of VRAM like that.

 

[Fouquin]

I wonder if this counts as a rare GPU. ArtX 1.

 

[Ruru]

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I wonder if this counts as a rare GPU. ArtX 1.

Now that's cool, when ATI acquired ArtX, they played a huge role in developing R300 aka Radeon 9700.

 

[Darthgrey]

Geforce FX5950 Engineering/review sample I've seen on ebay recently:



FX5900 Ultra PCB, 99% 5900 Ultra GPU, but with FX5950 clocks, Nvidia logo on backplate.

 

[Binary_Nexus]

BTW it's not "The one and only working Larrabee prototype in the world")

View attachment 233996

There is at least one more. It gives picture, it can show Windows10 desktop and even can run Unigine Heaven on Low settings with default drivers. I was not sure if Larrabee itself render all the 3D, HDMI cable was inserted in Larrabee directly, so later I checked integrated GPU separately and it's 15 times faster

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WOW!
I don't have a traditional Larrabee card, but instead I have a few Knights Ferry cards which are exactly the same board and chip, just without video ports (think like Nvidia's Tesla lineup compared to Quadro). Would you be able to extract the Larrabee Customizable Video BIOS v1.0.0.1410 and upload it here? I've been working for the past two years trying to get one of the cards working and my archive desparately needs one of the early BIOSes.
Another question, what drivers is it running on? Is it just the Windows Basic Display Adapter driver or is it something else?
Thanks!

May as well stick a couple of photos of one of my Intel Knights Ferry GPUs here too

 

[Ruru]

Got an Asus GTX 660 3GB (GK104), product code GTX660-3GD5-2DIS-DP

Practically a 660 OEM but I guess it's somewhat rare. I can take better pics after I've cleaned this.

edit: Here are pics from the cleaned card.

Spoiler

The GPU is GK104-200 to be exact.

 

[OtterSpace]

Today I decided to play around with my rare 6800 Ultra 512mb and compare it to the readily available Quadro FX4400.

The 6800 Ultra 512mb was released right around the time of the 7800 GTX release so very few were likely made. The 512mb 6800 Ultra likely was a very easy card for nVidia to launch due to its similarity to the Quadro design.

Visually it is quite obvious that the 6800 Ultra 512mb is just a consumer release of the Quadro FX4400 as they share a PCB and cooler.

However, in use the Quadro FX4400 is actually superior due to its dual link DVI chips so you can run 2560x resolutions compared to the 1920x resolutions on the 6800 Ultra 512mb.

The Quadro auto clocks the same as the 6800 Ultra 512mb for the 3dmark loops i ran using the latest 307.83 XP drivers on the Quadro FX4400 that I tested.

Bios files and GPU screenshots included.

I'm glad to own the 6800 Ultra 512mb to round out my 6800 Ultra collection but for me the standout 6800 Ultra is the AGP version.

Edit: for anyone interested in grabbing your own Quadro FX4400 search eBay for "Dell 0W5955" there are a few options around $50. I am not affiliated with any of these sellers in any way.

 

[GreiverBlade]

wait? my


is listed as rare? oh, great... good to know (albeit being untested )

 

[80251]

The picture on the EVGA 6800 Ultra 512mb shroud is the most bizarre I've ever seen on a videocard

 

[Rithsom]

Today I decided to play around with my rare 6800 Ultra 512mb and compare it to the readily available Quadro FX4400.

The 6800 Ultra 512mb was released right around the time of the 7800 GTX release so very few were likely made. The 512mb 6800 Ultra likely was a very easy card for nVidia to launch due to its similarity to the Quadro design.

Visually it is quite obvious that the 6800 Ultra 512mb is just a consumer release of the Quadro FX4400 as they share a PCB and cooler.

However, in use the Quadro FX4400 is actually superior due to its dual link DVI chips so you can run 2560x resolutions compared to the 1920x resolutions on the 6800 Ultra 512mb.

The Quadro auto clocks the same as the 6800 Ultra 512mb for the 3dmark loops i ran using the latest 307.83 XP drivers on the Quadro FX4400 that I tested.

Bios files and GPU screenshots included.

I'm glad to own the 6800 Ultra 512mb to round out my 6800 Ultra collection but for me the standout 6800 Ultra is the AGP version.

Edit: for anyone interested in grabbing your own Quadro FX4400 search eBay for "Dell 0W5955" there are a few options around $50. I am not affiliated with any of these sellers in any way.


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Cool stuff! 512 MB of video memory is pretty insane for a card from around 2005.

The picture on the EVGA 6800 Ultra 512mb shroud is the most bizarre I've ever seen on a videocard

It is a reference to an NVIDIA tech demo from that era:

 

[GreiverBlade]

It is a reference to an NVIDIA tech demo from that era:

some card have Nalu (the siren), Timbury was a bit odd even tho Dawn/Nalu tech demo were deemed sexist ... i prefered these

 

[Rithsom]

some card have Nalu (the siren), Timbury was a bit odd even tho Dawn/Nalu tech demo were deemed sexist ... i prefered these

I kind of wish that NV would bring these characters back into their tech demos. The RTX demo with the balls is cool and all, but it would be nice to see some characters again. Rendering lifelike human figures in real-time is still pretty difficult to do, so it only makes sense to include them.

 

[The red spirit]

I kind of wish that NV would bring these characters back into their tech demos. The RTX demo with the balls is cool and all, but it would be nice to see some characters again. Rendering lifelike human figures in real-time is still pretty difficult to do, so it only makes sense to include them.

That just sounds like LA Noire. To this day best facial animations ever made.

 

[GreiverBlade]

I kind of wish that NV would bring these characters back into their tech demos. The RTX demo with the balls is cool and all, but it would be nice to see some characters again. Rendering lifelike human figures in real-time is still pretty difficult to do, so it only makes sense to include them.

"A New Dawn" the upgraded Dawn demo was awesome and taxing, i remember being able to run it maxed out only on my HAF-XB build which featured an ASRock Z77 Extreme 4, i5-2400, 8gb Gskill ARES 2133 with 2 Asus ROG Matrix Platinum GTX 580 1.5gb in SLI, more hilarious? i paid 130chf for each 580 (well all my other rigs at the time were retro ... Phenoms II and GTX 460 at max )

 

[Ruru]

The picture on the EVGA 6800 Ultra 512mb shroud is the most bizarre I've ever seen on a videocard

Looks funny for even a 2005 card. Reminds me more of something early, not mid-2000s.

I kind of wish that NV would bring these characters back into their tech demos. The RTX demo with the balls is cool and all, but it would be nice to see some characters again. Rendering lifelike human figures in real-time is still pretty difficult to do, so it only makes sense to include them.

Nvidia's Nalu the mermaid and ATI/AMD's Ruby were damn unforgetable.

 

[80251]

Didn't Nvidia also have some flying tinkerbell type character as well?

 

[lexluthermiester]

Didn't Nvidia also have some flying tinkerbell type character as well?

Yes, yes they did.

 

[GreiverBlade]

Didn't Nvidia also have some flying tinkerbell type character as well?

Yes, yes they did.

as i mentioned Dusk and Dawn and A New Dawn

Dusk was just Dawn with less forest fairy more gothic fairy clothing and wings



FX series Dawn and the 600 series updated A New Dawn

 

[KLiKzg]

Got myself a TITAN. Nice one, used for gaming.
Guy probably sold, what he did not know he had. Local price was 90EUR.

Here are some photos:

 

[P4-630]

Got myself a TITAN. Nice one, used for gaming.

Nice one if you don't have anything better.

Otherwise wouldn't know what to do with it imo.