It’s an open secret that AMD and Nvidia both plan to introduce new GPUs with just 8GB of VRAM this year. Of course, that would have been enough if it had been 2019. But in 2025, with games becoming more and more demanding, 8 GB is not only not ideal, but even insufficient in some scenarios, as PCGH discovered during of his tests.
Spotted by VideoCardz, PC Games Hardware’s test configuration included the AMD Radeon RX 7600 and RX 7600 XT GPUs (currently $315 at Amazon). The reason for this choice is clear: both cards use the Navi 33 processor, with practically the same specifications. The only notable difference between the two cards is in terms of VRAM: the 7600 and 7600 XT have 8 and 16 GB of GDDR6 memory respectively, with a higher TDP of 25 watts for the 7600 XT.
8GB vs 16GB VRAM: The results are crystal clear
As PCGH’s testing reveals, in most modern games the performance gap between the two nearly identical cards is undeniably huge, almost entirely because the Radeon RX 7600 XT has twice as much VRAM. In some titles like Stalker 2 (sans ray tracing) et Indiana Jones : Great Circle (ray tracing), the Radeon RX 7600 F1 24, Forza Horizon 5 et Enshroudedthe performance gap wasn’t as big, but undoubtedly substantial enough to make the RX 7600 8GB a deal-breaker for a large portion of gamers who want to enjoy modern titles.
-Of course, there were plenty of titles without ray tracing where the performance gap was perfectly acceptable, like W40K, Assasin’s Creed : Mirage, Ghost of Tsushima, Cities : Skylines 2etc. Additionally, the performance gap between the two GPUs was much larger when ray tracing came into the picture, making the Radeon RX 7600 XT almost four times faster than the RX 7600 in some games. Simply put, the conclusion of PCGH’s dive is quite simple: those who want to enjoy modern titles, especially with ray tracing and/or at high resolutions, are strongly advised not to use GPUs with 8 GB of VRAM.
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