With Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, a new action game has launched on PC. Many testers praise the fantastic graphics. However, that comes at a price, which may annoy many players.
With Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, Ubisoft’s new shooter in the Avatar universe has launched. The reviews are predominantly positive so far, with a lot of praise especially for the world and the fantastic graphics.
However, the great visuals come with a cost, as some testers report. This particularly affects owners with graphics cards that offer relatively little video memory.
8 GB of video memory is no longer sufficient, 12 GB of VRAM is already tight
What does video memory actually do? Video memory (short VRAM) stores a lot of data.
- Many games store textures in compressed form in video memory to quickly access them again.
- Certain graphical effects, such as shadows or reflections, also reside in the VRAM.
- Many games are calculated in geometric data (triangles). The more complex the scene, the more memory is needed.
Basically, this means: The more demanding the games become, the more memory the games also demand. And in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, this is now very noticeable.
What about Avatar? The colleagues from ComputerBase explain in their detailed test of Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora that the game requires a lot of video memory. With 8 GB of video memory, you will have to significantly reduce details; you cannot afford ultra settings and advanced ray tracing with this. With 12 GB, the game runs quite well, but not without issues:
8 GB is already not recommended for maximum graphic details in Full HD including upsampling; at least 10 GB should be sufficient. For WQHD, the editorial team [ComputerBase] recommends 12 GB, and for Ultra HD, 16 GB.
The specifications are not a guarantee that they will be sufficient for longer gaming sessions. After a few changes [in the graphics settings], the GeForce RTX 4080 only managed a single-digit frame rate up to crashing – the 16 GB memory overflowed because it never deleted all unnecessary data during the switch.
via ComputerBase.de
Even 16 GB can still be tight at times; only with 20 GB of video memory are you on the safe side. And currently, only high-end models from AMD and Nvidia offer this much video memory, such as the RTX 4090 (16 GB) and the RX 7900 XTX (24 GB).
What is the problem? Many graphics cards typically have between 8 and 12 GB of video memory. 8 GB are still considered a recommendation for GPUs by many experts.
Especially Nvidia has been quite stingy with video memory for years: For example, the release of the RTX 3080 was criticized for only being equipped with 10 GB of VRAM. Many therefore hoped for an upgrade of the RTX 3080 with more video memory. You get a bit less performance on average with AMD than with Nvidia, but generally more video memory.
And this VRAM discussion is also being held again with the latest generation: The RTX 4070 at least comes with 12 GB of GDDR6X RAM, while Nvidia did release a version with 16 GB for the RTX 4070 after harsh criticism, but charges a high price for the upgrade.
Especially in the budget range, graphics cards are often equipped with very little video memory.
Half of all players on Steam have only graphics cards with 8 GB or less VRAM
How many players are affected? Taking the current survey data from Steam from November 2023 (via steampowered.com), one can see that the majority of players have 8 GB or less memory installed:
- 31.23% of all players have 8 GB of video memory installed
- Next are 6 GB with 16.33% of all players.
- 12 GB follows in third place with 14.31%.
- In fourth place are 4 GB VRAM with 10.81% of all players.
Simply put: More than 50% of all players participating in the surveys are somewhere between 4 and 8 GB. And things could get very tight when a memory-hungry game like Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora demands a lot of video memory.
Whether Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora will be fun on a beginner’s graphics card is another question: After all, the system requirements already set a high standard with an AMD Radeon RX 5700 or Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070. This has led to a discussion among players about whether PC gaming will remain affordable in the long run.
What happens next? In the long term, this is likely to lead to a rethink among manufacturers and players about whether the current recommendation of 8 GB of video memory is still sufficient for most titles.
Especially with the Xbox Series S, one can clearly see why 8 GB of video memory is becoming increasingly scarce:
The Xbox Series S illustrates why you should consider the purchase of cheap graphics cards carefully
