16GB vs. 8GB VRAM: Radeon RX 6800 vs. GeForce RTX 3070, 2023 Revisit

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16GB vs. 8GB VRAM: Radeon RX 6800 vs. GeForce RTX 3070, 2023 Revisit

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Outro music by David Vonk/DaJaVo

[DrearierSpider]

The first mainstream GPU with 8GB of VRAM was the R9 390 in 2015, which cost $330. By 2020, we should've only been seeing 8GB on the most entry level cards.

[kougar]

The 1070 had the same 8GB of VRAM as the 3070, and that was seven years ago...

[philosophyetc]

RIP in peace to anyone who paid $1400 for a GPU with 8GB of vram two years ago

[selohcin]

Excellent work, Steve. I had no idea new games were using this much VRAM. I'll be sure to get something with no less than 16GB of VRAM next time I buy a GPU.

[extragooey]

nVidia's planned obsolescence has worked... I'm gonna buy a new GPU to replace my 3070. Grats nVidia, you've driven me into getting an AMD RX 7900 XTX.

[instantstupor]

Would have also been interesting to see the RTX 3060 12GB vs a higher end RTX 8GB card. See if there were cases the former played better than its more expensive counterpart.

[claytonmurray]

The "I told you so angle" - is completely justified and I loved every second of it. However, the content is also extremely important because a lot of RTX 3070ti's, 3070's and 3060ti's are still being sold new, and are going to be exchanged on the second hand market. People need to know the value of these cards and the performance they can expect. Well done Steve!

[ThreaT]

I really appreciate the fact that on this channel you guys make the pressure you are putting on companies through your views and influence extremely clear to understand and remedy, with extremely specific target points so that they can't weasel out of criticism with a few extra gigabytes of VRAM. Quite frankly you guys are using your power in this market to the highest efficiency you possibly can without getting anti consumer pushback.

[amineabdz]

Retesting the 6700XT would be a great idea, considering that it offers 12gb of VRAM, and how it's already very close to the 3070 compute power but for cheaper, would be interesting to see how it fairs against the 3070 in the current VRAM limitaions meta.

[whiteglovepc]

What about the planned obsolescence angle in terms of NVIDIA purposefully limiting the VRAM in order to encourage consumers to upgrade sooner? Seems a clear strategy at this point.

[PotatMasterRace]

It would be very nice to see a 12Gb model like a 6700XT in the comparison as well. Or even an older 11Gb card like a 1080Ti. It would be hilarious if frametimes were more stable on the 1080 Ti than on a 3070 :D

[TheTardis]

My ancient RX580 has as much VRAM as that 3070. Now 8GB is just enough for 1080p gaming. Glad to see the Radeon card doing so well.

[itmegibby]

Would have been interesting to see how the 2080ti with its 11gb vram compared to the 3070.

[bierrollerful]

I must admit, I didn't think 8GB would be an issue this soon. Up until recently I thought that, all things considered, the 3060 Ti was *_the_* card of this GPU generation.

In the end, I bought a 6700 XT. Less so because of the additional VRAM, but mainly because it was cheaper - and now I'm really glad I did.

[corriban]

An RTX 4060 with 8gb of VRAM will be pretty much dead on arrival. I can't believe Nvidias social media team is unable to clearly communicate this to the higher ups.

[stefensmith]

Well well well, the anti-amd man himself has no choice but to speak well about AMD. Even in ray tracing the 6800 slaps the 3070 back to the beach the silicone was made from.😂

[Magmafire]

You know what would be an interesting follow up, including benchmark results from the 16gb Intel A770 in the titles the 3070 struggled. Just for fun, you could even include data from the Radeon VII for those same titles. That additional data would really drive your point home for owners of 8gb cards.

[falcone]

I'm glad I went with an RX 6700 XT. I remember people telling that rx 6700 xt was no match for rtx 3070 and the amd card actually performed a little bit worse initially but now it is a completely different story thanks to a bigger VRAM buffer and AMD's FineWine technology :)

[GewelReal]

I can't believe in the mental gymnastics that people go through to justify them buying Nvidia when they don't absolutely require it

[stianh.]

My choice a year ago stood between the RX 6800 and GeForce 3070. I'm happy to say I made the right choice.