Up until now, the mods that got the most attention were for the GeForce RTX cards. However, it has recently been discovered that Radeon GPUs can also be manipulated to allow for more frame buffer. Speaking of Radeon GPUs, the Radeon RX 5600 XT has been around for some time now.
It is a midrange GPU that was released in early 2020 and comes with a Navi 10 XLE CPU and 6GB memory, operating across a 192-bit memory bus. While this is the only configuration in which the card is available, board partners have managed to develop over 60 custom variants for it, which is quite a lot when it comes to Radeon cards.
One of the custom variants developed for the Radeon RX 5600 XT was PowerColor’s Red Dragon GPU. However, when it was launched, it had different specifications than what had initially been announced. The final product featured a 1750 MHz memory clock, which was faster than the originally promised 1500 MHz. This change was the result of AMD updating the specifications from 12 Gbps to 14 Gbps at the last minute. Some of you might recall this update.
Paulo Gomes’ team has selected the Red Dragon as their next project and is working on doubling the frame buffer for this GPU. To achieve this, they have replaced the 1GB Samsung GDDR6 14 Gbps memory modules with 2GB 16 Gbps chips. As a result, the card had to be downclocked to its original specs for testing purposes. However, they claim that it should be possible to achieve higher clocks during daily use.
Previously, this mod was not possible because there was no BIOS available for the RX 5600XT that supported 12GB memory. However, the team has managed to modify the BIOS using some undisclosed HEX changes, which has enabled this project to go ahead.
As shown in the video, the mod was successful after the team had faced some failed attempts. Windows correctly identifies the modified card, and it is compatible with official drivers. As a result, the team has been able to run games and benchmarking software to test the card’s performance, which they have now achieved. It’s worth noting that the team has used a non-standard preset with a 10K resolution, which explains why the card’s performance has now doubled.