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I modded an RTX 3050 8GB card from x8 lanes to x16 lanes!

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Titan5150

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Discussion starter · #1 ·
I modded an RTX 3050 8GB card from x8 lanes to x16 lanes by just adding some capacitors to the board, and it cost me less than $2.00...

I read that the 3050 and the 3060 used the same PCB and that the lanes for all X16 are on the RTX3050 board; the only thing missing was some caps, and I can say this is correct!

The open pads are where the caps are needed...


Electronic device Display device Technology Electronics Computer hardware
Electronic device Display device Electronics Technology Computer hardware


I had read that it would give little to no boost in performance, but that is wrong...

Blue is before, and orange is after the mod!

Technology Screenshot Software Diagram


Not too bad for less than $2.00 dollars and an hour of time...;)
 
#2 ·
Well it can be wrong. It will be wrong if you are being bandwidth limited. My suspicion is your pcie4 is running at pcie3 for some reason and adding back the 8 lanes removed the bandwidth limit. A single pice3 device will throw the whole machine back to pcie3. So a single older m.2 drive, etc.. might even be extra cheap gear that is sold as pcie4 but can’t actually quite hack it.
 
Discussion starter · #3 ·
bombastinator said:
Well it can be wrong. It will be wrong if you are being bandwidth limited. My suspicion is your pcie4 is running at pcie3 for some reason and adding back the 8 lanes removed the bandwidth limit. A single pice3 device will throw the whole machine back to pcie3. So a single older m.2 drive, etc.. might even be extra cheap gear that is sold as pcie4 but can’t actually quite hack it.
Click to expand...
It's a great little video card, It's an MSI RTX3050 Gaming X 8GB OC, bought it for $150 bucks. My motherboard is a Z390 Aorus Master, which is a PCIe Gen3 x16 board, and the video card was PCIe Gen4 x8 running at PCIe Gen 3 x8, After the mod, it is now running at PCIe Gen3 x16, which is giving it a performance boost...

If put on a PCIe Gen4 motherboard, it could be running at PCIe Gen4 x16 speed. I guess this makes me one of the very few people on the planet who have an RTX3050 8GB x16 video card?
 
#4 ·
GPUZ showing it at X16?
Im just wondering how adding caps for smoothing to data lines that are laser cut inside the die is adding pci-e lanes.
Maybe the performance difference your seeing is just from replacing the thermal compound.
 
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Discussion starter · #5 · (Edited)
bmgjet said:
GPUZ showing it at X16?
Im just wondering how adding caps for smoothing to data lines that are laser cut inside the die is adding pci-e lanes.
Maybe the performance difference your seeing is just from replacing the thermal compound.
Click to expand...
Yes, GPU-Z show x16 when before the mod it only shown x8, In fact, after I added the caps and booted up I was bumbed out because it was only showing x8 lanes and my bench mark was unchanged, BUT, two days later it hit me that I had a PCIe SSD card in the second slot, and with my motherboard if you have a card in the second slot the first and second split the x16 lanes making both cards run at x8 lanes, so I jumped up and moved the card in the second slot down to the third slot and booted, AND it was working!!!

The traces are all there, you can see them in the pictures above, I had read that the 3050 and the 3060 use the same PCB and that the traces are unchanged between them, I also read that the 3050 and the 3060 are the same chip and the 3050 got the chips that weren't good enough for the 3060 and nvidia just disabled whatever was needed to bring the chip down to the 3050 specs. the only thing changed was no caps on those 8 traces on the PCB. AND sure enough, it was all correct!

And I ran across a youtube video in Portuguese titled "Transformando RTX 3050 x8 em 16x： a incrível jornada para lugar nenhum". Watching the video, it sure seemed like they were saying modding the 3050 was easy, and you just needed to add some caps to the empty pads on the traces...

The bump in performance is real, I use "fan control" so my card always stays cool, even over-clocked with a full load, and I always keep an eye on temps...

I know how it sounds too easy to be true, But I'll be damned, It IS true! :D (y)
 
#6 ·
post up a gpuz validation link
 
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#10 ·
Titan5150 said:
I had read that it would give little to no boost in performance, but that is wrong...
Click to expand...
If the test uses more than what comfortably fits in 8GiB of VRAM or needs to swap assets often, then yes PCI-E bandwidth will matter.

That's the irony of many of these lower end GPUs...they need more PCI-E bandwidth because they don't have enough VRAM to keep things local, but they are also capped on lanes for segmentation reasons.

What does the AIDA64 GPGPU test show?

bmgjet said:
Im just wondering how adding caps for smoothing to data lines that are laser cut inside the die is adding pci-e lanes.
Click to expand...
It couldn't. The implication is that the lanes were never disabled at the silicon level, just not connected at the PCB level.

Zfast4y0u said:
Pull ssd out, return gpu to original slot and you should have 16 lanes as well, your soldering did nothing i assume
Click to expand...
It's hard to see from these pictures, but those traces look like they aren't connected without the caps in place. This is how lanes would be disabled or enabled at the PCB level.
 
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#12 ·
Titan5150 said:
I don't have AIDA64.
Click to expand...
Even the free version should allow the GPGPU test and show the GPU's memory read or write speeds, which actually correspond to PCI-E bandwidth (copy is the actual local VRAM bandwidth). There are other PCI-E bandwidth tests, but some (like 3DMark's) produce impossible results with ReBAR enabled.
 
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Discussion starter · #13 · (Edited)
Blameless said:
Even the free version should allow the GPGPU test and show the GPU's memory read or write speeds, which actually correspond to PCI-E bandwidth (copy is the actual local VRAM bandwidth). There are other PCI-E bandwidth tests, but some (like 3DMark's) produce impossible results with ReBAR enabled.
Click to expand...
I have 3DMark...

I usually use PassMark PerformanceTest 11.1 3DMark, it runs 5 tests, and some of them have a few tests each...

I've been using that forever, so I have a lot of history from all of my computers to compare against...

It's just a little RTX3050, so it's not going to break any record or match up against any of the other forum members' cards...
 
Discussion starter · #14 · (Edited)
Blameless said:
Even the free version should allow the GPGPU test and show the GPU's memory read or write speeds, which actually correspond to PCI-E bandwidth (copy is the actual local VRAM bandwidth). There are other PCI-E bandwidth tests, but some (like 3DMark's) produce impossible results with ReBAR enabled.
Click to expand...
I just ran 3DMark's PCI Express Feature Test, it was 13.7 GB/s or 1.7125 GT/s if I converted it correctly?

Here's my Passmark Score...

PassMark Software - Display Baseline ID# 2629350

www.passmark.com www.passmark.com

My memory Mark is kicking some butt for an old Z390 computer!
 
#15 · (Edited)
If this is real, then shame on NVIDIA for intentionally limiting the bandwidth on RTX 3050 to x8 lanes and trying to save $2, probably even less than that for them.

In my old PC I have RTX 3060 12GB and I chose this gpu because it seemed like the best fit for this PC, it has x16 lanes which is important since the motherboard is stuck with PCI-E 2.0 and needs to make use of all the available lanes. It will be last gpu upgrade, the previous card was GTX 1060 6GB.

My old PC: i7-980 (x58 motherboard), 24GB DDR3, RTX 3060 12GB, Samsung 870 EVO 1TB SSD.
It's running Windows 10 LTSC IoT Enterprise which will get updates until 2032.
Even though i bought a new PC in 2022, I still use the old one for some things, it's still very capable.
 
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#16 ·
deathnite said:
If this is real, then shame on NVIDIA for intentionally limiting the bandwidth on RTX 3050 to x8 lanes and trying to save $2, probably even less than that for them.
Click to expand...
Using the same PCB for different SKUs is a cost saving measure, but specifying a lower PCI-E lane count on die flavors that can support more is not. They're doing it specifically to harm performance and possibly reduce power consumption slightly.

Many of the differences between SKUs are artificial and only exist to upsell some products while trying to keep lower cost products from cannibalizing their market.
 
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#17 ·
Titan5150 said:
It's a great little video card, It's an MSI RTX3050 Gaming X 8GB OC, bought it for $150 bucks. My motherboard is a Z390 Aorus Master, which is a PCIe Gen3 x16 board, and the video card was PCIe Gen4 x8 running at PCIe Gen 3 x8, After the mod, it is now running at PCIe Gen3 x16, which is giving it a performance boost...

If put on a PCIe Gen4 motherboard, it could be running at PCIe Gen4 x16 speed. I guess this makes me one of the very few people on the planet who have an RTX3050 8GB x16 video card?
Click to expand...
Well there yo go then. you need all 16 lanes for pcie3 boards. 16 lanes of pcie3 is plenty quick enough for most things but 8 lanes isnt. Those 8 lane cards HAVE to have pcie4 to get enough bandwidth. The thing is actually worth $150 then. Rx580 cards nave 8gb and 16 lanes and are going for under a benjamin. But yours is now faster and has CUDA cores which the 580 doesnt. Its an actually better card than a rx580 now.
 
Discussion starter · #18 · (Edited)
deathnite said:
If this is real, then shame on NVIDIA for intentionally limiting the bandwidth on RTX 3050 to x8 lanes and trying to save $2, probably even less than that for them.

In my old PC I have RTX 3060 12GB and I chose this gpu because it seemed like the best fit for this PC, it has x16 lanes which is important since the motherboard is stuck with PCI-E 2.0 and needs to make use of all the available lanes. It will be last gpu upgrade, the previous card was GTX 1060 6GB.

My old PC: i7-980 (x58 motherboard), 24GB DDR3, RTX 3060 12GB, Samsung 870 EVO 1TB SSD.
It's running Windows 10 LTSC IoT Enterprise which will get updates until 2032.
Even though i bought a new PC in 2022, I still use the old one for some things, it's still very capable.
Click to expand...
I have Windows 10 LTSC IoT Enterprise on one of my boot drives, It's a good OS...

I read this on Reddit about NVIDIA's reasoning for the x8 lanes...

"A key piece of specification that sets the RTX 3050 apart from the RTX 3060 is the PCI-Express bus width of just 8 lanes, that's PCI-Express 4.0 x8, compared to x16 on the RTX 3060 even though the GA106 is perfectly capable of x16, and all the custom-design boards we're testing today reuse PCB designs from RTX 3060 products with PCB traces for all 16 lanes in place. NVIDIA offers this explanation: "Dropping to 8 PCIe lanes improves supply. It allows us to source a wider variety of chips for the life of the product." In other words, NVIDIA is currently harvesting GA106 chips that didn't make the cut for RTX 3060, but could in the future switch to the smaller GA107 silicon, which physically has 24 SMs (3,072 CUDA cores) and a 128-bit GDDR6 memory bus, along with a PCI-Express 4.0 x8 bus. This switch would come with no difference in performance."
 
#19 · (Edited)
bmgjet said:
GPUZ showing it at X16?
Im just wondering how adding caps for smoothing to data lines that are laser cut inside the die is adding pci-e lanes.
Maybe the performance difference your seeing is just from replacing the thermal compound.
Click to expand...
Apparently they didn't bother to actually laser cut them and just didn’t add the bits. If they actually were laser cut you’d be right though.
Titan5150 said:
I have Windows 10 LTSC IoT Enterprise on one of my boot drives, It's a good OS...

I read this on Reddit about NVIDIA's reasoning for the x8 lanes...

"A key piece of specification that sets the RTX 3050 apart from the RTX 3060 is the PCI-Express bus width of just 8 lanes, that's PCI-Express 4.0 x8, compared to x16 on the RTX 3060 even though the GA106 is perfectly capable of x16, and all the custom-design boards we're testing today reuse PCB designs from RTX 3060 products with PCB traces for all 16 lanes in place. NVIDIA offers this explanation: "Dropping to 8 PCIe lanes improves supply. It allows us to source a wider variety of chips for the life of the product." In other words, NVIDIA is currently harvesting GA106 chips that didn't make the cut for RTX 3060, but could in the future switch to the smaller GA107 silicon, which physically has 24 SMs (3,072 CUDA cores) and a 128-bit GDDR6 memory bus, along with a PCI-Express 4.0 x8 bus. This switch would come with no difference in performance."
Click to expand...
smells heavily of marketing doublespeak. How about “Tthe actual cost isnt nearly as high as we charge so we cut it down more to sell To even more people, and we did it the cheapest way possible ‘cause hey, mo’ money”
do i trust a company in a duopoly to tell the truth? Well, no….
 
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