GPU Memory: A Practical Discussion
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Date: 2025-04-20
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Comments and reviews: 20
ElladanKenet
No, 8gb isn't enough for modern AAA games at max settings, at 1080p. Period. However, for the cards released lately, memory bus is proving to be MORE of a bottleneck.
Consider the 3070ti. Monster of a card that still compares favorably to the 4070 Super. However, it only has 8gb of vram, so for the 1440p games it's intended for, it struggles. Much less 4K.
In all fairness, it's not fair to expect cards from 2 generations ago to still be able to play the most advanced games 4 years later no sweat. It'd be kind of depressing actually, if games did not progress that much.
But it also sucks that, due to some pretty arbitrary design choices, the 5070 isn't THAT much better than the 3070 in most respects. Certainly not when you compare them generationally.
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No, 8gb isn't enough for modern AAA games at max settings, at 1080p. Period. However, for the cards released lately, memory bus is proving to be MORE of a bottleneck.
Consider the 3070ti. Monster of a card that still compares favorably to the 4070 Super. However, it only has 8gb of vram, so for the 1440p games it's intended for, it struggles. Much less 4K.
In all fairness, it's not fair to expect cards from 2 generations ago to still be able to play the most advanced games 4 years later no sweat. It'd be kind of depressing actually, if games did not progress that much.
But it also sucks that, due to some pretty arbitrary design choices, the 5070 isn't THAT much better than the 3070 in most respects. Certainly not when you compare them generationally.
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thestrykernet
I don't think you can have a discussion about video memory without bringing cost into play. I absolutely agree you can make 8GB VRAM work, but the question is one of value and should you really have to. I think it's fair to say the B580 having 12GB at $250 should make everything above it with less VRAM an anti-consumer product which should be labeled such.
Memory bus width by itself doesn't mean anything at all because it depends on how much the GPU can leverage. The massive increase in memory bandwidth with the 50 series has meant virtually nothing with regards to the performance of the cards. A wider bus is generally better of course, but it also can be meaningless (ex: 3060 vs 4060 the only time the former wins is when the latter runs out of VRAM).
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I don't think you can have a discussion about video memory without bringing cost into play. I absolutely agree you can make 8GB VRAM work, but the question is one of value and should you really have to. I think it's fair to say the B580 having 12GB at $250 should make everything above it with less VRAM an anti-consumer product which should be labeled such.
Memory bus width by itself doesn't mean anything at all because it depends on how much the GPU can leverage. The massive increase in memory bandwidth with the 50 series has meant virtually nothing with regards to the performance of the cards. A wider bus is generally better of course, but it also can be meaningless (ex: 3060 vs 4060 the only time the former wins is when the latter runs out of VRAM).
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ThisIsFro
Can 8GB of ram be enough Sure, if the game you're playing is old enough and doesn't need the ram then 8GB is fine. But newer games are wanting more to have better visuals. I had an issue with Diablo 4 when it first came out, I had horrible stuttering because it was overflowing VRAM. I had to drop the game down to low textures to get around the issue. They later fixed the game to perform better but if I would have had a 12GB card I wouldn't have ran in to this issue.
Also having the game just silently lower your textures because you're running out of is terrible, you may never know why your game looks terrible if it does this.
A card that costs $400 with 8GB is a terrible investment for today and definitely for the future.
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Can 8GB of ram be enough Sure, if the game you're playing is old enough and doesn't need the ram then 8GB is fine. But newer games are wanting more to have better visuals. I had an issue with Diablo 4 when it first came out, I had horrible stuttering because it was overflowing VRAM. I had to drop the game down to low textures to get around the issue. They later fixed the game to perform better but if I would have had a 12GB card I wouldn't have ran in to this issue.
Also having the game just silently lower your textures because you're running out of is terrible, you may never know why your game looks terrible if it does this.
A card that costs $400 with 8GB is a terrible investment for today and definitely for the future.
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rhoharane
Is 8GB enough is a misleading question. Of course it's enough for some situations and uses and settings.
The question is Should a new card in 2025 that costs $300 and have current performance have 8GB
8GB means new games crashing, textures randomly becoming blurry and unblurry every few seconds even without you moving as the game struggles to determine which textures it needs, or more and more, you'll be lowering your settings on a desktop monitor and it's going to look like crap or it'll stutter like crazy. And we say more and more because this is already true for some games at good 1080 settings, with no RT. Things like upscaling also require vram so you can't just upscale the requirement away.
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Is 8GB enough is a misleading question. Of course it's enough for some situations and uses and settings.
The question is Should a new card in 2025 that costs $300 and have current performance have 8GB
8GB means new games crashing, textures randomly becoming blurry and unblurry every few seconds even without you moving as the game struggles to determine which textures it needs, or more and more, you'll be lowering your settings on a desktop monitor and it's going to look like crap or it'll stutter like crazy. And we say more and more because this is already true for some games at good 1080 settings, with no RT. Things like upscaling also require vram so you can't just upscale the requirement away.
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weirdodude1173
16GB isn't enough for me, but that's because I use AI stuff like Stable Diffusion image generation. 8GB isn't going to be going as far as it used to with the newer games and the new AI features which could also use more VRAM on their own. Like that G-Assist and some of the neural kinds of things. Neural Texture Compression might save some VRAM space, but it seems like that is years off before games take advantage of it. I wouldn't say 8GB is unusable in general, but people are likely to run into issues from time to time over the next years with only 8GB. 12 GB is not really much better. 16GB is a lot safer of an investment. I still want 32GB as the baseline for high end, all cards over $1000.
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16GB isn't enough for me, but that's because I use AI stuff like Stable Diffusion image generation. 8GB isn't going to be going as far as it used to with the newer games and the new AI features which could also use more VRAM on their own. Like that G-Assist and some of the neural kinds of things. Neural Texture Compression might save some VRAM space, but it seems like that is years off before games take advantage of it. I wouldn't say 8GB is unusable in general, but people are likely to run into issues from time to time over the next years with only 8GB. 12 GB is not really much better. 16GB is a lot safer of an investment. I still want 32GB as the baseline for high end, all cards over $1000.
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billclay2701
They aren't releasing 7 to 10 year cards anymore so we wil never see robust video ram unless gamers stop buying 8gb and 12gb cards. If the industry is heading towards bloated unoptimized 4k textured games the cards of today will have to be able to handle them 7 years from now. Otherwise, we will be on the get a new iphone every other year cycle they want us in. 8gb cards in 2025 are silly. But personally, I won't pay over $500 (currently have a EVGA 3060ti) for a card so pretty soon I will be forced to get more into my other hobbies. Thank goodness books don't need a video card.
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They aren't releasing 7 to 10 year cards anymore so we wil never see robust video ram unless gamers stop buying 8gb and 12gb cards. If the industry is heading towards bloated unoptimized 4k textured games the cards of today will have to be able to handle them 7 years from now. Otherwise, we will be on the get a new iphone every other year cycle they want us in. 8gb cards in 2025 are silly. But personally, I won't pay over $500 (currently have a EVGA 3060ti) for a card so pretty soon I will be forced to get more into my other hobbies. Thank goodness books don't need a video card.
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dennisbradley5620
8gb is plenty for 1080p gaming, which a 60 series card is made for. If you want to do some VR, AI or video editing you can buy the 16 gb version of 60 and 70 series cards. I dont understand so many videos bagging 8gb versions. Just dont buy them, there are 16gb versions. 8gb are just a budget option (well, as budget as GPUs can be these days). And dont bother with value for money talk, there are no value for money GPUs any more, they all cost too much. I thought my 4070 cost too much at about 600 USD, but the 5070 is 700, so yeh. Im ok with what i paid.
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8gb is plenty for 1080p gaming, which a 60 series card is made for. If you want to do some VR, AI or video editing you can buy the 16 gb version of 60 and 70 series cards. I dont understand so many videos bagging 8gb versions. Just dont buy them, there are 16gb versions. 8gb are just a budget option (well, as budget as GPUs can be these days). And dont bother with value for money talk, there are no value for money GPUs any more, they all cost too much. I thought my 4070 cost too much at about 600 USD, but the 5070 is 700, so yeh. Im ok with what i paid.
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Kreln1221
I call B.S. on this... The actual VRAM chips that are soldered onto GPU cards are relatively inexpensive in relation to the manufacturing and selling costs of the entire GPU cards themselves. The primary reason that GPU manufacturers, Nvidia being the most guilty of it, do not provide more VRAM on consumer grade gaming graphics cards is to force businesses to purchase professional grade GPUs, as their professional workflow software will either run slowly and unprofitability, or not even at all, without sufficient VRAM.
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I call B.S. on this... The actual VRAM chips that are soldered onto GPU cards are relatively inexpensive in relation to the manufacturing and selling costs of the entire GPU cards themselves. The primary reason that GPU manufacturers, Nvidia being the most guilty of it, do not provide more VRAM on consumer grade gaming graphics cards is to force businesses to purchase professional grade GPUs, as their professional workflow software will either run slowly and unprofitability, or not even at all, without sufficient VRAM.
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jackjian6082
even 2Gb vram is enough if you only browse the web. unless you ONLY play at 1080p and esport titles and on a very limited budget you should at the very least look for 12G...
would love to see good data on how exactly bus width, vram speed and ultimately memory bandwidth affect performance. this is likely GPU architecture dependent as well. as long as you have sufficient total throughput (except extreme edge case which does not exist eg: 128bit 30gbps vs 512bit 7.5gbps on the same gpu) you are generally fine.
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even 2Gb vram is enough if you only browse the web. unless you ONLY play at 1080p and esport titles and on a very limited budget you should at the very least look for 12G...
would love to see good data on how exactly bus width, vram speed and ultimately memory bandwidth affect performance. this is likely GPU architecture dependent as well. as long as you have sufficient total throughput (except extreme edge case which does not exist eg: 128bit 30gbps vs 512bit 7.5gbps on the same gpu) you are generally fine.
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TyGamer125
I think 8gb is fine on a 50 class card (like 5050) in 2025, something where you know it's not enough but that's all you can afford. 60 classis for the average person and the average person is buying 1440p monitors so it should have enough vram to support the average person which 8gb doesn't. 8gb is barely enough these days and it's only going to get worse as new game consoles come out and when you're spending $300 you aren't looking to buy a paper weight in 2-3 years once it's not sufficient.
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I think 8gb is fine on a 50 class card (like 5050) in 2025, something where you know it's not enough but that's all you can afford. 60 classis for the average person and the average person is buying 1440p monitors so it should have enough vram to support the average person which 8gb doesn't. 8gb is barely enough these days and it's only going to get worse as new game consoles come out and when you're spending $300 you aren't looking to buy a paper weight in 2-3 years once it's not sufficient.
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bobbysanderz6769
I have a 3070 and am still making good money from it, from my CNC job.
I will get an RTX Pro 4500 Blackwell this year after 5 years ofusingg a 3070 because I'm starting rendering professionally.
VRAM Marketing is a smooth robbery for people who ((just)) want to game with a thousand-dollar PC, and the fun fact is it won't be enough because every day will bring newer tech around.
People who just game will always waste money for no purpose and always complain about pricing !
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I have a 3070 and am still making good money from it, from my CNC job.
I will get an RTX Pro 4500 Blackwell this year after 5 years ofusingg a 3070 because I'm starting rendering professionally.
VRAM Marketing is a smooth robbery for people who ((just)) want to game with a thousand-dollar PC, and the fun fact is it won't be enough because every day will bring newer tech around.
People who just game will always waste money for no purpose and always complain about pricing !
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mistarbeanz
Geez, this video is nothing but a bad take. Sure, if you ignore games released in the last 3 to 5 years, you won't have any VRAM issues and for the few that do, you can lower the texture settings to fit within 8GB.
But for more and more new games that are coming out, even the lowest texture settings at 1080p will push 8GB of VRAM.
This is some bad advice. Spending money on a new GPU in 2025 with 8GB is just bad no matter what.
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Geez, this video is nothing but a bad take. Sure, if you ignore games released in the last 3 to 5 years, you won't have any VRAM issues and for the few that do, you can lower the texture settings to fit within 8GB.
But for more and more new games that are coming out, even the lowest texture settings at 1080p will push 8GB of VRAM.
This is some bad advice. Spending money on a new GPU in 2025 with 8GB is just bad no matter what.
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dnakatomiuk
Even if a GPU has more thab 8GB VRAM if its got 128bit memory bus its getting crippled a little bit, 10GB 12GB 16GB at least should have 192bit memory bus or more.
But AMD and nvidia won't they are deliberately holding cards back most likely because of games console's. AMD especially wouldnt release a 9600XT wirh 12GB they are too far in with building chips for consoles to screw it up
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Even if a GPU has more thab 8GB VRAM if its got 128bit memory bus its getting crippled a little bit, 10GB 12GB 16GB at least should have 192bit memory bus or more.
But AMD and nvidia won't they are deliberately holding cards back most likely because of games console's. AMD especially wouldnt release a 9600XT wirh 12GB they are too far in with building chips for consoles to screw it up
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grumpyrocker
Sure I'd love more VRAM on my laptop. But...in most of the games I want to play it's not actually been a big issue yet. Only Forza Motorsport 8 has been a bit tricky with 8GB. But Flight SIM 2024 plays great on high settings. And most games I try on pretty high settings work fine including Indiana Jones. I guess the real issue will be the future. But for now, I'm doing ok.
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Sure I'd love more VRAM on my laptop. But...in most of the games I want to play it's not actually been a big issue yet. Only Forza Motorsport 8 has been a bit tricky with 8GB. But Flight SIM 2024 plays great on high settings. And most games I try on pretty high settings work fine including Indiana Jones. I guess the real issue will be the future. But for now, I'm doing ok.
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Jtq-y4n
For some modern games 8gb is not enough unless you compromise settings and frame gen will use more vram. 12gb is basically enough for almost anything frame gen outside of 4k max RT games or badly optimized games. The important thing is 16gb SHOULD be the standard because 8gb has been standard for almost a decade and future games ( and their developers ) want to use more vram.
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For some modern games 8gb is not enough unless you compromise settings and frame gen will use more vram. 12gb is basically enough for almost anything frame gen outside of 4k max RT games or badly optimized games. The important thing is 16gb SHOULD be the standard because 8gb has been standard for almost a decade and future games ( and their developers ) want to use more vram.
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Dragoonoar
why is this even a question if all you play is retro games then 8gb is more than enough. if you play modern games 1080p and still have set textures on anything else but ultra then it is not enough. why do you have to go through such lengthy mental gymnastics i've had enough of nvidia's bullcrap and im not buying their overpriced crap. this shouldn't even be a debate
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why is this even a question if all you play is retro games then 8gb is more than enough. if you play modern games 1080p and still have set textures on anything else but ultra then it is not enough. why do you have to go through such lengthy mental gymnastics i've had enough of nvidia's bullcrap and im not buying their overpriced crap. this shouldn't even be a debate
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martinprince8253
The whole video is an nVidia take.
The discussion is about newly released cards and the money you have to spend on them NOW, not the cards you you already have.
You have to lower res and details on a 3070 for sure and you can use it for the most part still. But if the 3070 had more ram it would perform a whole heck of a lot better.
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The whole video is an nVidia take.
The discussion is about newly released cards and the money you have to spend on them NOW, not the cards you you already have.
You have to lower res and details on a 3070 for sure and you can use it for the most part still. But if the 3070 had more ram it would perform a whole heck of a lot better.
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rhoharane
The bus width conversation shouldn't be so abstract. Look at the 1440 benchmarks on the 5060Ti 16GB
It's usually well above 60fps at good 1440p settings.
Sure, it could theoretically be faster. But don't talk yourself into thinking it's not supposed to be a 1440 card.
Therefore, it should have way more than 8 GB of VRAM by default.
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The bus width conversation shouldn't be so abstract. Look at the 1440 benchmarks on the 5060Ti 16GB
It's usually well above 60fps at good 1440p settings.
Sure, it could theoretically be faster. But don't talk yourself into thinking it's not supposed to be a 1440 card.
Therefore, it should have way more than 8 GB of VRAM by default.
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pcworld
It is not a nuanced discussion. The $50 extra for 16gb will give you $50 to 100 extra return when you sell the gpu. If you ever want to try out a new game.. you will have to decrease setting. This is the first time this scenario has ever happened with. 60 Ti gpu. Actually the first time was 4060 Ti 8gb and now it is just worse.
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It is not a nuanced discussion. The $50 extra for 16gb will give you $50 to 100 extra return when you sell the gpu. If you ever want to try out a new game.. you will have to decrease setting. This is the first time this scenario has ever happened with. 60 Ti gpu. Actually the first time was 4060 Ti 8gb and now it is just worse.
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lflyr6287
Aha, now, when Nvidia again launched a 5060 Ti 8GB, we have to hear about how now, especially now, we have to educate ourselves about how memory is not just about the capacity. This sounds like an undercover Nvidia bribed video trying to insert a certain mindshare just for this launch to justify the 8 GB card.
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Aha, now, when Nvidia again launched a 5060 Ti 8GB, we have to hear about how now, especially now, we have to educate ourselves about how memory is not just about the capacity. This sounds like an undercover Nvidia bribed video trying to insert a certain mindshare just for this launch to justify the 8 GB card.
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