8 gigs of VRAM apparently isn’t enough for a high end gaming experience in future!
At least, that’s what channels like Hardware Unboxed have been showing in their videos.
But the problem is, to get a current gen gaming laptop with 12 gigs of VRAM,
you’re looking at Nvidia RTX 4080 graphics, which start from $2000 USD - not cheap!
Well, what if I told you that this gaming laptop has 12 gigs of VRAM,
but costs almost half that price?
And what if I told you how you could save money on your next gaming laptop,
with this message from our sponsor?
Newegg’s biggest summer sale is running right now!
Their laptop finder tool helps you to easily find a laptop based
on your custom requirements. Just put in your budget and go!
Right now they’ve got RTX 4050 gaming laptops starting from
$699 and RTX 4060 options from $899, the lowest I’ve ever seen these GPUs!
Whether you’re after a new laptop, or the latest PC hardware, Newegg’s FantasTech
sale has got you covered, check it out with the sponsored link below.
This is the ASUS ROG Strix G15 advantage edition,
and it has AMD’s Radeon RX 6800M graphics with 12 gigs of VRAM.
I originally reviewed this laptop a little over two years ago now, but all this time later,
it still frequently goes on sale for $1100 - which is almost half the price of an RTX 4080
gaming laptop and it has the same amount of VRAM. Even the higher tier RX 6850M
XT has gone on sale for just $1200. It just seems like with AMD you get more VRAM for your dollar.
But how well does the 6800M actually perform in modern games? And is it still worth buying?
We’ve tested it in 24 games at 4K, 1440p and 1080p resolutions
and compared it against a number of other modern laptops to find out.
I want to start out with Far Cry 6, as it uses a lot of VRAM with HD textures
enabled. That’s why the RTX 3050 laptop with only 4 gigs of VRAM is providing unplayable
frame rates. At 1080p, the RTX 3070 Ti, which can be bought for a similar price,
was reaching 17% higher FPS, while the newer RTX 4070 was 38% faster.
At 1440p the 3070 Ti was now 13% faster than the 6800M, while the 4070 was 17% faster. The
gaps aren’t as big as what we saw at 1080p as higher resolutions prefer more VRAM,
but they are also newer GPUs, so we expect them to perform better.
But then at 4K, 8 gigs of VRAM just doesn’t cut it anymore, and the 6800M was now 118% faster
than the newer and more expensive RTX 4070. To be fair, 44 FPS isn’t amazing with the 6800M,
but we could of course use FSR to boost the frame rate. The point is, the 4070 which was
better at 1080p and 1440p starts to fall apart once it runs out of VRAM. At least in this game.
Although this demonstrates the point that more VRAM is better, I don’t really consider the 6800M
or RTX 4070 laptop GPUs to be 4K gaming options. Even if the 6800M has more VRAM,
if it doesn’t have enough GPU horsepower then it’s not going to give you good FPS in games
at 4K anyway. Let’s check some more games, because different games behave differently.
Red Dead Redemption 2 is a game that tends to favor AMD’s Radeon graphics over Nvidia’s GeForce,
which is why the RTX 4070 was just 3% faster at 1080p. 1440p is much the same, the RTX 4070 and
RTX 3070 Ti were giving the same result as the 6800M. And then the 6800M ends up slightly ahead
of the 4070 at 4K. It’s not much, but it’s still a win from an older and cheaper GPU.
The Witcher 3 was tested with ray tracing enabled, as I figured that’d help fill up the VRAM, but at
1080p the 6800M was performing terribly. Even the cheaper and older RTX 3060 was a little better,
indicating an Nvidia advantage in RT performance at this resolution,
despite the 6800M having double its VRAM capacity. At 1440p there’s basically no difference between a
number of the GPUs, and that only gets worse at 4K. It doesn’t seem that VRAM is a limit here.
The 6800M wasn’t much ahead of the older and cheaper RTX 3060
in Cyberpunk 2077 at 1080p either. Even the 8 gig RTX 4060 was slightly better,
and that costs about the same as the 6800M, while the more powerful and more expensive
4070 was reaching a 45% higher average FPS. The gap lowers at 1440p as more VRAM is required,
with the 4070 now 16% faster than the 6800M. There wasn’t much difference at 4K, the FPS from both
isn’t really playable at ultra settings, but again features like FSR could be used to improve that.
Forza Horizon 5 can fill up the VRAM buffer with its highest extreme preset,
and at 1080p the RTX 4070 was 11% faster. Note that the 4070 was ahead of the 3080
Ti. The 4070 had an even larger 17% lead over the 6800M at 1440p. Although the
4070 was still ahead of the 6800M at 4K, the margin is smaller at just 5%,
or like 2 FPS. The 3080 Ti was further ahead in average FPS with its 16 gigs of VRAM, but for
some reason 1% lows suffered with the specific laptop I was testing with, Lenovo’s Legion 7i.
Watch Dogs Legion also needs a fair bit of VRAM at ultra settings. The 4070 was 7% ahead of the
6800M at both 1080p and 1440p resolutions, but then at 4K they’re basically both the
same. It appears the 6800M’s extra VRAM has helped to close the gap with the 4070,
though it’s worth noting that this game has DLSS support and not FSR,
so we could improve the experience on the 4070, but not the 6800M.
Alright instead of going through more individual games, let’s check out the average differences.
This graph shows the average FPS from all 24 games that were tested on these GPUs. The 8 gig RTX 4060
was slightly ahead of the RX 6800M at 1080p, and that can often be found for about the same price
with the right sale. The 8 gig 4060 was still a little ahead at the higher 1440p resolution
as well, where games should start requiring more VRAM, so it would seem that in the majority of
games I’ve tested, 8 gigs of VRAM is enough at max settings. At 4K the 8 gig 4070 was ahead of
the 6800M. We saw in some specific games that the 6800M was able to beat the 4070 due to the
VRAM capacity difference, but that wasn’t the case on average in a wider selection of games.
So is the RX 6800M still a capable laptop GPU? Yeah,
definitely, especially at 1080p and 1440p resolutions. From my testing, in most cases,
it wasn’t obviously taking full advantage of all its VRAM until we get to 4K though.
By that point in most games, the frame rates weren’t really good enough to play smoothly
anyway. But that’s more due to the GPU not being powerful enough than it not having enough VRAM.
Laptop GPUs just aren’t as powerful compared to their desktop counterparts. So look, I agree with
Hardware Unboxed, 8 gigs of VRAM is not enough for high end gaming. But that’s the thing,
in most cases, most laptops aren’t capable of what I’d classify as high end gaming anyway,
which is 4K at higher setting levels. And with laptops that’s just not because of a lack of VRAM.
Unless we’re talking about 4080 or 4090 laptops, which are actually powerful enough
for 4K gaming with high settings, but those also have more VRAM too.
There are also downsides with the 6800M. As it’s an AMD Radeon GPU, you can’t use DLSS,
as that only works with Nvidia RTX GPUs. You can however still use FSR,
which is quite good, and available in a lot of games these days.
Tim from Hardware Unboxed has shown that DLSS is superior compared to FSR,
but FSR is still a good way to boost FPS in a lot of games.
Unlike a newer RTX 40 series laptop, this also means that you won’t get frame
generation support with the 6800M. Though to be fair, it’s still early
days and that feature isn’t available in a whole lot of games just yet. But that said,
in support games I have personally found it to be more beneficial to use it than not use it,
as it just makes the gameplay smoother. I think it’s a nice feature to have.
If you’re looking to buy today, honestly for similar money to the 6800M, you could get the
RTX 4060, which generally performed a bit better at 1080p and 1440p resolutions on average. Yeah,
it has 8 gigs of VRAM, which may be more of a problem in future games than it is today,
but like I’ve said, I think there’s more to the story than just VRAM. You
still need the GPU itself to have enough power to run modern games.
Doubling the budget to get an RTX 4080 laptop with 12 gigs of VRAM is not going to be an
option for most people that are looking to spend $1100. But at the same time,
I wouldn’t buy a 2 year old GPU just to have 12 gigs of VRAM, but that’s me.
Not to mention that any newer RTX 4060 laptop is also going to be paired with a newer CPU,
and also most modern gaming laptops these days have newer features like a MUX switch
and advanced optimus. Which is something that this laptop does not have. So even with this
laptop and its 6800M, you’re kind of leaving performance on the table unless you connect
a monitor to the Type-C port on the back, as that connects directly to the 6800M.
If your goal is 1080p or 1440p gaming and you really want the safety of the extra VRAM, but at
the expense of less GPU performance, no DLSS and no frame generation, then yeah consider the 6800M.
If you need more details on VRAM, then check out this video next, where I discuss VRAM with
Steve from Hardware Unboxed and how much is enough, so I’ll see you in that one next!