A recent memory modification for the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 has resulted in impressive performance gains, particularly in newer games. Although the mod was more complex than previous ones, requiring additional PCB soldering, the results were remarkable, with significant improvements in the 1%, 0.1% lows, and average frame rate.
Modding the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 to 16 GB VRAM is a good idea, especially since NVIDIA had planned a similar card (RTX 3070 Ti 16 GB) but eventually cancelled it. With modern games using more than 8 GB of VRAM, some RTX 30 series graphics cards may struggle to achieve playable FPS. The modder benchmarked the new Resident Evil 4 at very high settings, demonstrating that the additional 8 GB of VRAM makes the difference between stuttering and smooth gameplay.
As mentioned, the recent mod is more complicated than earlier ones performed on some earlier graphics cards, as some resistors needed to be grounded to support higher-capacity memory ICs. Additionally, the modded graphics card had to be set to high-performance mode in the NVIDIA Control Panel to fix flickering.
AMD marketing has recently criticized NVIDIA and emphasized the importance of VRAM, but with NVIDIA launching the GeForce RTX 4070 with 12 GB of VRAM, it seems unlikely that this will change anytime soon. These mods demonstrate that there is a definite need for more VRAM, at least in some games.
