I get why VRAM has become a hot topic and everybody and their mother are going around pointing out why an x amount of it is not enough. The GPU manufacturers could have easily offered more a long time ago (and for a relatively little cost), but didn't, probably to nickel-dime you and to make you upgrade sooner. So it's completely logical for there to now be a movement in the PC hardware building community that is trying to remedy that and push the GPU manufacturers to offer more (by the way of the VRAM amount critique).

All of that is completely fine and understandable, and even desirable.

However, things have now completely flipped the other way and it seems as if people have completely lost their ability to understand anything other than the VRAM amount. It has literally come down to people only considering the binary of "enough/not enough VRAM" and literally nothing else.

So let me tell you something: the amount of VRAM in itself is irrelevant. If you are just gonna look at the number without considering anything else, then it has literally no predictive value as to what sort of performance you can expect.

And why is that?

It's because VRAM is only valuable if the GPU can run the scene well in the first place!

Imagine an old card, like, let's say, the 1060 6GB. 6GB is definitely not enough for modern games, but, even if the 1060 had 12GB, or 24GB, would that suddenly make modern games playable? Well, no. You might get 10fps instead of 7fps, but in any case it would unplayable - simply because the chip is not powerful enough.

This is a very important relationship that I seldom see mentioned or pointed out: The more powerful the card is, the more VRAM it needs. Conversely, the less powerful the card is, the less VRAM it needs. Some people say that they wouldn't buy anything with an x amount of VRAM unless it cost an x amount of money, but it has nothing to do with money, really. It's about performance (which then, in a roundabout way, has a relationship with money).

If one were to produce a 5090 with 8GB of VRAM, it would be utterly pointless, right? Because the 5090 can run 4k Ultra with RT - that's what the card has been made to do. It can run those settings at high frame rates, so the only thing it would be limited by would be the VRAM amount.

If one were to produce a 5070, or a 5070 Ti with 8GB, it would still be catastrophically bad. Again, because those cards can easily get 60fps+ at settings that would go over 8GB of VRAM.

The 5060 Ti 8GB is a lot less powerful than the 5070, but still powerful enough to run many games and settings - games and settings that use over 8GB of VRAM - at 60fps+. And this card actually exists! Very deservingly it is lambasted as the worst 50 series card that Nvidia is making at the moment (possibly tied with the 5050).

The 5060 - which also comes with 8GB - could also use more VRAM, as it's actually not that much less powerful than the 5060 Ti, but, together with games getting more demanding on the chip, it's already less of an issue.

Finally, there is the 5050, where the 8GB of VRAM becomes mostly a non-issue. Not because it's cheap, but because any settings that would go over 8GB of VRAM would be too demanding for the card to run anyway. You can also see this very thing with the 3060 12GB - which has the VRAM, but which can only beat the 8GB 5050 in scenarios where neither card is getting even 50fps. And once you lower the settings to get to over 50fps, the required VRAM drops as well.

So, to say the same thing in different words: the VRAM only matters in situations where it's limiting playable frames. Just getting "more performance" is meaningless if it doesn't lead to playable frames. And to get playable frames you need a GPU that's powerful enough to start with.

But, long story short, what does this mean?

Well, a few things. First, old or weak cards are generally not limited by VRAM, or benefited by VRAM either. The 5050, for example, is a truly terrible card, but it has nothing to do with VRAM. It just has a bad performance/price ratio, that's it. Cards like the 3060 12GB or the B580 benefit very little from their VRAM in modern games and should not be bought just because of it.

Second, you are not necessarily "future proofing" your GPU by buying one with the higher amount of VRAM. Again, VRAM is tied to the performance. Already today, you get many games (mostly UE5 based) where you are getting under 60fps at max settings on modern cards, never mind their VRAM. Future games will need more VRAM, yes, but they will also be more demanding on the chip as well - and that demand could very well rise much faster than the VRAM requirements. So what if in a few years your GPU doesn't have enough VRAM to run at max settings? It's completely irrelevant if max settings only get you 30fps regardless of VRAM.

This relationship between performance and VRAM might change in the future, and it's possible that we might one day live in a reality where you have lowered settings to the minimum, and could be getting 100+ fps, but are still limited by VRAM even on 12/16GB cards, but that's not the reality today, and there is no indication that it's gonna become the reality any time soon.

Until then, stop looking at VRAM as if it was a static value that could be assessed as good or bad (or even better or worse) at a glance and giving your recommendations based on that.