Whereas Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4070 hasn’t launched but, there have been lots of leaks about it, together with the chance that it’s going to boast 12GB of GDDR6X VRAM. However with a number of the latest video games chewing by means of reminiscence (particularly at 4K), AMD is taking the chance forward of the 4070’s launch to poke at Nvidia and spotlight the extra beneficiant quantities of VRAM it presents.
In a weblog submit titled “Are YOU an Fanatic?” (caps theirs), AMD product advertising and marketing supervisor Matthew Hummel highlights the intense quantities of VRAM used at high specs at 4K for video games just like the Resident Evil 4 remake, the current (horrible (opens in new tab)) port of The Final of Us Half I, and Hogwarts Legacy. The brief model is that AMD says that to play every of those video games at 1080p, it recommends its 6600-series with with 8GB of RAM; at 1440p, its 6700-series with 12GB of RAM; and at 4K, the 16GB 6800/69xx-series. (That leaves out its RTX 7900 XT with 20GB of VRAM and 7900 XTX with 24GB).
The not-so-subtle subtext? You want greater than 12GB of RAM to actually recreation at 4K, particularly with raytracing. Maybe even much less refined? The variety of occasions AMD mentions that it presents GPUs with 16GB of VRAM beginning at $499 (three, in the event you weren’t counting).
In an try to hammer its level house, AMD equipped a few of its personal benchmark comparisons versus Nvidia chips, pitting its RX 6800 XT towards Nvidia’s RTX 3070 Ti, the RX 6950 XT with the RTX 3080, the 7900 XT versus the RTX 4070 Ti, and the RX 7900 XTX taking up the RTX 4080. Every had 32 “choose video games” at 4K decision. Unsurprisingly for AMD-published benchmarks, the Radeon GPUs received a majority of the time. You may see these within the gallery under:
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Like all benchmark heavy piece of promoting, there are a ton of testing notes right here. We have reproduced these within the gallery under. Some fascinating notes embody differing CPUs, motherboards (together with some with whole board energy adjusted), modifications in RAM speeds, and extra relying on the declare. The vast majority of the gaming exams use the identical specs, however different claims differ and a few use older take a look at knowledge. The video games will not be the identical throughout every GPU showdown, and it additionally does not seem that these exams used FSR or DLSS, for many who are fascinated with these applied sciences.
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We cannot know for certain how Nvidia’s RTX 4070 performs towards any of those GPUs till evaluations go dwell, however AMD is ensuring you already know it is extra beneficiant with VRAM (although it does not appear to distinguish between the GDDR6 it is utilizing towards Nvidia’s GDDR6X).
It is also price mentioning that the choices for VRAM capacities are straight tied with the scale of the reminiscence bus, or variety of channels desire. Very like AMD’s Navi 22 that maxes out with a 192-bit 6-channel interface (see RX 6700 XT and RX 6750 XT), Nvidia’s AD104 (RTX 4070 Ti and the upcoming RTX 4070) helps as much as a 192-bit bus. With 2GB chips, meaning Nvidia can solely do as much as 12GB — doubling that to 24GB can be potential, with reminiscence in “clamshell” mode on each side of the PCB, however that is an costly method that is usually solely utilized in halo merchandise (i.e. RTX 3090) {and professional} GPUs (RTX 6000 Ada Era).
There’s additionally much more occurring than simply reminiscence capability, like cache sizes and different architectural options. AMD’s earlier technology RX 6000-series provided 16GB on the highest 4 SKUs (RX 6950 XT, RX 6900 XT, RX 6800 XT, and RX 6800), true, however these aren’t newest technology GPUs, and Nvidia’s competing RTX 30-series choices nonetheless usually managed to maintain tempo in rasterization video games whereas providing superior ray tracing {hardware} and enhancements like DLSS — whereas additionally boosts AI efficiency in issues like Secure Diffusion.
In the end, reminiscence capability might be necessary, but it surely’s just one side of contemporary graphics playing cards. For our up-to-date ideas on GPUs, take a look at our GPU hierarchy and our checklist of the most effective graphics playing cards for gaming.