Fraud with chips is common in the computer components market. The repair service Northwestrepair has shown an ASUS NVIDIA RTX 4090 TUF graphics card with a graphics processor from a less powerful model of the previous generation.
Some attempts at fraud with memory or processors substitution can be easily noticed immediately, but in this case, the chip discrepancy was hidden by the cooling system and fake labeling. The product, which seemed like a brand new RTX 4090 video card, even had a protective film on it, had a processor from an RTX 3080 Ti.
After removing the GPU and carefully examining it, it became clear that the processor, labeled as AD102, was actually a GA102 chip, which has almost the same size (628 mm² versus 608 mm²), so the forgery is not immediately obvious. The processor was polished, and a new engraving was made with a laser on it.
It was also found that at least one of the memory modules was not 2 GB, but 256 MB, so it was definitely not GDDR6X memory. The reason why GA102 was used is that this processor is compatible with AD102. The same graphics processor is used in the RTX 3090 Ti, which is often considered a test version of the RTX 4090 video cards.
So why do scammers make so much effort to fake the RTX 4090 and sell the card? Depending on where it was purchased, buyers may find themselves at a disadvantage when challenging the purchase. In addition, sellers may rely on uninformed buyers, shifting the blame for the faulty video card onto them, leading to self-paid repairs.
Source: VideoCardz
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