Users have found out that it's possible to flash cheap 4GB AMD Radeon RX48o GPUs to the more expensive 8GB variant. Some of the 4GB variants appear to contain exactly the same chips as 8GB Radeon RX480 cards, but have 4GB of RAM disabled in the BIOS. This should make it possible to flash the firmware of the more expensive 8GB Radeon RX480 to the cheaper 4GB variant.
A Dutch user on the website Tweakers.net found out when he analyzed his Powercolor 480 4GB video card. He found that his card contained 8 memorychips from Samsung, each with a capacity of 8Gbit. In total the card had 64 Gbit or 8GB of RAM, while it's sold as a 4GB model. Also the computer recognizes the card as a 4GB model, the other 4GB was disabled in the BIOS.
It should indeed be possible to flash a 4GB card to a 8GB card if the right hardware is present. In a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) an AMD employee has stated, "In the market you will see a version with 8GB of physical memory, and a version of 4GB of physical memory. We sent reviewers an 8GB model with a BIOS that allows them to flash between 4GB and 8GB available memory so they could perform testing on both hardware configurations."
Users that would like to get their hands on this tool are out of luck, it's not available to anyone else besides a handful of reviewers (yet).
It's unclear so far which models contain 8GB of RAM while being sold as 4GB model but it's likely there are many more than just the mentioned Powercolor 480 card.
Flashing the card is worth the money, the 4GB card is sold at $199 while the 8GB variant has a MSRP of $239.
