Wednesday, April 12th 2023
AMD Plays the VRAM Card Against NVIDIA
In a blog post, AMD has pulled the VRAM card against NVIDIA, telling potential graphics card buyers that they should consider AMD over NVIDIA, because current and future games will require more VRAM, especially at higher resolution. There's no secret that there has been something of a consensus from at least some of the PC gaming crowd that NVIDIA is being too stingy when it comes to VRAM on its graphics cards and AMD is clearly trying to cash in on that sentiment with its latest blog post. AMD is showing the VRAM usage in games such as Resident Evil 4—with and without ray tracing at that—The Last of US Part I and Hogwarts Legacy, all games that use over 11 GB of VRAM or more.
AMD does have a point here, but as the company has as yet to launch anything below the Radeon RX 7900 XT in the 7000-series, AMD is mostly comparing its 6000-series of cards with NVIDIA's 3000-series of cards, most of which are getting hard to purchase and potentially less interesting for those looking to upgrade their system. That said, AMD also compares its two 7000-series cards to the NVIDIA RTX 4070 Ti and the RTX 4080, claiming up to a 27 percent lead over NVIDIA in performance. Based on TPU's own tests of some of these games, albeit most likely using different test scenarios, the figures provided by AMD don't seem to reflect real world performance. It's also surprising to see AMD claims its RX 7900 XTX beats NVIDIA's RTX 4080 in ray tracing performance in Resident Evil 4 by 23 percent, where our own tests shows NVIDIA in front by a small margin. Make what you want of this, but one thing is fairly certain and that is that future games will require more VRAM, but most likely the need for a powerful GPU isn't going to go away.
Source:
AMD
AMD does have a point here, but as the company has as yet to launch anything below the Radeon RX 7900 XT in the 7000-series, AMD is mostly comparing its 6000-series of cards with NVIDIA's 3000-series of cards, most of which are getting hard to purchase and potentially less interesting for those looking to upgrade their system. That said, AMD also compares its two 7000-series cards to the NVIDIA RTX 4070 Ti and the RTX 4080, claiming up to a 27 percent lead over NVIDIA in performance. Based on TPU's own tests of some of these games, albeit most likely using different test scenarios, the figures provided by AMD don't seem to reflect real world performance. It's also surprising to see AMD claims its RX 7900 XTX beats NVIDIA's RTX 4080 in ray tracing performance in Resident Evil 4 by 23 percent, where our own tests shows NVIDIA in front by a small margin. Make what you want of this, but one thing is fairly certain and that is that future games will require more VRAM, but most likely the need for a powerful GPU isn't going to go away.
218 Comments on AMD Plays the VRAM Card Against NVIDIA
PC gaming on a healthy budget was always about timing your choices right and not upgrading for every fart. If you buy solid GPUs, the ones with asking price above the cost of a console, they last. Gaming doesn't move quite so fast either, that's why its so staggering to see Nvidia's latest run into this kind of trouble so fast. It is deliberate, it is obvious, and its going to hurt its buyers.
We've predicted the death of PC gaming so many times I've lost count - its still going and I think even with the turmoil of late it'll survive just fine. Ups and downs, sure.
Games play at max settings and a lot of times I'm even making use of the 120hz refresh rate on my OLED...at max settings. This thing's not meant for Nvidia specific-sponsored patches, but those are largely "Look at this shiny thing & don't worry about VRAM fluff pieces". Also, Idgaf about mine craft, quake or cyberjunk... I just drop on my Atmos headphones and hit these mother truckers HARD. The fluidity, freedom and piece of mind I have with 24GB VRAM is certainly nice too. Anyway, I just Love it and can't recommend it enough. I am Stoked for Starfield, Stalker 2, Avatar, Lord of The Rings, Lies of P, Forza, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor SOON and all the UE5 games!! 2023 is just an Epic Year in Gaming and this a GREAT GPU for it and the FUTURE!! I LOVE IT....Hahahahaha ;D
Unless some console gives me full access to local files and can run games from every console dating back decades, I'll stick with my flexible PC. Any reasonably powerful PC will be more expensive then a sold-for-a-loss console. Always have been.
Consoles are not running 4k ultra native rez 60+ FPS.
And I don't think PC gaming is going to die, but I think its going to become more of a niche as Nvidia is nearly a monopoly and their prices keep going up with no actual price to performance options.The whole point of spending more to play on PC used to be getting higher resolution and better textures, but now turning things down to console level is supposed to be fine?
Which is not bad at all in terms of what the games end up looking like.
Yes, PC has much - MUCH - higher ceiling in what you can achieve but it gets expensive and fast.
Can't buy an A6000 commercially either.
Besides, as much as I agree with AMD's statement, I don't like this "look how bad the other side is" kind of underdog marketing.
Kinda like a been there done that thingI think its fantastic, fun, and super risky too. AMD did this many times and boy did it backfire on them a lot. Like I said... Popcorn time!
But, its also crystal clear this is a straw they have to grasp at, there aren't that many others... :) So I get what you're saying. This is a sign of weakness just the same as it is a thing...
I take you support AEK or Panathinaikos?
Also, hats off to your 2004 European title :rockout:
One aspect people don't talk about, is pricing. Nvidia is constantly accused of artificially inflating GPU prices. If that were true, that would give AMD a huge opportunity to slash $100-200 off of everything and get market share back in no time. But they don't do that.
The 3070 is a 1080p card when RT is active and only a 'decent option at 1440p with no RT.