Bought a < £60 1050ti from China. Let's see what it's all about.

Vince · 26 May 2018 at 13:33

Afternoon Gents,

I have seen a few threads around with random sketchy video cards from unknown sources, then a few weeks ago I spotted this on some sketchy site and decided that I would see what it is,I already have some dodgy rx550's that are actually very good so this should be interesting, it was around £55 and claims to be a 1050ti:

Gonna put it into one of my rigs today and have a fiddle

Vince · 26 May 2018 at 14:11

Armageus said:
Nice sli connector

well i took it apart:

The build quality of this card is 'outstanding'

Vince · 26 May 2018 at 14:19

CREATIVE!11 said:
In b4 this catches fire in your case.

We shall see. I need a clean install of windows 10 on my main machine today so will test this card out. What do people want to see?

Vince · 26 May 2018 at 15:56

So nobody yet thinks it could actually be a 1050? The reinstall has just finished so just getting some programs installed and waiting for a mate to come round with some tim then ill put it in

Also card was not from ebay.

Vince · 26 May 2018 at 16:07

Rroff said:
1050 don't usually have SLI connectors or VGA output.

It should only be a few hours before I find out

To be honest I'm actually not that bothered what it is, I bought it on a credit card just in case it goes wrong. I have had success before so thought it is worth some investigating

Vince · 26 May 2018 at 20:01

CREATIVE!11 said:
LMAO.

RIP OP. I cant wait for results.

Vince · 27 May 2018 at 12:44

Don't... last night I found out that ati flash and flashed cards aren't too keen on 1803 so this morning am building a pc just so I can flash a card that is causing me problems. Today lads I promise.

In the mean time it's time to get building... all this because ati flash doesn't work on 1803 and all my machines have been updated, mind you at least ill have a build that I can just throw together for any card without messing around

Vince · 27 May 2018 at 14:43

So a little update, shows up in windows at 1050ti, install the latest nvidia drivers... nothing, the card is not installed properly. The same as all sketchy things it comes with a burned dvd with some driver files and of course I haven't had a machine with a dvd drive in forever. I had to dig out a really old XP laptop which took about 20 mins to boot then another 20 mins to copy files off of the dvd onto a usb key but now the drivers are installing so lets see what we get. For anybody out there wondering should I buy some sketchy gpu? At this point the answer is probably not.

And the results are in gpuz lies to me:

Vince · 27 May 2018 at 15:35

Ill fire it back up in a bit, im using the TV now to watch some f1 while i look for parts to repair my rx570 looks like a ghetto mod is in order.

Vince · 27 May 2018 at 22:13

CREATIVE!11 said:
Lmao op. You dun goof'd.

Telecaster said:
Hardly, I think he knows enough to have an educated guess that it was unlikely to be legit. Bit of fun though.

copycatuk said:
But does it run Crysis ?

I don't know what you mean it's a beast clearly. I'm keeping it to find out if it can run crysis. I will let you all know in good time.

Vince · 30 May 2018 at 13:29

Armageus said:
550ti with reduced TMU's and ROPs (192/24/12 instead of 192/32/24), and 128MB ram chips * 6 (instead of the 6x256MB for the 1.5Gb model, or 4x128MB+2*256MB for the 1Gb model)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nvidia_graphics_processing_units#GeForce_500_series

That's the beast.

still undecided what to do with it, clearly it's all powerful so is wasted in most applications.

Vince · 30 May 2018 at 21:21

Boo... I have been in contact with the vendor and not only have they issued a full refund I now also have a graphics card I never really needed that I bought for no other reason than I was bored. On top of this the item is no longer available for sale so I guess they have pulled it after I pointed out that they probably should. Perhaps I may even have done some people a favour here as that is now one less place you can buy a fake NV card from.

Vince · 30 May 2018 at 21:26

Armageus said:
Nice result

How many h/s though

I didn't even test it. Kinda feel like I should now

Perhaps I'll put it in the spare mining rig I am starting to build just for the lol's.

Vince · 31 May 2018 at 07:34

Boycey0211 said:
As much as I'm a moaner about mining ruining gfx card sales recently, building a mining rig out of dodgy chinese parts after a refund seems like a nice idea. Turning a profit on other people lies.

Provided it doesnt burn down your house that is :/

The premise is nice only you know that this will not be a very good mining card. It will use plenty of power while not really delivering much in the way of performance. Was fun to play with but I suspect not much other use.

Vince · 31 May 2018 at 12:11

MagicBoy said:
Main problem is they've bodged the card identity and it's got less vRAM than it claims it supports. Try and game on it and you'll get issues.

If it can be flashed back to a 550Ti then it should be usable, but I suspect you'll need a chip programmer for that as nvflash will still think it's a 1050Ti...

Nah it'll be fine... They have only effectively updated label fields. Given that the device ID is still for a 550ti you should be able to still use it without any sketchy issues. If I get time over the next few days ill answer the question on everybody's mind. Can it play Crisis?

Vince · 31 May 2018 at 13:37

MagicBoy said:
That sounds hopeful then. Can't remember exactly where, but I've seen a YouTube video on one of the tech channels where a fake 960 card that was in reality a 450 had the device IDs faked as well, and would randomly fall over when the VRAM filled up.

Good to know, at least I know now that if it does do wierd stuff, that it can be flashed back to what it is

Vince · 31 May 2018 at 16:11

willhub said:
I might get a fake GTX1080 to try out.

What you think, should I buy one? Just need to find one...

Nope drawing a blank here all the places I was finding fake cards seem to be gone

Vince · 31 May 2018 at 20:33

Armageus said:
I meant 550ti but real.in the sense of all tmus/rops

I'll see what this bad boy does, I bet its like 100h/s for all the power. Still though, I am quite impressed, I appear to have successfully scammed the scammer without even intentionally meaning to

I simply sent them a fairly long email describing what it actually was and the refund appears to be showing as pending on my credit card already and the product is no longer for sale. Have I found the only non scamming scammer out there?

Vince · 1 Jun 2018 at 14:02

varkanoid said:
not looking hard enough, go to a certain site and change item location to worldwide............

Problem is I would rather buy from somewhere that isn't an auction site. Somewhere where I can throw it on a credit card and roll the dice

Vince · 1 Jun 2018 at 21:11

This is a customized version, not original. The pursuit is the cost performance.
Although the interface and performance have changed, it can meet most of the usage requirements in reality.

What does this even mean? It can meet most usage requirements in reality? for who? doing what?

That's one of the best disclaimers I have seen. Might as well say, ladies and gents what you are looking at here is not what it says it is.