4GB graphics cards face mounting limitations in demanding modern games, highlighting need for higher VRAM

Budget 4GB graphics cards like the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 Super and AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT struggle with memory constraints in modern titles, signalling a shift towards higher VRAM requirements for smooth gameplay.

Tom’s Hardware has taken a fresh look at what 4GB graphics cards can still manage in modern games, using the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 Super and AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT as stand-ins while AMD’s new Radeon RX 9050 4GB remains out of reach. The exercise underlines a familiar point for budget gamers: 4GB is increasingly a hard ceiling rather than a comfortable specification, especially once image quality and texture demands rise. Tom’s Hardware’s own past reviews have already shown both cards were built for 1080p play, but each can run into memory pressure in more demanding titles.

In the competitive titles tested by IXBT News, the Radeon RX 6500 XT came out ahead of the GTX 1650 Super in Fortnite, Apex Legends and Counter-Strike 2. Fortnite at Full HD, with XeSS Quality upscaling and medium settings, remained playable, although memory use edged above 4GB. Apex Legends allowed high settings without upscaling, with memory consumption sitting just below the 4GB mark. Tom’s Hardware’s earlier coverage of the RX 6500 XT noted that it can broadly match the GTX 1650 Super at 1080p on medium and high presets, even if its narrow 64-bit memory interface makes it a less flexible card at the top end of the settings scale.

The picture changed in Cyberpunk 2077, where the GTX 1650 Super had the edge. Low settings and XeSS 2.0 Balanced were needed to keep performance acceptable, and both cards still pushed past 5GB of memory use despite having only 4GB physically installed. That reinforces the broader warning from Tom’s Hardware’s reviews: once a game becomes heavily memory-bound, raw shader performance is not enough to compensate. Tom’s Hardware has also previously shown that the RX 6500 XT can suffer when constrained by PCIe 3.0, while its newer RX 9050 testing suggests the unreleased card should be faster than these older budget parts in processing terms, even if 4GB of VRAM would remain a significant limitation.