Why are almost all fake GPUs based on the Geforce 450 GTS?

[maverick77_uk]

Hi all,

Just a vague interest really. On places like Youtube, there are a lot of videos regarding the dodgy fake GPUs that you can get from the obvious sites. These generally claim to be anything from 750's up to 1050's and reality, when torn down are generally 450 GTS's with an altered BIOS.

However, several things have intrigued me. Firstly, if these were just literally 10 year old graphics cards which had been cleaned up and BIOs flashed, it would be understandable (not forgivable, but understandable why they would do it).

However, these look to be brand new PCB'S and fans (the fan is generally a good clue as they all look the same dodgy style!), but also, the outputs are based on a 450, in that they have VGA out. This is also generally a good thing to look for to tell if it is dodgy, as cards like the 1050 had dropped analogue VGA support.

Which leads on to my next thought-if you were trying to make a dodgy card that would fool someone into thinking it was a 1050, why include a VGA port if you are making the PCB from scratch? Why not make the PCB look like you'd expect a 1050 PCB to look like, with something like the correct outputs?

So, I guess my query is why is it almost always the 450 GPU? Were there a massive over production in the day? Is there a massive vat of 450 chips sitting somewhere? Or is someone specifically going through an electrical dump pulling 450 GPUs for re-use in dodgy graphics cards? Why not use any of the other 100+ dirt cheap obsolete ancient chips that surely are also available in the same way?

And making a brand new card and PCB seems like a massive expense to go to to produce a fake card? I guess suggesting that these 450 GPU'S are just chips sitting somewhere without a PCB yet......

Any ideas?

Cheers!

[ik9000]

maybe because the charlies who get suckered into buying them are the old peeps who still want a vga connection for their 1360x768 15" TN panel (which they say is perfectly big enough). Maybe they tried making them better and got returns due to incompatibility?

[cheesemp]

I've often wondered the same having seen the same sort of videos. (There are also lots of videos covering 3 camera phones only have 1 low spec camera behind the glass and the other 2 are fake)

It must be from an oversupply as otherwise why not target a more common chip? I think a lot of these cards (like the fake phones) are made for the domestic market in China where they get flogged off cheap to more ignorant buyers. Imagine how many of these would be sold in the UK to your average buyer if we didn't have stronger protections? (There are some good videos on purchasing electronics in China - its rarely done from big chain stores, its more like indoor markets and you can remember the days when UK markets where full of dodgy knock offs)

I also think they know a few desperate people from other countries will order from the likes of wish!

[kalniel]

I was thinking along similar lines to the above. There's probably a factory or three somewhere that either has a lot of these cards, or perhaps even has the tooling to produce their own. Then they're probably also targeting markets where peripherals are still VGA based, so the fact your '1050' suddenly turns up with a VGA port isn't a problem, it might even be a good thing.

[maverick77_uk]

Hi,

Thanks both - yes, agree with your thoughts.

My other thought is that possibly the geforce 450GTS is the "sweet spot" in that it is old and obsolete enough to have absolutely no inherent value, so they are picking the chips up for next to nothing, while to the untrained eye, working. At the end of the day, they are DX 11 chips, so do still at least boot and try and run many of the latest games, albeit badly.

If they used, say a geforce 2 chip, they wouldn't even boot the majority of applications, so would look duff from the second they are installed. Geforce 600 series onwards could still possibly be more expensive as they do still have some inherent value as they are still current to a greater or lesser extent.

With the geforce 450 GTS, by the time the buyer may realise they are not getting the frame rates they expect, they can't be bothered to return it anymore, or figure their poor frame rates are due to something else, so again just live with it.

Cheers!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The GF108 was made until relatively recently so I am more surprised that isn't used,but the "faster" GF106 with greater power requirements is! So it probably tells you to get a bare GF108 GPU costs more than a bare GF106 one. So either there was a lot of unsold GF106 inventory in China,or it is quite possible the GTS450 was quite popular in China. Hence there is an ample stock of secondhand GPUs which could be repackaged onto newer PCBs,and in China repackaging of used GPUs,chipsets happens as you can see rather interesting motherboards for sale too.

[cheesemp]

The GF108 was made until relatively recently so I am more surprised that isn't used,but the "faster" GF106 with greater power requirements is! So it probably tells you to get a bare GF108 GPU costs more than a bare GF106 one. So either there was a lot of unsold GF106 inventory in China,or it is quite possible the GTS450 was quite popular in China. Hence there is an ample stock of secondhand GPUs which could be repackaged onto newer PCBs,and in China repackaging of used GPUs,chipsets happens as you can see rather interesting motherboards for sale too.

I see what you are saying CAT but the MB are usually fairly legit from what I've seen - You get z77 board and it'll be a z77 board (I know some of them have hacked BIOS to support more chips like Xeons etc but that's adding features not fraud). These are just nasty renamed in BIOS hacks which I've only seen with GPUs and then as mentioned it always the 450 GTS... Maybe Nvidia just cleared out some bulk inventory as the 500/600 series was coming out figuring they would be good for off loading on the Chinese market but even they couldn't shift them!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I see what you are saying CAT but the MB are usually fairly legit from what I've seen - You get z77 board and it'll be a z77 board (I know some of them have hacked BIOS to support more chips like Xeons etc but that's adding features not fraud). These are just nasty renamed in BIOS hacks which I've only seen with GPUs and then as mentioned it always the 450 GTS... Maybe Nvidia just cleared out some bulk inventory as the 500/600 series was coming out figuring they would be good for off loading on the Chinese market but even they couldn't shift them!

I was talking about the weird HEDT motherboards you can find in China for socket 1366,socket 2011,etc. The PCBs are brand new,but they appear to use a multitude of repurposed chipsets which appear to be secondhand.