The VIK-on enthusiast continues to experiment with graphics cards. This time, he doubled the video memory of the GeForce RTX 3070. Previously, he did the same with the GeForce RTX 2070, installing 16 GB of memory on it, which is twice as much as provided by the manufacturer.

The object of the new VIK-on experiment was the Palit GeForce RTX 3070 Gaming Pro model, equipped as standard with 8 GB GDDR6. The Russian youtuber published two videos: in one he showed the process of physical memory upgrade and tests, in the second he talked about the improvements that helped fix the problems found after increasing the video memory.

The work on upgrading the GeForce RTX 3070 began with the dismantling of the original memory modules installed on the video card. The enthusiast unsoldered the K4Z803256C-HC14 chips from Samsung with a volume of 1 GB each and replaced them with K4ZAF3258M-HC14 chips from the same manufacturer, but already with a volume of 2 GB GDDR6. A total of 3070 GDDR8 modules are soldered on the GeForce RTX 6, thus the enthusiast has increased the total amount of video memory to 16 GB.

Making it all work turned out to be a daunting task. NVIDIA prohibits video card manufacturers from modifying BIOS firmware on their own initiative. There are simply no compilers for this. Each change to the firmware requires approval from the graphics chip developer. For this reason, simply installing the correct BIOS version will not work. In addition, the task is complicated by the fact that in nature there are no GeForce video cards based on GA104 processors equipped with 16 GB of video memory.

In order for the card to determine the doubled video memory, the enthusiast had to go to the trick. Each NVIDIA graphics accelerator has so-called strips – sets of encoded signals, usually set by resistors, that determine the configuration of a particular video card. When configured, they tell the BIOS to support various memory configurations. For example, a strap with a value of 00000 indicates support for a configuration of 8 GB of Samsung video memory with chips of 1 GB each. In turn, a strap with a value of 00001 indicates support for the Micron’s memory. Through trial and error, VIK-on figured out that a 16GB configuration looks like a 00110 strap.

GeForce RTX 3070 Strap Configuration to Support 16GB VRAM

After physically upgrading and configuring the GeForce RTX 3070 with 16 GB of video memory, it was correctly detected by the software. As the enthusiast noted, the card can be used for verification in Furmark and 3DMark tests, and even in mining. However, these tasks are often accompanied by a black screen, crashes and generally unstable system operation.

Result of GeForce RTX 3070 with 16 GB GDDR6 in Time Spy and mining (below) before making edits

In the second video, the enthusiast talked about a method proposed by one of his channel subscribers, which helps to fix the described problems. As it turns out, using EVGA Precision GPU Frequency Lock helps to achieve the stability of the graphics card.

Result of GeForce RTX 3070 with 16 GB GDDR6 in Time Spy after making edits

In this case, performance degradation is not observed, and the card now easily scores 13 783 points in 3DMark Time Spy, as well as 4914 points in the Unigine Superposition 8K test. Both results are slightly better than the reference version GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Edition, which confirms the effectiveness of the upgrade.