Graphics cards overpriced, I know, lets mod 4090's to 48 gig of ram instead

[Bagerklestyne]

Video cardz - custom 4090's in China with 48 gig of vram.

Just when we had hoped the peak of silliness had been reached and maybe we'd see a slow return to not need to sell off internal organs for a video card upgrade.

Along comes some industrious people modding 4090's to support 48 gig of ram and water cooling them.

As the article mentions, not a big call for the 48 gig of ram for gamers, AI/LLM crowd will probably love them though, ripping a little more of the supply from the gaming community to the professional workspace.

 

[igormp]

I'd love to have a couple of those, but importing them would be really annoying, sadly.

 

[Marcus L]

ripping a little more of the supply from the gaming community

Nvidia are doing that by themselves, why do you think there is a shortage? they couldn't give a flying fk about gamers and most of their chips are AI/Datacentre bound, you get the dregs and pay dearly for it

 

[Bagerklestyne]

Nvidia are doing that by themselves, why do you think there is a shortage? they couldn't give a flying fk about gamers and most of their chips are AI/Datacentre bound, you get the dregs and pay dearly for it

That was never in doubt in my mind. Hence also why I'll go 9070XT this round, once the stock settles and prices dip a little

 

[wolf]

It would be neat if someone wanted to start a service where you could send in your card for VRAM upgrades - as expensive as that would be.

32GB 9070XT / 5080 / 4080 / 6900XT
24GB 4070
20GB 3080

and so on, there would absolutely be takers on that.

 

[tpa-pr]

So I don't quite understand how this is possible. I mean, I understand the soldering on memory modules part of it, but how is the vBIOS able to handle a non-standard VRAM configuration? I was under the impression BIOS modding the newer gens wasn't possible because the BIOS files were encrypted?

 

[MCJAxolotl7]

It would be neat if someone wanted to start a service where you could send in your card for VRAM upgrades - as expensive as that would be.

32GB 9070XT / 5080 / 4080 / 6900XT
24GB 4070
20GB 3080

and so on, there would absolutely be takers on that.

I have 12gb 3080ti, 24gb would be AWESOME

 

[igormp]

So I don't quite understand how this is possible. I mean, I understand the soldering on memory modules part of it, but how is the vBIOS able to handle a non-standard VRAM configuration? I was under the impression BIOS modding the newer gens wasn't possible because the BIOS files were encrypted?

4000 series bios was not that clamped down, and already included the bootstrap configs for more memory. This config is likely the same one used in the L40 that was left in the bios for some reason.

I have 12gb 3080ti, 24gb would be AWESOME

That's "easy", just replace the 8Gb modules with 16Gb ones, like how it was done on those 3070ti 16GB mods.

 

[tpa-pr]

4000 series bios was not that clamped down, and already included the bootstrap configs for more memory. This config is likely the same one used in the L40 that was left in the bios for some reason.

That's "easy", just replace the 8Gb modules with 16Gb ones, like how it was done on those 3070ti 16GB mods.

TIL, thanks! So are those bootstrap configs automatic or is some tinkering with the vBIOS required?

 

[igormp]

TIL, thanks! So are those bootstrap configs automatic or is some tinkering with the vBIOS required?

In the case of the 3000 series, I saw modders commenting about just needing to change some resistors around.
Not sure if that was even needed with the 4000 series, but all info I gathered for those came through Google translate on chiphell lol
In both cases no vBIOS changes were required, afaik.