This Upgraded GTX 980 Has 8GB VRAM

All GTX 980 graphics cards have 4GB VRAM no matter the model, so I was a little confused when I found this 8GB card on eBay.

My first thought was that it could be an engineering sample but after asking the seller and Nvidia themselves, it turns out that this is a custom and unique one-off GPU.

Let's see how it performs, and see if doubling the memory boosts the performance of this once high-end GPU in 2023.

0:00 GTX 980s Usually Have 4GB, So Why Has This One Got 8GB?
1:45 Gaming Performance - Cyberpunk 2077
2:18 Red Dead Redemption 2
2:29 Forza Horizon 5
2:44 Hogwarts Legacy
2:56 Spider-Man
3:12 The Last of Us
3:37 The Witcher 3 Next-Gen
3:55 Fortnite
4:21 How Does It Compare To a Standard 4GB GPU?
7:32 Final Words

Thanks for watching :)

[jonnyc]

Interesting idea, I wonder what else the seller has worked on over the years. Obviously quite a techically competent person

[bronsondog]

It'd be cool to see this and the standard 4gb card compared in games with the textures turned up.

[rcut]

Has a 8GB Card for 1080p and uses low or Medium Textures. Would have been fascinating with High and/or Ultra Textures and everything other option @ low or medium.

[hartsickdisciple]

GTX 980 is roughly on par with an RX 580 in terms of GPU horsepower. That means it will most definitely benefit from 8GB of VRAM in some games at some resolutions. There were 4 and 8GB versions of the RX 480 and 580, and the 8GB versions have definitely aged better. I would like to have seen some 1440p tests so the extra VRAM would be utilized.

[ZaneofAustin]

You know i think there could be a salvage market out there for some of this
taking old memory chips (with the same layout but higher capacity) and fixing cards (i mean it'd make more sense to fix a broken card than a working one)
but just upgrading the modules and giving the card another chance at life.

I really like the idea of upgrading the chips on a card.
It's green, and nerdy
i like it

[JaredKaiser]

they say if youre early RandomgaminginHD replies to your comment

[CyanRooper]

Imagine a world where people can easily add more VRAM to their GPU to make it last a little longer.

[caffeine]

Please do one more video with larger textures so we can see the memory in use. 😊

[bodek]

this is really a very interesting card. i know that polaris cards can have extra memory soldered on, but you'd need to flash the bios to that of the 8gb variant.
the 980 doesnt have an 8gb model, so you cant flash it with a bios of the 8gb variant, so i'm guessing the bios had to be modified manually. but i cant imagine how

[SHGames]

That is just a wicked collectors item. I’d keep it on my shelf with a nice plaque next to it.

[raized]

In Brazil, these kinds of upgrades although not common, do appear from time to time. There are some hardware technicians out here that have order lists for these modifications. Can you imagine a RTX 4070Ti with 24gb VRAM instead of the puny (for it's price point and performance) 12gb?

I'd love to see more from these kind of unique and even modified hardware.

[kasuraga]

A card like this would probably show more performance gains at 1440p vs 1080p I would think. Really interesting card though. Wonder what all is different besides the vram capacity to make it work.

[longnamedude]

What I want to know is how did they modify the VBIOS?
Because unless you used custom modified drivers that Graphics Card must be doing some crazy trickery to work with the Official Nvidia GPU Drivers.

[czbrat]

You're not on a console, you don't have to strictly stick to graphical presets. Medium preset with textures turned to high or ultra would have been useful to see. Better textures do look, well, better at the cost of almost to no performance loss whatsoever.

[SanHydronoid]

Honestly you should've turned all textures to ultra. As this would've shown the main highlight of this card and whether that advantage was worth it for the fps drop that comes with, if it even dropped much at all. Titanfall 2 is a good example since it uses 6Gb+ textures but still gives good fps

[dionelr]

Nice. I love little hacky projects like this. I have a reference model GTX 980 in a second PC that I’ve had for a long time. Good little card.

[CorneliusLT]

"Hello everyone and welcome 🤗" that always brightens my day!! Keep up the great videos

[JamesSmith-swnk]

Nice. A 12gb 980ti would be interesting.

[yousefz]

similarly, there is an example of someone creating a 16gb 3070. Needless to say, it slaps. Also would be neat to revisit with some 1440p+ gameplay as my similar era 390 really did keep up at 2560x1080 ultrawide with games regularly pulling 5-6gb. As higher textures and upscaling tech like Spiderman Remastered IGTI really do chew through VRAM this seems like a genuinely powerful card as raw performance is traded with upscaling given it's rise in implementation.

[BReal-EC]

Imagine if video cards were made with stick ram- like normal system ram sticks on a normal motherboard (not the soldered on stuff). That would allow for easy replacement is you have bad ram- and you could upgrade your ram later if needed. I realize that's a pipe dream and I am sure the GDDR ram needs a much better/closer connection than a slot would allow to get the speeds needed, and the card makers would not add cost to make the cards more viable longer versus you needing to just buy another card.