What happened
A new tool unlocks hidden video memory on Nvidia CMP 170HX mining cards. The cards were sold with 8GB or 10GB enabled, but physically hold up to 80GB of VRAM. Second-hand prices for the cards jumped from $100 to over $1,000 after the tool appeared. Developers are buying them to run large AI models locally without buying expensive server hardware.
The context
Running large AI models locally requires a lot of high-speed memory. Dedicated enterprise AI cards usually cost thousands of dollars. Unlocking tens of gigabytes of memory on cheap secondary GPUs offers developers a budget path for local inference.
Sources
- Wccftech ↗ via Google News Reported