Nvidia may not budge on its VRAM choices

By Monica J. White Published December 16, 2024

According to new leaks about the RTX 50-series, Nvidia may still keep its most popular GPU starved for VRAM. Wccftech claims that the RTX 5060 will retain an 8GB memory configuration combined with a 128-bit bus. Does this mean that the RTX 5060 won’t find its footing among some of the best graphics cards? Not necessarily.

The publication cites its own sources as it reveals some of the specs for Nvidia’s more affordable GPUs, ranging from the RTX 5070 Ti to the RTX 5060. And while there are some changes, it does seem that, for the most part, Nvidia is satisfied with its approach to video memory — which games like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle are constantly putting to the test. Newer AAA games will only push for higher memory capacities, which we may not find in Nvidia’s most affordable GPU, but the rest of the stack is looking a little better. Let’s go over the specs.

Wccftech claims that the RTX 5060 Ti and non-Ti will both use the PG152 printed circuit board (PCB) with the GB206 GPU die. Both graphics cards will switch to new GDDR7 memory — in fact, this is the expectation for all RTX 50 GPUs — and this will bring them a huge boost to bandwidth regardless of their memory configurations. While both are said to sport a 128-bit memory bus, the RTX 5060 will only have 8GB of memory, and the RTX 5060 Ti will double that, with 16GB of VRAM.

We’ve already seen Nvidia do something similar in the RTX 40-series. The RTX 4060 and one of its Ti counterparts both stuck to 8GB VRAM, but one version of the RTX 4060 Ti was decked out with 16GB. Unfortunately, that card didn’t provide much of a performance uplift due to its narrow bus and the resulting low bandwidth.

Both versions of the RTX 4060 Ti were fairly unimpressive when compared to the previous generation (which had a less limited memory interface, even if it only offered 8GB of VRAM). The 5060 Ti might share the same fate, but the switch to GDDR7 memory should give it a lot more breathing room, with both cards expected to deliver 448 GB/s of bandwidth — a 55% increase over the RTX 4060 Ti.

The lack of VRAM is bad news for mainstream gamers, especially with cards like Intel’s B580 providing 12GB at a similar price point. However, things are looking better when we move on to Wccftech’s RTX 5070 Ti and RTX 5070 coverage.

That's why I'm not in a hurry to draw a conclusion, the latest data shows 285W. However, 350W is also one of the configs.

— kopite7kimi (@kopite7kimi) December 14, 2024

Wccftech now expects the RTX 5070 Ti to use the same GB203 GPU as the one we’ll find in the RTX 5080. This in itself is an upgrade, as the RTX 4070 Ti didn’t share the same GPU with the RTX 4080 until the arrival of its Super version. Moreover, Nvidia is said to be boosting the total board power (TBP) up to 350 watts, and the GPU will receive 16GB of memory across a 256-bit bus from the get-go. That’s an upgrade over its predecessor, too, as the 4070 Ti only offers 12GB VRAM. With the memory configured at 28Gbps, we can expect the 5070 Ti to reach 896GB/s in bandwidth. Meanwhile, the RTX 5070 is said to come with 12GB of GDDR7 memory and a 192-bit bus.

As always, take these rumors with some skepticism, as they’re far from facst. For example, frequent leaker kopite7kimi disagrees about the power consumption. We should know more on January 6, as that’s when Nvidia will announce its next-gen GPUs.