GPUs Back In The 90s Did Have An Option To Expand Memory, Through a Dedicated Socket

With current-gen GPUs from NVIDIA and AMD, there have always been issues with VRAM capacities, especially with the more recent 8GB models, which stirred up a whole new debate in the industry. While GPUs with 8GB VRAM were regarded as a reputable option a few years ago, but in today's day and age, they aren't enough to run modern AAA titles, have you ever wondered if GPUs could expand the VRAM onboard? I mean, no gamer out there would ever run out of VRAM, and if they did, they could slide in additional memory, and then no one would be upgrading to higher-end GPUs and paying the extra to NVIDIA and AMD.

For a short answer, no, you cannot have expandable memory on GPUs due to technological barriers, but did you know that such a solution existed back in 1998, with the ATI 3D Rage Pro GPU? One company was famous for selling GPUs back in the 90s, and it was equipped with the feature of expanding the onboard VRAM by having a dedicated memory slot on the card itself. The base configuration came with 4MB of SGRAM soldered onto the PCB, and users could add an extra 4MB module through the slot, taking it up to 8MB of VRAM capacity.

Imagine playing Mario Kart 64, and then if you needed higher performance, you could slide in an extra module and call it a day. It would've been fascinating if modern-day GPUs were equipped with such a technique, but there are a lot of complications. Starting with the very first and major one, GPU manufacturers haven't designed a socketed form of GDDR memory, like the DIMMs for PC memory, hence you can't really swap out memory by any means.

Now, the reason for not having a socketed form is that modern-day modules, like the GDDR7, work on massive memory bandwidth, and achieving such speeds requires creating a complex PCB design, with the right memory controllers and power delivery. Having swappable VRAMs would disrupt the circuity in modern times, and even if manufacturers managed to sort this issue out, modular memory slots generally require longer signal paths and additional connectors, which would compromise performance, and won't give you optimal speeds.

While GPUs are advancing in their capabilities, less is being done to make these devices easier for the general consumer to access. Modern-day options, such as NVIDIA's RTX Blackwell GPUs, are challenging to acquire for the average consumer. More importantly, models aren't available at MSRP at all, so for the average gamer, getting GPUs is becoming more difficult with each passing day. Swappable VRAM looks out of the equation in modern times, but you never know.

By: DocMemory
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