Discussion Has anyone experimented on 3xxx cards to try and come up with the best Frankenstein of GPU/VRAM?

[Baeloro1481]

It's been done before, where someone has increased the Vram on a GPU, typically by swapping out ram chips for something bigger. In my 'nerd studies' I noticed there are several variants of the GA104/GA106 implementations that kinda overlap in terms of how they spec a card.

There is a GA106 model of 3060 with 6GB ram and 3840 CUDA cores, despite having mostly similar specs the rest of the way, but this is a lot more CUDA than the standard 3060's possess (3584). I currently possess an RTX 3060 12GB and an RTX 3070 8GB. Both feature GA104 silicon. My question is this: has anyone ever considered transplanting the GPU from a 3070 into a GA104 3060 with 12gb ram?

Seems like a great way to bump Ram without having to deal with potential BIOS issues? If that's not how GPU silicone works, my apologies, but I think this would be a fun thing to try... for science.

 

[Aeacus]

but I think this would be a fun thing to try... for science.

It would be far easier to add VRAM, than plant GPU chip from one PCB to another.

Has anyone experimented on 3xxx cards to try and come up with the best Frankenstein of GPU/VRAM?

In the unreleased GPU segment, there are some neat options. But with whatever reason, never released.

E.g GA104 chip + 16 GB VRAM = RTX 3070 Ti 16GB version,
specs: https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/geforce-rtx-3070-ti-16-gb.c3835

But the true monsters in GPU world are the workstation GPUs.
E.g RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell has 96 GB of VRAM!
Specs: https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/rtx-pro-6000-blackwell.c4272

While on consumer (gamer) market, highest Nvidia GPU VRAM you could get, is a mere 32 GB (RTX 5090).

While if we go beyond insanity, the single most VRAM GPU you could get, is:
AMD Radeon Instinct MI325X with insane 288 GB VRAM!
Specs: https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/radeon-instinct-mi325x.c4231

So, what you're asking, has been already done better (RTX 3070 Ti 16GB) + then some (MI325X).

 

[Order 66]

While on consumer (gamer) market, highest Nvidia GPU VRAM you could get, is a mere 32 GB (RTX 5090).

So, what’s the highest amount of VRAM you could get on a GPU that can run games? The MI325x doesn’t have display outputs, and I don’t think it supports directx either.

 

[Aeacus]

So, what’s the highest amount of VRAM you could get on a GPU that can run games?

96GB VRAM - RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell.
Does support DX12 Ultimate and has display output ports.

128GB x4 VRAM (512GB) - Intel Data Center GPU Max Subsystem.
Does support DX12 but doesn't have display output ports.
Specs: https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/data-center-gpu-max-subsystem.c4070

The MI325x doesn’t have display outputs, and I don’t think it supports directx either.

True, but it may support Vulcan or OpenGL.

 

[Order 66]

128GB x4 VRAM (512GB) - Intel Data Center GPU Max Subsystem.
Does support DX12 but doesn't have display output ports.
Specs: https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/data-center-gpu-max-subsystem.c4070

So you can still run games on a card that doesn’t have display outputs, but how does that work? I can’t imagine these are designed to work with windows, let alone games.

 

[stonecarver]

Years ago early 2000's we did have GPU's that had onboard slots to add memory.

We also had PCI cards that were used as an booster to motherboard memory slots that had banks of slots for system memory. Some Dell server PC's had this ability. Memory sticks capacity got larger so those died out.

But back to GPU's with onbaoard memory slots I seem to recall seeing something on Nvidia's side with a story with an upcoming " this was back in 2019-2021 " GPU that had this ability to add your own memory to the card.

It looked like it took laptop memory sticks in the old picture I seen.

Again a while ago it was one on those stories I found late at night and forgot to follow up the next day.

So you can still run games on a card that doesn’t have display outputs, but how does that work? I can’t imagine these are designed to work with windows, let alone games.

If you look up Linus a few years ago The smart guy over there Dennis did a video using a headless mining card to work off another card to get display.

 

[Aeacus]

But back to GPU's with onbaoard memory slots...

In today's day and age, it isn't viable to have VRAM slots on GPU, so that one can add more VRAM at later date.
Discussion about it: https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/why-dont-graphics-cards-allow-users-to-add-vram.2953629/
And Quora thread too: https://www.quora.com/Have-there-ever-been-graphics-cards-with-user-expandable-VRAM

Now, if GPUs would come without any VRAM what-so-ever but with VRAM slots (like MoBos come with DRAM slots, rather than soldered RAM), then it would be different story. But VRAM slots add more complications and overall, would bring down the GPU's performance.

So you can still run games on a card that doesn’t have display outputs, but how does that work?

A bit of fiddle, but doable.

Here's the video what stonecarver talked above;

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TY4s35uULg4

 

[Baeloro1481]

I still wanna see someone turn a 3060 into a 3060 Super.

 

[Aeacus]

I still wanna see someone turn a 3060 into a 3060 Super.

Unless you don't do it by yourself (or pay a lot of money to do it for you), no-one is going to do it, hardware wise, just for giggles.

Since "Super" is lesser version of "Ti", all one needs to do, is OC RTX 3060. This way, you can get the RTX 3060 "Super" levels of performance out of it.