Thursday, January 21st 2021
NVIDIA RTX 2070 Modded to Support 16GB Memory
PC enthusiast VIK-on pulled off a sophisticated memory mod for the GeForce RTX 2070, doubling its memory amount to 16 GB. In a detailed video presentation (linked below), VIK-on demonstrated how he carefully removed the 8 Gb Micron-made GDDR6 memory chips of his card, with 16 Gb Samsung-made chips he bought off AliExpress for $200. Memory replacement mods are extremely difficult to pull off, as you first de-solder the existing chips using a hot air gun while keeping the contacts on the PCB intact (ensuring no pins short); and solder the replacement BGA memory chips in place.
In addition, a set of "jumpers" on the PCB need to be modified to make it recognize the Samsung memory. The resulting card booted to desktop successfully, with GPU-Z reading its full 16 GB memory size. The card successfully made it through 3DMark TimeSpy, albeit with 30% lower performance than a normal RTX 2070 (6176 points vs. ~9107 points). The card would also crash Furmark. Still, it's mighty impressive that the "TU106" recognizes 16 GB of addressable memory (which means all its memory channels are intact), without the need for any BIOS mods, which is impossible to pull off.
Watch the VIK-on video presentation here.
Source:
VideoCardz
In addition, a set of "jumpers" on the PCB need to be modified to make it recognize the Samsung memory. The resulting card booted to desktop successfully, with GPU-Z reading its full 16 GB memory size. The card successfully made it through 3DMark TimeSpy, albeit with 30% lower performance than a normal RTX 2070 (6176 points vs. ~9107 points). The card would also crash Furmark. Still, it's mighty impressive that the "TU106" recognizes 16 GB of addressable memory (which means all its memory channels are intact), without the need for any BIOS mods, which is impossible to pull off.
36 Comments on NVIDIA RTX 2070 Modded to Support 16GB Memory
When you run a game that actually requires 16GB vram it will require something that's twice as fast as 2070 simple as that.
So the 16GB won't future proof anything.
I would gladly buy 6800 8GB if was $100 cheaper than the 16G version.
But AMD playing the game right dump more vram and people are fine buying slower cards as long it makes their epeen grows with that 16GB vram.
Plus very few people run only the game at any one time. I for example run a web rowser in the background and than can easily utilize 2GB along with Windows itself. Add to that a game on Ultra settings and suddenly 8GB requires closing of processes or lowering settings in game.
Keeping stuff in cache or memory allows you to alt tab into something else without suffering hiccups.
Yeah until the game engine needs it and then I'm sure can clear it, so the "alt tabbing might be compromised not he game imo.
It would be great if @W1zzard can chime in.
But: people run multi monitor, people run borderless fullscreen... in those situations the VRAM will likely remain allocated. We can easily test this, to be fair. The idea of a background application however has certainly changed over the years and especially since Windows 10. Multitasking is much more of a thing now than it used to be, and especially a browser can have a massive footprint.
Also, I would not trust Ali for parts like this as seems to be fake.