Recent graphics card releases might have caused some commotion with the lack of memory onboard, like the RTX 5060 with only 8 GB of VRAM. Well, the GTX 970 that was released in 2014 only came with 4GB of GDDR5, a whole different story where even in benchmarks it would struggle at 1080p. Although with a promise of performance like the R9 290X at affordable pricing (when Nvidia had budget graphics cards), it was still a valid choice.

But there is a YouTuber who wanted to see if he could improve the performance of this graphics card. This comes from Paulo Gomes, who took the 4GB GTX 970 and doubled its VRAM count up to 8GB, replacing the original 512MB 7Gbps DDR5 modules with 1GB 7Gbps chips and modifying the board so the card recognizes the changes.

All of which comes together to finally show the card being able to boot and actually have a video output. So we can finally get to see if it produces any noticeable difference.

GTX 970 8GB benchmarks

Paulo uses the Superposition benchmark to get a score for the video card. Noticeably, the initial 4GB gets a score of 866 in the 8K optimized benchmark. After the mod, though, it does manage to boost the performance by 58% as the 8GB modded version jumps to 1,576. Also showing off the GTX 1060 6GB next to it, which came out 2 years after, that achieved a score of 1,575, basically putting the two on par with each other.

The modder only shows off this benchmark to show off the performance of the card, but it was sent to be benchmarked by another YouTuber. Peperaio Hardware put the 4GB against the 8GB model right against each other to truly show the performance differences.

There’s a lot more of a muted increase in performance for the 8GB model GPU, if any at all. As the likes of Red Dead Redemption 2, GTA V, and Plague Tale Requiem don’t show any real changes. Yet the likes of Counter-Strike 2 showcase an increase by 10 – 30fps at various points, Cyberpunk 2077 gets a 5fps change, keeping it steady above 60fps for the most part. While it’s Horizon Forbidden West that sees a drastic improvement, nearly doubling the framerate of the card and making it a lot more playable.

This just shows there is a way to keep your old graphics card in shape, if you have the skills and parts to improve it. But with changes in tech and features, you still might require a new GPU anyway. It could be one way of making some of the modern graphics cards a bit more reasonable if you could upgrade the 8GB VRAM to something a bit more workable.

About the Author

Sebastian Kozlowski

With a fascination for technology and games, Seb is a tech writer with a focus on hardware and deals. He is also the primary tester and reviewer at BGFG and PCGuide.