The video card that never made it to the shelves is finally working. Brazilian YouTuber Fabian from the channel fmklab assembled a functioning RTX 3070 Ti with 16 GB of video memory, combining the RTX 3070 PCB, the chip from the 3070 Ti and GDDR6 chips from Samsung.
This version of the map was talked about back in 2021. Nvidia actually planned to release the RTX 3070 Ti with 16 GB instead of the final 8 GB, and confirmations were entries in regulator databases, mentions from Lenovo and a physical prototype that surfaced later. A working sample was never shown to the public.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3hgaii6FNo
Fabian started by completely disassembling the RTX 3070, leaving only the board, and desoldering the GPU from it. The GA104 crystal from the RTX 3070 Ti moved in its place, but with one important caveat related to the type of memory.
The stock RTX 3070 Ti comes with GDDR6X, while the regular 3070 uses simpler GDDR6. Installing 16 GB of GDDR6X on a 3070 Ti board would be too expensive, so the modder took a workaround and worked with GDDR6 hardware.
Instead of the 8 Gbit Samsung HC14 modules on the board, he soldered in 16 Gbit HC16 chips. Physically, the volume increased from 8 to 16 GB, but upon first launch, GPU-Z stubbornly showed only 8 GB, since the memory configuration is determined by hardware jumpers on the board.
To figure out which pins needed to be switched, Fabian used Nvidia’s own BIOS Reader utility and then resoldered the necessary jumpers. After this, the MATS diagnostic program correctly identified all 16 GB without a single error, and GPU-Z reported an RTX 3070 Ti with 16 GB GDDR6, exactly as on that very prototype.
Next came the practical tests. The locally launched language model occupied almost the entire available memory, which confirmed the functionality of all chips, and not just their formal definition by the system.
In Call of Duty: Warzone, paired with the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, the card consumed more than 13 GB of video memory and showed no signs of instability. In the description of the video, the modder left a link to the Unigine Superposition result as proof of the existence of the map, where he scored 5367 points.
This result is lower than most production RTX 3070 Ti, and the reason is clear. The bandwidth of GDDR6 is noticeably inferior to GDDR6X, so the increased capacity comes at the cost of memory speed.
Most likely, we are talking about the only working copy of the RTX 3070 Ti 16 GB in the world. From a practical point of view, the GA104 remains a strong chip, but is inferior to the current generation of Blackwell even with less memory, and the 16 GB RTX 5060 Ti will cost less than soldering experiments and will bring better energy efficiency, support for new technologies and a warranty.
