Does The Final of Us ship your gaming PC right into a zombie-like shuffle? Do the superior Unreal choices in Fortnite make you seek for the closest lovingly-rendered bush to cover in? Do you watch movies of the brand new Overdrive Mode in Cyberpunk on YouTube at 4K/60, as a result of you understand really making an attempt to run it in your {hardware} can be a violation of your property’s hearth insurance coverage coverage? If that’s the case, then AMD would really like a phrase: It thinks the answer is a brand new graphics card, with much more video reminiscence than the competitors.
In a put up cheekily titled “are YOU an enthusiast?”, AMD factors out that the newest PC video games often require 8GB of VRAM to satisfy the really useful specs for 1080p gaming, and 12GB of 16GB to run at 1440p or 4K, respectively. And wouldn’t you understand it, AMD’s Radeon graphics playing cards are likely to beat Nvidia’s GeForce playing cards on the identical worth, not less than once you slender the scope of comparability to onboard VRAM alone.
A handful of comparisons present the benefits in Radeon playing cards at roughly the identical worth stage: The $580 Radeon RX 6800 XT has 16GB of RAM versus the $640 GeForce RTX 3070 Ti’s 8GB, the $1000 Radeon RX 7900 XTX has 24GB of RAM versus the $1200 GeForce RTX 4080’s 16GB, and so forth. A number of benchmarks in common video games reveals a beneficiant tilt in the direction of AMD {hardware}.
AMD
AMD’s promotional put up comes out on the day that Nvidia’s RTX 4070 formally launches. Whereas the put up doesn’t provide any direct comparisons, Nvidia’s new $600, 12GB card is positioned to compete performance-wise with both the RX 6800 or the RX 6800 XT, each of which provide the identical 12GB of video reminiscence. Nevertheless, these playing cards are 2.5 years previous — AMD doesn’t have a 7000-series card going for anyplace close to that worth stage, not less than formally. We’ll have to attend for AMD to spherical out its latest choices for a extra direct comparability.
And talking of direct comparisons, it’s telling that AMD is making an enchantment to avid gamers’ sense of worth…however hasn’t talked about the darkish horse on this race. Intel’s Arc sequence of discrete GPUs remains to be recent, in its very first technology, and leaving rather a lot to be desired when it comes to software program extras. However what it’s completely nailing is worth, providing the 8GB Arc A770 for high-end 1080p video games at about the identical worth as a brand new RX 6650 XT or RTX 3060. Glass homes, AMD.
We lately dug deep into whether or not 8GB of VRAM is sufficient in 2023 on PCWorld’s Full Nerd podcast. Seize a beverage and take a look at the dialogue beneath!
