The Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 was a promising graphics card at launch offering performance similar to AMD’s Radeon R9 290X at a more affordable price range. Ten years later, the GPU has been given a new life thanks to Brazilian modder Paulo Gomes and his team who managed to add more VRAM, doubling the original from 4GB to 8GB.
To increase the memory, the mod involved replacing the original 512MB, 7 Gbps GDDR5 memory modules with 1GB, 8 Gbps chips along with a resistor so that the GPU can recognize the higher density VRAM. By having access to 8GB of upgraded VRAM, the modder noted an improvement in Unigine Superposition benchmark showing nearly double the score.
This one-of-a-kind Asus Strix-branded RX 970 was then handed to Youtuber Peperaio Hardware to evaluate whether increasing VRAM on an older GPU translates to any improvement in gaming. Testing was done using a mix of old and new games where titles like Red Dead Redemption 2, GTA V Enhanced, and Plague Tale Requiem didn’t show any signs of improvement. The results were compared to a Gigabyte Windforce GTX 970 with 4GB of memory.
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In Cyberpunk 2077, the results varied depending on the graphics settings with an uplift of 5-15% in performance on the 8GB modded GPU. The two games that gained noticeable benefit from the increased VRAM were The Last of Us Part II Remastered with a 24% increase in frame rate and Horizon Forbidden West offering as much as 40% improvement.