Video Ram Transplant doubles the RTX 3070 memory to 16 GB

Video Ram Transplant doubles the RTX 3070 memory to 16 GB

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Making graphics cards not obtained even more impossible to obtain, [VIK-on] swapped the RAM chips on an Nvidia RTX 3070. This makes it the only 3070 in the world to work with 16 GB.

If this sounds familiar, it is because he tried the same trick with the RTX 2070 in January, but was unable to get it to work. When he first published the video showing the process of unsoldering the 3070 Hynix 1 GB memory chips from the 3070 and replacing them with eight 2 GB Samsung chips, he hit the same wall – the card booted and detected the increase in RAM, but it was unstable and would end up crashing. Useful tips from your viewers led you to use an EVGA configuration GUI to block the frequency of operation that fixed the problem. Other troubleshooting (YouTube commentary in Russian and machine translation) showed that setting the “maximum performance mode” in the Nvidia tool is also a solution to stabilize performance.

The new memory chips do not report their specifications to the configuration tool. Instead, a set of three resistors is used to electronically identify which hardware is present. The problem was that [VIK-on] I had no idea what resistors and what the different configurations did. It looks like you can just start swapping the zero Ohm resistors to see the effect on the GUI, as they configure the memory brand and the available size. The fact that this card is not currently sold with a 16 GB option, but the configuration tool has settings for it when the resistors are configured correctly is kismet.

So, did that make a big difference? It is hard to say. He is running some benchmarks on the video, the results of Unigine 2 SuperPosition and 3DMark Time Spy are shown. However, we did not see any tests performed before changing the chip. That would have been the key to characterizing the real impact of the hack. That said, redesigning them with a portable hot air station and working your way through the resistor configuration is impressive, no matter what the performance increase.

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