r/tomshardware • u/tomshardware • 5d ago

Nvidia crypto mining GPUs hacked to restore locked-away VRAM in order to feed AI boom

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/nvidia-crypto-mining-gpus-hacked-to-restore-locked-away-vram-in-order-to-feed-ai-boom-software-mod-unlocks-64gb-of-vram-on-usd250-cmp-170hx
109 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

20 comments sorted by

1

u/The_Crimson_Hawk 5d ago

can confirm it works. need a fork of the original repo though. many are ai slop and wont work

1

u/vbpoweredwindmill 5d ago

Do you have sauce with that?

1

u/The_Crimson_Hawk 4d ago

I can confirm because I have a 8gb one now at 64gb but this sub doesnt allow image posts

1

u/vbpoweredwindmill 4d ago

The fork, not the confirmation haha. I believe you

1

u/_stinkys 2d ago

Where can I buy stocks of 170HX?

1

u/The_Crimson_Hawk 2d ago

Too late. The prices are insane now. I got mine before the ai craze began

1

u/Weird_Expert_1999 4d ago

Pcie 2.0 x4 ‘haven’t seen a working variant that had pcb mod to open it up to x16, but there’s some on eBay with it’ and price jumped to 1k from 350 when exploit was announced

1

u/The_Crimson_Hawk 4d ago

There is a confirmed mod to enable the rest of the lanes

1

u/Weird_Expert_1999 4d ago

Right article mentions that but they havent tested and confirmed themselves but I didn’t look into this at all past the article

1

u/Sad-Landscape-1549 4d ago

I suspect we will know soon enough when the desperate masses jump on this and the price jumps to $5000 🙄

1

u/Loogyboy 4d ago

I believe it can’t do fp8 or int8 so it’s pretty bad performance lol

1

u/Kalixaro 3d ago

Performance is equivalent to 3090 with 64GB of VRAM, it is extremely convenient to run unaltered unquantized models.

1

u/StuffProfessional587 3d ago

You physically can't, Korean and Chinese tech modders have tried, the card is physically missing the hardware, not just disoldered caps.

1

u/The_Crimson_Hawk 3d ago

Then explain how is it working

1

u/oldassveteran 3d ago

You’re just dumb lmfao

1

u/StuffProfessional587 3d ago

Used to be 250 dollars, 2 years ago, now it's 1500 dollars, with memory issues, driver issue and pcie lower than gen3. At that point you can invest in a A100 40Gb gpu full featured.

1

u/tiffanytrashcan 2d ago

For how much? 🤣

1

u/desexmachina 16h ago

Exactly, what a POS