Chinese companies are now increasing the video memory capacity of NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 40-series GPUs to support AI workloads, especially for cloud computing providers.
Chinese telecommunications service providers are renting out NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090D 48GB graphics cards for just $0.03 per hour. They can also be purchased with RTX 4080 SUPER 32GB GPUs.
Well, modding the GPU video memory is an area we all know about and it is no surprise that it has been done countless times in the past to achieve additional performance gains, and at a “relatively” lower financial cost.
The last strange encounter we witnessed was with GeForce RTX 2080 Ti from NVIDIAThe VRAM of which was doubled by modders (22GB) to get enough performance for AI markets. It seems that the “modding fever” has now spread to the latest GeForce RTX 40 “Ada Lovelace” GPUs.
A Chinese AI expert has revealed that Team Green’s GeForce RTX 4090D and RTX 4080 SUPER GPUs with modified video memory are being sold in the region. The GeForce 4090D is reportedly available with 48GB of GDDR6X memory, while the GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER is modified to accommodate 32GB of memory. The source says that such GPUs are popular among cloud computing providers, and they are renting out computing power to meet the demand for them in the market amid the AI craze. Interestingly, the modified GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER is available for $0.03 for one hour, which is shocking.
It's true and the speed is good.
I checked.
It looks like 32g4080 and 48g4090 will be available in China at the end of June.
48 g 4090 price about $2500.😂
At least it's cheaper than the A6000. https://t.co/K4koNUUMTm— Reply (@bdsqlsz) August 9, 2024
China has always had mysterious technologies, such as 32G 4080s, $0.03/hour per GPU.😎 pic.twitter.com/XPXeWixJhq
— Reply (@bdsqlsz) August 9, 2024
If you're looking to pick up some GPUs, NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4090D 48GB is reportedly available domestically for $2,500, which is still not bad considering the available alternatives like the RTX 6000 “Ada” which also comes with 48GB of memory but costs around $7,000.
Since these types of operations are done through backdoors, we haven't seen any images of the modified GPUs; therefore, we don't have a clear idea of how they ended up online in the first place, but we can assume that modders were able to design a PCB to accommodate 24 GDDR6X modules, as is the case with the GeForce RTX 4090D.
48g 4090d with flashlight 2.4 fp8. https://t.co/BeTZ3x53CB pic.twitter.com/J1ju7hSp1L
— Reply (@bdsqlsz) August 9, 2024
Previously, there were entire Chinese factories Disassemblies of NVIDIA's Latest Gaming GPUs Spotted and upgrading them with new circuit boards and coolers to serve large-scale AI operations in China. The move comes after the US government announced plans to restrict NVIDIA's export of AI accelerators to China, which later extended to consumer parts like the RTX 4090, forcing the company to launch specialized version of RTX 4090D to serve the market.
It would be really interesting to see this powerful design, considering that having such a large amount of video memory on a GPU is an achievement in itself, not to mention the cooling mechanism these modders could implement for such power.
Luckily, people outside of China can't take advantage of these “rental” items, given that access to the apps requires a local number and identification. China always manages to impress us, whether it's their modding skills or a host of other things we won't mention right now.
News source: @bdsqlsz