8GB VRAM not enough (and 10 / 12)

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BFG10K

Lifer
Aug 14, 2000
22,709
3,002
126
8GB
Horizon Forbidden West 3060 is faster than the 2080 Super despite the former usually competing with the 2070. Also 3060 has a better 1% low than 4060 and 4060Ti 8GB.
Resident Evil Village 3060TI/3070 tanks at 4K and is slower than the 3060/6700XT when ray tracing:
Company Of Heroes 3060 has a higher minimum than the 3070TI:

10GB / 12GB

Reasons why still shipping 8GB since 2014 isn't NV's fault.
  1. It's the player's fault.
  2. It's the reviewer's fault.
  3. It's the developer's fault.
  4. It's AMD's fault.
  5. It's the game's fault.
  6. It's the driver's fault.
  7. It's a system configuration issue.
  8. Wrong settings were tested.
  9. Wrong area was tested.
  10. Wrong games were tested.
  11. 4K is irrelevant.
  12. Texture quality is irrelevant as long as it matches a console's.
  13. Detail levels are irrelevant as long as they match a console's.
  14. There's no reason a game should use more than 8GB, because a random forum user said so.
  15. It's completely acceptable for the more expensive 3070/3070TI/3080 to turn down settings while the cheaper 3060/6700XT has no issue.
  16. It's an anomaly.
  17. It's a console port.
  18. It's a conspiracy against NV.
  19. 8GB cards aren't meant for 4K / 1440p / 1080p / 720p gaming.
  20. It's completely acceptable to disable ray tracing on NV while AMD has no issue.
  21. Polls, hardware market share, and game title count are evidence 8GB is enough, but are totally ignored when they don't suit the ray tracing agenda.
According to some people here, 8GB is neeeevaaaaah NV's fault and objective evidence "doesn't count" because of reasons(tm). If you have others please let me know and I'll add them to the list. Cheers!
 
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Golgatha

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marees

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$50 more to double your graphics memory from 8GB to 16GB feels like a no-brainer to us, after seeing how games have continued to push higher quality textures over the past few years. $90 or $100 extra isn’t quite as easy to stomach — the price of two games rather than one, more or less. But over the long term, if you’re serious about gaming, we’d almost always recommend trying to push up one or two notches from where you might feel comfortable on price.

It's not just about raw performance. We’ll show how the 16GB and 8GB variants of some cards match up in our testing, but those are the sanitized benchmark results. Many games simply behave better with an abundance of VRAM. We’ve encountered games where loading saves (or loading into new areas of the game) can eventually cause performance on an 8GB card to tank, requiring a restart. And there are also games where 8GB cards at higher settings simply fail — like the Nvidia-promoted Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, which can’t even run the ultra preset at 1080p on Nvidia’s 8GB GPUs.

There’s ultimately no 100% 'right' answer for how much memory you need, or how much more you should pay for that memory. Still, it’s an important spec and something to keep in mind. All else being equal, having more VRAM is better.

marees said:
This review came out 2 weeks back, for those who missed it

AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB review: plenty of performance with 16GB​

Be wary of the 8GB models, which are a completely different ballgame.​

Reviews
By The Staff of Tom's Hardware published June 10, 2025


Along with AMD’s RDNA 4 GPUs, we’ve tested all the initial onslaught of Nvidia Blackwell GPUs, plus Intel’s two (for now) Arc Battlemage GPUs. That doesn’t mean there won’t be mid-cycle refresh GPUs like last generation's RTX 40-series Super cards, but those generally slot into the existing structure without shaking things up too much. If those cards do happen — and they probably will — they’re likely to arrive in early-to-mid 2026.

Many have noticed that our standalone RTX 5060 review didn’t happen, and there are good reasons for that. Jarred has left the building, and while he’s helped us put together this one final hurrah, timing and a lack of direct sampling from Nvidia delayed the testing of that card. So, today’s review marks a two-for-one special of sorts — three-for-one if you want to also count the lackluster RTX 5060 Ti 8GB, which we also had to purchase for testing.

AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB review: plenty of performance with 16GB

Be wary of the 8GB models, which are a completely different ballgame.
www.tomshardware.com
Click to expand...
 
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marees

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Apr 28, 2024
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marees said:
$50 more to double your graphics memory from 8GB to 16GB feels like a no-brainer to us, after seeing how games have continued to push higher quality textures over the past few years. $90 or $100 extra isn’t quite as easy to stomach — the price of two games rather than one, more or less. But over the long term, if you’re serious about gaming, we’d almost always recommend trying to push up one or two notches from where you might feel comfortable on price.

It's not just about raw performance. We’ll show how the 16GB and 8GB variants of some cards match up in our testing, but those are the sanitized benchmark results. Many games simply behave better with an abundance of VRAM. We’ve encountered games where loading saves (or loading into new areas of the game) can eventually cause performance on an 8GB card to tank, requiring a restart. And there are also games where 8GB cards at higher settings simply fail — like the Nvidia-promoted Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, which can’t even run the ultra preset at 1080p on Nvidia’s 8GB GPUs.

There’s ultimately no 100% 'right' answer for how much memory you need, or how much more you should pay for that memory. Still, it’s an important spec and something to keep in mind. All else being equal, having more VRAM is better.
Click to expand...

If you’re absolutely sure that you won’t ever want to run 1440p, maybe the 8GB cards will get the job done. But even looking at 1080p ultra, the charts don’t tell the full story. Sometimes, a game would load up at 1080p ultra and have extremely poor performance. Exiting and restarting would usually clear that up. Other times, while playing a game (or just running benchmarks), performance would suddenly take a nosedive. Those sorts of issues just didn’t happen with the 16GB cards, and rarely with the 12GB cards, but on the 8GB GPUs it’s a regular occurrence.

Back when the RTX 4060 Ti came out, originally in 8GB trim and then with a 16GB variant a month later, we were relatively harsh on the limited gains that 16GB offered. Over the ensuing two years, however, our feelings about the 16GB card have become far more favorable. There’s a lot to be said for having enough VRAM that you generally don’t need to worry about it, and if it’s only $50 extra to double your VRAM, that’s money well spent.

We really wish there were a better middle ground. You can make a good argument that a 128-bit memory interface is sufficient for a budget oriented GPU, but with GDDR6 that limits AMD to either 8GB or 16GB. GDDR7 offers a potential middle ground by using the 3GB (24Gb) modules, though Nvidia has so far opted not to use those outside of the mobile RTX 5090 and the RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell.

In 2025, for a budget-mainstream GPU, even 12GB makes far more sense than 8GB, a capacity that we’ve seen used in mainstream GPUs since 2015.
 
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marees

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marees said:
If you’re absolutely sure that you won’t ever want to run 1440p, maybe the 8GB cards will get the job done. But even looking at 1080p ultra, the charts don’t tell the full story. Sometimes, a game would load up at 1080p ultra and have extremely poor performance. Exiting and restarting would usually clear that up. Other times, while playing a game (or just running benchmarks), performance would suddenly take a nosedive. Those sorts of issues just didn’t happen with the 16GB cards, and rarely with the 12GB cards, but on the 8GB GPUs it’s a regular occurrence.

Back when the RTX 4060 Ti came out, originally in 8GB trim and then with a 16GB variant a month later, we were relatively harsh on the limited gains that 16GB offered. Over the ensuing two years, however, our feelings about the 16GB card have become far more favorable. There’s a lot to be said for having enough VRAM that you generally don’t need to worry about it, and if it’s only $50 extra to double your VRAM, that’s money well spent.

We really wish there were a better middle ground. You can make a good argument that a 128-bit memory interface is sufficient for a budget oriented GPU, but with GDDR6 that limits AMD to either 8GB or 16GB. GDDR7 offers a potential middle ground by using the 3GB (24Gb) modules, though Nvidia has so far opted not to use those outside of the mobile RTX 5090 and the RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell.

In 2025, for a budget-mainstream GPU, even 12GB makes far more sense than 8GB, a capacity that we’ve seen used in mainstream GPUs since 2015.
Click to expand...
Comment from Jarred W

AMD didn't send an 8GB sample for review, and the 5060 Ti 8GB card was actually one I myself purchased (after I left Tom's Hardware for greener pastures). Neither company really wants people posting benchmarks that show how 8GB struggles at higher settings for $50 less money.


The user experience with the 8GB cards is quite poor in a lot of games. You can fix it by turning down settings, usually, but when it's just the cost of a single game to ensure you're not flirting with running out of VRAM, I just don't see a good reason to purchase built-in obsolescence. The 4060 Ti 8GB was a poor move two years ago. Today, the 5060 Ti 8GB and 9060 XT 8GB models are a joke, and I'd say the same for the RTX 5060.

Nvidia really should have just pushed all the GDDR7 manufacturers to start with 24Gb (3GB) chips and forget all about 2GB chips. That would have been so, so, SO much better than what we now have. Imagine if the RTX 50-series lineup were:

RTX 5060 12GB @ $329
RTX 5060 Ti 12GB @ $399
RTX 5060 18GB @ $549
RTX 5070 Ti 24GB @ $799
RTX 5080 24GB @ $1,049
RTX 5090 48GB @ $1,999

That would have been everything I wanted to see. Instead, we got slightly lower prices at each GPU tier, with clearly inferior offerings due to a lack of VRAM.


Review - AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB review: plenty of performance with 16GB

AMD’s Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB delivers solid performance at seemingly reasonable pricing, though current retail costs are about 10% higher than the official MSRP. It’s a good option with no massive shortcomings, unlike the 8GB cards that are still being foisted off on less knowledgeable...
forums.tomshardware.com
 
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marees

Golden Member
Apr 28, 2024
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marees said:
Comment from Jarred W

AMD didn't send an 8GB sample for review, and the 5060 Ti 8GB card was actually one I myself purchased (after I left Tom's Hardware for greener pastures). Neither company really wants people posting benchmarks that show how 8GB struggles at higher settings for $50 less money.


The user experience with the 8GB cards is quite poor in a lot of games. You can fix it by turning down settings, usually, but when it's just the cost of a single game to ensure you're not flirting with running out of VRAM, I just don't see a good reason to purchase built-in obsolescence. The 4060 Ti 8GB was a poor move two years ago. Today, the 5060 Ti 8GB and 9060 XT 8GB models are a joke, and I'd say the same for the RTX 5060.

Nvidia really should have just pushed all the GDDR7 manufacturers to start with 24Gb (3GB) chips and forget all about 2GB chips. That would have been so, so, SO much better than what we now have. Imagine if the RTX 50-series lineup were:

RTX 5060 12GB @ $329
RTX 5060 Ti 12GB @ $399
RTX 5060 18GB @ $549
RTX 5070 Ti 24GB @ $799
RTX 5080 24GB @ $1,049
RTX 5090 48GB @ $1,999

That would have been everything I wanted to see. Instead, we got slightly lower prices at each GPU tier, with clearly inferior offerings due to a lack of VRAM.


Review - AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB review: plenty of performance with 16GB

AMD’s Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB delivers solid performance at seemingly reasonable pricing, though current retail costs are about 10% higher than the official MSRP. It’s a good option with no massive shortcomings, unlike the 8GB cards that are still being foisted off on less knowledgeable...
forums.tomshardware.com
Click to expand...
Try playing for an hour on the 8GB card at 1440p ultra and you may encounter massive stutters on a regular basis, and at times performance can drop into the single digits (from 40+ FPS).

Look at the 1% lows as well. The 5060 Ti 16GB shows a 24% lead in minimum FPS compared to the 8GB card. That indicates there's a lot more hitching and stuttering going on (because there is).

And that's not just at 1440p and 4K ultra. You can get similar behavior at 1080p ultra at times, and that means you'll almost certainly encounter some games where that sort of thing also happens at 1080p high or 1440p high. Basically, you're spending $50 extra (depending on current prices) to wash away a whole bunch of idiosyncrasies and oddities. I can't stress that enough.

The charts tell one story, but I'm being absolutely frank in saying that it's not the full story. I tried to explain that in the review text. Every time you encounter a major showstopper (like how about Indiana Jones just crashing to desktop at ultra settings with a VRAM allocation error), that's a huge deal.

Review - AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB review: plenty of performance with 16GB

AMD’s Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB delivers solid performance at seemingly reasonable pricing, though current retail costs are about 10% higher than the official MSRP. It’s a good option with no massive shortcomings, unlike the 8GB cards that are still being foisted off on less knowledgeable...
forums.tomshardware.com
 
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J

jpiniero

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marees said:
$50 more to double your graphics memory from 8GB to 16GB feels like a no-brainer to us, after seeing how games have continued to push higher quality textures over the past few years.
Click to expand...

Price difference is more like $70 in practice... and Newegg is even offering gift cards on top for the 9060 XT 8 GB pushing the "real price" below $299. They are also offering GCs on some of the higher priced 5060 Ti 8 GB.
 
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DAPUNISHER

Super Moderator CPU Forum Mod and Elite Member
Super Moderator
Aug 22, 2001
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Iron Woode said:
Nvidia readying the RTX 5050 8GB for release.

This is going to be brutal.
Click to expand...
Steve has come around; Nvidia can do whatever they want. He calls out the Future overlords. Now I have to wonder if Jarred's exit from Tom's had anything to do with it. Perhaps he had enough integrity left to GTFO.

I read his posts in the comments section of the review @marees linked. He tells the moderator there basing a dumbass analysis on geomean, that it can obfuscate. No 💩 bro? I've been ranting about that for years. But people are so programmed, they just repeat the same tired, outdated, incorrect rhetoric.


It's what happens when you combine a captive market with a cult, developed over decades of strong-arming reviewers, and employing legions of trolls to infect every message board and social media platform.
 
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DAPUNISHER

Super Moderator CPU Forum Mod and Elite Member
Super Moderator
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coercitiv said:
Jarred's TL;DR version as expressed on his channel: better pay and better working hours, he's getting old and wants more security and less hassle with lack of sleep before major hardware launches.
Click to expand...
No doubt. My speculation is due to the timing. Perhaps it was the straw that broke the camel's back.
 
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I

igor_kavinski

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jpiniero said:
They act like it's the end of the world when the crappy below low end cards can't play on max details.
Click to expand...
Not the end but the world really doesn't need crap cards. Funny how you fail to see that. I guess Intel should've rehashed Comet Lake forever with die shrinks instead of wasting time and money on a new architecture, eh bro?
 
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