I'm upgrading from a Ryzen 5 3600X and GTX 1660 Ti. I recently installed a Ryzen 7 5800X3D, partly because I play World of Warcraft and want to avoid bottlenecking a newer graphics card. My motherboard is an ASUS ROG Strix B450-F with PCIe 3.0, and I have 32GB of DDR4-3600 memory.
I play at 1080p and 144Hz, and I'm comfortable using upscaling or frame generation when necessary. The games I'm most concerned about are Final Fantasy XVI and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, along with upcoming JRPGs. My realistic options are:
- Radeon 9070 GRE 16GB for about $570
- Radeon 9060 XT 16GB for about $520
- Radeon 9060 XT 8GB for about $400
- GeForce 5060 8GB for about $350
- GeForce 5060 Ti 8GB for about $450
The 16GB version of the 5060 Ti and the 5070 are outside my budget. How limiting is 8GB really at 1080p? Would an $450 5060 Ti 8GB still require low or medium settings in newer games, making it a poor upgrade, or would it be a reasonable choice? I'm hoping this system will last several years, similar to my previous build.
3 Answers
Since you're already spending close to $450, I'd avoid the 8GB 5060 Ti. The Radeon 9060 XT 16GB is the better value if you want to stay near budget, while the 9070 GRE gives you more performance and should age better. For the games you listed at 1080p, either 16GB option would give you more headroom and reduce the chance of needing another upgrade soon.
At 1080p, 8GB is still usable. Most games should run well at high or medium settings, although some newer titles may require lowering texture quality or avoiding heavy ray tracing. The main issue is longevity: 8GB is a hard limit, so a game can run out of VRAM even when the GPU itself still has performance available. Upscaling can help, but frame generation also uses some memory and may make the limit appear sooner.
That has been my experience too. An 8GB card can be perfectly playable, but you lose the convenience of selecting the highest preset and forgetting about it. You'll sometimes need to adjust textures or a few VRAM-heavy settings manually.
One important detail is your PCIe 3.0 motherboard. Several newer 8GB Nvidia cards use an x8 interface, so they may be more affected by PCIe 3.0 than a card with a full x16 connection, especially when VRAM is close to full. That makes the 9070 GRE more attractive in your system. If you choose an 8GB model, it should still work at 1080p, but I'd treat it as a shorter-term compromise rather than the best long-term purchase.
My board is an ROG Strix B450-F, so it is PCIe 3.0. That is another reason I'm considering the GRE instead of one of the 8GB cards.
The 5800X3D was also for World of Warcraft, since it benefits heavily from the extra cache. I'm leaning toward the 9070 GRE now, even though it's at the absolute top of my budget.