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It has been an exercise in deep frustration trying to figure out where to buy the Nvidia RTX 3080, as well as the GeForce RTX 3070 and GeForce RTX 3060 Ti. Only the GeForce RTX 3090 came back in stock recently – our audio editor James Archer managed to get one – but this card is incredibly expensive.
But an enterprising YouTuber has found a way to upgrade a GPU without the frustration of tracking down devices rarer than Unicorn Tears. VIK-on posted a video showing how it successfully upgraded a Palit GeForce RTX 2070 with 16 GB of video RAM.
Our colleagues at Tom’s Hardware noted that the YouTuber’s upgrade from the 8GB Micron GDDR6 video memory of the RTX 2070 to 16GB Samsung GDDR6 VRAM was based on a leak diagram received by VIK-on. This illustration shows the RTX 2070 with a 16GB VRAM option.
This is interesting, as there had been leaks suggesting that Nvidia might release a 16GB version of the GeForce RTX 2080 and RTX 2070 a few years ago. VIK-on’s DIY update demonstrated that double VRAM support must have been built into the previous generation of GeForce graphics cards.
16GB of VRAM is more than the 10GB of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080, although the 3080 uses faster GDDR6X memory. But the current RTX 3070 has 8GB of GDDR6, so VIK-on’s modified RTX 2070 beats its successor in terms of memory volume.
However, the RTX 3070 uses the new Ampere architecture, which offers a performance improvement over the Turing architecture of the RTX 2070. As such, an increase in VRAM will not suddenly help the RTX 2070 take on the RTX. 3070.
Still, this is a nice upgrade to an already fairly powerful graphics card, given that the RTX 2070 comes with ray tracing and deep oversampling capabilities. There’s a catch, though: YouTuber’s upgrade is far from stable when fully loaded.
It’s also a tricky upgrade to do unless you’re used to taking graphics cards apart. Tom’s Hardware gives more details on how VIK-on upgraded, but we recommend that you don’t try this on your own RTX 2070, unless you are feeling very confident or very bored (or of them).
In theory, doubling the RAM should definitely help the RTX 2070 handle games with a lot of complicated graphics assets. But it would have to remain stable under heavy loads to be effective. Still, this in-house upgrade is a promising sign that it’s possible to build a 16GB RTX 2070, and that we might see the GeForce RTX 3070 benefit from such an upgrade later.
If you’re looking for a more powerful gaming machine without the risk of DIY disaster, check out our picks for the best gaming PCs.
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