I think many would agree that in terms of gaming, graphics cards with less than 4GB of VRAM are struggling more and more to effectively handle the modern era of AAA-gaming. While it is, of course, still entirely possible to enjoy video games on the more ‘entry-level’ end of the video card spectrum, in an official blog post by AMD, they are pretty much suggesting that now might be the time in which, put simply, 4GB of VRAM simply isn’t going to be enough anymore!
AMD 4GB Graphics Cards – An Era is Ending?
In the blog post (which you can read in full here) AMD performed a number of benchmarks utilizing both its 4GB and 8GB variants of their Radeon 5500 XT GPUs. Based on the results, it seems pretty clear that the additional VRAM gives (at the very least) around a 20% performance boost in a games performance.
Not a colossal amount, but in terms of FPS, certainly enough to make a pretty substantial difference. The main key factor of the blog post, however, basically boils down to the fact that, even for their own graphics cards, AMD is acknowledging that the era of 4GB VRAM GPUs being ‘good enough for high-end gaming’ (practically regardless of the model) is likely coming to an end. In making their conclusion, AMD has said:
“AMD is leading the industry at providing gamers with high VRAM graphics solutions across the entire product offering. Competitive products at a similar entry-level price-point are offering up to a maximum of 4GB of VRAM, which is evidently not enough for today’s games. Go Beyond 4GB of Video Memory to Crank Up your settings. Play on RadeonTM RX Series GPUs with 6GB or 8GB of VRAM and enjoy gaming at Max settings.”
What Do We Think?
The main obvious question this blog post raises is if AMD is effectively announcing that they will no longer produce graphics cards at the 4GB VRAM (or lower) level. If this is the case, then in truth it wouldn’t be entirely surprising. Particularly since (pretty much the release of the RX 480) AMD has been erring more and more towards (or around) the 8GB level.
With their next GPU releases expected around September this year, it’s going to be interesting to see if AMD backs this up or whether they will still look to release models with more limited VRAM capabilities.
What do you think? – Let us know in the comments!
That’s what’s called cherry picking benchmarks. It’s definitely true that some games require more than 4GB at their highest settings, although it could be argued that users of entry level cards are pretty used to tweaking performance by lowering settings (which often have marginal image quality improvements, especially at 1080p). But what’s special about the 5500 XT is that it has only 8 PCIe lanes, half of what other cards have, so it has an extra performance penalty in the situation when not all textures can be resident in VRAM.
Also, I’m not sure what the deal is with AMD releasing a card and then basically saying “don’t buy it”. My guess would be that the either the 4GB version is selling much better than the 8GB one, or both are losing to the 4GB 1650 Super. Considering that 8GB only makes a significant difference in a handful of games, the 8GB 5500 XT really isn’t great value for money, so it makes sense.