Fake or Rare Nvidia Graphics Card?

Rainwater said:

http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gt-730/buy-gpu

They do make 4gb gt 730's. There are some on this list. The actual Gpu itself the gf 108 is the only thing you should be researching because if Tech Tweaker is correct and they did not use that chip in any gt 730's then you have a flashed card of another sort. I don't have time to look into it at the moment but I will later.

But as everyone has pointed out, it looks like you got burned. And that sucks. See if the dude will give you your money back. This is why I don't buy used stuff online. Even tho you bought it in person but I don't think it will be long before people start using these De-Lid tools to put a 7700k heat spreader on an i3.

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yes but that gt 730 is gdd3 but this one reports itself to be gddr5 which doesnt exist...

And also there is plenty of gt730 with gf108 chips


but the thing is that there is no 4gb 128bit model...they are all 64 bit or ddr3




I'd love to know if is theres anyone on the forum who could know what card is this from pcb power design?Or someone who can inspect bios and tell us is there something funky happening...If this is fake gt 730 people must know
Can we report this to nvidia?

EXACTLY. Sorry for the confusion, my point is just as everyone else's. No matter how much you look into it, no matter much you try and convince yourself. It looks very much VERY much like a scam. Chalk it up as a loss. At least you didn't buy a Skylake i3 with a 7700k heat spreader on it. I can only imagine that is going to be the next big scam. Try an return it. If you can't it's only a few bucks.

Rainwater said:

EXACTLY. Sorry for the confusion, my point is just as everyone else's. No matter how much you look into it, no matter much you try and convince yourself. It looks very much VERY much like a scam. Chalk it up as a loss. At least you didn't buy a Skylake i3 with a 7700k heat spreader on it. I can only imagine that is going to be the next big scam. Try an return it. If you can't it's only a few bucks.

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i mean i bought it from a local "trusted" dude that sell used pc's and components...i can't blaim him...He probbably tested it just like i did...Open up msi kombustor or something and gpu passes every test, no artifacts no nothing...Plays games on lower settings fine

I tried few games now, gpu works fine until vram reaches 980mb then it falls on its face and crashes the game and the nvidia driver...

The only thing i'm gonna try to be sure is a fresh install(because i migrated from hdd to ssd by cloning the windows) of windows and drivers and see if that maybe fixes the crashes when gpu memory is at about 1gig...but i doubt it wil help becouse this gpu just doesn't exist in this configuration( 128bit and 4 gigs of ddr5 paired with gf108)

Well he might refund you. If you show the evidence. If I accidentally sold something like that I would refund it. I have sold many PC components. I have done a lot of PC work for friends and friends of friends. If he has any Integrity you will be able to approach him about the matter. If it was on purpose then you won't but there are enough links on this thread to prove your case with the guy.

Mr.Scott said:

LOL, It's not manufacturer specific, AMD does it also.

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That's just like pre-AMD Radeon...

Lazar said:

but what happens if gpu has 1gig of memory and has been flashed to "see" 4 gigs?

The problem that i have with this card isn't the performance nor the fact that it may be a clone...it actually crashes all official nvidia drivers when i start pushing the settings...Dirt Rally runs on ultra low 100fps avg...one would think that you could bump up the settings a little?Look at the end of video to see what happes

the same is with crysis 2 and crysis 3...crysis 2 runs okay on high-ultra settings...Push settings to extreme the video memory goes over 1gig and the video driver crashes...
Crysis 3 runs okay on medium setting, if put setting to high video driver crashes...

and its the same like in dirt...all kinds of textures and artifacts all over the screen



But gpu passes every stress test (like msi kombustor or 3d mark because they don't try to use all 4 gigs of vram)...is there a program for vram stress test?
is it possible to modify this original bios to limit the memory to 1 gig and see if that fixes the problem?

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Yep, the same flippin' Windows driver error as my eVGA GeForce GTX 660 Ti when it had the wrong BIOS. That would occur randomly in Heaven and it seemed more likely to do that when switching from 2D to 3D modes, so it's possibly a GPU Vcore issue where it don't automatically switch voltage modes correctly. That's why it's dumb to flash any BIOS to it... I hate folks that sell video cards with some random BIOS on it...

Luckily for me, it was just my buddy that decided to flash an Asus BIOS on to it and then TechPowerUp to the rescue...

But, I did notice something else that was bad, in 2D, I randomly got red screen crashes, where I get a red screen when using the command prompt in Windows and then Windows stops responding...
That problem was gone after I reflashed it with the right BIOS...

Here's old listings of that card with other names, also the brand "Vamery" is always associated with fake GTX's (don't know if they are actually counterfeit or not) :

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vamery-GTX7...526?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item487ef3aae6

http://www.ebay.com/itm/gtx650-real...112581?hash=item3f69bfbb05:g:SgAAAOSwGtRXxEtX

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Nvidia-Gefo...281771?hash=item2efa816d6b:g:xTIAAOSwj85YQr-l

so after more searching i think that i've found what i have...a bios re-flashed gt440...As all other "Vamery" card are gt 400 series

The reference nvidia pcb looks very similar to what i have (note it uses hynix memory and i have samsung, so i gess that they modified reference nvidia bios and flashed it to some aftermarket pcb like mine that uses samsung memory to look like gt730)





and the cooler design looks like knock off of Galaxy gt 640





after a little more googling i've found a gt440 that might be the same card as mine? the specs are the same
this gt440 has 1gb ddr5 128bit samsung memory and gpu-z reads it like that, and i have samsung memory chips but its probbably runnig hynix voltages and timings from reference model

mine: and the one that i've found on google





Can i flash and fix this card? I won't be mad if i get a normaly working gt 440 instead of gt 730

Is it possible flash a bios from any manifacturer gt440 as long as the specs and pcb align?

There is a gainward gt440 bios on techpowerup and the specs of that gpu are the same as mine...and it says that it supports both samsung and hynix memory?
I've googled the images and the pcb looks the same its just red instead of blue






and how can mine "fake" gt730 run on "real" gt730 drivers?

You can flash whatever you want, brand doesn't make any difference, but I personally am not telling you to do that. You'll be no better off. Maybe worse off.

Drivers are not card specific. The same driver covers many generations, series's, and model's of cards.

I agree with Scotty, I do not see a benefit to trying flash a different bios.

Just open a case to return that one and get another different one, there's plenty of peeps here that won't mind helping you if you need

Chart of GF108 vs. nVidia graphics card models. It is a Fermi architecture GPU that actually came out in 2010 with the GT 420 OEM/GT 430 and was subsequently used in all the models shown below.



Other GT 730s used the GK208 which is a Kepler architecture GPU came out in 2013 with the GT 630 and the was used in all the models shown below.

I bought another card...MSI ati radeon 5670 1gb ddr5 for like 15$
i'm going to pick it up tomorrow...And its an original card and its faster than this by 10-15%

and i'm going to giveaway this crap for free to someone who needs it...It actually does work normally even for gaming until you putt settings too high (as it has only 1gb of vram but the software thinks its got 4gb) and than it crashes...

I just need something thats more stable

I agree with others in this thread. You should contact and return this to the guy that sold it to you. You would probably get a refund if he is legit and the biggest gain here. Is if he didn't know about this issue he DOES NOW. So you might be saving him and many others after you a headache because he will know to be on the lookout for these fake cards.