NVIDIA’s GTX 1650 launched seven years ago as a budget entry-level GPU, and while it was never particularly exciting, a modding team from YouTube channel Paulo Gomes has given it a surprisingly capable second wind. It is nice to see modders experimenting with ways to improve the longevity of older, entry-level cards, since the global memory shortage has made buying a new GPU seriously expensive.
The modding team pulled off a physical VRAM upgrade by resoldering 2 GB Samsung HC16 GDDR6 chips in place of the card’s stock 1GB GDDR6 modules, bumping the total memory from 4GB to 8GB without any firmware modifications. The process wasn’t entirely seamless. Two faulty HC16 modules caused the first boot to fail, but swapping those out for working units got the card up and running on the second try.
The results of the mod were surprisingly effective. In Unigine Superposition’s 8K-optimized mode, the score jumped from 624 to 1,245 points, essentially doubling performance on a benchmark that hammers memory bandwidth. This is a synthetic test that focuses specifically on VRAM, so the bump was sort of expected.
The real-world game results told a similar story. In God of War, at the game’s original graphics preset running at 2560×1080, frame rates held around 40 FPS on both configurations, though frame times were tighter on the 8GB card. Push to ultra settings, and the difference becomes stark: the stock 4GB card drops to around 10 FPS, while the 8GB version holds a much more playable 20 FPS.
One important caveat here: this mod only works on the TU106 die version of the GTX 1650, specifically the GDDR6 variant. NVIDIA shipped the GTX 1650 across multiple die configurations, including TU117 and TU116, and the TU106 variant was actually built from binned silicon originally intended for mid-range RTX 20 series cards like the RTX 2060 and RTX 2070.
The modders did not explain exactly why other GTX 1650 variants are incompatible, though memory controller or firmware differences are the likely reasons. The mod does come with one minor downside: some idle stuttering was observed after the upgrade.
This is part of a bigger trend of hardware modders demonstrating just how much VRAM matters in modern games. The same team previously doubled the GTX 970’s memory from 4GB to 8GB and upgraded an RTX 3070’s memory from 8 GB to 16GB, both yielding meaningful performance gains in memory-limited scenarios.
Given that newer budget GPUs still ship with 8GB VRAM or less, projects like this continue to raise an uncomfortable question for the industry.
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[PC Hardware Specialist]
Usman Saleem brings 8+ years of comprehensive PC hardware expertise to the table. His journey in the tech world has involved in-depth tech analysis and insightful PC hardware reviews, perfecting over 6+ years of dedicated work. Usman’s commitment to staying authentic and relevant in the field is underscored by many professional certifications, including a recent one in Google IT Support Specialization.
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