New games are pushing even powerful last-gen GPUs to their limits and exposing a big problem with graphicscards: VRAM limits.
We’re off to a rocky start with PC releases in 2023. Hogwarts Legacy, Resident Evil 4 Remake, Forspoken, and most recently and notably The Last of Us Part One have all launched in dire states, with crashes, hitches, and lower performance despite a minor increase in visual quality. And a big reason why is that the graphics cards of the last few years aren’t equipped to handle the demands of games today.
Related Your graphics card is the same way. The GPU handles the actual processing, while the VRAM holds the data necessary for that processing. This most notably comes up in texture resolution, as higher resolutions are much larger in size compared to lower ones. But other data flows in and out of VRAM, too: shadow maps, geometry, and critically, shaders.
Resident Evil 4 Remake can hog up to 8GB of VRAM simply on textures, though you have the option to go much lower. The Last of Us Part One can consume nearly 7GB at its lowest graphics preset and upwards of 14GB at its highest. And Hogwarts Legacy sucked up nearly 13GB of VRAM with ray tracing on, and close to 8GB with it off.
I’m calling this the RTX 3070 Ti problem, but it’s not exclusive to the RTX 3070 Ti. It just serves as good touchstone for a wide swath of GPUs that are stuck at or under 8GB of VRAM, despite sporting excellent GPU power otherwise. Even the 10GB RTX 3080 isn’t immune, especially with the highest graphics settings at 4K.
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