When Nvidia announced its RTX 50 Series, a few things stood out. Upgrading to the new GDDR7 standard unlocks faster memory, but RTX 5090 sticks with slightly slower 28Gb/s modules rather than the higher 32Gb/s that had everyone excited. Fortunately, modders are already gearing up to rectify this the moment the pixel pushers land on shelves.
Granted, 28Gb/s is nothing to trifle with. It offers between 1.7TB/s and 1.8TB/s of bandwidth, which is a 70% uplift over RTX 4090. But as with all tech, if there’s room to improve, you can be sure tinkerers will find a way.
Among the four revealed graphics cards, RTX 5080 is curiously the only model to feature 32Gb/s memory underneath. Brazilian modders have confirmed they plan to use their soldering expertise to transplant the faster memory modules from the 80-class GPU into the new flagship.
Of course, this isn’t something you’ll want to try at home, given it’s $999 a pop for each RTX 5080, but it will grant the $2,000 RTX 5090 up to 2TB/s of bandwidth. This is double that of RTX 4090 and a new record for a consumer card.
The implications of such a procedure run deep. TechLab’s Burti (translated by Videocardz) explains that while 32Gb/s gives a baseline of 16,000MHz, up from 14,000MHz, this doesn’t take into account the overclocking potential, which could exceed the 17,000MHz barrier. And, while it may benefit RTX 5090 more than any other model, there’s nothing to say the same mod couldn’t give RTX 5070 Ti or RTX 5070 a facelift.
I, for one, can’t wait to see what performance this nets, particularly as both Intel Arc Battlemage and AMD RDNA 4 remain on the older, slower GDDR6 standard.
