Eight gigabytes of video memory on the Nvidia Geforce RTX 2070 are not enough for you? Fortunately, with the necessary technical skills, it is possible to change that, as a Russian modder has now demonstrated (see embedded video below). And yet most of you would probably not want to swap the card for a normal RTX 2070, because the 16.0 GByte GDDR6-VRAM that is available to the modded RTX 2070 come with a price.
We’re not talking about the obvious price of the additional video memory, which you basically only have to remove from another graphics card or, like modder VIK-on, purchase it from Aliexpress for 200 US dollars (via Techpowerup).
RTX 2080 Ti »Super«: We saw a similar mod a little over a year ago. At that time, modders made one RTX 2080 Ti “Super” out of two RTX 2080 Super:
more on the subject
Modders build the world’s first “Geforce RTX 2080 Ti Super”
What happened to the RTX 2070?
First, let’s take a look at the modder’s work. This is impressive because memory mods are far from easy to perform. You have to be really damn good with the heat gun, in other words: guess the right time at which you can remove the memory modules without damaging the circuit board or the contacts.
Soldering the new memory modules is no less difficult, which requires a certain amount of practice – so maybe it is better not to imitate it. You can also watch the full video from VIK-on, but it’s in Russian:
Link to YouTube content
Success yes, performance no
While we are not copying: The RTX 2070 does not just recognize the 16.0 GB GDDR6 video memory. To do this, VIK-on had to modify the board further and – as it looks – solder on some capacitors or resistors.
The RTX 2070 then recognizes the 16.0 GB GDDR6-VRAM without any problems, but the performance drops massively.
In the 3DMark TimeSpy benchmark test, the RTX 2070 only achieved 6,176 points, previously it was 9,107 points – a decrease of around 32 percent.
Hardware-Trends 2021: Bigger video memory is definitely a trend of the year. What else we expect in 2021, you can find out at GameStar-Plus:
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Nvidia Lovelace and AMD Ryzen Zen 3+: Hardware Outlook 2021, Part 2
GameStar-Talk: The new Radeons from AMD come natively with 16.0 GB of video memory, making life difficult for Nvidia:
12:40
AMD versus Nvidia – That’s how strong the Radeon RX 6800 XT is compared to the RTX 3080
