Discussion Is 8GB of VRAM Enough For the Future? (VRAM Consumption Discussion Thread)

[TechyInAZ]

Hi Community, with VRAM consumption going up considerably in 2020 with games like COD Warzone and especially DOOM Eternal, are we at a point now where 8GB of VRAM might be the minimum requirement for games of 2021?

After doing research on the matter, seems evidence is pointing more towards this idea being true.

All Nvidia Ampere (rumored to be RTX 4000 series) GPUs in the top tier range are going to have 16-20GB of vram.

And on top of it all, Ray tracing seems to drive up vram consumption by a gigabyte or two just to run this technology in some titles.

What are your thoughts? I'd love to hear what you all think!!

 

[popatim]

How far into the future are you asking about?
otherwise I agree with your assessment.

 

[MasterMadBones]

Consoles tend to decide the minimum hardware requirements for games for a while, and it looks the XBOX Series X will have up to about 10GB of usable VRAM, while the PS5 has 14 or so. However, games have to split the full 14GB (on both consoles) made available to them between CPU and GPU data, so in reality we'd be looking at 6-8 GB of VRAM usage. Some games might use more though, but I don't really expect that in the near future.

As long as Nvidia and AMD keep producing entry-level to mid-range gaming GPUs with 8GB or less VRAM, game developers will have to keep that in mind. I expect 4GB cards to disappear pretty soon, but 8GB will probably stick around for a little longer.