Is it possible to add more ram onto your antique Nvidia/ATi GPU?

[ediflorianus]

Here is a interesting question for you folks out there...
Is it possible & or feasible to add more Vram onto your antique apple AGPPro (FX5200) Nvidia video card?
As there is a new trend in adding more V ram onto new GPU's with heatstation , changing the ram chips on your gpu,
I was thinking maybe we can do the same , modd/personalize/attach more & maybe new V ram to old existing cards....
My standard Card I run is a GeForce NV34 FX5200 Ultra AGP-Pro with ADC port for my Acrylic monitor runing at 1680x1050 with a whopping 64MB... runing BGA chips
Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de)
Device ID: 0x0321
Revision ID: 0x00a2
ROM Revision: 2060

In theory these cards had 128-bit memory interface , so should go at least to 256MB or 512MB.... is it possible to add the extra ram into the bios file ? will it boot if BGA chips are changed? will it only work with standard DDR1 stuff... or maybe more(newer ddr/BGA) is possible?

Regarding ATi Radeon 9650, the good old RV360 or RV350 was used.... that has already a 256 MB on the card released for the Mac... The stock non mac versions have complete schematics available online , is it possible to add more to this or that GPU has reached the max back when it was launched . Weird questions , with no answers are available...

Most important , is it possible for the VBios to integrate the additional ram so to be used by the OS X , or it's only the way it was (you need different video card for additional v.ram)

I ask this because I usually have issues on large new movies when I play them , and a boost of video-ram would resolve much of my issues.

hmm it seems someone is already working on similar stuff...

 

[Bug-Creator]

Dunno, but I do know that even older cards like the 9250 had 2 RAM banks if it was 256MB (and maybe even on some 128MB models).
So I would guess that there was a hard limit on how big such a bank could be and it seems obvious that you couldn't add a 2nd bank on card that shipped with just one.

Remember 256MB was seen as an insane amount 20 years ago so it is only sensible that most of these chips simply lack the pins needed to address more.

 

[Amethyst1]

I know this is not what you asked, but what about replacing that less-than-stellar FX5200 with a more capable ADC card?

 

[ediflorianus]

I know this is not what you asked, but what about replacing that less-than-stellar FX5200 with a more capable ADC card?

If I find something better I will replace(on a budget), I have the 9600-9650 in one of my riggs...however it's little difference between them, and I left that in the original G5 rig it came in.... For me it would be easy to change ddr1 bga on the board of the fx5200, I just don't know if the software would agree with it... maybe I just need to look for a newer screen on dvi....(and stock the old one in a box,retire as main screen)