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As reminiscence provides get tighter and tighter and graphics card costs proceed to rise, issues are getting weirder and weirder within the discrete GPU market. The newest signal of the occasions is AMD’s launch of the RX 9050 4GB, an OEM-only and region-specific variant of the already limited-release RX 9050 8GB. If 4GB GPUs are coming again, we wished to see how a lot players ought to anticipate to endure by trying to play the most recent video games on graphics playing cards with such small reminiscence swimming pools.
For reference, the final time AMD launched a brand new 4GB product was all the way in which again in 2022 with the RX 6500 XT and the RX 6400. And a minimum of for discrete GPUs, Nvidia received off the 4GB prepare years earlier, after the launch of the GTX 1650 Super again in 2019. At a minimal, most each discrete GPU since has had 6GB or 8GB of VRAM.
AMD says the present RX 9050 8GB is supposed for 1080p medium gameplay with no additional particulars about settings or upscaling, so the bar is already low for that product earlier than the 9050 4GB cuts each bus width and reminiscence bandwidth in half. Despite its cutting-edge RDNA 4 GPU structure, the 9050 4GB has a meager 64-bit reminiscence bus and a mere 144 GB/s of reminiscence bandwidth, specs that may have been low-end even 10 years in the past.
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But the RX 9050 brings help for FSR 4 to even this lowest rung of the discrete graphics ladder, and its extra superior machine-learning-powered upscaling mannequin ought to ship a large leap in picture high quality in comparison with the temporal method of FSR 3 and earlier generations. Upscaling is probably going going to be key to reaching playable efficiency in all however essentially the most light-weight video games on 4GB graphics playing cards.
So, is it completely insane for AMD to launch a 4GB graphics card in 2026? Does that tiny VRAM pool make a graphics card ineffective for gaming? We do not have an RX 9050 4GB at hand, however we do occur to have each an RX 6500 XT and a GTX 1650 Super within the TH GPU library, so we fired up a number of well-liked titles on these playing cards to see what sort of expertise players can anticipate in the event that they’re caught with simply 4GB.
To monitor GPU reminiscence utilization, we used HWiNFO64 and logged each its “GPU D3D Dedicated” and “GPU D3D Dynamic” parameters. If a GPU experiences a big dynamic reminiscence allocation, it’s a great signal of spilling out of VRAM, however that’s not a direct signal that efficiency goes to fall off a cliff. Different video games deal with this type of spillover in several methods, so it’s price realizing about however not essentially trigger for alarm.
Fortnite
We began our testing with Fortnite, which wants no introduction as probably the most well-liked PC video games on the market. While it could have a fame as a potato recreation, it might simply as simply showcase essentially the most superior options of Unreal Engine 5.
Fortnite just lately began utilizing {hardware} RT acceleration to allow UE5’s flagship Lumen results, so the RT-Core-less GTX 1650 merely cannot run the sport with the visible richness we have taken without any consideration on most each different graphics card we have examined this 12 months.
But even though those delivered frame rates might seem acceptable, input latency is not, even with Radeon Anti-Lag enabled. Nvidia’s FrameView utility estimates input latency of 63.9 ms with Lumen on, and that’s too much for a competitive shooter like this. To get input latency down, you have to disable Lumen, and since that makes for an apples-to-apples comparison anyway, that’s how we continued our testing.
| Row 0 – Cell 0 |
RX 6500 XT (Lumen On) |
RX 6500 XT |
GTX 1650 Super |
|
Dedicated |
3917 |
3852 |
3713 |
|
Dynamic |
1254 |
533 |
545 |
|
Total |
5171 |
4385 |
4258 |
Between medium settings and XeSS Quality upscaling, Fortnite ends up being perfectly playable, and reported VRAM usage on both cards hovers just over the 4GB mark.
We have to wonder whether the RX 9050 might be able to run Fortnite with Lumen enabled while delivering lower input latency thanks to its more powerful RT accelerators and more modern architecture generally.
Apex Legends
Apex Legends struggled on both the GTX 1650 and RX 6500 XT out of the gate with our usual maxed-out test settings. Dropping back to High reduced the VRAM footprint and resulted in playable frame rates.
| Row 0 – Cell 0 |
RX 6500 XT |
GTX 1650 Super |
|
Dedicated |
3465 |
3547 |
|
Dynamic |
299 |
450 |
|
Total |
3764 |
3997 |
Apex doesn’t have any kind of upscaling support, so you’re entirely dependent on its quality settings to boost performance. But we were happy to see that we didn’t have to dial them back much to achieve playability on these cards.
Cyberpunk 2077
We also called up Cyberpunk 2077 as an example of a triple-A title that gamers with entry-level PCs might want to run in 2026. We chose 1080p medium settings out of the gate for this game and immediately enabled XeSS 2.0 Balanced upscaling, as even with that dialed-back preset, VRAM usage was already well over 4GB for both cards.
| Row 0 – Cell 0 |
RX 6500 XT |
GTX 1650 Super |
|
Dedicated |
3453 |
3457 |
|
Dynamic |
2439 |
2249 |
|
Total |
5892 |
5706 |
But even with that massive indicated VRAM spillover, Cyberpunk’s performance remained perfectly playable, if not entirely smooth. The crowd density setting had the biggest effect on the immersiveness of the gameplay experience compared to our usual maxed-out test settings. With low crowd density, the sprawling streets of Night City are practically empty. Cranking it back up to High restored the bustle that makes it feel like a lived-in world without totally devastating performance.
Counter-Strike 2
Counter-Strike 2 showed the greatest divergence between cards for memory allocation, at least according to the tools we have available. The GTX 1650 reported a total of 3.5 GB of memory used, and the RX 6500 XT showed 4.6 GB.
| Row 0 – Cell 0 |
RX 6500 XT |
GTX 1650 Super |
|
Dedicated |
3936 |
3266 |
|
Dynamic |
696 |
240 |
|
Total |
4632 |
3506 |
But that apparent spillover once again doesn’t equal poor performance, as the Radeon handily beats out the 1650 Super here.
Bottom line
Across the handful of titles we tested, gaming with just 4GB of VRAM isn’t the instant performance cliff you might expect in 2026, but it also requires careful finessing of quality and upscaling settings to achieve not just playable performance, but also tolerable input latency. Once you’ve done that, though, it’s possible to have a perfectly fun time on hardware that would make most people turn up their noses at first glance.
Judging by our experience with the RX 6500 XT and GTX 1650 Super, upscaling will be key for the best experience with the RX 9050 4GB, and its support for FSR 4 will be a huge image quality improvement for low-end PCs.
The 9050 also brings much higher RT performance to the table compared to RDNA 2 and RDNA 3 products, and if games as widely played as Fortnite are finally starting to lean on RT acceleration to enable their most advanced lighting effects, that’s another useful technical upgrade for enabling the best experience, even on low-end products.
We’re sure that some modern AAA games would be truly unplayable on these 4GB cards, but that’s not the reason they exist. For low-end PCs that are built to run the most popular esports and free-to-play titles, 4GB is still fine, and for markets outside of the United States, especially, products like this are important—just not to enthusiast PC builders.
In that light, the just-released RX 9050 4GB and the higher-end 8GB version are best understood as a much-needed technical update for entry-level OEM systems, much like how we described the RTX 5050 when we reviewed that card last year. If you have the luxury of spending more on a graphics card, you certainly should, but for those renting time in internet cafes and esports centers outside of the USA, low-cost products like the 9050 are an important bridge to the wider world of PC gaming.
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