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Video Random-Access Memory (VRAM), is a vital component of your graphics card (GPU), designed to hold graphical data. Rather than transferring the information from elsewhere, the GPU can grab directly from its onboard video memory for quicker processing. When booting up a game, textures, assets, shaders, and buffers temporarily get stored in the VRAM. Now, those lush virtual environments and effects won’t slow down or negatively impact gameplay. However, you may have noticed newer games are demanding more VRAM.

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One of the factors driving up the amount of VRAM needed is higher texture resolution settings. 1440p monitors have increased in popularity, offering sharper images because of their pixel density. A 2560 x 1440p resolution contains around 3.7 million pixels, 75% more than 1920 x 1080p. Whereas 4K (3840 x 2160) displays have around 8.3 million pixels, demanding even more from the GPU. More pixels mean more detail, and this information takes up a greater amount of space in VRAM. So why can you play older games on higher resolutions, but newer releases require more VRAM?

It mostly comes down to graphical fidelity. Modern games utilize more complex rendering techniques than in the past. Character model geometry has become more elaborate, lighting — such as ray tracing — and reflections are more sophisticated in today’s games. Even newer cards can pose memory problems, which is one reason why gamers should avoid NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 5060 and consider some alternatives instead.

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One of the mistakes people make when buying graphics cards is not opting for a GPU with enough VRAM. Surprisingly, it’s still easy to find Nvidia budget gaming laptops on retail shelves that offer only 4 GB of VRAM. For context, according to TechSpot, “Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag” (more than a decade old now), uses an average of 3.3 GB of VRAM at 1080p, but bump that up to 4K resolution and it hits up to 6.6 GB.

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So 4 GB of VRAM isn’t enough for newer games, but what about 8 GB? It depends on the game, the resolution, and your graphics settings. For example, some newer titles like “Indiana Jones and the Great Circle,” necessitate a minimum VRAM of 8 GB. If your card has 8 GB of VRAM, to run the game might require a lower resolution at 1080p, with reduced graphical quality and lower frame rates. For 4K at ultra settings, you’d need a card with at least 16 GB of VRAM and possibly as much as 20 GB for the best experience.

According to YouTube channel Hardware Unboxed, other recent releases like “Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart” at 1080p with medium settings exceed 8GB of VRAM usage, whereas “Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty” and “Hogwarts Legacy” don’t, at similar settings. In general, for 1440p gaming you should consider a minimum of 12GB of VRAM and at least 16GB for 4K. 

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What if you can’t afford a new graphics card at this time, but still want to play some of the latest game releases without crippling performance issues? Fortunately, you can optimize your available VRAM by tweaking some of the graphical settings in the game’s menu. If you reduce some resource-intensive options like the resolution, or texture detail, you can get a bump in performance and reduce the strain on your video memory.

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Turn off or lower settings like ray tracing, shadows, reflections, and ambient occlusion. While these do provide some enhanced visual effects, they are a drain on VRAM and shouldn’t impact your experience too greatly. Finally, you can enable settings outside the game, like AMD’s Radeon Super Resolution (RSR), which renders using lower resolutions and then upscales them, provided you set the in-game resolution lower than your monitor’s native setting.

This mode can help improve performance without degrading the visual fidelity to a noticeable degree. To squeeze even more out of your graphics card, you should be aware of these GPU settings that are ruining your PC gaming experience.