The "forgotten" GPU hardware feature that would instantly fix modern PC gaming

Modern GPUs have soldered memory . What you see is what you get, and while some PC hardware modders have been adding more VRAM to graphics cards (and handheld PCs) by soldering memory chips and modifying the BIOS , regular people like you and me are stuck with the original amount of memory our graphics cards shipped with.

But back in the '90s, there were a few graphics cards from ATI and Matrox equipped with memory modules that you could slot extra memory into and increase your VRAM. So why did they fall out of favor, and would it be possible to have a modern GPU with upgradable memory ?

ATI and Matrox created graphics cards with upgradable VRAM in the mid-1990s

Never run out of video memory

Back in the second half of the 1990s, ATI (this was way before AMD bought the company) created the ATI 3D Rage graphics chipset that supported 2D and rudimentary 3D acceleration. A year later, the company launched the ATI Rage Pro chipset, intended to compete with the 3dfx Voodoo and the NVIDIA RIVA 128.

The Rage Pro featured the then-new AGP interface (there were models with the slower PCI interface as well), supported early versions of OpenGL and DirectX, and could run 3D games. The card wasn't that powerful, and its drivers weren't especially stable, but it proved very popular, especially in the OEM and prebuilt PC market, with many systems featuring it. The card received a few upgrades, including the Rage Pro Turbo, Ultra, and Fury, and helped make ATI a household name.

One cool feature of some ATI Rage cards was that certain variants came with memory slots. Owners could buy memory modules, slot them into the graphics card, and upgrade its memory. You had modules with 2MB, 4MB, 6MB, and 8MB of VRAM (yep, that's megabytes), with different graphics card models supporting different capacities.

Matrox also dabbled in expandable VRAM graphics cards with its Matrox Millennium models. Some versions of the card came with similar memory slots that could fit VRAM modules, allowing owners to upgrade their memory to 16MB in some cases. Even some onboard graphics chips supported VRAM expansion boards.

Now, you had to be careful to get the right memory flavor because different cards used either slower EDO (Extended Data Out) memory or faster SGRAM (Synchronous Graphics RAM). You also had to make sure the module was compatible, with upgradable graphics cards often featuring stickers listing which modules worked with that specific card. If you had the right module, all you had to do was remove the graphics card, insert the module into the appropriate slot, and you were off to the races.

The upgrade wasn't as exciting back then as it would be today. You could usually run games at higher resolutions, as well as higher color depth (32-bit color instead of 16-bit), but in general, your in-game frame rates wouldn't improve much. This experiment was short-lived, and aside from ATI and Matrox, other vendors didn't really embrace graphics cards with upgradable memory.

Unlike the old days, having a modern GPU with upgradable VRAM would be brilliant because we'd be able to simply bump VRAM from 8GB to, say, 12GB or 16GB and keep using the GPU for years to come.

Some older gaming GPUs (the RTX 3070 and RTX 3080, for instance) are still quite powerful, but their limited VRAM buffers are the main bottleneck in memory-hungry games, especially when you raise texture quality or enable ray tracing effects. Unfortunately, the chances of seeing a modern GPU with upgradable memory are essentially nonexistent.

Upgrading VRAM with add-on modules on modern GPUs is impossible

Too complex to pull it off

Back in the day, ATI and Matrox could create upgradable graphics cards because the memory they used was ridiculously slow compared to the video memory in modern GPUs. Latency and signal integrity weren't nearly as important as they are today, so you could create a daughterboard with a few memory modules soldered onto it, connect it to the graphics card via a slot interface, and it would work just fine.

At modern GDDR speeds and bandwidth, memory chips must be as close to the GPU die as possible to reduce latency and maintain short, clean signal paths that preserve signal integrity. A modern GPU with upgradable memory would not only be expensive to make, but adding more memory via an add-in board would also noticeably hurt performance.

Such a GPU would not only be very expensive and likely slower that regular GPUs, but AIBs (add-in-board partners such as ASUS, MSI, Sapphire, and others), as well as NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel, would also have to test and certify each memory module, which would cost extra and take a lot of time.

That doesn't even take into account customer support headaches, fake modules that would inevitably start circulating, people using incompatible modules, and a host of other issues that would make these cards a nightmare to manufacture and support.

PC modders can upgrade VRAM on modern GPUs

But there are massive caveats

Technically, you can upgrade the memory on modern GPUs, but it's a slow, convoluted, and expensive process that involves desoldering the original memory modules, soldering on new ones, and then modifying the card's BIOS, so the system can recognize and properly use the extra memory.

Another issue is that the card may not work properly with standard GPU drivers, so you might have to modify every driver update to keep it compatible with the modded card. And of course, one mistake during the process can easily leave the card permanently bricked.

Some PC modders have added more memory to modern GPUs such as the RTX 3070, RTX 2080 Ti, and the RTX 4090, as well as to handheld PCs like the Steam Deck and ROG Ally, but these are highly complex procedures that require specialized equipment, along with a lot of skill and experience.

---

GPUs with upgradable VRAM were cool, but we'll likely never see one ever again

Graphics cards with upgradable VRAM were super cool, but they were niche products that disappeared only a few years after their introduction. The engineering behind them was impressive, but also complex and expensive, and as video memory got faster, adding memory slots to a GPU stopped making sense.

While a GPU with upgradable memory would be very appealing today, it simply isn't practical to equip modern GPUs with memory slots without severely hurting performance. That kind of solution just doesn't work with modern GDDR memory, which is astronomically faster and far more sensitive than the EDO memory and SGRAM that those old expandable graphics cards used.