In parallel with Nvidia’s announcement of an RTX 4070 with 12 GB of memory “only”, AMD feels obliged to tickle its competitor where it can: the amount of onboard VRAM… And on this point, the Radeon often have the advantage.
As the first tests of the new RTX 4070 are about to be published, ahead of its launch scheduled for April 13, AMD is working without delay to praise the merits of its own graphics solutions one last time. How ? By reminding the press and consumers that when it comes to 4K gaming, the amount of onboard video memory makes a difference… and that on this point, its cards often have the advantage.
Among them, the Radeon RX 6800, launched last year. Positioned more or less opposite the RTX 4070 with a price now below 600 euros, the latter has 16 GB of GDDR6 on board, against 12 GB “only” for its competitor. A small significant memory surplus, in particular to take advantage of the best textures in game without having too much of an impact on overall performance.
Allocation and use are two different things…
On a board shared for the occasion, AMD reminds us that some of the latest PC hits are indeed very demanding on video memory — a fortiori for use in Ultra HD, with or without ray tracing. Resident Evil 4 may for example require a maximum allocation of 17.5 GB of VRAM to play in 4K with ray tracing, while 15.2 GB is still required to play it without ray tracing in the same definition.
Source: AMD via VideoCardz
A convincing example, but as pointed out VideoCardzHowever, AMD seems to overlook that there is a difference between memory allocation and actual memory usage. Recent games can also adjust the fidelity of the textures by themselves according to the available memory. That said, AMD has a point: playing the most demanding titles in 4K or 1440p does indeed require a GPU with a large amount of video memory. A field on which its graphics cards are indeed well positioned.
It is for this reason, however, that Nvidia should not launch high-end desktop GPUs equipped with less than 12 GB of VRAM. On the mid-range, the RTX 4060, already announced on laptops, should however be limited to 8 GB of VRAM only… at least in the basic version. At AMD, the Radeon RX 7700 and 7600, intended for players who also have a tighter budget, will also be limited to 8 GB of VRAM.
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