Vendors Turn RTX 3070 Ti Mobile Into Bogus Desktop GPUs
Meet the GeForce RTX 3070 TiM
A small maker of graphics cards is selling its so-called "GeForce RTX 3070 TiM" graphics card that barely offers the performance of a desktop GeForce RTX 3060 Ti. The board is indeed based on Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3070 Ti graphics processor for laptops configured accordingly and has nothing to do with GeForce RTX 3070 Ti for desktops. Unfortunately, while the manufacturer discloses the product's specs, it still carries quite a misleading model number so you won't see it on any lists of the best graphics cards.
The 51Risc GeForce RTX 3070 TiM graphics card with 8GB of GDDR6 memory sold at Aliexpress (and noticed by VideoCardz) disguises itself as a GeForce RTX 3070 Ti since few people will ever see the M moniker after the Ti. Meanwhile, this board carries Nvidia's GA104 (GN20-E) silicon used for laptop-bound GeForce RTX 3070 Ti which is considerably slower than its desktop-bound brother.
Nvidia's desktop GeForce RTX 3070 Ti uses the company's full-blown GA104-400 GPU with 6,144 CUDA cores and a 1,770 MHz boost clock paired with 8GB of 19 GTps GDDR6X memory. By contrast, the laptop version of the GeForce RTX 3070 Ti features a GPU with 5,888 CUDA cores and an up to 1,485 MHz boost clock mated with 8GB of 14 GTps GDDR6 memory. Meanwhile, the 51Risc GeForce RTX 3070 TiM features a GPU with 5888 CUDA cores operating at up to 1410MHz and accompanied by 8GB of 17.5 GTps GDDR6 memory.
| Header Cell - Column 0 | CUDA Cores | Clocks | FP32 Performance | Memory | TDP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GeForce RTX 3060 Ti | 4864 | 1410 - 1665 MHz | 16.2 TFLOPS | 8GB, 14GT/s GDDR6 | 200W |
| GeForce RTX 3070 | 5888 | 1500 - 1725 MHz | 20.3 TFLOPS | 8GB, 14GT/s GDDR6 | 220W |
| GeForce RTX 3070 Ti | 6144 | 1580 - 1770 MHz | 21.7 TFLOPS | 8GB, 19GT/s GDDR6X | 290W |
| GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Laptop | 5888 | 510 - 1485 MHz | 14.6 TFLOPS | 8GB, 14GT/s GDDR6 | 125W |
| GeForce RTX 3070 TiM | 5888 | 915 - 1410 MHz | 16.6 TFLOPS | 8GB, 17.5GT GDDR6 | 220W |
Given the clocks of the GeForce RTX 3070 TiM, it should offer performance similar to that of the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti in most cases and will never reach the framerates provided by the GeForce RTX 3070. Yet, due to its 17.5 GTps memory, it can beat both in applications that require high memory bandwidth.
Meanwhile, the RTX 3070 TiM is also relatively reasonably priced: it costs $337 with free shipping from China to the U.S., which is significantly lower than the cheapest GeForce RTX 3070 ($530) but is more or less in line with the price of the most affordable GeForce RTX 3060 Ti ($389) board at Amazon.
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The 51Risc GeForce RTX 3070 TiM looks like all inexpensive gaming graphics cards these days: it is a reasonably compact dual-wide product with a dual-fan cooling system, one eight-pin auxiliary PCIe power connector, and four display outputs. The only sticker on its backplate says this is an 'RTX3070TI 8G DDR6' device. The board rocks a220W TDP, which aligns with the desktop GeForce RTX 3070. Meanwhile, the GeForce RTX 3070 TiM requires drivers for laptop GPUs, which 51Risc does not conceal but does not state explicitly.
Nowadays, at least in well-developed countries, forged processors and graphics cards are not as common as they used to be some 20 years ago. But the proliferation of global trade opened doors for forged hardware from Asian stores to the U.S. and Europe. 51Risc, by any means, does not produce fake hardware as it adequately discloses specifications and even mentions with what silicon they are dealing. But the rather bogus naming looks quite misinforming and may mislead a consumer unaware of various GPU peculiarities.
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Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.
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thisisaname Seems good to me something that is a bit faster than a 3060ti for around 87% of the price. The naming is no worse than what Nvidia and AMD have done.Reply
A quick look on Amazon.com show me that the $389 is a sale price and the normal price is closer to $489 which makes this only 69% which make it even better. -
Eximo They are also doing it with 3060M GPUs. Actually quite decent, a very low power 6GB 3060, but with more CUDA cores than the desktop version.Reply
Problem is you have to use their drivers that you download from a google drive... -
LolaGT That is actually a great deal for the $$ along with the 6 GB 3060 version I've seen.Reply
The issue is with getting genuine drivers to install. If they can't fix that then no one is really going to want that, and team green will never bless these cards I would guess.
Too bad, because they would sell like hotcakes. -
Math Geek if, and that is a big if, you know what you are buying, it does not sound like too bad of a thing.Reply
similar to 3060ti yet a lot cheaper and stronger is certain specific workloads.
but if someone is tricked into thinking they are buying a cheap (read too good to be true) 3070ti, then it is of course a scam.
i honestly don't have a problem with this so long as it is very clearly made 100% obvious what you are buying.
but coming out of china and the suspect drivers and so on, would keep me very far away from buying one. -
Alvar "Miles" Udell I wouldn't say it's anymore "bogus" than nVidia and AMD calling their mobile parts by desktop names and appending an M even though they have nowhere near the performance of those parts, or when AMD and nVidia take older parts and rebadge them with newer series model names so you end up with parts which don't actually support the features that that series does.Reply
As it stands for about $350 with currency conversion from a listing on a Russian website linked to Ali Express, for a card with 3060 like performance, which costs about $350 on Newegg, it's about right. I wouldn't buy it, and I wouldn't advise anyone who doesn't absolutely need a new GPU to buy any GPU at all in this age of insane prices. -
Corbec542 I think the reason why it's cheap is cause these cards were originally ment to be used for mining, but then the crypto crash happened.Reply
Which is why if you look at other cards similarly priced as this one, they seem to all have the same cheap and simple heatsink design since these were originally ment to run on custom firmware and underclocked/undervolted. Have seen these cards before, years ago and some if not most of them used to only have one display output.
If you still want to get one of these cheap cards to try out , I would suggest getting the AMD ones like the RX 6600M which really cheap and unlike this card (nvidia 3000 risc/mllse) that you have to use the custom driver that the seller provides you, the AMD 6000 cards (51RISC or MLLSE) you can just download the officiall drivers from AMD and they work out of the box
I Actually own two of these (RX6600M and RX6600 MLLSE) i just wanted to try them out since ived used ex mining cards before, and so far ived had them for a few months now the haven't experienced any seriouse problems with them yet.
The only problem I had so far are the temps due the crappy heatsinks it comes with (card runs hot at around 75c+ under heavy load using default fan curve, and around 60-65c using custom fan curve) so overclocking is pretty much impossible and undervolting doesn't do much for it, so you need a decent amount of airflow near the gpu for these if you plan to buy them for testing. -
hannibal Why the normal 3070ti mobile drivers would not work?Reply
The world is full of laptops that has the same chip... -
cfbcfb Both AMD and Nvidia mobile parts have found their way into desktop cards.Reply
They still tend to perform well per watt, and the price on this is just fine while it provides more than adequate 1080p performance.
But of a mistake calling it a 3070ti, that'll disappoint some folks when they don't get the perf #'s they expected.
But then again, the gpu vendors have had no problems selling mobile 3070/3080 products that don't perform like a desktop, without pointing that out?