AMD Retail Radeon RX 480 4GB to 8GB Memory Unlock Mod Works, We Benchmarked

[xorbe]

I wonder if any shady businessmen after seeing that would have thought to buy a bunch of these peeloff the sticker, flash them to 8gb and resell them at the 8gb price. To boot there would be nothing wrong with this, since according to 54th, they'd just be correcting AMD shortcomings.

Somewhere, someone is doing this right now, almost guaranteed.

 

[INSTG8R]

Shhh now you'll never find one...

 

[Makaveli]

I hope people don't get all excited and expect this. It was made clear shortly before the NDA lifted that AMD sent out cards that are able to be 4gb and unlocked to 8gb to reviewers so the can send a reviewer one card and still have both configs reviewed. It would be awesome if it was true for everyone but there are already pics of the 4gb internals from some that clearly show only 4gb of physical ram.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150771&SortField=0&SummaryType=0&PageSize=10&SelectedRating=-1&VideoOnlyMark=False&IsFeedbackTab=true#scrollFullInfo&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-The Tech Report-_-na-_-na-_-na&cm_sp=&AID=10487648&PID=1800524&SID=

You better tell that to people buying the cards from newegg!

The very first post is of someone unlocking the memory on a non reference card.

 

[BromoL]

I registered an account for saying: THANKS!

I got my Sapphire RX 480 4GB yesterday (in germany for 219€ from Alternate) and this published test gave me confidence in trying the 8GB bios. Worked like a charm. But i think the days of the reference 4GB version are counted. Only hours after i ordered mine (early monday) it disapeared from all online shops (not even listed as out of stock) in germany and even the marked up offerings from ebay are gone.

Furthermore i want to add: My GPU voltage in the highest power state is only 1.03x volts (forgot the last digit) at stock settings and my power draw is correspondingly lower.

Best regards,
a very happy RX 480 4to8 GB owner

 

[BiggieShady]

You know, i thought about your response once again and thought how it would have felt to be an SLI customer - EVGA charging extra for some highend SLI Bridge that promises extra performance but when you read Techpowerup review you see it does nothing extra. - Is it called scamming people into buying same stuff but charging extra ? NO ?

You shouldn't think that much about my responses ... this is all semantic, one can feel scammed and not be a victim of the scam in the same time ... your example of the SLI bridge is great, same performance as the old bridge, people feel scammed, is it really a scam just because SLI games of today don't use extra available bandwidth on the bridge? We will see once devs get creative with multi gpu schemes in dx12, but right now it only gives you what you buy - more bandwidth on the bridge that you don't use.
Same difference, is buyer scammed by not being privy to information of RX480 download more memory upgrade, when he or she is buying 8 GB model? No. Do they feel scammed? Possibly ... but thanks to w1zz the information came early enough.

 

[wurschti]

lol time to flash titan x bios to 980

card is still too weak to my taste. not really interested getting 4gb more vram because it's already low end card.

low end 4K card? yes
low end card? not really. this is a perfect 1080p card, and a good bargain for 1440p, depending on the title. Plus it's not limited to single GPU config for future upgrades and the company is not asking you a shitload of money for the 4GB memory difference. $30 is a minuscule difference if you compare it to NVIDIA's 780's 3GB vs 6GB price difference which was more than $100.

 

[rhythmeister]

Has anyone here liberated the extra 4GB of ram on the XFX Core Edition card?

 

[Sunstream]

Also the 9500 to 9700 mod. That was glorious.

The ATI Radon 9500 to 9700 was Awesome mod and I did it. I was careful to follow the directions back then I was nervous of flashing my video cards because I had a sapphire that did not flash right go to find out that sapphire screwed up told us to flash back to the original bios until they fixed the bug. Sapphire got better. But I had an ATI Radeon 9500 that I mod to 9700 and got much better performance. Now with the 480 could have 8GB so if I buy a 4GB 480 I can try this flash? Or was it with the first few card drops?

 

[AsRock]

Lotteries are scams. There are based on a weakness of human psychology. Variable ratio reward systems are the most addictive. Lotteries thrive on that.

Lotteries are profitable precisely because they don't give people enough payback to justify the pay-in. They only provide the illusion of doing so. Of course, this is the basis of all profitability. Businesses that give people equal value are "out-competed" by the scammers, provided the scammers are savvy enough. Business that give people more value than what the buyer paid for go out of business in short order.

The problem with lotteries that makes them worse than the general profitability scamming is that the buyer doesn't know what they're buying. Instead, they're buying a hope or a dream — via the variable reward system. That's a step worse than the buyer just not knowing what what they're buying is worth (or not being able to leverage their power to force a seller to provide equivalent product) — the basis of profitability.

It's bad business, in terms of ethics, to do things like the panel lottery in televisions. Even if it reduces the price tag to the consumer a smidgen it reduces the overall value potential of the purchase more when there is high variability in panel quality. So, the more "lottery" a purchase is the more abusive it is, particularly when it involves a large amount of money.

Since this card does not look to benefit all that much from the additional RAM and isn't a good value for Crossfire (in comparison with just buying one high-performance Pascal) the lottery effect here seems to be rather small.

Well if you get a 4GB over a 8GB that's your fault for being a cheap ass, you can easily just pay the extra $30 if you don't that's your fault.

I skimmed over the thread and to be honest scamming was never mentioned in the way you put it ... not "doing the scam" but "feeling scammed". Some people would feel scammed if they bought 8 GB version for extra $30 yesterday, and some would feel saved from bios flashing for only 30 bucks.

But you got what you payed for so they should stop bitching and man up, this happens with so many products so company's save money at the start of production dam some even do it later on in production.

 

[Flow]

I skimmed over the thread and to be honest scamming was never mentioned in the way you put it ... not "doing the scam" but "feeling scammed". Some people would feel scammed if they bought 8 GB version for extra $30 yesterday, and some would feel saved from bios flashing for only 30 bucks.

Agreed 100%.
I once got myself the 6950 Toxic which had the 6970 bios on the second switch position. While not 100% guaranteed, which was stated on the box, it did work as intended. I got it at a time already newer revisions of the 6950 pcb did not unlock anymore so I "payed" off the risks. While having a bios switch on my 7970Ghz, it proved useless since any modification made to the bios simply did not unlock anything or changed voltages etc.
This was rather disapointing for me, as is the lack of a bios switch on my 390, which otherwise would give me a "safe" crack in unlocking extra shaders if at all possible.

Anyway, no such thing as a scam, just an extra bonus for those willing to roll the dice and gain some extra memory. Tweakers galore, a nice extra for those that like to tweak and take a chance.

 

[BiggieShady]

But you got what you payed for

You always get what you pay for because that's definition of buying.

so they should stop bitching and man up

It's like buying a game on Steam one day before the summer sale, keyboards get soaked in manly tears