AMD Stagnation: Five Years of Mainstream Radeon GPUs Tested

[poshflamingos]

Texture quality and resolution are absolutely linked. If you have less pixels to view a texture then you see less of the texture.

Except that's not how it works, because 1 texel isn't equal to 1 pixel on the screen. I literally explained this in my previous comment already. On objects that are distant from the camera, sure, there's a point where texture resolution is lost to the screen resolution. On objects that are close to the screen, the opposite happens, even very high res textures can get close enough to the camera where texels become larger than pixels and you definitely see the loss in texture quality.

Why does everyone think they need 4k textures to have a good gaming experience.

Nobody is saying that you "need" "4K" textures. They're saying that those GPUs (4060, 5060, 7600, 9060 8 GB) are VRAM-starved relative to how fast their GPU cores are, and that makes them terrible value. Again, as I said on the previous comment, consoles like the PS5 and Series X have slower GPUs than those but more VRAM, and they make great use of that VRAM by offering higher texture quality (and thus higher visual quality) than what these 8 GB GPUs are capable of, despite the fact that they are slower than those 8 GB GPUs. Those 8 GB GPUs need more VRAM to make sense.

I would also like to remind everyone that the 8GB is under MSRP and that the 16GB is over MSRP if you can find it at all. The real world price difference is large enough that it's forgivable.

Yeah, they are under MSRP because nobody wants them. Nobody wants them because they cannot run modern games without ugly compromises, while the consoles (which, again, have weaker GPUs than these) do not have to make those ugly compromises for no other reason than the fact they aren't VRAM starved.

 

[thewelshbrummie]

Look at what I just found... are we going to have an 8GB crusade against Nvidia this time?

That looks like a mistake on the image - I found an article with that image which linked to an Amazon listing for a 5060, not a 5070. Try some background checking of the source before posting an image without any context from an independent source.

Expect the 16GB doesn’t perform noticeably better. It’s a mild overlock away at best until you artificially bump up the VRAM usage with insane textures and upscaling to 4K. The 8GB cards are fine for 1080p and low 1440p which is what they’ve always been aimed at.

It's about not running out of VRAM and the card having to move that to system RAM - that's where the terrible 1% lows on some games become a problem. The reason 16GB performs the way it does is either the game not requiring over 8GB VRAM or the textures never need to be managed. 16GB is simply the better option and won't be a limitation.

The fact that the 3060 can beat the 3070 in some tests, only because it has more VRAM, should end any argument as to why 8GB cards should be, and already are, EOL.

 

[Axeia]

Texture quality and resolution are absolutely linked. If you have less pixels to view a texture then you see less of the texture.

Why does everyone think they need 4k textures to have a good gaming experience.

I would also like to remind everyone that the 8GB is under MSRP and that the 16GB is over MSRP if you can find it at all. The real world price difference is large enough that it's forgivable.

Because higher quality texture = more detail in the image = looks better close up. There's no direct correlation to your screens resolution. Just because they can both be '4k' does not mean you need one to benefit from the other.

From a GamersNexus article on it:

The higher the resolution of the texture the crisper the image. That's why it's the one single setting that can make a massive difference with (almost) no impact on performance, all you need is VRAM

The "real world" price difference is a straw-mans argument imo. Supply and demand as always...
The reason why 8GB is below MSRP is because it's unwanted.
The reason why 16GB is above MSRP is because it's wanted.

The price difference for AMD/NVIDIA would be $20-30 per card although that's with prices that we as consumers can see. Fair chance that difference is even lower when you bulk order hundreds of thousands of the things. It's no more expensive for the pick and part machine in the factory to place a chip with more memory, the costs are just in the chip itself and they're minor.
If the graphics card makers just made the higher VRAM model there'd be no reason for it to be much more expensive other than there simply being higher demand.

Everyone's perception of the world seems to be different though. My eyes seem to be attuned to fine detail, when I walk past a tent in a game and I can see the lines in the fabric - love it. I point it out to my girlfriend and she struggles to see it. Meanwhile it might take me a while to notice when my monitor somehow reset to 60Hz whilst my girlfriend instantly notices.

 

[seeprime]

Look at what I just found... are we going to have an 8GB crusade against Nvidia this time?

Did you find that fake card on Temu?

 

[BadThad]

Great article as always Steven! Thanks!

I'm still hanging on to my $900 RX6800 16GB I bought during the crunch. I betting it could still beat all the cards on this list. Even though it was expensive, it has proven to be an excellent card even today.

There's a lot to be said about longevity, I am in 100% agreement with you. Buying an 8GB card is simply guaranteeing you'll be buying a new video card sooner as you start hitting walls. The games aren't getting any less demanding.

 

[BadThad]

Turning the textures down fixes basically all VRAM issues, people need to stop acting like this is the end of the world. Turn the textures down and the difference between 8GB and 16GB cards disappear

This is true. I used to have a Quake 3 friend that basically played MP with sticks and sprites on the screen seeking higher FPS, it looked awful, like 16 colors DOS awful..but....he could play. hahahahaha

I think I'd choose a lower res over dropping textures. Modern games are pretty damn cool visually and compromising that reduces the enjoyment overall.

 

[manowar51]

AMD did a great job with 9060 XT.
It basically doubled in performance versus two generations behind. I call that a win.

Regarding the 8Gb (non) issue:
It exists mostly due to non optimized video games. If you going to be angry with someone, they are the ones.
Using extremely high polygon count 3D models for everything, even for things not in main focus, using 4K textures for not even secondary objects in the scene, object that will never fill up the screen, scenes with way too many objects just for sake of it. That eats up your VRAM faster than you think.

And I call it a non issue, because AMD left you a choice, if 8Gb is not enough for you, there is 16Gb model for on average 50 bucks more. There you go, you do not need to suffer so much.
And please, if you have 300 to pay for a graphic card, you can find 350 too.
People who do not have money at all, do not even have 300 to begin with.

A comment of reason. I'm so bored of hearing the complaints of 8GB GPUs holding the gaming industry back. It's the gaming industry holding the gaming industry back. Many people who don't game need GPUs for other things. We provide them for 3D X-ray scanners, and we don't even need 8GB to run the very latest 3D rendering software, 4GB is just fine. We would have to charge our clients more for something they really don't need if 8GB cards stopped being available.

This is just another case of this tech community wanting to hate on the tech companies and coming up with an excuse to do so.

 

[Benses]

Why are people defending a 8gb models? It’s like saying “Hey! AMD and Nvidia can you make worse product next gen!”

I’m too poor to buy a card that 20$ extra is fine if you can’t afford. You do realize that they could have easily sold 16gb model for 20$ cheaper. It does not cost AMD or nvidia 20$ for an extra 8gb.

 

[redgarl]

Did you find that fake card on Temu?

No, it is actually the real Gigabyte promotional poster...

They simply made a mistake on it. This is supposed to be the 5060.

You all bite to it.

 

[redgarl]

Already happened.

Not even close to the extend they went against Frank Azor comment.

Sorry, but they didn't go against Nvidia until they were forced to do so from their narrative against AMD. It is just about 4 months late. They didn't do it at the release of the 5060TI so all this is just pure hypocrisy.

Even there, Steve admitted that he was gaslighting with his owns numbers and methodology.



This chart proves that Frank Azor comment was 100% correct.

 

[redgarl]

Why are people defending a 8gb models? It’s like saying “Hey! AMD and Nvidia can you make worse product next gen!”

I’m too poor to buy a card that 20$ extra is fine if you can’t afford. You do realize that they could have easily sold 16gb model for 20$ cheaper. It does not cost AMD or nvidia 20$ for an extra 8gb.

Because... it is not a limiting factor, it is an option. You are not forced to buy the 8GB SKU. You can buy the 16GB one if it doesn't suite your needs.

This is why going into crusade against an option, is ridiculous. If the 9060XT would have been 8GB only, then that would have been a problem and the drama would have been justify since the GPU can push some interesting 1440p results.

However, if you play at 1080p and you are on a tight budget, maybe lacking 8GB is the least important of your compromise.

Lastly, 20$ on a 300$ card is a good 7% of the total cost. So if you think AMD or Nvidia is making 30% of margins on these low level GPUs, then you understand that this is not JUST 20$.

And if you think GDDR7 cost the same as GDDR6, then you are making another shortcut that is inaccurate.

 

[Axeia]

Not even close to the extend they went against Frank Azor comment.

Sorry, but they didn't go against Nvidia until they were forced to do so from their narrative against AMD. It is just about 4 months late. They didn't do it at the release of the 5060TI so all this is just pure hypocrisy.

Even there, Steve admitted that he was gaslighting with his owns numbers and methodology.



This chart proves that Frank Azor comment was 100% correct.

Except his comment doesn't hold up.
Most played eSports, sure. But do all of those people play just eSports exclusively, no other games on their radar at all that would benefit from it?
I mean I mostly play HotS and StarCraft 2. Because those are my most played games I should get 8GB? Oh wait now my performance in cyberpunk is terrible.

16GB same GPU, no compromise? My wallet disagrees, fair enough if the card was 20 or 30 extra but its like 100 and even north of that.

By the same logic if those esporters don't need the 16GB then why sell them a GPU die that large? Less FPS would be fine too. People are mad at the 8GB model because the horsepower is there under the hood but it's hamstrung by the VRAM and the proper 16GB costs far more then the material bill, it's an upsell - same thing people get mad at Apple for, charging silly prices for memory.

 

[human7]

I love these comparison charts that show performance and inflation adjusted or real world adjusted prices, gives a good story for how the technology and market has changed over time.

A lot of people are getting hung up on the 8GB vs 16GB issue, and to me, it's less about the VRAM capacity or pricing and more about naming. Both AMD and Nvidia should make their product naming more obvious to the non-technical consumer that there is a difference between the two, otherwise an unsuspecting consumer could easily be mislead to thinking they are getting one product when in reality they are getting another. Let people make their own choices about what capacity and budget is right for them, but don't let the companies off the hook for the way they named these products. In that sense, I'm absolutely fine with the reviewers roasting the products or companies accordingly.

 

[LordVile95]

That looks like a mistake on the image - I found an article with that image which linked to an Amazon listing for a 5060, not a 5070. Try some background checking of the source before posting an image without any context from an independent source.



It's about not running out of VRAM and the card having to move that to system RAM - that's where the terrible 1% lows on some games become a problem. The reason 16GB performs the way it does is either the game not requiring over 8GB VRAM or the textures never need to be managed. 16GB is simply the better option and won't be a limitation.

The fact that the 3060 can beat the 3070 in some tests, only because it has more VRAM, should end any argument as to why 8GB cards should be, and already are, EOL.

The 1% lows are also fine.

You can manufacture a test to hoover up VRAM with no actual benefit to performance or visual fidelity. In real world scenarios with settings that make a modicum of sense however VRAM isn’t an issue.

 

[llamapanda]

Please fix the duplicate '7600' in the headline.

 

[Axeia]

A comment of reason. I'm so bored of hearing the complaints of 8GB GPUs holding the gaming industry back. It's the gaming industry holding the gaming industry back. Many people who don't game need GPUs for other things. We provide them for 3D X-ray scanners, and we don't even need 8GB to run the very latest 3D rendering software, 4GB is just fine. We would have to charge our clients more for something they really don't need if 8GB cards stopped being available.

If there was one singular option priced in line with the actual costs, so say $15-30 depending on if it's GDDR5/6/6X etc. Would you lose any single customer about charging them $15-30 extra?

[How much performance do you need? Sounds like the task is pretty simple if you don't need so much and are worried about cost in $15-30 region per product isn't there better options to start with?

• a 50(0) class product? A bit cheaper and that coming with 8GB makes more sense.
• Do you need a graphics card in the first place?
  • Why not use a AMD Ryzen 7 8700G? It's cheaper than these 60(0) class products
  • Or lower still, Intel N200/N250 pack a respectable amount of graphics power

That's all x86_x64 even. If you can pivot to ARM how about a Rockchip RK3588 like on the Banana Pi BPI-M7?
Those all sound like better solutions for your particular use case as they're cheaper and apparently the minor upcharge of more memory is problematic. Even the Intel N250 could have a pretty detailed single model (which is likely the case with a 3D scanner?) spinning around at 60fps easily. Heck, I've done some CAD fiddling on a Ryzen 5 2500u and it was not an unpleasant experience.

This is just another case of this tech community wanting to hate on the tech companies and coming up with an excuse to do so.

No, this is people getting burned on cards with too little VRAM too many times. They can see that the costs are (or should be - if they had only made a single type) $20-30 and they can see that the performance of the GPU itself is there, but held back by too little memory.

 

[LordVile95]

If there was one singular option priced in line with the actual costs, so say $15-30 depending on if it's GDDR5/6/6X etc. Would you lose any single customer about charging them $15-30 extra?

[How much performance do you need? Sounds like the task is pretty simple if you don't need so much and are worried about cost in $15-30 region per product isn't there better options to start with?

• a 50(0) class product? A bit cheaper and that coming with 8GB makes more sense.
• Do you need a graphics card in the first place?
  • Why not use a AMD Ryzen 7 8700G? It's cheaper than these 60(0) class products
  • Or lower still, Intel N200/N250 pack a respectable amount of graphics power

That's all x86_x64 even. If you can pivot to ARM how about a Rockchip RK3588 like on the Banana Pi BPI-M7?
Those all sound like better solutions for your particular use case as they're cheaper and apparently the minor upcharge of more memory is problematic. Even the Intel N250 could have a pretty detailed single model (which is likely the case with a 3D scanner?) spinning around at 60fps easily. Heck, I've done some CAD fiddling on a Ryzen 5 2500u and it was not an unpleasant experience.


No, this is people getting burned on cards with too little VRAM too many times. They can see that the costs are (or should be - if they had only made a single type) $20-30 and they can see that the performance of the GPU itself is there, but held back by too little memory.

Literally no one has been “burned” with a lack of VRAM. These cards are not powerful enough for it to be an issue

 

[Axeia]

Literally no one has been “burned” with a lack of VRAM. These cards are not powerful enough for it to be an issue

Except benchmarks literally show cases where the card has the umph to do things at playable framerates on the higher VRAM model but don't run (crash), run a lot worse, or start reducing settings dynamically on the lower VRAM model.
These benchmarks are from various sources, across various games on reasonable settings.

So yes, people are getting burned. Heck, my partner has a 12GB RTX 3060 and played both the last of us and Hogwarts at settings that at the time were problematic on the RTX 3060 8GB (I think both now have been patched to reduce quality dynamically avoiding the performance tanking to unplayable levels). Since then a lot of cards more powerful than the RTX 3060 but still with 8GB of VRAM came out and more games were released that struggle with 8GB so your argument holds no water.
The GPU power is poorly matched with the VRAM amount. It's like building a gaming PC with a 9800X3D and then bottle-necking it with 8GB of RAM. Sure it'll run a lot of games great, but also quite a few poorly or not at all.

 

[Axeia]

Optimizing is one of the basic tasks in any respectable software company (gaming or not).
Since I actually work in such a company, I can tell you that it is about planning and managing properly.
It starts with your 3D artists to whom you ask to create several LOD levels for every object.
Same goes for textures. Make sure their sizes (resolution) or polygon count is appropriate for the scene and focus in games.
And finally once you are in scene editing, you can always start HUD and see just how many polygons and VRAM are you using at give setting details. Then you just cut what is not needed.
Like 4K texture for a small 3D object in the scene that would, at best take up 100pixels on a screen. Or the number of lights.
Or cut number of trees and their details, especially for those in the background. Not to mention leafs topology. And there are so many , many examples.
It is one of THE MAIN jobs, to optimize your software when developing it.

But lately, they tend to rush and just throw in without of much consideration.

That is however very base level low hanging fruit type of stuff (at least in that field). A bit like how Joe average will just install whatever theme and extensions on his Wordpress page to make it act the way he wants it (amateur level), more professional developers will stick to using a few widely used javascript libraries etc and then the real pro will try to avoid the use of javascript for some tasks and use CSS instead (which can be hardware accelerated) and perhaps not load in a 400KB javascript library to select and hide an element but just write some code themselves.

From a lot of game betas I think your workflow might also not apply to every company. A lot seem to leave optimizing till quite late, it locks you into a certain design I imagine if you start with culling things early rather than just going full boar and doing optimization later.

In most other branches of programming it also works the same way. You write code and test things, only start optimizing once performance actually IS a problem. This is a fun example imo:

"Someone improved my code by 40,832,277,770%"
The base code taking a month to run is of course... not what anyone wants. However the very first improved version taking 5.86 seconds would likely be a good enough example if it's a thing you run once in the apps lifetime. The 'winner' at 6,761µs was likely a lot less readable or even comprehensible to people and you'd only optimize that far if it's a core part of your app that gets run a lot.

I imagine this translates to assets as well where you can do optimizing by splicing things into many parts so you can cull things more easily but it becomes way harder to update and suddenly changing the leafs slightly for a more autumny look becomes a massive undertaking rather than a simple task?

 

[LordVile95]

Except benchmarks literally show cases where the card has the umph to do things at playable framerates on the higher VRAM model but don't run (crash), run a lot worse, or start reducing settings dynamically on the lower VRAM model.
These benchmarks are from various sources, across various games on reasonable settings.

So yes, people are getting burned. Heck, my partner has a 12GB RTX 3060 and played both the last of us and Hogwarts at settings that at the time were problematic on the RTX 3060 8GB (I think both now have been patched to reduce quality dynamically avoiding the performance tanking to unplayable levels). Since then a lot of cards more powerful than the RTX 3060 but still with 8GB of VRAM came out and more games were released that struggle with 8GB so your argument holds no water.
The GPU power is poorly matched with the VRAM amount. It's like building a gaming PC with a 9800X3D and then bottle-necking it with 8GB of RAM. Sure it'll run a lot of games great, but also quite a few poorly or not at all.

Because those tests are designed to max out VRAM at settings no one would actually use in the real world. In reality they’re fine because the settings they’re capable of don’t require that much VRAM. If you decide you want to load in 4K textures and render at 4K on a 1080p monitor you can max out the VRAM, if you just put everything at high where visual clarity starts to hit the point of not being noticeable there’s no issue. There’s a reason why if you look at an actual review the 8GB cards in the one up perform quite well but in the 8GB reviews with none standard benchmarking they look bad. It’s the author pushing their own agenda rather looking for objective fact.

 

[Axeia]

Because those tests are designed to max out VRAM at settings no one would actually use in the real world. In reality they’re fine because the settings they’re capable of don’t require that much VRAM. If you decide you want to load in 4K textures and render at 4K on a 1080p monitor you can max out the VRAM, if you just put everything at high where visual clarity starts to hit the point of not being noticeable there’s no issue. There’s a reason why if you look at an actual review the 8GB cards in the one up perform quite well but in the 8GB reviews with none standard benchmarking they look bad. It’s the author pushing their own agenda rather looking for objective fact.

Think it's more that you're pushing your own narrative. My partner as I already mentioned ran games at settings that would have been problematic on the lesser model.
Not to punish the card but simply to enjoy the game at high fidelity. So yes people do use those settings.

I fully understand lowering settings not to run into problems but the point is that there wouldn't be a need to do so if the cards simply had more VRAM. Running for example Hogwarts with raytracing enabled is a perfectly reasonable thing to do at 1080p on a 60 class RTX card (less so on AMD until recently).

 

[LordVile95]

Think it's more that you're pushing your own narrative. My partner as I already mentioned ran games at settings that would have been problematic on the lesser model.
Not to punish the card but simply to enjoy the game at high fidelity. So yes people do use those settings.

I fully understand lowering settings not to run into problems but the point is that there wouldn't be a need to do so if the cards simply had more VRAM. Running for example Hogwarts with raytracing enabled is a perfectly reasonable thing to do at 1080p on a 60 class RTX card (less so on AMD until recently).

And what were those settings?

If you want to play a game at high fidelity you’re not buying a 60 class card,

Aside from you do because you have to resort to upscaling and turning down the settings to make the 16GB models playable.

 

[Axeia]

And what were those settings?

1080p Ultra, Raytracing enabled.
Oh and look at that the RTX 3060 literally outperforms the RTX 3060 Ti, 3070 and 3070 Ti*

(screenshot from a Hardware Unboxed video)

What is your argument, that 8GB is enough? Clearly not when the 60 class GPU outperforms the higher placed/priced cards and delivers a playable experience unlike those more expensive cards.
Or maybe your argument is that it's not the case in popular games? Hogwarts Legacy was literally the best selling game in 2023 (the people trying to boycott it for political reasons failed hard).
That 1080p raytraced is an unrealistic settings? Let's see, a single player game with a player base that's heavily into that specific world and would want to see it at its best - pretty realistic I'd say. 30fps is good enough for digital sight seeing.
That the game is poorly optimized? It's seen optimization since then but they cannot fix having not enough VRAM in a way other than dynamically lowering texture quality so even though the FPS doesn't fall of a cliff anymore you are getting worse quality.**

Hogwarts is a great example due to its popularity but there are more titles. And it's applicable to me (well, my partner really) directly as she did play on those settings and very emerged into the Wizarding world.

* Since then NVIDIA has released the RTX 4060, RTX 4060 Ti, RTX 4070, RTX 5060, 5060 Ti all with 8GB. Even more power but still offering worse performance than the RTX 3060 12GB in some cases.
** Optimization costs money, so either game prices go up if you want it to happen on that side. Or, like everywhere else we do with computers we throw more powerful hardware at the problem as it tends to be the cheaper more scalable solution. Even better in this case is that the hardware is really simple, just use chips with more capacity. No power issues, no heat issues - just a very minor price increase.

If you want to play a game at high fidelity you’re not buying a 60 class card

Unless you want to dismiss 1080p as not high fidelity to begin with (somewhat understandable) that's simply not true. At 1080p you have basically two options.
Use an iGPU/APU for 'low fidelity' although even there in a lot of games you can crank the settings surprisingly high.
or
Buy a graphics card, in which case you should expect high fidelity because CPUs with an iGPU/APU are cheaper than entry level graphics cards aimed at 1080p.

---

Feels weird to go this deep into a topic and focus so hard on NVIDIA in a comment on an AMD article but it's mainly a problem with Raytracing and AMD simply didn't do 8GB cards that had enough raytracing performance. That said there will be situations where it holds true without raytracing and AMD is becoming just as bad with sticking too little VRAM on cards so imo they're not quite as bad as NVIDIA but they're not much better either and their latest 8GB offerings shouldn't have seen the light of day either.

 

[LordVile95]

1080p Ultra, Raytracing enabled.
Oh and look at that the RTX 3060 literally outperforms the RTX 3060 Ti, 3070 and 3070 Ti*

(screenshot from a Hardware Unboxed video)

What is your argument, that 8GB is enough? Clearly not when the 60 class GPU outperforms the higher placed/priced cards and delivers a playable experience unlike those more expensive cards.
Or maybe your argument is that it's not the case in popular games? Hogwarts Legacy was literally the best selling game in 2023 (the people trying to boycott it for political reasons failed hard).
That 1080p raytraced is an unrealistic settings? Let's see, a single player game with a player base that's heavily into that specific world and would want to see it at its best - pretty realistic I'd say. 30fps is good enough for digital sight seeing.
That the game is poorly optimized? It's seen optimization since then but they cannot fix having not enough VRAM in a way other than dynamically lowering texture quality so even though the FPS doesn't fall of a cliff anymore you are getting worse quality.**

Hogwarts is a great example due to its popularity but there are more titles. And it's applicable to me (well, my partner really) directly as she did play on those settings and very emerged into the Wizarding world.

* Since then NVIDIA has released the RTX 4060, RTX 4060 Ti, RTX 4070, RTX 5060, 5060 Ti all with 8GB. Even more power but still offering worse performance than the RTX 3060 12GB in some cases.
** Optimization costs money, so either game prices go up if you want it to happen on that side. Or, like everywhere else we do with computers we throw more powerful hardware at the problem as it tends to be the cheaper more scalable solution. Even better in this case is that the hardware is really simple, just use chips with more capacity. No power issues, no heat issues - just a very minor price increase.


Unless you want to dismiss 1080p as not high fidelity to begin with (somewhat understandable) that's simply not true. At 1080p you have basically two options.
Use an iGPU/APU for 'low fidelity' although even there in a lot of games you can crank the settings surprisingly high.
or
Buy a graphics card, in which case you should expect high fidelity because CPUs with an iGPU/APU are cheaper than entry level graphics cards aimed at 1080p.

---

Feels weird to go this deep into a topic and focus so hard on NVIDIA in a comment on an AMD article but it's mainly a problem with Raytracing and AMD simply didn't do 8GB cards that had enough raytracing performance. That said there will be situations where it holds true without raytracing and AMD is becoming just as bad with sticking too little VRAM on cards so imo they're not quite as bad as NVIDIA but they're not much better either and their latest 8GB offerings shouldn't have seen the light of day either.

So your argument is that a card outperforms another when the game isn’t actually playable? Solid argument there. Also what happens when you turn it to just high or turn the RT down from the highest setting to get a playable frame rate?

 

[Axeia]

So your argument is that a card outperforms another when the game isn’t actually playable? Solid argument there. Also what happens when you turn it to just high or turn the RT down from the highest setting to get a playable frame rate?

Except that it is playable? If you're sight seeing you want Max settings and 30fps is enough. If you get into doing the combat you can always turn off raytracing.
And that's the RTX 3060. All those other cards I mentioned should stay well above that. Heck I wouldn't be surprised if the RTX 5060 if it had the memory would stay pretty close to 60FPS.

The only reason you can't get the same PLAYABLE experience on those more expensive cards is VRAM.
Yes you can lower settings but the whole point is that those cards don't need to be sandbagged by 8GB.