News PC gamers appear to be rejecting 8GB graphics cards — now available for a discount

[Ranulf]

PC stuff containing silicon might be the focus here, but this will have huge additional impacts. Calls for reduced regulatory "burden" on approving SMR projects, all experimental by the way, with all the associated dangers, is a case in point.

Your sci-fi reference is quite accurate. The discussion is do we want a StarTrek , or a Star Wars/Expanse future, and how to prevent a terminator one. They mostly agree that the Singularity has begun.

Crazy stuff indeed and a wild ride surely awaits us all.


Edit:
This would be a truly epic topic for P&N, but I just can't see it happening there.

Yeah it is hard to avoid delving into the political/philosophical with this one and I agree that a good debate would likely not happen in P&N. I'll just say for some in silicon valley, they seem obsessed with a new silicon life overall and think AI and gobbling up all data everywhere is the way forward. Even as they destroy the tech world that got them to this point. It is like the game industry pushing higher prices while telling me that the game runs great in 360p with a ton of AI vaseline on the screen so that it looks like 1080p. It is a brave new world with no pc hardware in it anymore. But it looks fabulous in traced rays. Buy now! Leatherjacket man and his cousin demand it! You need that high perf PC to play Borderlands 4, you heahterns!

 

[SteveGrabowski]

I'm torn, in principle I don't need the 9070 XT and I have other things to buy and play with, but my hunch tells me that in 2 months from now I could sell the 6800XT for a stupid price, making the 9070 XT a very inexpensive purchase.

So freaking annoying, I had decided to ignore this crap and maybe get a 9060 XT if the old card fails... but there's no way to ignore this stupid AI craze.

F@#king AI. Was in the same situation, as I really didn't want to buy an RTX 5070, but it's a near 2x increase in performance over the 6700 XT I was running that had become a 1080p card and I got spoiled by 1440p gaming. So figured it was buy now or wait absolute bare minimum 1 year with no Supers coming in to save the 5000 series like they did the 2000 series. Really bad timing too having to buy near Christmas when I had to buy a ton of gifts so went 5070 over 9070 non XT because it was $100 cheaper for me. Figure the card just has to last until the PS6 so I'll gamble 12GB is enough without turning on a bunch of RT until then.

 

[coercitiv]

Update from HUB:

https://twitter.com/x/status/2012026846918164690

Quote from Asus:

We would like to clarify recent reports regarding the ASUS GeForce RTX™ 5070 Ti and RTX™ 5060 Ti 16 GB. Certain media may have received incomplete information from an ASUS PR representative regarding these products.The GeForce RTX 5070 Ti and GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB have not been discontinued or designated as end-of-life (EOL). ASUS has no plans to stop selling these models.

Current fluctuations in supply for both products are primarily due to memory supply constraints, which have temporarily affected production output and restocking cycles. As a result, availability may appear limited in certain markets, but this should not be interpreted as a production halt or product retirement.ASUS will continue to support the GeForce RTX 5070 Ti and RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB and is working closely with partners to stabilize supply as conditions improve.

HUB concludes with a timeline of the comms with Asus, point number 10 is almost funny.

So the current timeline is as follows:
1. We request RTX 5070 Ti samples from Asus (and other partners)
2. An Asus PR rep looks into it, comes back and says they cannot provide 5070 Tis due to supply constraints, saying their models are “end of life”
3. We ask Asus to clarify whether the RTX 5070 Ti is end of life. They confirm it’s end of life.
4. We reach out to retailers to see whether they can purchase RTX 5070 Ti stock for their stores, to fact check Asus’ claims. They say there is no supply.
5. Given we have received an on the record statement from Asus and confirmed the supply constraints with retailers, we publish a video with this information
6. Nvidia says all GeForce SKUs are being shipped
7. Asus reaches out to clarify that Nvidia told Asus that the RTX 5070 Ti is not end of life, but that Asus are “streamlining some models”
8. We publish that statement
9. Asus reaches out again to provide another statement (the third statement we’ve received from Asus), now saying the 5070 Ti is not discontinued or end of life. This directly contradicts the original statement.
10. We immediately request RTX 5070 Ti samples now that the cards are not discontinued or end of life. We haven’t heard back yet.

 

[Ranulf]

Ahh, the comedy of errors. All a misunderstanding I'm sure. A miscommunication between PR department peoples. Perhaps an AI failed to generate an appropriate response due to a shortage of vram in between DLSS and frame gen duties. It happens.


I'm begining to regret not buying a 5070 or 5070ti now too along with my 9600.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Here we are again, the dark times have fully returned.

The 3060 12GB was going to make a comeback, but it is MIA so far. You have to scrape the bottom of the barrel with the 5050 to hit the $300 or less budget. ARC despite having more VRAM has too many caveats to hold it up as the savior of budget gaming. Can't yet play Crimson Desert, a game with over 3 million copies already sold.

Owlcat better be scrambling to optimize better. System requirements are crazy high. UE5 strikes again? The Expanse: Osiris Reborn is presently targeting 12GB cards as the minimum.

Minimal System Requirements (PC):

• OS: Windows 10 64-bit
• Processor: Intel Core i5-10400F / AMD Ryzen 5 5600
• Memory: 16 GB RAM
• Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 / Radeon RX 6700XT
• DirectX: Version 12
• Storage: 30+ GB available space

Recommended System Requirements (PC):

• OS: Windows 10 64-bit
• Processor: Intel Core i5-12600K / Ryzen 5 7600X
• Memory: 16 GB RAM
• Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 / Radeon RX 7700 XT
• DirectX: Version 12

More than 8GB cost big money now.

 

[marees]

dark times are here again — atleast until the end of 2027

 

[Ranulf]

The expanse game looks interesting though no space combat apparently. It is Owlcat though, which means the initial release is buggy and will take 6-12 months to work optimally. They usually get the job done but it has been a trend with all of their rpg games like the kingmakers and rogue trader and those aren't UE5.

 

[ToTTenTranz]

Looks like Valve's engineers are developing tools to make 8GB VRAM GPUs more palatable. In time for the Steam Machine.

Fixing AMDGPU's VRAM management for low-end GPUs | pixelcluster's GPU blog

It apparently does 2 things:

1 - detects which apps are running on the background and limits the VRAM consumption on them

2 - manages and reduces the amount of game data that goes out of VRAM and into System RAM (which is what often leads to stuttering).

Valve engineer shocks Linux community with game-changing VRAM hack for 8GB GPUs — breakthrough solution turbocharges gaming by prioritizing VRAM for games while background tasks take a back seat

No more spilling into system memory.

www.tomshardware.com

 

[moinmoin]

Just note (as usual, if you use Linux you should already know the spiel)

but keep in mind they'll only work on AMD GPUs because Nvidia drivers have closed-source memory management.

 

[ToTTenTranz]

Just note (as usual, if you use Linux you should already know the spiel)

She says Intel Xe are also compatible.

amdgpu and xe both have support for the dmem cgroup controller already. In theory, Intel GPUs running the xe kernel driver should benefit as well, although I’m not sure anyone tested this yet.

 

[Panino Manino]

Looks like Valve's engineers are developing tools to make 8GB VRAM GPUs more palatable. In time for the Steam Machine.

Fixing AMDGPU's VRAM management for low-end GPUs | pixelcluster's GPU blog

It apparently does 2 things:

1 - detects which apps are running on the background and limits the VRAM consumption on them

2 - manages and reduces the amount of game data that goes out of VRAM and into System RAM (which is what often leads to stuttering).

Valve engineer shocks Linux community with game-changing VRAM hack for 8GB GPUs — breakthrough solution turbocharges gaming by prioritizing VRAM for games while background tasks take a back seat

No more spilling into system memory.

www.tomshardware.com

"Necessity is the Mother of invention."

These news about "magical" solutions to lack of RAM are hard to believe.
It's really true and as good as people are claiming?

 

[Bryo4321]

"Necessity is the Mother of invention."

These news about "magical" solutions to lack of RAM are hard to believe.
It's really true and as good as people are claiming?

The results are in the toms link. It’s not magic, but reducing spill over to 600 megs instead of 1.6 gb is pretty nice. That should be enough of an optimization to resolve some stutter in games that are borderline in 8gb. For now.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

With how boring and unattractive the market is, I thought I'd post something that might help stimulate discussion. Or not.

I don't care for side by side channels. Without voice over, full explanation of your testing methodology and why you used it. Explaining weird results: i.e. "I did not expect it, so I triple checked everything from hardware to game settings and retested 3 runs." Stuff like that; it is hard to put any stock in the results. Further compounded by some being outright fake or accidentally or intentionally manipulated.

Disclaimer issued I found this side by side of some interest for AMD users. Nvidia has better memory management in windows so the observed behavior on RDNA2 might be case specific. IF the testing is accurate and results legit, this could be yet another reason for low budget AMD gamers to switch to Linux for AAA gaming. TLDW = VRAM management is better, improving overall performance in almost every title tested with a 6650XT.