Identifying an NVIDIA GPU sold as 1050Ti

It's got a 50/50 shot of working if you can find the right bios, and it must be flashed manually via the bios chip itself. The bios cannot be flashed via software on those cards.. If you find the right bios, and it does not have hacked memory or a lesser amount, than it will work. If it has less memory than it should, it's going to artifact
 
One thing to note. The latest GeForce drivers I believe drop Fermi support. Not sure if that means those are removed, or just no longer updated.
 
Ocellaris said:
You are incorrectly assuming this isn’t some Frankenstein board built out of parts which may not even function as intended. The SLI bridge on the fakes doesn’t work.
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It actually functions reasonably well, even in games it works until it gets an out of memory error due the erroneous 4GB memory listed when it actually has 2GB. If it is run under the proper drivers with the correct BIOS information it should run alright on some of the ancient computer systems I have laying around. I wouldn't bother even trying to run it on any of the newer systems, what would be the point, even the crappy onboard video on them are light years ahead of this card.
 
matt167 said:
It's got a 50/50 shot of working if you can find the right bios, and it must be flashed manually via the bios chip itself. The bios cannot be flashed via software on those cards.. If you find the right bios, and it does not have hacked memory or a lesser amount, than it will work. If it has less memory than it should, it's going to artifact
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It will have the correct BIOS in it, it just needs the header to be modified. And yes it has to modified manually it cannot be done via software.
 
All of the markings and identifiers on the PCB and memory are almost certainly irrelevant. They could be any random assortment used since the entire card is counterfeit.

Did you check the device hardware ID in Windows Device Manager? At this point you might have better luck just flashing a few of the most likely BIOS options and testing it out. I bet it's something like a GTS 450.
 
FlawleZ said:
All of the markings and identifiers on the PCB and memory are almost certainly irrelevant. They could be any random assortment used since the entire card is counterfeit.

Did you check the device hardware ID in Windows Device Manager? At this point you might have better luck just flashing a few of the most likely BIOS options and testing it out. I bet it's something like a GTS 450.
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Device manager labels with the code associated with a 1050 Ti, that is because the BIOS has been spoofed to give a false ID. As for the circuit board being fake, it would cost far too much to make a fake board, each change we made to our circuit board designs cost us tens of thousands of dollars, outright creation of entirely new boards costs much much more.

These guys in China are buying old cards, of which there are a great many available at very cheap prices, they don't have to fake the circuit boards they just have to get the 450's and 550's which have an open BIOS and then simply change the header information on the card. Though this leads to wrong drivers being installed so they mod a drivers disc to install the 450 or 550 drivers which allows you to run the card, this allows them to get positive feedback on their Ebay sales because many people are fooled by the fact that the card actually works. As soon as you try to load updated drivers though the driver installation reads a header of 1050 Ti and loads drivers for a "1050 Ti" and then you have a noticeable problem as you attempt to run a 450 or 550 with Fermi architecture as a 1050 Ti with a Pascal architecture.

As for the lack of branding on the circuit board this actually common with Asian third party manufacturers, NVIDIA does not actually make any circuit boards, the circuit boards are all made by third party companies that use the NVIDIA technology and name branding for their cards ie MSI, Gigabyte, Zotac, EVGA , Asian third party manufacture Colorful igame, Galax etc etc etc. While all these companies produce their own "brand" of circuit board they all use the NVIDIA processors made by TMSC Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company in Taiwan. igame or Galax boards while being of Asian manufacture are not "counterfeit" boards, certainly no more so than Gigabyte or Msi or anyone else that contracts with NVIDIA for the right to produce NVIDIA branded video cards.
 
MountainGaurdian said:
Device manager labels with the code associated with a 1050 Ti, that is because the BIOS has been spoofed to give a false ID. As for the circuit board being fake, it would cost far too much to make a fake board, each change we made to our circuit board designs cost us tens of thousands of dollars, outright creation of entirely new boards costs much much more.

These guys in China are buying old cards, of which there are a great many available at very cheap prices, they don't have to fake the circuit boards they just have to get the 450's and 550's which have an open BIOS and then simply change the header information on the card. Though this leads to wrong drivers being installed so they mod a drivers disc to install the 450 or 550 drivers which allows you to run the card, this allows them to get positive feedback on their Ebay sales because many people are fooled by the fact that the card actually works. As soon as you try to load updated drivers though the driver installation reads a header of 1050 Ti and loads drivers for a "1050 Ti" and then you have a noticeable problem as you attempt to run a 450 or 550 with Fermi architecture as a 1050 Ti with a Pascal architecture.

As for the lack of branding on the circuit board this actually common with Asian third party manufacturers, NVIDIA does not actually make any circuit boards, the circuit boards are all made by third party companies that use the NVIDIA technology and name branding for their cards ie MSI, Gigabyte, Zotac, EVGA , Asian third party manufacture Colorful igame, Galax etc etc etc. While all these companies produce their own "brand" of circuit board they all use the NVIDIA processors made by TMSC Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company in Taiwan. igame or Galax boards while being of Asian manufacture are not "counterfeit" boards, certainly no more so than Gigabyte or Msi or anyone else that contracts with NVIDIA for the right to produce NVIDIA branded video cards.
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If you know so much about this, have you gotten the card working correctly yet?

Also pumping out junk PCBs while in China cost next to nothing compared to a company in the states getting PCBs redesigned. Sure some of these fakes came as complete cards, however other are manufactured with old parts (and this is why the SLI connectors rarely works on the fakes). Even if it cost them $20K US, it doesn’t mean the math won’t work out when they flood the market and sell the cards.
 
Ocellaris said:
If you know so much about this, have you gotten the card working correctly yet?

Also pumping out junk PCBs while in China cost next to nothing compared to a company in the states getting PCBs redesigned. Sure some of these fakes came as complete cards, however other are manufactured with old parts (and this is why the SLI connectors rarely works on the fakes). Even if it cost them $20K US, it doesn’t mean the math won’t work out when they flood the market and sell the cards.
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I'm not claiming to know a lot about the fake card situation. I'm more familiar with fake electronic components and such. As a PCB designer though, I think it's odd that anyone would take the time to make ANYTHING and manufacture it, populate it, and make it "sort of" work. Even in China, I don't think it would be worth the time and effort to do that. I'm not saying it doesn't or has never happened, but it doesn't quite add up to me.

More likely, I think is remarking old or broken (or maybe a trashed, flawed production run) set of existing cards. A bit of remarking, a hacked up BIOS flash, and you can turn garbage into a pretty easy scamming tool. I would think that would be way more profitable and much easier to do.

This is typically how the fake component thing works. They will sand off the surface of a big batch of ICs, re-mark them to something that's in demand or hard to find, and make a killing before anyone realizes they have fakes. Usually when their project releases the magic smoke due to incorrect ICs, pinouts, power pin locations, etc. You see this a lot with things like the CA3080, uA726, among others.

It's a lot easier and productive to take something that exists, and make it more enticing, than to build a fake from the ground up. If you're going to do that, you might as well just go into business as a low end card manufacturer.

Like I said, I could be wrong. I haven't followed this exact issue. These comments are just based on my own experience/knowledge of similar matters.
 
Ocellaris said:
You are incorrectly assuming this isn’t some Frankenstein board built out of parts which may not even function as intended. The SLI bridge on the fakes doesn’t work.
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I wouldn't put it past them to restamp the memory and GPU chips. Such antics were common with fake L3 moterboard cache chips via the 486 days.
 
MountainGaurdian, congrats on taking this obvious scam and turning it into a teaching moment for your son and also making it a detective/scavenger hunt project. This life lesson will give your son so much more computer knowledge than most are exposed to with their "power on, load steam and discord, flame away" computer lifestyle. And I'm glad to hear you could apply for a refund. :)
 
MountainGaurdian, I have purchased a very similar board and after a lot of research I managed to rewrite the bios to this frankenstein video card. You will have to use an eeprom writer as suggested by Matt67. It is indeed a gts450 but rev 2 at 1 GB DDR5 ram not 2 GB. The link for the rom bios is :
https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/143074/143074
Message me if you need help with the finer details of using the eeprom burner on this card.
 
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