Progress Reported on Unlocking 48GB VRAM on Nvidia CMP 170HX GPUs
A hardware and firmware modification is currently being developed to unlock hidden memory capacity on 10GB Nvidia CMP 170HX GPUs, expanding usable VRAM from 40GB up to 48GB. A post in the LocalLLaMA community indicated that progress on the modification is coming along smoothly. Unlocking up to 48GB of ultra-fast HBM2 memory turns budget-friendly secondhand crypto-mining cards into capable accelerators for running large local language models. This provides hardware enthusiasts with a significantly lower-cost alternative to expensive enterprise hardware like Nvidia's A100 GPUs. The CMP 170HX features six HBM2 memory stacks on Nvidia's GA100 die architecture, but was factory-disabled down to 8GB or 10GB for product segmentation and quality control. Community unlocks re-enable these disabled memory stacks, though stability and maximum reliable capacity may vary based on silicon lottery quality.
## BACKGROUND
The Nvidia CMP 170HX is a dedicated cryptocurrency mining card derived from the enterprise-grade GA100 processor used in Nvidia A100 accelerators. Because mining prioritizes memory bandwidth over raw VRAM capacity, Nvidia disabled most of the onboard HBM2 memory stacks, which hardware modders are now actively attempting to bypass for local AI workloads.