Why VRAM Is So Important For Gaming: 4GB vs. 8GB

I told yall Dreamcast better than Ps2 little vram azz 😂

Guess I'll buy a 6800XT when my 5700 XT no longer works. But for now. It has never failed me to play a game at high 1080p

Forgot about 980ti?

Now nvidia is trying to convince customers not to worry about the lack of vram because they can make up for it using AI! SO INNOVATIVE RIGHT GUYS?????

Hardware unboxed I much rather you gave us the ideal lower native resolution that the 4GB cards needs to run as, in order to get that particular game to be playable. Would we need to step down to 630, 720, 768p, 810, or 900p yada... Handheld markets also take the shared vram perspective. Lowering your resolution is a doable workaround and ideally is easier to picture your value loss from 1080p or higher.

Rachet and clank is on PC!?!!!
Wtf buying it now

VRAM is critical for gaming... unless Nvidia doubles it and charges an extra $100 in which case it's not worth it and a complete waste of money.

I wonder how that same principle reflects on shared RAM on devices like Steam Deck with 16GB of RAM with only 1GB reserved for VRAM

VRAM isn't used for just gaming. 8gb isn't enough for a lot of modern productive work too, especially anything that involves AI today. I often wish I had 24gb+ instead of my 16gb for productivity alone. Same story with RAM, though that's far more easier and cheaper to upgrade on a PC.

Ya everyone was calling me crazy and dumb to buy used 3090 FE because it wasn't fast enough to utilize the 24gb VRAM, I thought everyone was crazy for buying a 4090 for a crazy MSRP or a just as ridiculous premium for a 4070TI S 16GB. Nvidia funneling everyone to the most expensive GPU's....greedy. Why buying used is the way. ON top of my 3090 aging well and still being a Nvidia not a AMD GPU, it also runs AI at phenomenal results. A no brainer. Bought my 3090 Used for a whooping 680 CAD Used. enough headroom to upgrade the CPU as well. People buying a 4080 series are crazy. Nvidia banking on zombies with whale wallets.

Me with a 2GB gtx 960 in 2024
🫠

Assuming you have the VRAM to support it, texture quality is one of the easiest ways to improve the image quality with basically no impact. I've never fully understood the argument of "lower quality GPU's can't use all that VRAM" when texture quality has almost no GPU impact. Assuming you have extra VRAM, you can crank it up for free and gives you a much better image.

I forgot about vram when i bought my new Gaming PC, I got a trash RX 6500 XT 4 GB. This shit sucked and made me mad, so I'm buying a RX 5500 XT just to stay within budget and get that 8 gb vram i need

Best I can do is 3.5 + .5 GB

Biggest take from this is that on ultra low quality you get a game that looks amazing and immersive, glad games can be available to a wider audience of people on a budget.

I found this an informative video, and the larger VRAM allocation is worth having.

I never even factored in VRAM when I bought my Windows 11 laptop. Now that I saw this video, I opened up Task Manager/Performance and saw that my GPU Memory capacity is 32.2 GB and the Dedicated GPU is 512 MB. Which type of memory storage is being referred to with regards to the 4GB vs. 8GB comparison?

I guess 8 gigabytes of vram is still enough for now but if you buy a new gpu right now it should have more to be future proof.

Is there any videos like this where they just lower the "textures" setting and then compare differences?
(It depends how the game handles it, but if you're playing at 1080p or 1440p you probably don't need the highest setting in most games anyway.)

Still baffled the laptop rtx4070 only has 8gb of vram

Got the RTX 2060 Super which has 8gb VRAM back in the day before lockdown. Didn't know how crucial it was for future proofing because games right now, 8gb is like almost below the minimum. Glad I got it then and hope I could still squeeze abit more out of it in these few years.

This is ridiculous. Everyone knows that human eye can only see upto 4GB of VRAM.

And i thought 8 gb was a lot when i upgraded to an RX6600 from an ancient ATI Radeon 5850 with 1gb gddr5

RX580 8GB still serves me well today. Couldn't have said that if I had a 4GB version. My next upgrade will definitely be a 16GB card. No compromises here.

640kb is enough for everybody!

I like ram

with this kind of card exists I always wonder why AIB partners rarely made a higher VRAM buffer cards especially for cards that really are now marked as production EOL. There's still a buttload of older/ previous gen GPUs leftover and instead of going to ewaste center, AIB partners can just repurpose those into higher VRAM buffer cards, and if this weird 8GB 6500XT and the VRAM modder is anything to go by, they should've done this when 3070 16GB mods sparked, not to mention that if I recall correctly at that time some of 30 series RTX are already production EOL. Is it just AIB partners doesn't want to spend any RnD for this or NVIDIA (which where these VRAM mods actually matter a lot and works really well) really holding them hostage to the point where not even VRAM modifications is allowed not even on older gpus?

Also I'm sorry that you have to purchase Skull and Bones :(

What about RX6500XT🤔🤔🤔

Is the RX 6500 XT 8GB VRAM swapped GPU?

Were the screen caps for the texture quality on Warhammer backwards? Just looked like the ultra one with the additional effects was on the right. Unless this is a CitySkylines 2 situation again.

There's also the modding aspect, which a lot of people seem to forget. Playing ETS2 on 1080p I can easily reach 20GB of RAM usage and around 10-11GB of VRAM usage. And that's without any graphics/skybox mods, which I'm sure would result in an even higher usage. Sure, it's an unoptimized dinosaur of a game right now, but it will get better soon with the game engine update and the eventual port to DX12. For now having plenty of RAM and VRAM does seem to alleviate some of the stuttering.

the first time I really had VRAM problems was with my GTX 770 that only had 2 gigs. After that I bought a GTX 1080 with 8GB and a friend and I hypothesized that Nvidia gives even their higher to medium cards barely enough VRAM to force customers to buy a new card earlier.

By the time the memory becomes relevant, the general graphical performance will often no longer be up to scratch anyway.
Nevertheless, as this or other tests prove, you never want to get into a situation where the memory could be the limiting factor.
That's why it's better to spend a little more money and invest in more memory, if this option is available.
For 1080p gaming these days, I wouldn't recommend a GPU with less than 12 GB of VRAM if you want it to last a few years.

Feel slightly vindicated on getting a 4070ti super for the 16 gigs of vram

I don’t know why the vram discussion is such a devisive hot button topic.

To be honest, I am just getting into all this VRAM importance thing now because I am buying a new PC.
My old PC with a GTX 1070 OC (8GB) is still able to run most games at 2k... I played Elden Ring last year with 50~60fps. I then started BG3, and that game forced me to lower graphic quality to medium/low, but is still working with 50~60fps.
Because it's getting to the point were I have to lower graphics bellow Medium, I am upgrading, but I don't know if the problem is VRAM of simple raw power.
The only time I see VRAM completly used is in very unoptimized games.

Nvidia: 3050 4GB seems like an acceptable gaming laptop configuration 😊

Wait how the hell did you get the 6500XT 8GB? I could never find one.

What about devs? Does none of the blame lie on their end? I'm not excusing the GPU companies for failing to keep up. It's absolutely true that they have no business selling 4-6GB cards at this point, much less for the prices they're asking. But some of these games shown in the benchmarks are using up 30+ GB between VRAM and system RAM. That's ludicrous. It wasn't too long ago that you could game with 4GB of RAM and 2GB of VRAM. You could run some great looking games on that kind of hardware too, as crazy as that sounds now. Now they're asking 5x (that's FIVE TIMES) as much memory (not to mention it's much faster memory) for textures that are barely any better? Seriously? Something's wrong here.

it's amazing how VRAM used to be this nonsense stat only a few years ago but nowadays every game needs at least 8GB. How stupid. 16GB VRAM is now the norm.

Vram is important so Devs can be lazy. But I also blame that on publishers for rushing the devs

Can someone explain to me like I’m five how your VR speed makes a difference, and the bus width. How not every 8GB card isn’t the same…. And how I might benefit from overclocking my vram?

Cries in RTX 2060 (6GB)

I only got 4GB :(

My RTX 3050 Laptop 4gb vram 😊

So much fps talk when there is hardly any proper quality games coming out.

My current system: 16GB memory, 12GB VRAM. My previous system: 8GB memory, 1GB VRAM. System before that: 4GB memory, 128MB VRAM. So yeah, VRAM increases have been much bigger and more than system memory for me as well. I suspect it would eventually taper out. But interesting to see where it goes.

Wtf is a "4060 Chai"?!

Excellent Video Design

Not having a go at you guys here, I love the content!! But I noticed with the Jedi Surviver benchmark the VRAM usage decreased on the 8GB card when enabling the Epic textures which seemed a little weird. But I mean otherwise, thankyou for the video! I'm currently on the market for a gaming laptop and this video has helped me a lot! Cheers.