Brazilian modders double Nvidia RTX 2080 memory but only see a 10% performance boost
A group of Brazilian modders have soldered 16GB of memory to an RTX 2080, doubling its memory capacity from its usual 8GB (h/t Videocardz). The mod, which was performed by Paulo Gomes, Jefferson Silva, and Ygor Mota, involved removing the original GDDR6 chips on the RTX 2080, replacing them with denser models. Although a doubling of memory is quite substantial, the performance benefits of this mod are questionable and you're probably better investing in the best graphics cards for gaming than performing this mod.
Although modding a graphics card to have more VRAM sounds complicated on the surface, it's actually not that difficult. The modders simply removed the original 1GB GDDR6 chips and replaced them with denser 2GB chips to get a total of 16GB. All it needed was a great soldering station setup and a little patience. There was nothing unusual like putting more memory chips on the other side of the board. The only other step is moving a single capacitor to get the GPU to recognize the extra 8GB of memory. A new vBIOS for the GPU wasn't required.
Of course, GDDR6 and other kinds of VRAM aren't as easy to buy as regular sticks of RAM, and they're certainly not designed to be sold at retail. Gomes explains that the chips used for this particular mod came from Aliexpress, and although the mod clearly worked, he cautioned that he didn't know how long these 2GB chips would last for. They are likely to be reclaimed parts from scrapped boards, or factory surplus / seconds.
As for the performance results, they weren't exactly earth-shattering. The GPU was put through its paces in the Resident Evil 4 remake, which is notable for how memory intensive it is. The modders didn't do a proper benchmark run to compare the original 8GB model to the modded 16GB version, but noted that the average framerate was about the same while the 1% low framerate was roughly 10% higher, which indicates a smoother and more consistent framerate.
The results might be a little disappointing for gaming, but it's not unsurprising. 8GB of memory sounds about right for the performance level that the 2080 is at, and it's unlikely that it's particularly starved for memory. However, all that extra VRAM could be useful for rendering or AI, which are generally the kind of workloads that benefit more substantially from additional video memory.
