Prepare for the return of 4GB graphics playing cards

You thought a Sophie’s Alternative between ruinously costly or embarrassingly underpowered laptops was as dangerous because the RAM crunch would get? Nope. It appears to be like like we’re about to go backwards for graphics playing cards, too. A model new AMD Radeon card has simply been introduced and… oof. Some variants showing in pre-built PCs will begin with simply 4GB of GDDR6 reminiscence.

AMD has formally introduced the Radeon RX 9050 after a day or so of leaks and, if you happen to look on the official spec web page, it says that the Navi 44-based card (a shared platform with the 9060 and 9060 XT) has a “Max Reminiscence Measurement” of 8GB. However ASRock’s spec web page for its personal model of the cardboard is available in two flavors, 4GB and 8GB. So which one will you really be seeing?

I requested an AMD consultant to make clear the discrepancy between the 8GB spec on AMD’s web site and ASRock’s itemizing. They mentioned the 4GB variant of the cardboard is a “system-only variant, not supposed to be offered out of the pre-built system.” So that you gained’t see that 4GB card on retailer cabinets or in GPU-only on-line listings, solely in pre-built (presumably funds) gaming desktop PCs.

The RX 9050 8GB card is about at a $279 USD introductory worth, however for the preliminary launch it’s going to solely be accessible within the Latin American and APJ (Asia-Pacific and Japan) markets. Plans for releases in different markets weren’t shared.

For context, the 9060 can also be OEM-only, however the 8GB 9060 XT variant is at present going for slightly above the $400 USD mark, although you’ll find higher offers if you happen to dig slightly. That card had 8GB of VRAM, the baseline for many PC avid gamers shopping for new {hardware}… and earlier than all this “AI” reminiscence nonsense, we have been arguing about whether or not 8GB was sufficient in 2025. The RX 9050 is the primary AMD desktop card launch in virtually a full 12 months.

The brand new card makes compromises elsewhere, too. With 16 compute models, 16 RT cores, 64 texture models, and 1024 stream processors, it’s rocking roughly one quarter the facility of the top-end card… which tracks, with one quarter of the reminiscence. In keeping with reporting from the widely dependable Uniko’s {Hardware} on Twitter, the 4GB model of the cardboard has solely a 64-bit reminiscence bus as a result of it’s utilizing half the bodily reminiscence, versus the 128-bit model on the 8GB card.

That is fairly dang dangerous. We haven’t seen a 4GB desktop card from AMD because the RDNA2-based Radeon RX 6400 again in 2022. Nvidia launched the GTX 1630 (not even getting the present RTX designation) in the identical 12 months, ditto for Intel’s Arc 3 A370M. It’s arduous to see the discharge of this card, at the moment, as something however a giant step backwards even when it’s restricted to pre-built methods in the meanwhile.