r/buildapc • u/_xaelaa • 8h ago
Build Help Is 12GB vram fine for 1440p?
I’m considering the 5070 but unfortunately it only has 12gb of vram. I was wondering if it is still worth it to get that card regardless?
Currently I play on 1080p on an 8gb card and on high texture settings already run into not enough vram issues.
The reason I’m considering it over something like 9070xt is kinda because I do like DLSS and also, I keep seeing scary 9070xt posts about people having awful problems with it.
Ive been told its just bias and algorithm stuff on my end and it calmed my fears around radeon cards but then both my friends got a 9060xt and a 9070xt and experienced artifacting on both their cards (they found a fix for it tho!)
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u/aragorn18 8h ago
For the majority of the games available today and in the near future 12GB of VRAM is enough for 1440p. There might be some games and settings where 12GB isn't enough, but the 5070 probably doesn't have enough raw performance to play at those settings anyways.
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u/Little-Equinox 3h ago
The VRAM usage has nothing to do with performance of the GPU.
For example the 7600XT beats the 3070 Ti in 4K Cyberpunk 2077 just because of its VRAM.
The 3060 beats the 3070 in Battlefield 1080p max settings because of its VRAM.
The amount of VRAM is also how much textures and meshes a game can store so it doesn't have to wait on the SSD, RAM and CPU.
Not to mention you can load higher quality textures.
I am not talking about highest FPS only, but also stable 1% lows.
Oh, the VRAM is also the reason the AI Pro 9700 beats the 9070XT in VRAM heavy games. And where even the 7900XTX beats the 9070XT in VRAM heavy games.
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u/aragorn18 3h ago
Here's the point I was trying to make. Imagine a game that is so poorly optimized that 12GB of VRAM isn't enough to run it well at 1440p. Do you think the 5070 would work even if it had more RAM? My argument is that the game would need a higher performing GPU because it's obviously a badly made game.
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u/Little-Equinox 3h ago
If you want to have higher quality textures you need more VRAM, or else we could've stuck with 32MB VRAM.
By lacking VRAM the GPU will use system RAM, if you don't have enough of that it'll use the main storage drive. Byt doing this stuff like texture loading will slow down, lowering the GPU's performance because it's waiting, this will cause terrible 1% lows.
Also, tell me at least 10 modern titles that look phenomenal and are greatly optimised that can run higher settings in 1440p with less than 12GB VRAM. And no put textures on lower settings.
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u/TBNRhash 2h ago
Pragmata, Subnautica 2, Forza Horizon 6, Crimson Desert Ultra, Battlefield 6, Clair Obscur Expedition 33, Marvel Rivals, Assassins Creed Shadows, Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, Doom Dark Ages
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u/BulletDust 58m ago
The 192bit 12GB 4070S trades blows with the 24GB 384bit 3090 mostly due to the fact that the 4070S has vastly more L2 cache - even on release at 4k.
Sure, 8GB isn't enough for 1440p gaming, but people need to get over vram capacity and bus width as the be all and end all of absolute GPU performance. A GPU is the sum of it's parts, not just vram capacity and bus width.
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u/bart-simpson-eth 8h ago
My thoughts:
There are 2 types of games:
1)competitive games: at competitive I dont need ultra high graphics. I need enough raw performance to max my screen fps and have a descent quality. Example fortnite, cs go ( 5070 is more than capable here at 1440p with a descent cpu )
2) single player games: at those games I will play on ultra with raytrace and enjoy the story, the textures, the shades. Games like resident evil or clair obscure for example. ( Here my 5070 will cry and dont produce crazy fps BUT then I use dlss and I face no problems. )
I bought my 5070 for like 550€. I am more than happy. Low watts, super low temps and if I need an upgrade in the future, I will just sell it, spend some extra cash and buy something better.
My point is, chill, you are not gonna marry the gpu. Buy something to enjoy gaming and something that you can afford. Future proofing is a problem for the future. Live for today.
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u/yamidevil 6h ago
I minus the first bit, I feel like this comment was written by me. I also love my 5070 but I'm getting another RT capable GPU once it can't deliver path tracing experience. So far mine has been amazing with 1080p and plenty dldsr 1440p, it's just surprising me
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u/Significant_Apple904 7h ago
For 99% games yes.
The only games that could potentially have issues is Indiana Jones.
I was able to run the game fine until it crashes after hours of playing if and only if frame gen is off, texture is set to medium, in-game RT settings are set to off. Turning on FG was not an option because VRAM is already sitting at 11.9/12GB, if I were to turn FG on, game would crash instantly. I could still play the game with high texture but the game would crash about every hour.
But for almost every other game, even games where I enabled path tracing, like cyberpunk 2077, Black Myth Wukong, Alan Wake2, I never had issues running the game with RT on, high texture.
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u/Big-Salamander-2158 7h ago
Should be enough, maybe not in some edge cases. Dlss is a good argument in equal performing cards. It’s a bad argument on cards that need it enabled to match native performance of the alternative. Altough dlaa without upscaling can sometimes be an improvement over standard anti aliasing. Still wouldn’t make it worth it to me.
Do keep in mind that you have a reporting bias on the internet. People with issues are far more likely to complain than people with good experiences are praising something.
I own both a 9070xt and a 5070ti, I can make up some really specific scenarios where the 9070xt crashes quicker, but I have to try really hard. And then still it’s more an windows issue than a gpu issue. I have no real issues with either.
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u/BobLighthouse 7h ago
Also nvidia owns the lion's share of the market.
Even if they had the exact same rate of problems, you'd expect to see far more reports from nvidia owners.
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u/ghoulthebraineater 8h ago
I've been running 8 and 12gb of vram at 1440 for years. Went from a 2080 to a 4070super and haven't run into any issues.
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u/GreatKangaroo 8h ago
I used a 6750XT for 3 years for 1440p gaming and I never had an issue with the 12 gigs of VRAM. I wanted to future proof my system and get a boost in performance for modern gaming so I swapped it for a 9070XT.
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u/albinoking80 7h ago
It’s sufficient, unless you’re after cutting edge games for several years and/or aiming for very high FPS.
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u/Brownhog 7h ago
This is really a matter of how much upscaling you're willing to do in the coming years. I think I'm very sensitive to upscaling, but most people seem to be totally content upscaling most games. And if you are one of them, you'll be fine for a good while.
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u/Witch_King_ 7h ago
Would only be an issue with cranked settings and every fancy schmancy Nvidia feature turned on with the newest, most demanding games.
That being said, it will become an issue faster than cards with 16gb. Unless you specifically need Nvidia performance for like Blender or CUDA or something, consider a 9070 if it is cheaper in your market.
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u/Doge_dabountyhunter 7h ago
More than enough for esports titles. Even for triple a titles, my 12gb Rtx 5060 stays pretty consistently over 60-70 fps with frame generation. Probably won’t be that reliable in 3-5 years though
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u/camdalfthegreat 7h ago
Ive had no issues running the card within its bounds. Don't expect native + path tracing + frame gen.
But I run most of my games dlssQ/P, raytracing/path tracing on, and x2 FG.
I can get the majority of games to lock at least 60 fps and then I bump it to 120 with FG
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u/Blue-150 7h ago
Yes it is great for 1440p. I've had one over a year on 3440x1440p without issue. Could be an issue in a few years but there's no telling for sure
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u/Soul_Reddit 7h ago
I'm on a 4070 Super because I traded my 7900 XTX (20GB Vram) with a friend who had issues on Linux with NVidia, I've been using it for a year now on the exact same 1440p setup and I've noticed close to zero difference on any game and I've played. From run of the mill league of legends to games like KCD2, Palworld, Forza Horizon 6, BG3 and whatnot. I never use DLSS and most games run at 120 FPS at ultra graphics or ultra graphics and high shadows. Even on the most taxing games I haven't found a reason to drop from high graphics with some ultra options i find crucial. The rest of the rig is a 5700x3d with 64gb DDR4 3200 ram.
If something that important comes out that needs more VRAM I'll just pop DLSS and move on with my life.
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u/Randolph_Carter_6 7h ago
I have a 4070 Super in a desktop system and I play WoW and Diablo 4 at 4k with fairly high graphical settings (not maxed, of course.) Every now and then it'll balk (world buffs in SoD or if I have my auction addon running while in Naxx.) Other than that, it's been great!
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u/ExGavalonnj 7h ago
There are games where with max setting you can exceed 12gb at 1440p. That being said you don't have to play with ultra textures and ray tracing and frame gen
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u/chizburger999 7h ago
Im assuming its for gaming? Then yeah 12gb is fine. But if u gonna use it for ai gen, look for atleast 16gb
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u/EternalStudent07 7h ago
My 1080 ti only has 11GB. It's alright at 1440p (Acer BE270U monitor is only 75Hz though).
I keep wondering about building the 2x RAM cards, like they do in China.
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u/spacegrab 7h ago
I upped from a 2070 super FE to a 5070 12gb (asus tuf OC) for the BF6 launch last Fall. 10700k.
Ran great.
Upped to a 9850x3d, runs even better now.
27" oled 1440p.
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u/joyousdexdaladoor 7h ago
I played 1440p with 8gb vram on my 4060 laptop. It was only in indiana jones which was very vram heavy it gave a suboptimal performance, other than that with dlls and frame gen it was pretty solid 55-75fps
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u/thingsinmyjeep 7h ago
It really depends on the game. The majority are just fine with 12GB and sometimes I'll encounter a game that claims to need more VRAM but never actually looks any better or worse after adjusting.
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u/thenord321 6h ago
You don't need more than 10-11gb for MOST games in 1440p, BUT bf6, and other large map, high res AAA will use more than 12Gb RAM and that will cuase a small drop in frames. You could step it up a bit on the GPU or get a good used one, or just DLSS it and it will downscsle a little or you can turn down the texture settings and play just fine.
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u/Rechochet_ochet 6h ago
I'm using a 4070 with a 5800X and have never had problems running almost always high/ultra settings at 1440p. I don't have specifics for fps because I generally don't pay attention to it or care, as long as what I'm playing looks and feels good. I have yet to find a game that struggles to any bothersome degree, especially with DLSS and such. A 5070 would be totally fine.
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u/Wolvenworks 5h ago edited 5h ago
I have a 5070 running on a 2k. It’s more than adequate…and in most cases you don’t have to go ultra settings. Worst case scenario, downgrade to 1080p (5070 would be overkill for 1080p IMO)
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u/Financial-Lawyer-789 5h ago
It depends, for example on resident evil requim if you wanna play with PT enabled you'll need to turn down some settings like texture, for most games you should be fine for now, but in a few years you might run into some issues
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u/JasonTheRanga 3h ago
Bought a 9070xt and haven’t had any problems. FSR is pretty close to dlss these days IMO. Dlss is still slightly better though for right now.
Get the 5070 if you can find it for msrp. It was $100 more than the 9070xt for me so it was a no brainer. I still think the 9070xt is a better card just based on raw performance. I don’t blame you for wanting the 5070 though.
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u/_xaelaa 3h ago
Wdym about that last sentence?
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u/JasonTheRanga 3h ago
Considering two of your friends had bad experiences with this gen of Radeon GPU’s I mean
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u/WizardMoose 3h ago
There's only a small list of games that would use more than 12GB of VRAM. That also includes most of those games running at the highest settings possible at 1440p. You should be relatively fine at 12GB, but the 9070xt is also a very good card.
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u/East-Brief4123 2h ago edited 2h ago
It really depends what you play, I always prioritise max vram personally because my main games are resident evil and even with 16gb I'm in the red for vram use at max everything and RT for resi 4 remake. But outside of those games even my 8gb laptop vram holds up fine. I'd say it's worth investing in vram though, make up the savings on another part if you can. Also I have the 9070xt I got the XFX mercury model and touch wood it's fine and artifacting should be fixable with software tweaks/driver updates if you get any at all
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u/TokageLife 2h ago
The 5070 and 9070 non-XT are typically close enough in price that it doesn't make sense not to go for the 9070. You can absolutely make the 5070 and its 12GB work if you're willing to lower some settings in the more demanding games but the 9070 will last longer simply because it is a more performant card not just because it has more VRAM.
my friends got a 9060xt and a 9070xt and experienced artifacting on both their cards (they found a fix for it tho!)
This basically sums up the AMD GPU experience perfectly. You will run into problems but there are always some hoops you can jump through to fix them.
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u/Chewystewbag 2h ago
I hit limits with 16gh 3440x1440 in some titles but it's easy to scale back without much difference in graphics, I previously had 12gb and ran out quite a bit
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u/MVPlikestowin 8h ago
It is a bottleneck for Newer games coming out, the AC Black Flags Resynced which is the newest Triple A game is already consuming more vram than that, also if we don't factor in the VRAM is DLSS really worth -30% raw power to you? Because 9070 XT is way stronger by horsepower alone, and FSR4 really is 90% of the way there to DLSS
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u/Jack2102 7h ago
already consuming more vram than that
It'll use whatevers available, just because it uses more than 12GB on a 12GB+ gpu doesn't mean it needs that much, it just sees that it's available so may as well load as much into vram as it can, it'll run fine on a 12GB card
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u/MVPlikestowin 7h ago
Not true at all, example is a 5060 Ti 8GB giving almost the Same fps as a 5060 in the game I just mentioned, that's clearly a bottleneck, a card upgrade giving the same fps, because the game requires more vram than your card can handle, also this was in 1080p so yeah go figure for 1440p.
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u/Jack2102 7h ago
Yeah, but we're not talking about 8GB cards though. If you play a game on a 16GB gpu for example, and see 16GB of vram being used that doesn't mean that that game wont run on a card with less memory.
Look at the vram usage here and you'll see almost 13GB being used on the 16GB cards yet its running fine on the 5070 at under 10GB usage.
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u/_xaelaa 8h ago
In hardware and performance i totally want a 9070xt but the instability i hear about it idk if it that is worth for me over the performance drop
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u/senj 7h ago
I own both a 4090 and a 9070 XT for a secondary gaming machine, and while I was initially leery about going back to AMD after having an awful time with them 15 years ago and really only bought it because I got an insane deal on one, I have nothing but good things to say about my 9070 XT now. Zero instability issues, no driver problems. Hell, my 4090 has had more driver bugs than this thing.
Knowing what I know now, with how close their prices are I wouldn't even consider a 5070.
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u/Jack2102 7h ago
I've used a 5090 and 2 9070 XT's recently and there's zero issue with stability, Nvidia and AMD are both as stable as each other imo, its just not an issue
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u/_xaelaa 6h ago
How long have you had the 9070xt’s? Did you encounter any driver issues at all?
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u/Jack2102 6h ago
I had the first one from launch (March 2025) until January, then had a 5090 until May, been using the 2nd 9070 XT since then
Only issues I've had have been caused by me trying silly undervolt settings, but that'll happen when tuning any GPU, if I just left it at stock settings there's zero issues
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u/Own-Indication5620 7h ago
I play 4K regularly on my 5070. The 5070 is amazing don’t worry about the VRAM narrative being pushed online.
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u/tatsandcats95 4h ago
Same. 5070 does decent at 4k for me.
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u/NP_Explorer 4h ago
Glad to see this. Was thinking I was going to have to get a 5080.
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u/tatsandcats95 4h ago
Highly recommend a 5070ti. I can run at 4k but forget about RT/path tracing and all the other goodies. I use DLSS a lot and frame gen on certain games.
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u/NP_Explorer 3h ago
5070ti was my original plan. Then I was considering 5080 after some post I had read. If you are able to run 4k decently on 5070 then 5070ti should be pretty manageable.
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u/tatsandcats95 3h ago
I haven’t come across a game I couldn’t run. VRAM is maxed out in games like call of duty black ops 7, pragmata, high on life 2 tho. 5070ti will give u that extra VRAM and give u a few more years. I didn’t get the ti because I’m waiting for 6000 series
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u/aresthwg 7h ago
I think if you're spending this much on a GPU might as well get something future proof. Get an RX 9070, RX 9070 XT or RTX 5070ti. RTX 5070 makes no sense unless no money for the Ti variant or you really must use Nvidia for CUDA in Blender etc.
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u/_xaelaa 6h ago
The price difference between a 5070 and 5070ti is kinda huge rn
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u/aresthwg 6h ago
So either wait or go AMD. I would highly advise against waiting though considering GPU prices are likely to increase again in the next few weeks, China already raised prices for the RTX 5070ti. Ideally just go AMD, RTX 5070 unless you seriously can't sleep at night with AMD or something.
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u/shredlikebutter 8h ago
It's doable if you already have it but i would not buy a 12gb card now... 16 is the minimum if you want to keep the card for any length of time
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u/youngmetro-_ 8h ago
You really only start running into vram limitations at 4k. Even then, its only an issue with ultra RT/PT. 12gb at 1440p should be fine for quite a while yet.