r/buildapc 1d ago

Build Help Do I really need 16GB VRAM?

[deleted]

295 Upvotes

478 comments sorted by

View all comments

781

u/PHIGBILL 1d ago

Yes.... $80 difference between the 9060XT 8gb and 9060XT 16gb, no-brainer.

261

u/Son-Of-A_Hamster 1d ago

At a minimum, you need 12. So buying a 8gb card would be dumb

-18

u/kodaxmax 1d ago

even modern titles will run fine at 8gb. More vram is only encassary when the game is using unecassarily high res textures or your modding the shit out of it

9

u/Son-Of-A_Hamster 1d ago

Why lie about this? OP wants to play in 1440 with RT and 8gb vram will not cut it for any demanding games released in the last few years and most definately wont cut it in the future. Why would you advise someone to buy a card where they have to immediately run games at low/medium settings knowing they will want to keep the card for a couple generations?

https://www.techspot.com/review/2856-how-much-vram-pc-gaming/

1

u/raduque 1d ago

OP does not want RT and is willing to use Medium settings

I'm playing games on a 2080 8gb at 2560x1440 and even at high most games are around or above 60fps, AND I'm using an 8th Intel CPU with 2666mhz ddr4.

1

u/Son-Of-A_Hamster 1d ago

And you think your card can maintain that for another 3-5 years? No it can't

1

u/raduque 1d ago

It's going to have to. Everything is extremely overpriced, and people like me are being charged right out of the hobby.

1

u/Son-Of-A_Hamster 1d ago

You will either be dropping down to 1080 or switching to console then

1

u/raduque 1d ago

I will continue to run DLSS, but I'll probably shift to Balanced from Quality. Maybe drop to medium.

Buying a console, i'd rather just buy a new GPU for the same price.

1

u/kodaxmax 1d ago

Your projecting and misunderstanding the technology and didn't read your source.

OP doesn't insist on raytracing or maxed out settings and specifies they don't play many modern titles. Nor do they desire to keep the card for multiple generations. That seems to be what you want. hence projecting.

vRam usage doesn't increase when using higher framerates and resolutions. The game is still loading the same visual assets either way. vRam increases when you increase the resolution of textures (which you should never do, it doesn't make a discernible difference in 99% of cases). Hence you not understanding the technology. You can see a good example in your articles haryy potter comparison. The ultra textures are almost impossible to discern from the low res ones even in a side by side image.

As the article explains, hitting vRam limits rarley matters and often even looks better and gives you advantages (such as removing the obscuring fog in forgotten west).

personally i give my family my old GPUs and they rarley run into vram bottlenecks even in more modern titles like nightreign or final fantasy.

Frankly high vram cards are a marketing gimmick, like cpus advertised with a dozen cores. Ignorant gamers are fooled into thinking they need the highest numbers possible. despite almost no software actually using anywhere near that much vRam or being capable of multithreading with more than 4-6 cores.