Modder doubles GeForce RTX 3070 memory from 8GB to 16 GB GDDR6

by Hilbert Hagedoorn on: 03/09/2021 10:09 AM | source: | 16 comment(s)

It's certainly not the first time that we see a modder altering the GDDR6 DRAM amount on a graphics card, and there you have it, GeForce RTX 3070 modded to 16 GB GDDR6.

This Geforce RTX 3070is equipped with 8 GB as standard. That may be enough for most cases at the moment, but it is not totally future-proof and anyone who is in the enthusiast area would agree, 16 GB is better. The SMT soldered Samsung modules type K4Z803256C-HC14 can be exchanged for modules of type K4ZAF3258M-HC14. They are almost identical with the subtle difference that the capacity is doubled from 1 Gbit to 2 Gbit. After a bit of fiddling with even the card recognized the new 16GB partition. Unfortunately, it really needs a BIOS mod with proper timings, voltages and frequency to become a proper success. And that last bit is getting more complicated.

It didn't work 100%; software like 3D Mark, Furmark and Crypto mining ran without restrictions, but the card did not render 3D graphics problem free. Here and there it created generated black screens. Further tests showed it is clock frequency-related.

4 pages 1 2 3 4

vestibule
Senior Member

Posts: 723
Joined: 2014-04-21

#5894059 Posted on: 03/09/2021 06:38 PM

Nice find.

EspHack
Senior Member

Posts: 2731
Joined: 2010-01-03

#5894098 Posted on: 03/09/2021 08:33 PM

maybe the EU could take a look and determine this is blatant planned obsolescence and rule that big expensive GPUs come with socketed memory

Zeka
Member

Posts: 83
Joined: 2016-09-27

#5894113 Posted on: 03/09/2021 09:29 PM

I was just thinking that, what would it take to put slots in there, so you can expand memory, same as for system memory?
I assume there's nothing much in the way, but I guess they prefer to sell whole cards

must be for user satisfaction and protection, compatibility and

user1
Senior Member

Posts: 2005
Joined: 2016-01-29

#5894119 Posted on: 03/09/2021 09:55 PM

As the modder said it is not really an issue of BIOS but rather a driver issue. His conspiracy theory was that it is done intentionally by Nvidia so that AIBs could not release some custom cards with more RAM than Nividia has allowed. His hopes was that with the release of RTX 3070 (which supposedly will have 16GB VRAM) the modded card will also work flawlessly.

He is Russian.
Its actually not that crazy, it would be pretty weird if the timings do not apply properly and the chips themselves are used on an existing card ( like a quadro variant of the same silicon), though that remains to be seen

asturur
Senior Member

Posts: 1211
Joined: 2010-05-12

#5894152 Posted on: 03/09/2021 11:43 PM

I do not think ram quantity is ever an obsolescense factor with GPU.
My geforce 770 4GB was obsolete as soon as the 2gb version, not one day later.

When 16GB are needed for a game, there is the chance that the 3070 does not do enough FPS with 16GB either at the target resolution for 16GB.

4 pages 1 2 3 4

Post New Comment

Click here to post a comment for this news story on the message forum.