A modder in Brazil has built the graphics card NVIDIA decided not to sell: an RTX 3070 Ti with 16 GB of memory. It boots, it passes memory testing, and it runs a large language model using almost the whole 16 GB pool.
The interesting part is not that it works. It is what it proves about the card everyone actually bought.
How the 16 GB RTX 3070 Ti was built
Fabio, who goes by fmklab, did not start from a retail 3070 Ti. He started from an RTX 3070 board, because that one uses ordinary GDDR6 rather than the GDDR6X the real 3070 Ti ships with, and ordinary GDDR6 comes in the density he needed.
- The graphics chip was swapped. The 3070 processor came off and a genuine 3070 Ti chip went on in its place.
- The memory was doubled. The original Samsung 8 Gb modules were replaced with 16 Gb ones.
- The card lied about it. GPU-Z still reported 8 GB after the swap, because the board was configured for the old chips. He used NVIDIA's own BIOS Reader tool to find which memory straps needed rewiring, and after that the full 16 GB appeared.
That last step is the one that separates this from a soldering trick. Doubling the memory chips is the easy half. Convincing the card that the memory is there is the half that needed the vendor's own tooling.
Does it actually work
Yes, and the tests he ran are the right ones.
- MATS came back clean. That is the memory test that catches a bad modification, and a card that passes it is not merely reporting the right number.
- A local language model filled nearly all 16 GB. Which is the workload where capacity is the only thing that matters.
- Call of Duty: Warzone pulled over 13 GB. Paired with a Ryzen 7 9800X3D, with no sign of instability. On a stock 3070 Ti that game would be scraping the ceiling.
- It is slightly slower in a benchmark. His Superposition score came in a little under a typical retail 3070 Ti, which is expected: GDDR6 is slower than the GDDR6X it replaced. A fair trade for twice the capacity.
NVIDIA had this idea in 2020
This is the part that stings. A 16 GB RTX 3070 Ti was reportedly explored by NVIDIA back in 2020, and the idea resurfaced later through leaked engineering samples. It never shipped.
Five years on, the 8 GB version of that card is exactly the one people complain about, because 8 GB is where modern games start making compromises you can see. Every article about textures dropping out or stutter in a busy scene is, underneath, an article about a decision made in 2020.
One person with a hot air station and the vendor's own BIOS tool has now demonstrated that the chip was never the limit. The memory configuration was, and that was a choice.
Before anyone asks
No, you cannot do this to your card, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. It needs a donor board of the right model, a working graphics chip harvested from another card, board level rework on ball grid array packages, and firmware editing that has to be right or the card does not come back.
Treat it as evidence rather than a guide. The useful takeaway is for buying, not soldering: on any card you are considering today, memory capacity is the specification that ages worst and the one you cannot change later. We laid out what actually runs on a limited memory budget in the piece on weak PCs.
Sources
The build of a working 16 GB RTX 3070 Ti by the Brazilian modder Fabio, known as fmklab, the use of an RTX 3070 board because it runs ordinary GDDR6 rather than the GDDR6X of the retail 3070 Ti, the replacement of the 3070 graphics chip with a genuine 3070 Ti chip, the swap of Samsung HC14 8 Gb memory modules for HC16 16 Gb units, GPU-Z still reporting 8 GB until the memory straps were rewired with the help of NVIDIA's BIOS Reader tool, the clean MATS test result, the local language model using nearly the full 16 GB, Call of Duty: Warzone drawing over 13 GB paired with a Ryzen 7 9800X3D without instability, the Superposition score landing slightly below typical retail 3070 Ti runs because GDDR6 is slower than GDDR6X, and the report that NVIDIA explored a 16 GB RTX 3070 Ti as far back as 2020 with the idea resurfacing through leaked engineering samples all come from TechPowerUp's report published on 9 September 2026. The reading of what this proves about the shipped 8 GB card, and the warning that this is not a repeatable modification, are ours.
