07-31-2019, 10:24 PM
https://www.techpowerup.com/257776/nvidi...g-possible
Quote:While working on GPU-Z support for NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX Super cards, I noticed something curious. Each of the RTX 2060 Super and RTX 2070 Super is listed with three independent device IDs in the driver: 1F06, 1F42, 1F47 for the former and 1E84, 1EC2, 1EC7 for the latter. GeForce RTX 2080 Super on the other hand, like nearly every other NVIDIA SKU, uses only a single device ID (1E81). The PCI device ID uniquely identifies every GPU model, so the OS and driver can figure out what kind of device it is, what driver to use, and how to talk to it. I reached out to NVIDIA, for clarification, and never heard back from them besides an "interesting, I'll check internally" comment.
With no official word, I took a closer look at the actual values and remembered our NVIDIA segregates Turing GPUs article, that was part of the launch coverage for the initial GeForce RTX unveil. In that article, we revealed that NVIDIA is creating two models for each GPU, that are identical in every regard, except for name and price. If board partners want to build a factory-overclocked card, they have to buy the -A variant of the GPU, because only that is allowed to be used with an out of the box overclock. Manual overclocking by the users works exactly the same on both units.
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Now of course you're wondering what reasons board partners would have to change existing, perfectly fine cards sitting in warehouses, ready to go, into slower (= cheaper) variants. Let's look at the financials quickly. RTX 2080 currently sells for $640, flashing that into RTX 2070 SUPER, selling for $520 makes little economic sense. Things don't look that much better for the $450 RTX 2070 to $400 RTX 2060 SUPER transition. Even if a board partner is having a hard time selling RTX 2080 for $630, they could definitely sell them for $600, and still make a better profit than turning it into a $520 RTX 2070 SUPER. My guess is that NVIDIA wants to increase available inventory for SUPER, reduce inventory of non-SUPER at the same time, and avoid a price fight between non-SUPER end-of-life models and brand-new SUPER cards. If that is the case, then maybe the company is giving its partners some sort of compensation, either as cash, or as rebate for future GPU purchases.
The only other explanation that I can imagine is that if demand for RTX SUPER greatly exceeds that for the older models, then partners could be tempted to convert just enough inventory to SUPER, to ensure that they don't lose sales to other AICs. People who want RTX SUPER now might look at options beyond their established hardware vendor, which could result in lost sales. This is more of a possibility nowadays, with differences between custom-design cards being minimal and coming down mostly to cosmetic differences and cooler / thermal settings. Flashing down small batches would ensure customers are kept happy, while vendors are able to reduce existing warehouse stocks a little bit quicker-essentially a balancing tool.
We're not sure exactly how the board modification is performed, whether solder rework and BIOS flash are done at the AIC factories, or whether NVIDIA does it in-house to protect their methods. We suspect this to be the case, because both the GPU and NVFlash BIOS flashing software have several layers of protection against GPU cross-flashing, and NVIDIA might not want to give its board partners the keys to the kingdom. On the other hand, if these cards can be flashed back (even if using an external flasher), and the solder mod is reasonably easy to do, then this could end up being an amazing method for people to flash their SUPER cards back to RTX 2070 / 2080 and gain some free performance in the process. These cards are full RTX 2080 / 2070 cards after all, there can be no defective units, otherwise that cards wouldn't have made it through QA in the first place.