According to Nvidia, no such product is part of its current lineup, yet the YouTuber appears to have successfully obtained one, only for it to reveal an unexpected backstory.
The video, titled "I Ordered an NVIDIA RTX 4010 from China," showcases the YouTuber's journey in acquiring the mysterious card from an online marketplace, Shenzen Bitland.
This platform, a haven for obscure and often unbranded hardware, is not a typical source for high-end tech enthusiasts. The seller, however, claimed that the card was intended for Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) rather than direct sale to to the great unwashed. Even more peculiar, the seller noted that the card came with no warranty.
Budget-Builds Official had previously worked with this same merchant to secure a GT 1010 graphics card, a now-rare piece of hardware, which had been successfully delivered. Encouraged by that experience, the YouTuber decided to take a chance on the "RTX 4010," which cost around £80, though the final price was closer to £120 ($150) due to import fees from China.
Budget-Builds Official was initially taken aback by the quality of the product. The single-slot, low-profile GPU featured a sleek black cooler adorned with the Nvidia logo—far from the typical designs associated with obscure Chinese graphics cards.
The card was packaged in an anti-static bag that bore a sticker with PNY’s branding, despite being sold by Shenzen Bitland. This raised further suspicions that the card may have been a repurposed or rebranded item.
Once installed into a PC, the card initially failed to be recognised by the software GPU-Z. However, the program did identify some key specifications: 768 shaders, 4GB of GDDR6 memory, a 64-bit bus width, a memory bandwidth of 96 GB/s, and a PCIe 3.0 x16 interface.
To put these figures into perspective, the RTX 4060, a more advanced card, offers four times the number of shaders, double the memory and bus width, and nearly three times the bandwidth.
Despite these underwhelming specifications, the true nature of the "RTX 4010" soon became clear. After further investigation, Budget-Builds Official discovered that the card was, in fact, an Nvidia RTX A400, a budget workstation GPU from the Ampere generation, which had been repurposed for sale under a different name. The RTX A400, which launched earlier this year, is manufactured by Nvidia and resold by third-party brands like PNY. In a somewhat deceptive twist, the card in question had its branding obscured by a sticker, leaving only the Nvidia logo visible on the cooler.
The so-called "RTX 4010" had been modified with Nvidia’s Chinese drivers (also used for the RTX 4090D) and was clocked at 200 MHz faster than the original A400 model. This bespoke modification allowed the card to fill a gap in the budget graphics market in China, where it could serve as an affordable gaming GPU or a basic video output solution. At a starting price of £80, it presents a much cheaper alternative to more powerful, mainstream cards.
While the RTX 4010 may not technically exist as an official product from Nvidia, it has raised interesting questions about the grey market for computer hardware, particularly in regions like China, where such modified components are more readily available. For consumers outside of China, this card offers a glimpse into a parallel world of hardware, where branding and pricing are fluid, and the lines between genuine and counterfeit are often blurred.
Here is the video.
