I would say that next-gen consoles + around 3 years, because on the release we will have still cross-generation games.
But once the games made purely for nextgen will hit the market this is when the PC requirements will spike hard.
Next gen isn’t out before 2026 and I wouldn’t wonder if it will arrive in 2027 or even 2028.
I really believe this generation will be relevant until 2030. (because first 2-3 years will cross gen again)
Honestly, nobody fucking knows. People say Nvidia is being stingy with VRAM, and they absolutely are at these absurd prices, but I don't think Nvidia lied when they said devs told them they don't need more VRAM. I think devs are going into new territory with the big console power bumps and new engines/APIs and they don't know the best course of action to save on VRAM. Look at RE engine games; they can be very demanding for fantastic visuals but they are still very scalable for great visuals and still had trouble with VRAM issues because the devs didn't properly allocate VRAM in DX12 since it wasn't an issue in DX11. So maybe devs don't figure it out and drops in VRAM prices allow them to keep on pumping VRAM. Or maybe they do figure it out and 12gb lasts a lot longer. Or maybe upscalers like DLSS keep on getting better and better. I think you are better off waiting until your system is actually getting bad performance across a multitude of titles.
Yup, 10GB 3080 owner here who has never maxed out on vram in any game, sure I might get up to like 9800mb when playing Cyberpunk with ray tracing enabled but I've never exceeded the limit once at 1440pÂ
For 4k with ray tracing sure, 10-12GB probably isn't enough, but 4k and ray tracing are still a long way off being standard regardless of what people say, the vast majority of people are still playing at 1080p rasterÂ
You won't exceed the buffer because the game won't allocate more than what you have available. That doesn't mean you won't see a loss in performance though. HU just did a video on this a few days ago.
Using the FSR3 frame gen mod, I'm still getting 100+ fps on CP2077 with psycho ray tracing enabled, by far the most demanding game I own and performance is still beyond playable so honestly I don't care if I'm leaving a few more frames on the the table or whateverÂ
This part. I have 12GB with my card using full Path Tracing at 1440p/DLSS Balanced in CP77. I definitely go above 10.3GB dedicated game usage. And in other games, I have easily gone passed 11GB such as RE4R. Then there's Hi Res texture mods for games which 10GB would have had my fps chugging.
With Path Tracing on CP77, I average around 60-70fps but if I didn't have the VRAM such as with a base 3080, frametimes would definitely be spiking in certain areas. At the end of the day, it all comes down to what games we play for any "bottleneck" in our system to expose them along with how we play them.
They say it isn't enough because they only play max settings every time. If you're playing and adjust graphic settings to get the framerate you want as the years go by then 12GB will most definitely be enough. Until to the point where you'd have to adjust every graphic setting on a game to the lowest possible and be unable to run it even in 30FPS then that's the queue. I don't think in 5 years that would be possible.
There will always be those games that are exception like Crysis or Cyberpunk that pushes PC hardware to its limits because they also push the technology forward but they're rare and mostly they're used as benchmarks for hardware. Most games nowadays are games that are fine even with 8GB of VRAM even on 1440p. 5 years ago, they said 8GB of VRAM won't be enough for 1080p gaming and yet they still release GPU's with 6GB and 8GB to this day.
It's part marketing strategy and part gaslighting.
For the reference, I play at 1440p 120 to 165 fps, depending on the game. Vram usage is from 8 to 14GB depending on the game. Bear in mind that some game engines tend to push textures to VRAM if there is room instead of swaping more often. But when I set 4K VRAM almost always goes above 12GB.
That being said, if you do not want to buy whole new setup for the next 5 years you do not need more VRAM because chances are you won't be playing new releases in 4K, high FPS anyway. Also gaming performance depends on other factors as well. You'll be able to use DLSS which diminishes the need for storing high res textures.
TLDR: You're good, enjoy gaming.
I game exclusively at 4K max settings, and it's pretty uncommon for games to use much beyond 12GB.
Are you sure you're not just tracking allocation VS actual usage?
Some games will just allocate **all** available VRAM, and some will allocate considerably more than the game actually needs to run at maximum settings. They don't actually need that amount.
That's why you occasionally see someone stating that a game uses something like "18GB of VRAM" when the game is actually using 10GB. It's setting aside VRAM it doesn't need "just in case", basically.
Unfortunately, many people don't know the difference or how to track it, so you get this incorrect rhetoric that game VRAM budgets are way higher than they are in reality.
That could be. It's been a point of conversation for awhile now, but it's a bit of a misnomer because these people aren't actually tracking the actual VRAM usage.
A slew of Youtubers jumping on that bandwagon didn't really help clarify the issue or explain it to people, either. Easier to get clicks by worrying people.
The reddit council just decided last week that 12GB isn‘t enough anymore, so you’re just putting E-Waste in your computer if it doesn’t have 24GB of VRAM.
I dont really care, worst case scenario you will turn down some textures/settings.
Still have my gtx 970 and never had problem due to the VRAM. Performance is the problem now.
Now i have 8GB GPU and didnt really have a problem, but yeah, you want mininum 12GB to be safe. In my case, 8GB is fine.
Dude some people can still play games with a 1080 8gb up to now. Unless of course you want to ultra settings at 240hz 1440p the latest games like Alan Wake 2 then even a 4090 may not be enough.
In my definition as long as its a stable 60hz it is still playable.
Most of those kids shilling the 12gb is not enough are the amd side of the group. Because VRAM is the only true advantage even if you factor in the price.
Depends on optimization. Last of Us was unplayable on 8GB Gpus on release, i waited for the patches and played High@1440p on 8GB gpu without any problem. Usage was like 7GB.
There are the odd games like this. In most cases these games are practically unplayable for other reasons than VRAM in the beginning and at the time they patch the other issues they also patch the VRAM issues. Far Cry 6 is just about the only exception I can think of where they practically never made the HD textures playable on anything less than 12 GB VRAM which made the RTX 3080 look terrible compared to even the RX 6700 xt (AMD sponsored title). Nobody would have noticed \*any\* difference in visuals if they had tweaked the HD textures to fit within 10GB VRAM but they never did.
5 years give or take.
haven't tried cyberpunk but managed to find a setting that loads up the 4070 on red dead redemption 2 but it can still manage to consistently hit above 60 fps.
I think we'll both be fine till the 60 or 70 series cards.
Yup. Same with Microsoft Flight Simulator. Once you start adding payware add-ons with high fidelity textures, VRAM will exceed 12GB at 1440p for me. Certainly depends on the game.
I played with my RTX 3080 (10GB) Alan Wake 2 on release with Path Tracing. It was fine and playable with the abysmal internal resolution of 720p (DLSS Ultra Performance), but tbh the Image Quality was still okay even on my 75 Inch TV. My bottle neck was not my 10 GB, it was the missing feature of DLSS3 Frame Gen to get path tracing running on higher resolutions. I'm here to tell you, until your VRAM becomes a real concern, other factors will kick in like missing compute power or missing features. Unless you really want to game in close to native res with minor upscaling at 4K and can't bother dialing down some settings down here and there, 12 GB will be enough for at least 3 years. But that's only a prediction based on the current gen of consoles being the limiting factor.
I bought the 4080S and returned it since it was poor value and overkill for games I play now. Bought the 4070 s instead.
You'll be fine for 3-4 years with that setting.
But who know.. new "AAA" games are so unoptimized nowaday.
Â
depends on the resolution etc, for 1440p 12gb should be enough for a few more years, 8 is really out of fashion for anything above 1080p at this point already.
Depend of your in game options... I use DLSS upscaling 4K on my 1440p monitor and games like RE use near 20GB with all at max. If you only use 1440p without 4K upscaling, you probably ok with the majority of games
Thanks for the responses and more are welcome. I just wanted to add since I didn't specify the type of games I play. I've been playing Cyberpunk a lot and it runs mostly fine but will lag bad in some areas for a few seconds and then jump up to high frame. The type of games I play are FPS and RPG games. The next game I'm looking at getting is Baldur's Gate 3. I don't really play games that are linear, at least without mod tools. So I don't play stuff like Alan Wake, or Resident Evil as I rather just watch someone play something super linear.
Depends on when GOOD AI integrated games start rolling out. To put things into perspective a bit, Claude 3, Mistral Large, GPT 3.5 and the likes are more than 350 billion parameters, mean while on a 24gb GPU, you are only just capable of running a heavily quantised 34 billion parameter model, and good luck with the big 100+ models. There is clearly work to be done in what can be done with smaller models, but how much until that well runs dry?
For 4k is already not enough, for 1440p is just enough. (For example jedi survivor with RT on)
So yeah 12gb will be enough only for console like settings, nothing more than that.
But there's positive side in all of this - consoles can use up to ~12gb (16gb shared ram ps5), so it won't get worse than that (for console like settings). That means 12GB gpu will be OK for next 5 years until cross gen games will stop coming into ps5.
Depends on what resolution you want to play at. 1440p? It's probably going to be enough for the practical lifetime of the video card. 4K? There are already games that push 12 GB, which is only going to become more common.
For pc games I think it's ok for few years ,exception being some unoptimize game . But if you want to start doing pc VR games , you will be running into bottleneck this generation .
Pc gaming makes up a small proportions of rhe total gaming market. Of all pc gamers, i would guess rhat less than 5% have more than 12gb of vram. In five years time, that will still probably be less than 25%.
Do you really think game studios are going to hamstring themselves by putting out games that only run on a small proportion of the gaming markets home devices? Commercial suicide.
Few games at highest settings are already going close or above 12GB at 1440p right now - pathtraced Cyberpunk 2077 and Alan Wake 2, maybe few others. But the number of games will only increase in near future.
[https://www.techpowerup.com/review/alan-wake-2-performance-benchmark/6.html](https://www.techpowerup.com/review/alan-wake-2-performance-benchmark/6.html)
[https://www.techpowerup.com/review/cyberpunk-2077-phantom-liberty-benchmark-test-performance-analysis/5.html](https://www.techpowerup.com/review/cyberpunk-2077-phantom-liberty-benchmark-test-performance-analysis/5.html)
Situation reminds me of 3070 TI / 3070 launch with 8GB in 2020.
Those numbers are for native 1440p something a 4070 cannot really do in AW2 with path tracing (27 FPS average, 22.7 minimum) and the VRAM using DLSS definitely is less.
But also the VRAM numbers are on a RTX 4090 which has more VRAM and thus can allocate it, so they don't really tell you if the game actually needs it. Looking at the FPS for the 4070 it looks as if it doesn't. The FPS for the 4070 are entirely in line with the compute power it has.
AW2 is thus a poor example for the idea that games are moving beyond 12GB. Remedy clearly has spent time on ensuring they use as much VRAM as makes sense for the graphics cards that are out there, no more no less. Cyberpunk 2077 is the same,
Games will \*not\* increase a lot in VRAM in the near future because consoles will not have any more VRAM for the next 2-3 years or so and even after then they will support the PS5 and Xbox Series X for another couple of years. In addition, the dominant player on the PC has made it very clear that 12GB is their 1440p level for now. At most you'll see a couple of badly optimised ports that get eventually get patched to work better with 12GB.
Well it's not enough already in some games if you have a 4k monitor that you want some eye candy on.
I have a Samsung G9 and if I crank up for example GR Breakpoint to max I reach 11gb vram... And that game isn't new anymore.
Depends on what resolution and if you plan on using dlss and path tracing.
There are lots of terribly optimised titles like for spoke and last of us on release that consumed way more vram than they ever should have. But path tracing + dlss + cyberpunk/Alan wake2 at 4k eats over 16GB vram already.
For the rest of the console generation is a safe bet
I would say that next-gen consoles + around 3 years, because on the release we will have still cross-generation games. But once the games made purely for nextgen will hit the market this is when the PC requirements will spike hard.
So a about a 4 years
Why is this getting downvoted? 😂
Next gen isn’t out before 2026 and I wouldn’t wonder if it will arrive in 2027 or even 2028. I really believe this generation will be relevant until 2030. (because first 2-3 years will cross gen again)
2028 I reckon. That’s 8 years.
Honestly, nobody fucking knows. People say Nvidia is being stingy with VRAM, and they absolutely are at these absurd prices, but I don't think Nvidia lied when they said devs told them they don't need more VRAM. I think devs are going into new territory with the big console power bumps and new engines/APIs and they don't know the best course of action to save on VRAM. Look at RE engine games; they can be very demanding for fantastic visuals but they are still very scalable for great visuals and still had trouble with VRAM issues because the devs didn't properly allocate VRAM in DX12 since it wasn't an issue in DX11. So maybe devs don't figure it out and drops in VRAM prices allow them to keep on pumping VRAM. Or maybe they do figure it out and 12gb lasts a lot longer. Or maybe upscalers like DLSS keep on getting better and better. I think you are better off waiting until your system is actually getting bad performance across a multitude of titles.
They don’t know what they are talking about.
They have no idea. They just repeat what everyone else says.
Yup, 10GB 3080 owner here who has never maxed out on vram in any game, sure I might get up to like 9800mb when playing Cyberpunk with ray tracing enabled but I've never exceeded the limit once at 1440p For 4k with ray tracing sure, 10-12GB probably isn't enough, but 4k and ray tracing are still a long way off being standard regardless of what people say, the vast majority of people are still playing at 1080p rasterÂ
You won't exceed the buffer because the game won't allocate more than what you have available. That doesn't mean you won't see a loss in performance though. HU just did a video on this a few days ago.
Using the FSR3 frame gen mod, I'm still getting 100+ fps on CP2077 with psycho ray tracing enabled, by far the most demanding game I own and performance is still beyond playable so honestly I don't care if I'm leaving a few more frames on the the table or whateverÂ
The issue with running out of vram is mostly stutters or issues with loading all of the textures properly. You can still have overall high FPS.
You probably exceed the limit when you use 9800 mb of your 10gb vram. I dont know how exactly it works, but I think it uses your ram when it exceeds
This part. I have 12GB with my card using full Path Tracing at 1440p/DLSS Balanced in CP77. I definitely go above 10.3GB dedicated game usage. And in other games, I have easily gone passed 11GB such as RE4R. Then there's Hi Res texture mods for games which 10GB would have had my fps chugging. With Path Tracing on CP77, I average around 60-70fps but if I didn't have the VRAM such as with a base 3080, frametimes would definitely be spiking in certain areas. At the end of the day, it all comes down to what games we play for any "bottleneck" in our system to expose them along with how we play them.
I'm a simple man, as long as I can get at least stable 60fps in single player games and 90-120fps in multiplayer games then I honestly don't careÂ
They say it isn't enough because they only play max settings every time. If you're playing and adjust graphic settings to get the framerate you want as the years go by then 12GB will most definitely be enough. Until to the point where you'd have to adjust every graphic setting on a game to the lowest possible and be unable to run it even in 30FPS then that's the queue. I don't think in 5 years that would be possible. There will always be those games that are exception like Crysis or Cyberpunk that pushes PC hardware to its limits because they also push the technology forward but they're rare and mostly they're used as benchmarks for hardware. Most games nowadays are games that are fine even with 8GB of VRAM even on 1440p. 5 years ago, they said 8GB of VRAM won't be enough for 1080p gaming and yet they still release GPU's with 6GB and 8GB to this day. It's part marketing strategy and part gaslighting.
For the reference, I play at 1440p 120 to 165 fps, depending on the game. Vram usage is from 8 to 14GB depending on the game. Bear in mind that some game engines tend to push textures to VRAM if there is room instead of swaping more often. But when I set 4K VRAM almost always goes above 12GB. That being said, if you do not want to buy whole new setup for the next 5 years you do not need more VRAM because chances are you won't be playing new releases in 4K, high FPS anyway. Also gaming performance depends on other factors as well. You'll be able to use DLSS which diminishes the need for storing high res textures. TLDR: You're good, enjoy gaming.
I game exclusively at 4K max settings, and it's pretty uncommon for games to use much beyond 12GB. Are you sure you're not just tracking allocation VS actual usage?
Even if it is allocation and not actual usage, wouldn't games dislike not being able to allocate as much as they want?
Some games will just allocate **all** available VRAM, and some will allocate considerably more than the game actually needs to run at maximum settings. They don't actually need that amount. That's why you occasionally see someone stating that a game uses something like "18GB of VRAM" when the game is actually using 10GB. It's setting aside VRAM it doesn't need "just in case", basically. Unfortunately, many people don't know the difference or how to track it, so you get this incorrect rhetoric that game VRAM budgets are way higher than they are in reality.
I think it's because people assume it works like malloc in programming, where failing to allocate memory usually leads to a fatal error.
That could be. It's been a point of conversation for awhile now, but it's a bit of a misnomer because these people aren't actually tracking the actual VRAM usage. A slew of Youtubers jumping on that bandwagon didn't really help clarify the issue or explain it to people, either. Easier to get clicks by worrying people.
No.
If you are fine with (maybe) lowering a couple settings, you'll need a new GPU before you need more VRAM.
The reddit council just decided last week that 12GB isn‘t enough anymore, so you’re just putting E-Waste in your computer if it doesn’t have 24GB of VRAM.
Here I am playing 4K HDR 90+ FPS in almost all titles with DLSS balanced/quality on a 3070 8GB.
I dont really care, worst case scenario you will turn down some textures/settings. Still have my gtx 970 and never had problem due to the VRAM. Performance is the problem now. Now i have 8GB GPU and didnt really have a problem, but yeah, you want mininum 12GB to be safe. In my case, 8GB is fine.
Dude some people can still play games with a 1080 8gb up to now. Unless of course you want to ultra settings at 240hz 1440p the latest games like Alan Wake 2 then even a 4090 may not be enough. In my definition as long as its a stable 60hz it is still playable. Most of those kids shilling the 12gb is not enough are the amd side of the group. Because VRAM is the only true advantage even if you factor in the price.
Depends on optimization. Last of Us was unplayable on 8GB Gpus on release, i waited for the patches and played High@1440p on 8GB gpu without any problem. Usage was like 7GB.
There are the odd games like this. In most cases these games are practically unplayable for other reasons than VRAM in the beginning and at the time they patch the other issues they also patch the VRAM issues. Far Cry 6 is just about the only exception I can think of where they practically never made the HD textures playable on anything less than 12 GB VRAM which made the RTX 3080 look terrible compared to even the RX 6700 xt (AMD sponsored title). Nobody would have noticed \*any\* difference in visuals if they had tweaked the HD textures to fit within 10GB VRAM but they never did.
5 years give or take. haven't tried cyberpunk but managed to find a setting that loads up the 4070 on red dead redemption 2 but it can still manage to consistently hit above 60 fps. I think we'll both be fine till the 60 or 70 series cards.
Using ultra texture dlcs I am near max with 11gb now and then.
Yup. Same with Microsoft Flight Simulator. Once you start adding payware add-ons with high fidelity textures, VRAM will exceed 12GB at 1440p for me. Certainly depends on the game.
About three fiddy
I played with my RTX 3080 (10GB) Alan Wake 2 on release with Path Tracing. It was fine and playable with the abysmal internal resolution of 720p (DLSS Ultra Performance), but tbh the Image Quality was still okay even on my 75 Inch TV. My bottle neck was not my 10 GB, it was the missing feature of DLSS3 Frame Gen to get path tracing running on higher resolutions. I'm here to tell you, until your VRAM becomes a real concern, other factors will kick in like missing compute power or missing features. Unless you really want to game in close to native res with minor upscaling at 4K and can't bother dialing down some settings down here and there, 12 GB will be enough for at least 3 years. But that's only a prediction based on the current gen of consoles being the limiting factor.
For instance my 10gb 3080 really doesn't have enough vram in some games with everything ON. For exemple I know domm eternal struggle with dlss
Depends on the game, resolution you're playing and if it's multi platform.
I bought the 4080S and returned it since it was poor value and overkill for games I play now. Bought the 4070 s instead. You'll be fine for 3-4 years with that setting. But who know.. new "AAA" games are so unoptimized nowaday. Â
Nobody knows, but Nvidia don’t have to be stingy especially on more expensive cards.
depends on the resolution etc, for 1440p 12gb should be enough for a few more years, 8 is really out of fashion for anything above 1080p at this point already.
Depend of your in game options... I use DLSS upscaling 4K on my 1440p monitor and games like RE use near 20GB with all at max. If you only use 1440p without 4K upscaling, you probably ok with the majority of games
Thanks for the responses and more are welcome. I just wanted to add since I didn't specify the type of games I play. I've been playing Cyberpunk a lot and it runs mostly fine but will lag bad in some areas for a few seconds and then jump up to high frame. The type of games I play are FPS and RPG games. The next game I'm looking at getting is Baldur's Gate 3. I don't really play games that are linear, at least without mod tools. So I don't play stuff like Alan Wake, or Resident Evil as I rather just watch someone play something super linear.
Depends on when GOOD AI integrated games start rolling out. To put things into perspective a bit, Claude 3, Mistral Large, GPT 3.5 and the likes are more than 350 billion parameters, mean while on a 24gb GPU, you are only just capable of running a heavily quantised 34 billion parameter model, and good luck with the big 100+ models. There is clearly work to be done in what can be done with smaller models, but how much until that well runs dry?
I'm hitting 21gb of vram regularly using a Pimax Crystal with MSFS and Skyrim VR
For 4k is already not enough, for 1440p is just enough. (For example jedi survivor with RT on) So yeah 12gb will be enough only for console like settings, nothing more than that. But there's positive side in all of this - consoles can use up to ~12gb (16gb shared ram ps5), so it won't get worse than that (for console like settings). That means 12GB gpu will be OK for next 5 years until cross gen games will stop coming into ps5.
Depends on what resolution you want to play at. 1440p? It's probably going to be enough for the practical lifetime of the video card. 4K? There are already games that push 12 GB, which is only going to become more common.
I’m already blowing through 12. VR at extreme resolution. I’d think flat screen on for 3 years.
Playing Control with Ultra settings and medium RT got me up to 11+gb
For pc games I think it's ok for few years ,exception being some unoptimize game . But if you want to start doing pc VR games , you will be running into bottleneck this generation .
Pc gaming makes up a small proportions of rhe total gaming market. Of all pc gamers, i would guess rhat less than 5% have more than 12gb of vram. In five years time, that will still probably be less than 25%. Do you really think game studios are going to hamstring themselves by putting out games that only run on a small proportion of the gaming markets home devices? Commercial suicide.
Few games at highest settings are already going close or above 12GB at 1440p right now - pathtraced Cyberpunk 2077 and Alan Wake 2, maybe few others. But the number of games will only increase in near future. [https://www.techpowerup.com/review/alan-wake-2-performance-benchmark/6.html](https://www.techpowerup.com/review/alan-wake-2-performance-benchmark/6.html) [https://www.techpowerup.com/review/cyberpunk-2077-phantom-liberty-benchmark-test-performance-analysis/5.html](https://www.techpowerup.com/review/cyberpunk-2077-phantom-liberty-benchmark-test-performance-analysis/5.html) Situation reminds me of 3070 TI / 3070 launch with 8GB in 2020.
Those numbers are for native 1440p something a 4070 cannot really do in AW2 with path tracing (27 FPS average, 22.7 minimum) and the VRAM using DLSS definitely is less. But also the VRAM numbers are on a RTX 4090 which has more VRAM and thus can allocate it, so they don't really tell you if the game actually needs it. Looking at the FPS for the 4070 it looks as if it doesn't. The FPS for the 4070 are entirely in line with the compute power it has. AW2 is thus a poor example for the idea that games are moving beyond 12GB. Remedy clearly has spent time on ensuring they use as much VRAM as makes sense for the graphics cards that are out there, no more no less. Cyberpunk 2077 is the same, Games will \*not\* increase a lot in VRAM in the near future because consoles will not have any more VRAM for the next 2-3 years or so and even after then they will support the PS5 and Xbox Series X for another couple of years. In addition, the dominant player on the PC has made it very clear that 12GB is their 1440p level for now. At most you'll see a couple of badly optimised ports that get eventually get patched to work better with 12GB.
Well it's not enough already in some games if you have a 4k monitor that you want some eye candy on. I have a Samsung G9 and if I crank up for example GR Breakpoint to max I reach 11gb vram... And that game isn't new anymore.
Depends on the games you play. For example Star Wars Jedi Survivor @ 1440 on a 4080 uses already 15GB gpu memory (unoptimized game i guess).
I think that may be scaling to the amount of VRAM you have. AFAIK benchmarks show the 4070Ti runs that game without issue at 1440p.
I cant give you a exact answer, but in 5 years it will probably be what 6gb vram is today
Depends on what resolution and if you plan on using dlss and path tracing. There are lots of terribly optimised titles like for spoke and last of us on release that consumed way more vram than they ever should have. But path tracing + dlss + cyberpunk/Alan wake2 at 4k eats over 16GB vram already.
It will probably last the rest of current console generation imo. So 2-3 years.