Any way to ADD RAM to a videocard

[morgash]

is there any way i could perhaps solder DDR400 RAM chips onto my old Radeon 7200 LE to give it a boost in memory performance and total memory? I have several sticks of cheap ddr400 value RAM lyin around and since i just got done overclocking the core of this card to 550mhz on air up from 165mhz i thought i would look at the mem next. so, gurus, is it possible? is it possible to change ANY of the hardware specs on these cards? add pipes, vertex shaders, etc? lemme know

Thanks,
Morgash

HERE is the link to the my post and pics proving the core speed on the vid card. also explains how i did it.

 

[Vegitto]

Adding memory wouldn't be possible. Replacing it however, might be possible, but only for someone with very 1337 soldering skills.

 

[Matthias99]

s there any way i could perhaps solder DDR400 RAM chips onto my old Radeon 7200 LE to give it a boost in memory performance and total memory?

No. The memory controller is built into the GPU and would have no idea what to do with faster RAM (or more RAM).

is it possible to change ANY of the hardware specs on these cards? add pipes, vertex shaders, etc? lemme know

Absolutely not. How many pipes/shaders a card has is a physical property of the GPU (unless the GPU actually has more and some have been disabled by the BIOS/software, but there's nothing to 'unlock' on a RADEON 7000).

 

[PottedMeat]

heh 'back in the day you could upgrade the ram with those old cards ( S3 trios / cirrus cards / blah blahs )

today: no practical way - you may be able to upgrade the ram with larger capacity ICs but the cost would make it idiotic.

 

[elpres05]

Some very old VGA's had slots for boosting the memory capacity but today we don't have such features.

I doubt if your theory would work but its worth a try. How will you DC the memory on your card ?

 

[Bassyhead]

Yup in the old days it was common for video adapters to have sockets or slots for upgrading the RAM, however with the rapid turnover of new video adapters this was rarely done. One was best off buying an adapter with the maximum amount of RAM already installed.

 

[MCsommerreid]

MSI is bringing back the modular video card with ZIFF's for GPUs and RAM. It's an interesting idea, but I bet it would end up being most expensive and very proprietory.

 

[BrownTown]

can people even by GDDR memmory without having to buy 1000s of units? Probably not, maybe if you did you could solder on some faster chips, but If you got that kind of money then you would be better served just buying a new card. Having slots to upgrade RAM don't work with the speeds they run at nowadays,.

 

[icarus4586]

With what you're going for, definitely not. The GPU has the memory controller built in, specialized for a specific type of RAM. There's no way in heck it'd work with off-the-shelf system memory, even if you de-soldered it from the DIMM stick. There might be a way to do it if you got chips that exactly matched the ones already on the board, and if there were open solder points where more RAM could go. Even then it would at least require a re-flashed BIOS.