AMD is expected to release its RX 6700 and 6700 XT this year, hoping to gain traction in the mid-range section of the graphics card market by competing with Nvidia’s RTX 3060 and 3060 Ti – currently the best graphics card options on a budget. So far, AMD’s RDNA 2 architecture has only targeted the higher-end GPU market with its 6800 and 6900 graphics cards.
When it came to Nvidia’s 3060 and 3060 Ti, the cheaper non-Ti variant curiously boasts 12GB of VRAM, more than the 8GB found on the 3060 Ti. Many thought this was in anticipation of AMD’s future cards continuing to come out with significantly more VRAM, but that doesn’t appear to be the case.
There’s the possibility that the RX 6700 will have 6GB of GDDR6, half of what you’ll find in the 6700 XT’s 12GB, according to an EEC listing of a number of PowerColor cards discovered by PC Gamer. If this listing turns out to be correct, 6GB will be the lowest we’ve seen on any RDNA 2 or Ampere graphics card so far. We question whether 6GB of VRAM is sufficient for gaming in 2021 and into the future, especially with 1440p rapidly becoming the mainstay resolution for the best gaming monitor.
This doesn’t fully confirm that the RX 6700 will have just 6GB of VRAM, however. The 6700 and 6700 XT won’t be arriving for a few months yet, and we’ve had radio silence from AMD on their progress in recent weeks. EEC listings haven’t always been accurate in the past, either.
There were listings for the rumoured 3080 Ti featuring 20GB of VRAM, whereas now there’s rumours that Nvidia may be launching the 3080 Ti with just 12GB instead, so have a pinch of salt at the ready.
It seems weird that the RX 6700 would have less VRAM than last generation’s equivalent RX 5700 with 8GB, only matching VRAM on the even lower-end RX 5700 XT, so we’ll have to wait for further news from AMD before we can really understand what the VRAM situation on the 6700 series is.