We’ve spent the last few months talking exhaustively about new graphics cards, and unfortunately, a lot of it has been negative. Nvidia’s RTX 50 series launch has been disastrous, with melting cables, black screen driver crashes, missing ROPs, and pricing and availability issues which are just ridiculous. The Trump tariffs are only making things worse, too.
But newer, more affordable cards are coming! The RTX 5060 Ti launched recently and sold out almost immediately like just about every other card this year. Even the 8GB version. And that gives me some concern, because Nvidia is going to launch its even-more affordable RTX 5060 in the coming month and it’ll come with just 8GB of VRAM. We might see a 16GB version at some point, but 8GB is likely to be the main version: and you really, really shouldn’t buy it.
Why 8GB just isn’t enough
For many graphics card generations the sheer quantity of video memory on your graphics card didn’t make a huge difference. It was one of the factors that affected overall performance, but there wasn’t much in the way of a bare minimum you needed unless you were going for high-end gaming with all the visuals turned up.
But in 2025, there are very real problems with not enough VRAM. And we’re not talking about ancient 2GB or even newer 4GB cards, either.
Nvidia recently launched the RTX 5060 Ti and it came in both 16GB and 8GB versions, with no other real differences between them besides the sheer quantity of memory. They both sport the same Blackwell GPU with 4608 CUDA cores and a boost clock speed around 2.6 GHz.
But you know what was a huge difference? The real world performance. Not in every game, mind you. Some early reviews of the 8GB version showed it running games at very comparable frames per second to the 16GB version, prompting some to throw out the concerns that the 8GB version would underperform. Such moves were premature.
In the weeks that followed the 8GB version has proved to be a far worse performer, in some case only spitting out frames per second that were a fraction of what the 16GB version could manage. No wonder Nvidia didn’t want to send out review samples of these cards.
The proof is in the (poor) performance
Overclocking.com tested a range of games and found the 8GB card to be seriously unimpressive, and even incapable in some games. In Spiderman 2 at 4K with high quality DLSS, the 8GB model only managed 13 FPS, while the 16GB version could hit 51 FPS on average. The frame times on the 8GB version were terrible, too.
At 1080p, the 16GB version managed 84 FPS, while the 8GB version fell woefully behind at just 59 FPS. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle just crashed and wouldn’t run on the 8GB version, and Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 displayed terrible texture loading issues.
Techspot’s review of the 8GB card found similar disparities between the two models, with some cases of the 16GB version performing just a few percent better, but others over 80%.
Although the difference was far less pronounced at 1080p, where you might argue the 5060 Ti 8GB is targeted, upscaling and frame generation makes it possible to play games at 1440p and even 4K with these cards. But not without adequate VRAM.
They’re all too expensive anyway
The RTX 50 series cards were pretty overpriced at MSRP, but with their inflated costs since then and ongoing tariff turbulence driving up prices, new Nvidia graphics cards (and AMDs RX 9000, to a lesser extent), are bonkers and really hard to justify.
But that just leaves gamers trying to buy whatever they can to get a new card. Which means the 8GB 5060 Ti GPUs sold out fast, with gamers none the wiser about its underwhelming capabilities. That will be even more true with the RTX 5060 if it launches with just one memory configuration. Gamers will be paying inflated prices for a card that doesn’t do what it can, because it doesn’t have enough memory. In some cases, it might not be able to play certain games at all. Nvidia isn’t making that even remotely clear.
No graphics card priced over $300 should have less than 12GB of VRAM in 2025. That goes for AMD too. If it drops an 8GB version of the 9060 XT, don’t buy that either.
Nvidia and AMD need to see stock of these cards sit on the shelves to make a point.
Spread the word.