“More memory is important” – AMD causes big discussions with anti-Nvidia article – WhatsNew2Day

It is always of limited significance when a manufacturer advertises its own products. So also in the case of a new one AMD blog article. Nevertheless, it is currently causing interesting discussions, for example among colleagues at the PCGHwhich we want to take a closer look at.

What is the gist of the article? AMD is primarily concerned with the question of how much video memory a GPU should have. Unsurprisingly, the answer leads to clear recommendations for your own Radeon graphics cards. According to AMD’s benchmarks, they are not only ahead of similarly expensive Nvidia graphics cards in terms of memory, but also in terms of performance in games.

A video by tech youtuber Hardware Unboxed recently went in a similar direction. You can find out more about this in our article RTX 3070 vs RX 6800: Ray tracing performance of both graphics cards surprises two years after release.

AMD is currently making the following comparisons, but beware! The performance data is based purely on AMD’s internal measurements, which unsurprisingly show their own Radeon models in a particularly good light.

The selection of games varies depending on the duel. However, more than 30 titles were always measured, in maximum details. Upscaling processes such as FSR and DLSS were not used.

Depending on the game and settings, we came to similar, but also clearly different, results in our own tests. You can find out more about this in the benchmarks from our last graphics card test for Nvidia’s Geforce RTX 4070 Ti:

How are AMD’s statements to be evaluated?

It’s no secret that Radeon graphics cards have long offered more VRAM than similarly priced Nvidia models. In our experience, the exact effects of this are more nuanced than AMD presents here.

This is also due to the fact that important factors such as the upscaling methods just mentioned are excluded and ray tracing is given rather low weight. The latter does not appear in any of the tested games in the duel between the RX 6800 XT and the RTX 3070 Ti.

Upscaling methods such as DLSS and FSR are important because games are calculated internally at a lower resolution, which can also reduce VRAM requirements. At the same time, Nvidia tends to be ahead in terms of image quality when it comes to upscaling, which is also due to the additional use of AI. This is not the case with FSR. In contrast to DLSS, FSR runs with every graphics card.

Graphics card that kills everything with VRAM and performance

The most important thing for last

A particularly crucial point is that VRAM requirements vary greatly depending on the game, resolution and graphics settings. In addition, too little video memory can not only manifest itself in lower FPS, but also in muddy and/or later loading textures, which is more difficult to measure.

These circumstances sometimes lead to clearly different results in performance comparisons. At the same time, it is often easy to significantly reduce VRAM requirements without having to accept large optical losses.

With AMD’s basic recommendation but let’s go along with it when it comes to playing current titles in maximum details. The manufacturer provides the following information for the three most important 16:9 resolutions:

• 1920×1080: from 8.0 GB recommended
• 2560×1440: from 12.0 GB recommended
• 3840×2160: from 16.0 GB recommended

We are already working on an article that takes a closer look at the topic of VRAM requirements. Until then, let us know what you think of video storage in the comments. This applies both to AMD’s current blog entry and in general. What amount of VRAM do you consider the minimum these days? And does AMD really have decisive advantages over Nvidia here? We look forward to your opinion on this!