Progress in the field of graphics cards is moving forward at an incredible pace. New technologies are constantly emerging, increasing efficiency and overall performance. But there is one element that has stagnated in recent years. We are talking about VRAM, i.e. video memory, which is an integral part of every graphics card. Important data is stored in it, in games, a larger VRAM enables, for example, better textures, shadows and other quality settings, it is key above all for a higher resolution.
Of course, progress in the field of card performance is also associated with progress on the side of the games themselves, which move forward in all respects – graphics are improved, ray tracing and other conveniences are implemented. However, such things do not only take power, but VRAM. While until recently its capacity was not addressed much, in the latest AAA titles it is starting to show that it can be practically crucial in the future.
Forspoken was one of the first games this year to show its VRAM demands. True, it’s not a well-optimized or good-looking title, but it’s far from over. Just a few days later, the remake of Dead Space was released, and in February, Hogwarts Legacy, where this problem started to be talked about the loudest. It turned out that popular cards such as RTX 3070 with 8 GB or RTX 3080 with 10 GB VRAM find their limit and in higher resolutions with ray tracing on (which is quite demanding on the video memory) they can even be less powerful than the otherwise significantly weaker RTX 3060 , which however has 12 GB of VRAM. Detailed test prepared the Hardware Unboxed channel, which tested the game on 53 graphics cards. In Hogwarts, which is probably the most demanding location in the entire game, it turned out that with ray tracing turned on, the 10GB RTX 3080 is not even enough for Full HD.
Moving slowly to the present, the recently released Resident Evil 4 remake is another example of a video memory intensive title. This time I can confirm it from my own experience. I played RE4 on an RTX 3070, I resorted to a custom resolution of 3200 x 1800 with RT turned off and 2GB textures to fit into the VRAM capacity. Even so, I encountered about three times during play that the game wanted more VRAM than the card offered, and the data had to be stored in system memory, causing the framerate to drop massively. Fortunately, it was resolved fairly quickly and was an exceptional situation.
RE4 has been broken down in quite some detail by YouTuber Daniel Owen. IN the first video it mainly shows a situation where the game crashes completely due to lack of VRAM, which should not happen. But as described in the second videothis is a specific problem in this game with ray tracing, when you turn it off the game won’t crash, although of course you can still experience significant slowdown and 1% FPS degradation when exceeding the VRAM limit.
So far, the latest example of players complaining about VRAM requirements is the very current PC port of The Last of Us Part I, which again tested the Hardware Unboxed channel. With the Ultra preset, 8 GB is not enough even in Full HD resolution. The average framerate is not bad, but you will witness very unpleasant stuttering, and therefore also a low value of 1% FPS. Owners of such graphics must proceed to reduce the preset to High (or play with the settings in more detail) in order to achieve the desired smoothness.
So, as you can see, video memory is becoming more and more of an issue, and it shows especially in modern titles. In addition, let’s not forget that we are still waiting for games created on Unreal Engine 5, which will use all new technologies. And it is quite likely that the demands will gradually increase.
It is somewhat paradoxical that Nvidia strongly emphasizes ray tracing in its marketing, but it can take a large amount of VRAM. At the same time, it is Nvidia that tends to be relatively stingy with regard to video memory. For an overview, I have prepared graphs with individual tiers of graphics cards and VRAM capacity across generations for the last almost 10 years. While in the higher performance levels the VRAM capacity grew at a relatively rocket pace, this is no longer the case for the lower and significantly more popular models. Sometimes we can even see a regression, as it should be for example now with the RTX 4060, which according to leaks is supposed to have only 8 GB. And the fact that the prices of individual models have gone up significantly over the years (especially in the latest generation) is not included in the graph.
So if the trend of video memory intensive games continues, as it probably will, I’m very curious to see if that will affect Nvidia card sales. Although AMD is behind in some technologies, it is significantly better in VRAM capacity. For example, the current Radeon RX 7900 XTX offers 24 GB compared to 16 GB for the RTX 4080, the RX 7900 XT offers 20 GB compared to the RTX 4070 Ti with 12 GB. However, it also applied to the last generation, probably the best example being relatively priced cards in the form of RX 6800 with 16 GB and RTX 3070 with 8 GB of VRAM.
What do you think about the whole situation? After your recent experiences when buying a graphics card, will you be more interested in the video memory capacity?
