This quick video explores my thoughts about the upcoming RTX 5090, RTX 5080 and RTX 5070 Ti – and especially those final two cards, because they ‘only’ have 16 GB of VRAM.

While that IS quite a lot, and it’s more than my current GPU has (I use the RX 6700XT which comes with 12GB of VRAM), I have been worried to see that the 16GB 4080 Super can’t play the latest games at 4K. For example, the 4080 Super can’t play Indiana Jones And The Great Circle with all settings maxed out at 4K. Heck, it can’t even handle medium path tracing with a few other settings enabled.

If you prefer text over video, please read on for the guide/transcript version of this video.

Video Transcript And Guide

Hey everyone, this is quite a quick, unplanned video today, but I wanted to get it out there because, in 2 days, the RTX 50 Series is launching—or at least the RTX 5090 and 5080. I’ve actually been overanalyzing everything quite a lot recently because I’ve been planning on buying maybe the RTX 5080. But then, I’ve been watching some videos from Daniel Owen and zWORMz Gaming (I’ll link to those down in the description), and they basically show that the 4080 Super, with its 16 gigs of VRAM, cannot actually play the latest games like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle with the full settings maxed out at 4K.

That actually concerns me quite a lot because, obviously, the 5080 also only has 16 gigs of VRAM, and it kind of feels like 16 gigs just isn’t enough anymore—which is completely crazy.

Now, I should say before we carry on that, obviously, this card (the 6700 XTX) has 12 gigs of VRAM, and actually, I can play games on it. I’m not saying that, you know, if you’ve got 10 gigs or 12 gigs of VRAM, then that isn’t enough. But certainly, we have seen the 4060, with 8 gigs of VRAM, be unable to play some games at certain resolutions. And now, we see the latest games like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle not actually be able to run with 16 gigs of VRAM, and that concerns me quite a lot.

For example, the RTX 5080 is going to—if you look at the board partner cards—probably be at least £1,200 here in the UK. And that is quite a lot of money for a graphics card that ultimately can’t play the latest games with all the settings maxed out.

You might be thinking, “Well, just dial it down slightly”… like, people aren’t going to notice if instead of supreme textures, you have high-quality settings or something. But I kind of feel like, if you’re paying over £1,000 or $1,000 for a card, you should be able to play the current games at 4K with the settings maxed out. Especially since that’s, you know, NVIDIA’s vision for actually having a path-traced future and everything else.

I do appreciate that it’s not all about VRAM, though. For example, the 7900 XTX, with its 24 gigs of VRAM, doesn’t perform as well in many games—including Indiana Jones—compared to the 4080 Super. So, I do get that. I do get that simply having VRAM doesn’t necessarily translate to extra FPS or a better gaming experience or something like that. And certainly, if I was to go for an RTX 5080, that would be a massive upgrade over my current graphics card—I do get that.

But basically, I’m filming this video to get your thoughts. Are you planning on getting a 16-gig card—maybe the 5070 Ti or the 5080? And if so, are you concerned about the fact that, you know, you can’t play the latest games at 4K with everything maxed out? Or am I just maybe overanalyzing things too much?

I would love to hear your thoughts, so please drop me a comment.

I do also get that sometimes you’ve just got to, you know, pick a card, buy it, and enjoy it—and be happy with it instead of overanalyzing everything, which I tend to do.

So again, I would love to hear your thoughts. But because I was actively looking at an RTX 5080—which releases in just 2 days here in the UK—I just wanted to get this video out there to get your thoughts.

As a backup option, though, I might go for something like a 4070 Ti Super, which also comes with 16 gigs of VRAM but is going to be almost half the price of the 5080. So that is something I could do while waiting for the inevitable 5080 Ti or 5080 Super—which probably will have more VRAM, though with NVIDIA, maybe not. Maybe it’ll only have 12 gigs of VRAM—I don’t know.

But anyway, I hope you found this video useful. I would love to hear your thoughts, so please leave them down in the [comments]. And if you enjoyed this video, please click the like button and subscribe to see more videos like this.

Thanks for watching!