As memory supplies get tighter and tighter and graphics card prices continue to rise, things are getting weirder and weirder in the discrete GPU market. The latest sign of the times is AMD's launch of the RX 9050 4GB, an OEM-only and region-specific variant of the already limited-release RX 9050 8GB. If 4GB GPUs are coming back, we wanted to see how much gamers should expect to suffer by attempting to play the latest games on graphics cards with such small memory pools.
For reference, the last time AMD launched a new 4GB product was all the way back in 2022 with the RX 6500 XT and the RX 6400. And at least for discrete GPUs, Nvidia got off the 4GB train years earlier, after the launch of the GTX 1650 Super back in 2019. At a minimum, most every discrete GPU since has had 6GB or 8GB of VRAM.
