A comparison between difference PCI-E generations in VRAM constrained titles:
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecvuRvR8Uls
How Much VRAM Do Gamers Need? 8GB, 12GB, 16GB or MORE?
- Thread starter DeckerSolo
- Start date
The insult to injury: all these cut down PCIe x8 cards with 8 GB of VRAM are very likely to be used for upgrading older machines or in prebuilts with crappy mobos that don't have PCIe 4 support... Even the upcoming AMD B840 chipset won't have PCIe 4, and I suspect it will be very popular among mfg-s like Dell/Alienware, HP et al.
A mate of mine recently upgraded his old PCIe 3 (AMD B450) based board with a very good AM5, PCIe 5 chipset board, stuck an R9 7900x3d in it, 32Gb of DDR5, 2x gen 5 NVME's and 2x gen 4's...then 'upgraded' his old 2070 super to a 3070ti...still with 8Gb of VRAM. He's like me...isn't really fussed about the raytracing stuff so it beggars belief that he didn't opt for at least a 12Gb RX7700xt or even a 20Gb 7900xt.
The 3070ti used to be a decent card, but stupidly crippled by 8Gb of VRAM...and why I jumped ship and replaced mine 2 years ago with the very capable Powercolor RX6950xt Red Devil. I'd still have that 16Gb 6950xt fitted in my current AM5 PCIe 5 build...believe me, there isn't many places to go for a meaningful GPU upgrade from the 6950xt unless I went back to Nvidia for the 4090 or 4080 super....but I wanted an RDNA 3 based card so opted for the very competent 24Gb Sapphire RX 7900xtx rather than pay 2 grand to jump on the Nvidia raytracing cash grab again
I'm not knocking Nvidia here...apart from their prices...I've bought and been perfectly happy with enough of their cards over the years before I even dared to try an AMD GPU. The 6950xt was my first foray into the dark side and I can't say I was in any way disappointed. But simply... If you want the undeniable best, love your 4k raytracing and aren't budget constrained, go buy a 4090.
I read a comment from someone, somewhere that made me smile..."Raytracing, meh...If Nvidia ever released a GTX 4090 for a price that wasn't stupid money, I'd buy it."
The 3070ti used to be a decent card, but stupidly crippled by 8Gb of VRAM...and why I jumped ship and replaced mine 2 years ago with the very capable Powercolor RX6950xt Red Devil. I'd still have that 16Gb 6950xt fitted in my current AM5 PCIe 5 build...believe me, there isn't many places to go for a meaningful GPU upgrade from the 6950xt unless I went back to Nvidia for the 4090 or 4080 super....but I wanted an RDNA 3 based card so opted for the very competent 24Gb Sapphire RX 7900xtx rather than pay 2 grand to jump on the Nvidia raytracing cash grab again
I'm not knocking Nvidia here...apart from their prices...I've bought and been perfectly happy with enough of their cards over the years before I even dared to try an AMD GPU. The 6950xt was my first foray into the dark side and I can't say I was in any way disappointed. But simply... If you want the undeniable best, love your 4k raytracing and aren't budget constrained, go buy a 4090.
I read a comment from someone, somewhere that made me smile..."Raytracing, meh...If Nvidia ever released a GTX 4090 for a price that wasn't stupid money, I'd buy it."
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8 GB VRAM works for now if your card also isn't crippled with cut down PCIe lanes, but it probably won't suffice in a few years when the next console generation comes out. Rumor has it that Nvidia's 5000 series won't have increased VRAM, either, which is insane. Today high refresh rate QHD monitors are the norm, even productivity monitors (like DELL U2724D which I just bought and is glorious for IPS) are moving to 120 Hz, basic 180 Hz QHD gaming monitors cost around 200 €, and a 400 € GPU should be able to push this resolution natively at 60...90 FPS and high or ultra texture resolution in modern AAA games.The 3070ti used to be a decent card, but stupidly crippled by 8Gb of VRAM...and why I jumped ship and replaced mine 2 years ago with the very capable Powercolor RX6950xt Red Devil. I'd still have that 16Gb 6950xt fitted in my current AM5 PCIe 5 build...believe me, there isn't many places to go for a meaningful GPU upgrade unless I went back to Nvidia for the 4090 or 4080 super....but I wanted an RDNA 3 based card so opted for the very competent 24Gb Sapphire RX 7900xtx rather than pay 2 grand to jump on the Nvidia raytracing cash grab again
As for raytracing, rumor has it RDNA 4 will make a leap at RT performance--we'll see how good it will be. My main hope is that with the acquisition of Silo AI AMD will start working on their own AI upscaling and AA solution to really compete with Nvidias DLSS
The RDNA 3 cards already have a lot of AI processing units, it would make perfect sense for AMD to take full advantage of it and do what they did with FreeSync to counter Nvidias proprietary Gsync and build a base for hardware-agnostic standards that are now supported by everything (VESA VRR and Adaptive-Sync).I generally use ray tracing effects, when they're available, on my RTX 4090. The performance cost is usually quite extreme, but the net effect is positive. I wouldn't personally worry about RT performance on anything slower than a 4070 Ti Super, however. Below that threshold, you can't have high resolution, high frame rates (even with frame generation), and good RT at the same time, and I'd almost always sacrifice the RT effects before sufficient internal resolution or a reasonable frame rate. An RTX 4090 (especially once I've tuned it) lets me have it all (well, except enough performance to give EDO good anti-aliasing, ha), within reason. It was pretty expensive, but it's price/performance ratio is not that bad, and it has enough performance to do things nothing else can even attempt.
Once RT is out of the picture (and if one isn't using CUDA for actual work), there isn't a ton separating AMD and NVIDIA video cards. DLSS is generally the best upscaler, but the NVIDIA cards in direct price competition with AMD cards are sufficiently slower that you can just run a higher resolution with the AMD parts. NVIDIA's video encoders are still better, but no so much so that most people would be willing to spend more for the increased compression efficiency. The NVIDIA parts that would otherwise be competitively priced tend to have castrated VRAM capacity. About the only clear advantage left for NVIDIA is power efficiency, which is a nice to have, but unless your electricity or cooling costs are extreme, probably not enough to really skew purchasing decisions.
My general recommendations, as of today, but which will be in flux due to price and availability:
Below $250 -- Get into retro gaming or get a different hobby.
Bellow $300 -- Intel Arc A770 16GB (yes, the drivers are actually getting pretty usable) OR something used/refurbished from a higher tier. Ironically enough the A770 is also better at ray tracing than pretty much any card that costs less than $450 or so, if you want a cheap taste of it.
$300 - $350 -- AMD RX 6750 XT or RX 6800.
$350 - $400 -- AMD RX 7700 XT.
$400 - $500 -- AMD RX 7800 XT, RX 6800 XT, a discount RX 6900 XT, or if you really want to get on your knees for Jensen's Huang an RTX 4060 Ti 16GB isn't that bad (but it's not exactly good).
$500 - $600 -- NVIDIA RTX 4070 (just fast enough to not be totaly useless at RT and with just enough memory to not choke in anything because of VRAM, for now). The AMD RX 7900 GRE isn't bad either.
$600 - $700 -- NVIDIA RTX 4070 Super or AMD RX 7900 XT.
$700 - $800 -- NVIDIA RTX 4070 Ti Super. The 4070 Ti is also in this segment, but the Ti Super is only fifty bucks more.
$800 - $1000 -- AMD RX 7900 XTX.
Anything more than this and you're looking at an RTX 4080 or 4080 Super (which are so close you just get whatever is cheaper), or 4090, which has nothing resembling competition.
Note that I'd also be extremely hesitant about spending more than $700 on any GPU today, because we are six months from a new high-end product cycle from NVIDIA, and not too much longer from new mid-range stuff from AMD and Intel. But if you need something now, you need something now.
Once RT is out of the picture (and if one isn't using CUDA for actual work), there isn't a ton separating AMD and NVIDIA video cards. DLSS is generally the best upscaler, but the NVIDIA cards in direct price competition with AMD cards are sufficiently slower that you can just run a higher resolution with the AMD parts. NVIDIA's video encoders are still better, but no so much so that most people would be willing to spend more for the increased compression efficiency. The NVIDIA parts that would otherwise be competitively priced tend to have castrated VRAM capacity. About the only clear advantage left for NVIDIA is power efficiency, which is a nice to have, but unless your electricity or cooling costs are extreme, probably not enough to really skew purchasing decisions.
My general recommendations, as of today, but which will be in flux due to price and availability:
Below $250 -- Get into retro gaming or get a different hobby.
Bellow $300 -- Intel Arc A770 16GB (yes, the drivers are actually getting pretty usable) OR something used/refurbished from a higher tier. Ironically enough the A770 is also better at ray tracing than pretty much any card that costs less than $450 or so, if you want a cheap taste of it.
$300 - $350 -- AMD RX 6750 XT or RX 6800.
$350 - $400 -- AMD RX 7700 XT.
$400 - $500 -- AMD RX 7800 XT, RX 6800 XT, a discount RX 6900 XT, or if you really want to get on your knees for Jensen's Huang an RTX 4060 Ti 16GB isn't that bad (but it's not exactly good).
$500 - $600 -- NVIDIA RTX 4070 (just fast enough to not be totaly useless at RT and with just enough memory to not choke in anything because of VRAM, for now). The AMD RX 7900 GRE isn't bad either.
$600 - $700 -- NVIDIA RTX 4070 Super or AMD RX 7900 XT.
$700 - $800 -- NVIDIA RTX 4070 Ti Super. The 4070 Ti is also in this segment, but the Ti Super is only fifty bucks more.
$800 - $1000 -- AMD RX 7900 XTX.
Anything more than this and you're looking at an RTX 4080 or 4080 Super (which are so close you just get whatever is cheaper), or 4090, which has nothing resembling competition.
Note that I'd also be extremely hesitant about spending more than $700 on any GPU today, because we are six months from a new high-end product cycle from NVIDIA, and not too much longer from new mid-range stuff from AMD and Intel. But if you need something now, you need something now.
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