How to spot a fake GPU?

[Luke Hamilton]

Is there a way to check if the GPU is legit or not?

 

[USAFRet]

Is there a way to check if the GPU is legit or not?

1. Where is it purchased from?
Ebay has a far higher likelihood of fake.
Shipping direct from China as well.

2. Price. New + much cheaper than retail points to fake

3. Looks.
Does it look exactly like something you see at Newegg/AMazon or the manufacturer?

4. Fine print in the ad copy.
Read everything

5. Performance. But by then, you've already coughed up the money.

 

[bignastyid]

Most of the time the specs wont match up. Wildly different clock speeds, the wrong type of vram, the wrong amount of vram.

 

[geofelt]

Is there a way to check if the GPU is legit or not?

Why do you want to know?

If you are buying a gpu used, on ebay, you do get some protections if you have the ability to test it out.
Some fakes can be very sophisticated so who you buy from needs to have a good reputation.
Match up the specs with what you see on GPU-Z.
Search using the serial number to see if it matches.

 

[ko888]

Some of those fakes will have their VBIOS modified to report bogus specs so you can't trust GPU-Z either

 

[g-unit1111]

There's tons of ways to spot fake products. What you should be really skeptical of is if it's a brand that you've never heard of. I have seen more than a few instances of this pop up on eBay and similar places. If a brand name sounds suspicious or you've never heard of it then you are right to be skeptical. There's a few known Chinese manufacturers that make legit products (such as Zotac) but there's also a few who you should avoid. This article does a good job of telling who is real or not:

Chinese Graphics Card Brands & Identifying Fake Graphics Card

How to spot fake graphics cards. List of trusted or legit Chinese graphics card brands along with brands that should be avoided. Some of the reputable and top graphics card brands are Asus, EVGA, Gigabyte, MSI, etc. Graphics cards from well-known brands do cost a bit more than the less popular...

graphicscardhub.com