According to a recent listing on Goofish, Chinese companies are now selling mobile versions of NVIDIA's latest RTX 40-series GPUs as desktop graphics cards. Originally designed for gaming laptops, the GeForce RTX 4080M and RTX 4090M are now being marketed in China as more affordable alternatives to their official desktop counterparts. This development is not surprising to industry observers, as similar adaptations were made with the RTX 20 and 30 series. These companies are taking advantage of the lower cost of mobile GPUs, along with budget cooling solutions and simpler PCB designs, to offer cheaper desktop GPU options. The mobile GPUs, which have a power consumption limit of 175 Watts, are being repurposed without official approval, with NVIDIA seemingly ignoring this practice. Despite the lack of official endorsement, these modified GPUs are entering the market, providing gamers with a cost-effective alternative to the more expensive desktop versions.
Although not officially supported by NVIDIA, these cards use the mobile GPU dies along with custom cooling solutions and PCBs to function in desktop PCs. Reports suggest that the RTX 4080M desktop variant has 7424 CUDA cores and 12 GB GDDR6 memory, which is a 24% reduction in cores and 4 GB less memory compared to the desktop RTX 4080. The desktop RTX 4090M is even more limited, with 9728 cores and 16 GB memory, representing a 40% decrease in cores and 8 GB less memory than the flagship RTX 4090 desktop card. The pricing for these cards ranges from $420 to $560 for the RTX 4080M, surpassing even the desktop RTX 4090 for the 4090M variant. The performance and longevity of these unofficial cards are still to be determined. While they offer a cheaper option for Chinese gamers, the reduced specifications come with tradeoffs. Nevertheless, their availability demonstrates the ongoing demand for next-gen GPUs and the lengths some vendors are willing to go to meet that demand.
