NVIDIA GeForce GTX 2070 GPU Engineering Sample Spotted: 2176 Cores Instead of 2304, Can Be Flashed With RTX 2070 vBIOS

NVIDIA's early engineering sample of the RTX 2070, known as the GeForce GTX 2070, has been spotted and features lower cores than the original variant.

NVIDIA's GeForce "GTX" labeling was used up till the GeForce 10 and GeForce 16 series GPUs. Everything after these GPUs was labeled under the GeForce "RTX" series but it looks like the company had internally labeled the RTX 20 series as GTX 20 series as one such model has now surfaced online.

Pictures posted by @unnatural__log show a peculiar NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 GPU which is mentioned to be an engineering sample which explains why it doesn't use the "RTX" labeling.

In terms of design, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 2070 Engineering Sample features the same design as the GeForce RTX 2070. It has the same dual axial fan cooler with the dual-slot design but the label on the sides reads "GeForce GTX" and there's no "GTX 2070" or "RTX 2070" on the front. The card has a few missing labels but besides that, there are no big differences. The display ports include the same HDMI, 2x DP, USB Type-C VirtualLink port, and a DVI output. The card should feature a standard 8-pin connector since this was before the time NVIDIA switched to the 12-pin or 16-pin interfaces.

The PCB of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 2070 Engineering Sample also matches the reference design but its the specifications that are the biggest change. While the RTX 2070 featured 2304 cores, the GTX 2070 ES GPU features 2176 cores and is based on the TU106-400A-A1 GPU with the device ID being "10DE-1F07 - 10DE-12AD". This is the same core configuration used by the RTX 2060 SUPER which featured the TU106-410-A1 GPU.

Based on the testing done by the user, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 2070 Engineering Sample GPU was flashed with the BIOS of an RTX 2070 "400A BIOS" which doesn't change the device ID nor unlock the extra cores but it does grants some extra power to the GPU core which can be used for manual tweaking. With OC, the GPU ended up with around 95% of the performance of the RTX 2070, or a 16 percent boost over its default profile. That's a pretty decent bump considering that we don't get to see such gain on modern-day GPUs anymore since they are already running at clock speeds way above their listed "peak boost" clock speeds.

Overall, this shows that there was a time when NVIDIA hadn't decided to use the "RTX" branding for its upcoming Turing GPUs which ended up becoming the first "RTX" GPUs, thus ending the reign of the GeForce "GTX" series. NVIDIA has also sized the production of the last GeForce GTX GPUs which means that it's all RTX from now onward unless NVIDIA decides to move to a new branding in the future.