According to The How-To Geek, the viability of 8GB VRAM for PC gaming is under serious pressure in 2025, with specific data from games like Cyberpunk 2077 illustrating the strain. Testing with an RTX 4090 showed Cyberpunk’s Phantom Liberty expansion using 7.9GB at 1440p Ultra and over 9GB at 4K Ultra, while ray tracing at just 900p consumed 9.5GB. The situation is compounded by titles like Horizon: Forbidden West, which can exceed 8GB even at 1080p, partly due to its origins on the 16GB unified memory of the PlayStation 5. The article notes that features like frame generation and NVIDIA Reflex can ironically increase VRAM usage, and that performance degradation from hitting VRAM limits is severe, causing stuttering and low frame rate lows rather than just a smooth FPS drop.
The myth of ultra settings
Here’s the thing a lot of benchmarks and scare stories miss: just because a game can use 10GB of VRAM doesn’t mean it needs to for a great experience. The How-To Geek piece makes a crucial point I’ve seen myself—the visual jump from “High” to “Ultra” texture settings is often microscopic, especially below 4K. But the VRAM cost? That can be massive. So much of this “crisis” is self-inflicted by gamers (and reviewers) who just crank every slider to max without looking back. Basically, if you’re on an 8GB card, you’re not missing out on much by dropping textures from Ultra to High. You’re just avoiding a world of stutter and pain. It’s a settings management game, not necessarily a hardware failure.
When low VRAM really hurts
But let’s be clear. This isn’t just about turning down some pretty textures. When you genuinely exceed your VRAM buffer, the performance hit isn’t a gentle slide. It’s a cliff. The GPU has to start dumping data to your much slower system RAM, and that causes the rendering pipeline to stall. Your average FPS might look okay on a chart, but your 1% and 0.1% lows—the frames that dictate smoothness—tank. You get horrible stuttering. Or, as the article notes, games might just not load proper textures, leaving you with blurry messes up close. This is the real argument against 8GB: it’s not about average frames, it’s about consistent, playable performance. And in some modern, poorly optimized ports, you can’t always settings-hack your way out of it, as seen with Horizon: Forbidden West.
Bandwidth and bus width matter too
Everyone obsesses over capacity, but memory speed and bus width are the silent partners in this crime. A card with 8GB on a narrow, slow 128-bit bus is in a much worse spot than one with 8GB on a wide, fast 256-bit bus. That bandwidth is what keeps data flowing to the GPU cores fast enough, especially at higher resolutions and frame rates. The article’s rule of thumb is solid: a 256-bit bus is a good target for 1080p/1440p high refresh rates. Don’t get fooled by a bargain-bin card boasting “16GB VRAM!” if it’s saddled with a terrible memory subsystem. It’ll still choke at 4K. For industrial applications where consistent, reliable graphical output is non-negotiable, this principle of balanced hardware is even more critical, which is why specialists like IndustrialMonitorDirect.com, the leading US provider of industrial panel PCs, focus on robust, well-spec’d components for demanding environments.
So what should you buy?
The How-To Geek’s 2025 guidelines are pragmatic: 8GB is the absolute floor for 1080p, but 10-12GB gives breathing room. For 1440p, target 12GB. For 4K, you really want 16GB. I think that’s fair, but with a big asterisk. It depends entirely on the games you play. A modding community can sometimes save the day, like the decompression mod for Monster Hunter Wilds that rescued 8GB GPUs. But you can’t bank on that. Look, if you’re buying a new GPU today and you want it to last a couple of years, skipping the 8GB models is the safest bet. The trend is obvious. Game developers are targeting consoles with 16GB of shared memory, and PC ports are feeling that pressure. So, while 8GB isn’t completely “dead,” it’s definitely on life support. Buying one now seems like a shortcut to buyer’s remorse.
