If Nvidia won’t add enough VRAM, modders will – 22GB for less than $500
This modded RTX 2080 Ti is a budget-friendly AI graphics card
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Even though the RTX 4090 boasts a massive 24GB of VRAM, not everyone needs (or can afford) this flagship GPU, and with the next step down being just 16GB, Nvidia is lacking more affordable cards for the AI market. The modding community has taken up the task of creating something for less than $500 in the form of this beefed-up 22GB RTX 2080 Ti.
The RTX 2080 Ti has been given a second wind, a card that featured just 11GB when it released back in 2018. With it being juiced up and doubling up to 22GB VRAM, this enables those that want to boost their AI workloads first and foremost. AMD have historically been better at providing value for money as far as memory is concerned, but this modded option trumps even their latest RX 7000 series.
RTX 2080 Ti modded to feature 22GB of VRAM
Look over to eBay user customgpu_official, and you’ll find this 2080 Ti with 22GB of memory for just $499.00. It is advertised to be a great solution for Deep Learning workloads and at this kind of price, it is 3-4 times cheaper than you’ll find any RTX 4090 these days. AMD’s RX 79000 XTX is what comes closest, with 24GB of VRAM for just over $900 as of late.
The 2080 Ti is no longer the best in terms of gaming performance, but that isn’t what the focus is here. Even still, it’s no slouch and the gaming usage isn’t hindered as DisplayPort and HDMI ports still remain on this modded component.
Comparing price to the current RTX 40 series, and the best you’ll get for around $500 is the RTX 4060 Ti 16GB variant, with an MSRP of $499, though it does sell for around the $450 mark lately. The eBay listing advertises the card as the best budget alternative to the RTX 3090 & 4090, as well as being fully supported by official Nvidia drivers – it works out of the box.
Why is this GPU good for AI workloads?
The seller of this card indeed looks to be somewhat of a professional when it comes to GPU modding. Their website goes into detail about benchmarking and performance tests for AI content creations such as stable diffusion AI drawing. Doubling the memory of this 2080 Ti does wonders for this kind of processing, generating a 512 x 768 drawing in just 5.4 seconds, or eight simultaneously in 44 seconds.
If you’re a Deep Learning student or start-up and interested in tasks such as Stable Diffusion or large language models such as Llama 2, this is the best value GPU you’ll find right now.
ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 2080TI
Clock Speeds
1650 MHz
VRAM
11GB GDDR6
Memory Bus Width
352- bit
With double the VRAM, this modded GPU simply out-does the regular-old ASUS ROG Strix option above – at the same $499 price.
