The matter of fake GeForce graphics cards floating around Chinese e-commerce platforms has been a widespread issue for some time now. However, a new report from MyDrivers suggests that Nvidia is finally doing something about it. The news publication claims that the chipmaker is working with the top Chinese e-commerce companies to eradicate counterfeit GeForce gaming graphics cards, which are common tenants on our list of best graphics cards.
Obscure graphics card brands, including 51RISC, Corn, or MLLSE, were previously trapped in China's domestic market. However, these brands have silently crept into the U.S. market over the years through platforms like eBay or, more recently, via third-party marketplaces at Amazon or Newegg. Most of the time, consumers will find GeForce graphics cards from these Chinese brands at lower prices or sometimes with ridiculous price tags. Common sense would tell you to avoid them and stick to Nvidia's official partners. However, every once in a while, a less-experienced consumer would fall for the lower prices.
The end of the Ethereum mining boom left remnants of overused mining graphics cards on the market. Some sellers are repainting the memory chips on old graphics cards to sell them on the second-hand market. Others are repurposing mobile graphics cards into desktop form and creating phony names like the GeForce RTX 3070 TiM.
According to MyDrivers, Nvidia has reportedly denied its relationship with these bogus brands, highlighting that they're not official partners. Furthermore, the report claims that the chipmaker allegedly doesn't know how the counterfeit brands produce the knockoffs. As a result, Nvidia is seemingly working hand-in-hand with e-commerce platforms to remove the fake GeForce graphics cards.
It seems that Nvidia's efforts have immediately yielded positive results. Big-name Chinese platforms, including JD.com and Douyin, have cleaned house and restricted the sales of second-hand, refurbished, and falsely advertised GeForce RTX 20-series (Turing), GTX 16-series (Turing) and GTX 10-series (Pascal) graphics cards. Pinduoduo and Tmall have followed suit, implementing new second-hand and refurbished sales policies.
Nvidia shared three valuable tips to help consumers prevent buying counterfeit graphics cards. First, the chipmaker purportedly recommends users buy a GeForce RTX 40-series (Ada Lovelace) graphics card. The logic is that since Ada launched after the mining boom, there shouldn't be any recycled GeForce RTX 4090 or GeForce RTX 4080 mining graphics cards around. Secondly, consumers should buy from Nvidia's official partners, such as Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, and Zotac - to name a few. Finally, for consumers who understandably don't want to spend lots of money on a GeForce RTX 40-series product, the GeForce RTX 30-series (Ampere) is still pretty good. However, to avoid fakes, Nvidia ostensibly suggests consumers pick up a post-mining boom SKU that has enjoyed a facelift along the lines of the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti GDDR6X or the GeForce RTX 3060 8GB.
It's excellent that Nvidia has acted on fraudulent GeForce graphics cards. However, we hope to see the chipmaker's crackdown extend to the U.S. market because there are still some residues of graphics cards from 51RISC or MLLSE around.
