A Modder Frankenstein’d The NVIDIA RTX 3070 Ti 16GB That Never Saw The Light

In the world of gaming hardware, a Brazilian YouTuber named Fabian, known online as fmklab, has embarked on an impressive journey to bring a long-awaited upgrade to the NVIDIA RTX 3070 Ti. This modder has successfully created a custom RTX 3070 Ti 16GB variant, a card that was never officially released by the manufacturer.

To achieve his goal, Fabian had to meticulously gather components from various GPUs. The core of the 16GB RTX 3070 Ti lies in its GPU, which he sourced from an existing RTX 3070. He then integrated the memory core from NVIDIA's RTX 3070 Ti, which sports an impressive 16GB of Samsung GDDR6 memory chips.

Fabian's decision to go with GDDR6 chips over the more expensive GDDR6X used in the Ti variant was a strategic one. He explained that 16GB of GDDR6X memory would have been prohibitively pricey. Therefore, he opted for GDDR6 chips to achieve the desired VRAM capacity increase.

After assembling the various parts, Fabian had to configure the memory straps on the PCB to ensure the card could effectively utilize the entire 16GB of memory. To test the card's capabilities, Fabian initially ran a local large language model (LLM), which consumed nearly the entire 16GB pool.

When it came to gaming, Fabian put the Frankenstein RTX 3070 Ti 16GB through its paces with Call of Duty: Warzone, where it managed to utilize around 13GB of the available memory. The card was paired with an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D, and it showed no signs of instability, demonstrating its robustness.

However, while Fabian's experiment was a remarkable success, it's essential to note that the current Blackwell equivalent, the RTX 5070 Ti, will significantly outperform this custom card. Similarly, the current RTX 5060 Ti 16GB also surpasses the RTX 3070 Ti 16GB in performance.