If you want to check out more stories like this, we've covered a variety of graphics card mods focused on GDDR capacity upgrades, including a 44GB RTX 2080 Ti , a 128GB RTX 5090 , a 48GB RTX 4090 , an 8GB GTX 9070, and many more.
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Aaron Klotz Social Links Navigation Contributing Writer Aaron Klotz is a contributing writer for Tom’s Hardware, covering news related to computer hardware such as CPUs, and graphics cards.
Gururu Gamers Nexus shows a Hong Kong shop putting 48GB on a 24GB 4090 card in two hours. In this case they needed a knew PCB wired for the additional memory, but something easily attained. See it here at the 2:33:40 part. Reply
LordVile They’ll also need a custom VBIOS and drivers too though so obviously it’s not good for gaming Reply
valthuer Turning a humble RTX 5080 into a 32GB AI monster? At this point, these modders aren’t just upgrading GPUs — they’re doing God’s work . Nvidia creates, modders let there be VRAM . Amen. Reply
richardnpaul I expect we'll see the same again when/if the Super refresh happens, just with 48GB of VRAM, to feed the, insatiable, AI beast. Reply
abufrejoval IMHO chances of 5080 supply going away because Nvidia is cutting production of the consumer chips and no longer supplying OEMs with VRAM are way bigger than the effect of these upgrade jobs on the global market. I just can't see them doing this at significant enough scales to have a meaningful impact on a market that's alrady facing a dire outlook with GDDR7 being in short supply and thus very expensive. Using these GPUs for ML scale-out via PCIe is really, really hard and requires implementing a bespoke or heavily adapted model, which requires serious engineering time. Now that is likely cheaper in China than in many other places, but overall you still need to get your money back somehow. So what could that possibly be? Using them individually doesn't really add a lot of power to a wide range of use cases, so again how do you monetize the effort, which very likely increases the resale cost to 2-4x the original sales price even without the price DRAM price increases? With RAM prices gone crazy, I really can't see the business case getting any better. I could see these cards doing somewhat better at local slop generation, which may have been the new crypto for a moment or two, but again, that's a market probably near drowing from oversupply. I realize that there must be a market or this wouldn't happen, but if anyone can see it, please enlighten us. Reply
orbatos Why is this article framed like this is some niche speculative thing? The shops doing this work are selling a commercial product, and they have been doing this kind of upgrade for years. It's primarily done with 4080s and 4090s still as they are much cheaper, but soon enough that will drop off if favour of the 5000 series cards' supply… If there 2026 supply actually materialises. Reply
orbatos abufrejoval said: IMHO chances of 5080 supply going away because Nvidia is cutting production of the consumer chips and no longer supplying OEMs with VRAM are way bigger than the effect of these upgrade jobs on the global market. ———- snip ———; I realize that there must be a market or this wouldn't happen, but if anyone can see it, please enlighten us. There are several issues with your assessment. The business case is on demand, these shops take orders, *make the modified card*, and ship it out, often the same day. Keep in mind that these are *far* cheaper than high end workstation cards even with the modifications, then compare it with the machine room behemoths, there no question that a market for people, businesses and researchers that aren't trillion dollar conglomerates exists. It's the same for gamers, and professional users that don't need workstation+ cards to be productive, like CG artists and video editors. The consumer market supplanted the majority of the professional market for these products most of 3 decades ago, giving individuals most of the power of a studio with some caveats. Nvidia is notorious for spurning these professionals by holding back on ram to the extent that some use different hardware if they can to bypass it. Those users want this, and arguably need it with the market going crazy. Reply
DingusDog They can have the blower cards. Reply
Key considerations
- Investor positioning can change fast
- Volatility remains possible near catalysts
- Macro rates and liquidity can dominate flows
Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/modders-have-figured-out-how-to-slap-32gb-of-vram-on-the-rtx-5080-as-memory-shortage-intensifies#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com
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Informational only. No financial advice. Do your own research.