AMD's latest blog post on gaming graphics doubles down on the importance of abundant VRAM in modern gaming, citing 12GB or more as optimal for 1440p gaming. The only slight problem is that the GPUs AMD is touting in the 1440p arena are essentially 2+ years old at this point.

In a blog post titled "The Importance of VRAM When Gaming at 1440p in 2023," AMD's Matthew Hummel says the latest Steam survey data shows that 1440p is the sweet spot for PC gaming. And AMD recommends 12GB of VRAM for 1440p games at maximum settings.

The blog post includes various benchmark examples showing that AMD's 12GB Radeon RX 6750 XT tears down Nvidia's 8GB RTX 4060 Ti in games with maximum texture detail and ray tracing enabled. nvidia s usual ray tracing advantage is reversed on RTX boards with low VRAM. This is because with ray tracing enabled, VRAM may be used beyond the available buffers.

Of course, it is important to note that simply running a game at maximum settings usually does not make sense. In general, the highest settings will not significantly improve the visual quality any more than lowering it by one notch, while reducing performance horribly.

So one could say that AMD's benchmarks are somewhat artificial. On the other hand, there is real value in simply running global maximum settings and being confident that you will never run out of VRAM.

Another problem with AMD's implicit or otherwise criticism of Nvidia is that at least Nvidia has launched its latest 1440p competitors, the RTX 4070 and RTX 4070 Ti. The cards AMD is touting as 1440p products, RX 6700 XT and RX 6750 XT, are already quite old.

We expect AMD to roll out new RX 7700 and RX 7800 boards. However, at this stage, AMD is taking its time. It is also worth noting that Nvidia is clearly marketing the 8GB RTX 4060 Ti as a 1080p card. Therefore, it is not entirely fair to criticize it for not being optimized for 1440p.

Contrary to this, the same is true of the 6700 XT, which undercuts the 4060 Ti in terms of price, and the 6750 XT, which is nearly identical. Comparing these AMD boards to the much more expensive RTX 4070 and RTX 4070 Ti would not make much sense.

Overall, the moral of the story is that AMD has a point: if Nvidia puts more VRAM on their graphics cards, they will do better. However, AMD's point would hit harder if they weren't making it on a GPU that is now very old.

This will keep running. In the meantime, let's hope AMD comes out with a new 1440p GPU soon.