I bought an AMD RX 9060 with 8GB of VRAM a couple of months ago for about €276. Before that, I was gaming on the Radeon 760M integrated graphics in my Ryzen 5 8600G, so I mainly wanted an affordable upgrade.
I can currently find an Intel Arc B580 with 12GB of VRAM for around €362, which is roughly €86 more than I paid for the RX 9060. I'm wondering whether the extra 4GB of VRAM makes the B580 a better, more future-proof choice, especially with memory prices increasing.
I'm a fairly casual gamer because work and my master's degree take up most of my time. I'm not interested in spending much more on a high-end card; I'd just like something that will remain useful for a while. I also couldn't find Intel graphics cards locally when I bought the RX 9060. Would switching be worthwhile, or should I keep my current card?
4 Answers
Since you’re a casual gamer, changing cards now would mean more money and hassle for a fairly uncertain future benefit. Keep using the RX 9060 until it actually becomes a problem, then upgrade to something that offers a clearly meaningful performance improvement.
At 1080p, 8GB should be fine for your current card. If you plan to move to 1440p, I’d save your money for a genuinely stronger model with 16GB rather than moving sideways to the B580 just for its memory capacity.
The B580 doesn’t seem like a good value at that price. VRAM is only one part of performance, and paying about €86 more for a slower card isn’t worthwhile here.
I’d keep the RX 9060. The B580’s main advantage is the extra VRAM, but the RX 9060 is considerably faster overall. If a game eventually needs more than 8GB, lowering texture quality is usually a better compromise than paying extra to switch to a slower card.
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