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Ram Upgrade on Video Card?

M

mohammedtaha

2[H]4U
Joined
Oct 14, 2004
Messages
3,648
Is it possible to upgrade the ram you have on a video card ?

I was wondering if it's possible to upgrade the ram on a x800xt pe with faster samsung memory and then the ram would run at 700mhz max since my x800xt pe runs at 600 mhz max.

Samsung GDDR3 ram

So what I'm trying to say is remove the old ram on the pcb and solder the new ram and it should work since those pcb's do come with either 2.0 or 1.6

Did anyone think of this before ? Has it been done
 
It's pretty much impossible. Surface-mount soldering is not easy to do, and all the solder points on those ram chips are underneath, so there's no way to get at them with an iron. If you attempted to do such a thing, you'd ruin your card very quickly.
 
it could probably be done, but i doubt it could be done by human hands. It does bring up an interesting point though. When are we gonna have generic boards produced that we could manually add a GPU and Ram to ourselves? Vid cards are basically mini MB's. Why is the market such that expansion and upgrades are impossible without buying a whole new board?
 
pigpen said:
it could probably be done, but i doubt it could be done by human hands. It does bring up an interesting point though. When are we gonna have generic boards produced that we could manually add a GPU and Ram to ourselves? Vid cards are basically mini MB's. Why is the market such that expansion and upgrades are impossible without buying a whole new board?
Click to expand...

My guess would be $ but who knows...
 
I remember those old Matrox cards back in the day that you could increase the ram by putting a stick in a RAM slot it had on the card. That would be sweet if they started doing that for cards of today.
 
I'm an engineer for a company that manufactures the robotic equipment used for surface mount electronics. In fact, a few of our clients build ATI and Nvidia products. A few build for both at the same facility and on the same equipment. Most current DDR/DDR2/DDR3 memory utilizes uBGA packaging technology. (Micro Ball Grid Array). All the leads are located on the bottom of the part as was mentioned above. This allows for higher speeds and lower power req. because of less distance between the die and the leads. However, specialized equipment must be used not only to de-solder a BGA component but to replace one also. Not to mention XRAY equipment to inspect solder connections once the new mem chips were installed. And someone like myself who has the appropriate knowledge of all these machines to make the changes.

The costs involved would not justify in any way modifying your existing board. And even if you could do it, there would still be no gurantees. There are lots and lots of procedures in place to insure these type parts are mounted correctly in the first place during the initial assembly. I have seen first hand complete boards thrown in the trash because of faulty or improperly orientated part. The heat required for unsoldering will destroy the board in most cases or make it very unreliable. Most OEM's would rather eat the cost of the raw materials than risk a failure down the road somewhere. Knowing what I know and seeing the things I've seen, it amazes me to this day that my computer even boots up at all.

On another note, I don't think we'll ever see upgradeable video cards. The life cycle between new and old technology is too short to justify this type option. Maybe someday if we ever hit that wall where someone says "ok I think it's fast enough for me" we may see upgradeable upgrades. But IMO we'll never see it. Upgradeable Upgrades, that's right folks!!!! And you can quote me on that.
 
pigpen said:
it could probably be done, but i doubt it could be done by human hands. It does bring up an interesting point though. When are we gonna have generic boards produced that we could manually add a GPU and Ram to ourselves? Vid cards are basically mini MB's. Why is the market such that expansion and upgrades are impossible without buying a whole new board?
Click to expand...

that's what 3dfx rampage was supposed to be.
 
I have an old ATI rage3d card that has expandable ram on it. It has a small SODIMM socket (or at least I think that's what it is...it's the same size/shape)...but I don't think I can put the 256mb SODIMM from my laptop on there...

Not so sure about the GPU being upgradeable...but the ram would certainly be appealing.

Maybe it would lower the price of the boards then too...if they just came with sockets and no ram...that way if they didn't come up with new ram, just buy the new GPU board and transplant your gig of GDDR3 or 4 or 6 or whatever... :p
 
nst6563 said:
I have an old ATI rage3d card that has expandable ram on it. It has a small SODIMM socket (or at least I think that's what it is...it's the same size/shape)...but I don't think I can put the 256mb SODIMM from my laptop on there...

Not so sure about the GPU being upgradeable...but the ram would certainly be appealing.

Maybe it would lower the price of the boards then too...if they just came with sockets and no ram...that way if they didn't come up with new ram, just buy the new GPU board and transplant your gig of GDDR3 or 4 or 6 or whatever... :p
Click to expand...
It would certainly lower production costs. They would make, say one exact same board for all GeForce 6xxx series, and one, also exact same board for all RadeonXxxx series. Then you get to buy your own GPU, ram chips, etc... well, you get the idea.
 
I guess after reading this, I'm not going to attempt to replace the core in my cpu now. Thanks.




/me runs off
 
I think upgrading memory is what integrated graphics has on some motherboard, but the GPU core is also cut down. hmm me wonders if mobo manufacture can place a GPU ZIF socket for mobo.
 
Darth_Fluffy said:
Or, you could have an extra videoboard for rendering...
Click to expand...

man...now you're bringing back the memories! Anyone remember the FIRST 3d cards? The "add-on" cards from Creative and 3dfx (at least I think 3dfx had an addon) that would plug into the VLB expansion slot and use a pass-thru cable from the primary video adapter???
 
someone on xtremesystems forums (who woulda guessed? :p ) successfully transplanted video card memory, I think it was even from a geforce fx to a radeon. He used a special oven to make the solder molten so he could slide off the ram chips and used a precision hot air soldering station to get them on the new card. And of course he modded the bios, etc.

It was pretty amazing.
 
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