Early RTX 5060 Ti benchmarks reveal why Nvidia withheld the 8GB version from reviewers

[Daniel Sims]

In brief: Nvidia's marketing for the RTX 5060 Ti has so far focused exclusively on the 16GB model, raising eyebrows as the company has refused to provide reviewers with access to the 8GB version. This decision suggests an effort to downplay the cheaper variant's underwhelming performance, and an early review appears to confirm those suspicions – at least, in certain scenarios.

A review on Bilibili offers an early look at the 8GB version of Nvidia's RTX 5060 Ti, which has not been made available to Western media. The video reveals that halving the VRAM significantly affects performance in several notable games and hampers the effectiveness of multi-frame generation, the RTX 50 series' standout feature.

To be fair, the 8GB RTX 5060 Ti holds its own against the 16GB model in synthetic benchmarks and many titles, including Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty (at reasonable settings), Counter-Strike 2, Resident Evil 4, Forza Horizon 5, F1 24, Call of Duty, and even Alan Wake 2. However, performance gaps do emerge in more demanding scenarios.

Assassin's Creed: Shadows shows a 10 percent performance gap between the two variants, but the 8GB model performs significantly worse in Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered. At 1080p, average frame rates are about 23 percent lower, with one percent lows dropping by a staggering 30 percent. The gap narrows somewhat at 1440p.

Even multi-frame generation can't fully mask the disparity due to the 8GB card's limited VRAM. In Cyberpunk 2077 at max settings, the 16GB model dips to 18 FPS, while the 8GB version bottoms out at just nine FPS. Activating 2x framegen equalizes performance, but a slight gap reappears at 4x, indicating that the 8GB card may struggle to benefit fully from multi-frame generation in future titles.

RTX 5060 Ti "8GB" performance
Yes, 8GB is worse even with MFG. https://t.co/yvfG38LFdh pic.twitter.com/iVaNonAuAX

– 포시포시 (@harukaze5719) April 16, 2025

Our recent review of the 16GB model labeled the RTX 5060 Ti as yet another misfire in an already disappointing lineup, and we haven't even touched the 8GB variant. Releasing a mid-range graphics card with just 8GB of VRAM in 2025, eight years after AMD's Radeon RX 580 launched with the same amount, should be unacceptable. Expect a full review from TechSpot once the 8GB 5060 Ti reaches store shelves.

The continued push for 8GB mainstream GPUs is troubling, especially since this segment dominates the most popular price tier. Most of the top 10 GPUs on Steam are 60-class Nvidia cards with 8GB of VRAM, a trend the RTX 5060 Ti 8GB and the upcoming standard 5060 are likely to extend for years. That means a large share of PC gamers will remain stuck with memory-constrained hardware, limiting their performance in modern and future titles.

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Early RTX 5060 Ti benchmarks reveal why Nvidia withheld the 8GB version from reviewers

 

[yRaz]

50x the disappointment

 

[Theinsanegamer]

And yet there will still be people who will meat shield for the 8gb cards, blaming developers when it's been pretty evident that 8gb should have been relegated to 6400 tier cards years ago.

 

[KedsDead]

The 8 GB card is fine, for people who play titles like, Apex Legends, Fortnite, TF2 and laundry list of Free To Play titles out there.

Am I defending it, no. It does have its place how ever. Lets be honest, that crowd normaly buys the 50 series cards, (I mean the 1050ti, ect) so yes this card will sell well to the sheeple and thats all Nvidia wants right now.

Sheeple Unite, Team Green has the card for your play style, at a price.

 

[Thatsdisgusting]

The 8 GB card is fine, for people who play titles like, Apex Legends, Fortnite, TF2 and laundry list of Free To Play titles out there.

Why they should change their 3060 and 4060 (god bless their souls)? And btw, aint those titles absolutely playable on 10 years old flagships?

Again, anyone like me, the owner of 3080Ti or 3090, has a need for something more performant for PT titles, yes. But only options here are 5090 (I'm not that retarded, sorry) - or 5080/70Ti, +20-30% performance for what, 1,5 or 2 grands? Thats a joke.

But e-sport nerds and clerks? Cmon, they're good to go with anything above gt1030

 

[Anton Longshot]

I don't mean to offend but in my opinion Team Green's a bunch of ripoff artists now.
When the time comes I will not replace my current "green card" (ha ha) with one of their current products.

Dunno why they even pull this stuff they are SUPER rich and could probably GIVE us good cards. Oh well. Moving on.

 

[noblody]

Maybe:
5050 8GB gddr6
5060 16GB gddr6
5060TI 16GB gddr7
would be a cleaner and more future proof lineup. I don't understand the need for 5060 with 8GB in 2025 in either simple or TI variant. FG already needs more ram, so why make these 8GB cards? for the 5050 FG would probably not matter as framerates would already be quite low.

 

[longjohn119]

Some people don't seem to realize that you can turn your texture settings down if your GPU only has 8 GB of memory ..... Running Cyberpunk at max setting on a 60 series cards proves nothing because whether you have 8 GB or 16 GB the game is still unplayable. With Shadows you can tweak the texture pool size down and lower the textures and the game will run just as well with barely any noticeable difference in graphic quality.

Whenare PC gamers going to realize that on a PC it is up to you to optimize the game settings to fit your hardware. If you only want to use presets buy a console

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Some people don't seem to realize that you can turn your texture settings down if your GPU only has 8 GB of memory ..... Running Cyberpunk at max setting on a 60 series cards proves nothing because whether you have 8 GB or 16 GB the game is still unplayable. With Shadows you can tweak the texture pool size down and lower the textures and the game will run just as well with barely any noticeable difference in graphic quality.

Whenare PC gamers going to realize that on a PC it is up to you to optimize the game settings to fit your hardware. If you only want to use presets buy a console

No duh, you can turn settings down. This isnt our first day on the ranch.

Here's the thing: if you have to turn settings down to fit in the VRAM buffer, your GPU is KNEECAPPED and cannot be used to its full potential, which is what people have been saying about 8GB GPUs for years!

The only thing you've done is prove people like me right: 8GB on a GPU like this is insulting and should have been relegated to sub $200 entry level display adapters years ago. These GPUs are held back by insufficient VRAM and nobody should touch these cards, but some people will meatshield 8GB cards with red herrings for how you can still make them work.

If you want to play with lowered settings, dithered resolution, and blurry textures; dont waste money on a 8GB GPU. Just go buy a console.

 

[yRaz]

Some people don't seem to realize that you can turn your texture settings down if your GPU only has 8 GB of memory ..... Running Cyberpunk at max setting on a 60 series cards proves nothing because whether you have 8 GB or 16 GB the game is still unplayable. With Shadows you can tweak the texture pool size down and lower the textures and the game will run just as well with barely any noticeable difference in graphic quality.

Whenare PC gamers going to realize that on a PC it is up to you to optimize the game settings to fit your hardware. If you only want to use presets buy a console

8GB cards in todays world should be used as nothing more than a simple display adapter or they should be priced in such a way where it is understood that they aren't meant to do anything but simple gaming. The 5060ti 8GB is currently selling at the MSRP of the 16GB model. You can get a whole console for the price of a 5060ti 8GB. So, yes, I agree, you should buy a console. It is worth, at most $300. I don't have a problem with 8GB cards, I have a problem with the price. Even the 12GB 5070 is showing VRAM issues and that's selling for $750.

People aren't calling out the cards simply because they're bad, they're angry at the trend that nVidia has created. A trend of over priced cards that are obsolete at release. It's also killing 2 birds with one stone by killing the secondary/used market of GPUs. People aren't angry about the stuttering, or the small amounts of VRAM, they're tired of being taken advantage of. They're angry at the anti-consumer practices that these cards represent.

 

[OortCloud]

nVidia don't care. They got lucky with crypto then again with AI and so are just going through the motions with gaming GPUs. Even their drivers are awful now.

 

[kiwigraeme]

The 8 GB card is fine, for people who play titles like, Apex Legends, Fortnite, TF2 and laundry list of Free To Play titles out there.

Am I defending it, no. It does have its place how ever. Lets be honest, that crowd normaly buys the 50 series cards, (I mean the 1050ti, ect) so yes this card will sell well to the sheeple and thats all Nvidia wants right now.

Sheeple Unite, Team Green has the card for your play style, at a price.

How would the average consumer know if getting a 8 or 16GB?

NVidia is hiding the info from consumers, unless they KNOW to make sure to get a 16GB

Really 8Gb should be a $200 5050 card and marketed as such , or $250 at most

Too much stuff is switch and bait now - yet show reviews for best build
People get upset not equal colours in M&Ms - where are my sexy green ones ? ( maybe more seriously a mix roast nut pack - why nearly all peanuts , nothing lke image of peanuts, almonds, walnuts, macadamia etc

 

[TooQik]

8GB cards in todays world should be used as nothing more than a simple display adapter or they should be priced in such a way where it is understood that they aren't meant to do anything but simple gaming. The 5060ti 8GB is currently selling at the MSRP of the 16GB model. You can get a whole console for the price of a 5060ti 8GB. So, yes, I agree, you should buy a console. It is worth, at most $300. I don't have a problem with 8GB cards, I have a problem with the price. Even the 12GB 5070 is showing VRAM issues and that's selling for $750.

People aren't calling out the cards simply because they're bad, they're angry at the trend that nVidia has created. A trend of over priced cards that are obsolete at release. It's also killing 2 birds with one stone by killing the secondary/used market of GPUs. People aren't angry about the stuttering, or the small amounts of VRAM, they're tired of being taken advantage of. They're angry at the anti-consumer practices that these cards represent.

100% agree with this comment.

8GB cards have a use and a place - low end gaming machines, media servers etc, but the price being asked for them currently is putting them outside the reach of where you would normally find them being used.

 

[Axeia]

We're gonna have this odd situation where the RTX 3060 12GB will destroy the RTX 5060 8GB in performance in a few select cases. Wonder what the uplift in performance even is, RTX 4060 wasn't very impressive compared to the RTX 3060 and going by most indicators the RTX 5060 shouldn't be much of an uplift over the RTX 4060.
Truly feels like the graphics card market has entered the Intel Quad Core Era. Minor upgrades for minor price increases.

 

[NumberNine]

GPU manufacturers are being stupid with their VRAM right now to avoid undercutting their enterprise segments. There are 3 GPU makers. All of them in agreement by way of adopting these practices.

Remember buying GPUs in the mid-late 2000s with more VRAM on them than you could ever imagine needing? Things are quite different now aren't they?

 

[Axeia]

Whenare PC gamers going to realize that on a PC it is up to you to optimize the game settings to fit your hardware. If you only want to use presets buy a console

There's two settings I hate turning down, texture quality and resolution.
Texture quality is one of the settings that affects the visuals the most. But, it's basically free to crank up as it's no extra load on the CPU/GPU just the memory and storage.
Resolution can actually affect me physically. If I play at non native res I often get a headache and sometimes (when the resolution difference is big) the veins in my eyes burst (I had the same thing with refresh rates under 75Hz on a CRT. I guess I have sensitive eyes). The upscaling techniques do help with that but every time they kick in I notice it and it looks bad to me so it's the very last setting I'm willing to lower. (I'm on WQHD, I can imagine upscaling to 4K looking a lot better).

So yeah you can play around with settings to have games run better. But the ones little VRAM make you lower are the most important settings to me. Nvidia could just you know... Put more VRAM on the cards.
They keep pushing the prices of the cards further up, the dies aren't getting any bigger. Imo the very least they could do is stick enough VRAM on the things.

Blah blah game developers optimize, yeah they don't. Developer time is expensive and optimizing tends to be very boring work to not.
Blah blah enough for current games, it's not. We already have multiple games struggling with it and that'll only get worse in the future.
Doubling the VRAM used to happen every couple of years, now it hasn't since what the RX 480 in 2016? That's almost a decade ago and relatively speaking the memory makes up for a smaller part of the BOM (bill of materials) than ever because the cards are really fricking expensive.

 

[nnguy2]

Some people don't seem to realize that you can turn your texture settings down if your GPU only has 8 GB of memory ..... Running Cyberpunk at max setting on a 60 series cards proves nothing because whether you have 8 GB or 16 GB the game is still unplayable. With Shadows you can tweak the texture pool size down and lower the textures and the game will run just as well with barely any noticeable difference in graphic quality.

Whenare PC gamers going to realize that on a PC it is up to you to optimize the game settings to fit your hardware. If you only want to use presets buy a console

You can also lower your resolution to 720p for fps. why are you apologizing for leatherjacket?

 

[Watzupken]

The RT and Tensor cores all require some VRAM to operate. When using DLSS Frame Gen with RTX 4xxx, it was clear that 8GB cards regress in performance because it ran out of VRAM. So if 2x FG is already a problem then, it comes as no surprise that MFG is probably more taxing and problematic for the VRAM starved 8GB cards. But of course, Nvidia will happily sell you a lie by sending only 16GB versions out to reviewers so that most people will not be aware of the issues with the 8GB versions.

 

[MarcusNumb]

They will sell well anyway, cause there are not many kids out there or their parents who are willing to do some research before purchasing a computer. And even if they do, if their budget is limited and they don't really focus much on cases where VRAM become a problem, they will just buy these GPUs anw.

How many non-techsavy parents are willing to buy a 6800xt, for example, for their kids instead of a 5060 when most of the salesmen will suggest them that 5060 is more than enough ? Or simply just buy a console and avoid all the headaches xD

Whether we like it or not, NVIDIA is controlling the market and they can do whatever they want.

 

[hahahanoobs]

Why they should change their 3060 and 4060 (god bless their souls)? And btw, aint those titles absolutely playable on 10 years old flagships?

Again, anyone like me, the owner of 3080Ti or 3090, has a need for something more performant for PT titles, yes. But only options here are 5090 (I'm not that retarded, sorry) - or 5080/70Ti, +20-30% performance for what, 1,5 or 2 grands? Thats a joke.

But e-sport nerds and clerks? Cmon, they're good to go with anything above gt1030

E-sports nerds have been arguably pushing computer hardware for gamers.

Top streamers aren't playing TLOU.
Single player games aren't the ones high refresh monitors were targeted for.
Nvidia Reflex 1 and especially 2. 60g mice. Optical and Hall effect keyboards. 240Hz+ monitors. Fast GPU's It's all e-sports driven. All aside from maybe HDR, DLSS and Raytracing. That's for single player gamers. The rest is for and because of e-sports.

You're welcome.

 

[Nobina]

The 8 GB card is fine, for people who play titles like, Apex Legends, Fortnite, TF2 and laundry list of Free To Play titles out there.

Am I defending it, no. It does have its place how ever. Lets be honest, that crowd normaly buys the 50 series cards, (I mean the 1050ti, ect) so yes this card will sell well to the sheeple and thats all Nvidia wants right now.

Sheeple Unite, Team Green has the card for your play style, at a price.

Every 8GB defender has to ignore the most important thing that makes these cards terrible which is the price. I had a GTX 1050 Ti 4GB back in the day and it was like 200 EUR, not a great price even at the time. How much does this cost?

 

[yRaz]

Every 8GB defender has to ignore the most important thing that makes these cards terrible which is the price. I had a GTX 1050 Ti 4GB back in the day and it was like 200 EUR, not a great price even at the time. How much does this cost?

When my 1080ti died I used a 1050ti 4GB for awhile until I could get my hands on a 6700XT during the GPU shortage. These low end cards have a place, sometimes you just need the bare minimum to get you buy while you either save up or wait for availability to become better. The thing is, they need to be priced accordingly. They should have a price where it is obvious you are going to have to make compromises. "yeah, I can't X,Y and Z, but I only paid $200 for it". It's that kind of mentality that people love ARC graphics cards and that they're always sold out. People thought intel stopped making them. It turns out that they aren't making lots of them and that they always sell out quickly whenever they send out a batch.

 

[Greek Chorus]

I wonder if keeping the VRAM size low is to cripple their use in AI systems to keep the market segmented to go after higher margin sales.

 

[yRaz]

I wonder if keeping the VRAM size low is to cripple their use in AI systems to keep the market segmented to go after higher margin sales.

I see 3 main reasons, 1 is to limit AI ability as many LLMs, once trained, don't require alot of GPU power to run, just lots of memory. 2 is planned obsolescence and 3 is that they have an absurd amount of enterprise orders and they're allocating most of the higher density chips to that. They're super highend models use HBM3 chips, but there are still plenty of workstation cards in their lineup that are using the higher density GDDR7 modules. There are companies that will stick 8 of their workstation cards in a Threadripper system instead of needing to buy a rack of their H100's or whatever they're called. That's exactly what happened with my buddy at university did. They didn't have it in their budget for one of those big AI serverracks so they built 2 Threadripper systems each with 6, 7900XTX's in them to run AI models on and linked them together with dual 200Gb NICs.

 

[candle86]

No duh, you can turn settings down. This isnt our first day on the ranch.

Here's the thing: if you have to turn settings down to fit in the VRAM buffer, your GPU is KNEECAPPED and cannot be used to its full potential, which is what people have been saying about 8GB GPUs for years!

The only thing you've done is prove people like me right: 8GB on a GPU like this is insulting and should have been relegated to sub $200 entry level display adapters years ago. These GPUs are held back by insufficient VRAM and nobody should touch these cards, but some people will meatshield 8GB cards with red herrings for how you can still make them work.

If you want to play with lowered settings, dithered resolution, and blurry textures; dont waste money on a 8GB GPU. Just go buy a console.

Huh that's interesting I remember when GTA IV came out max settings 1200p used more RAM than on the current flagship, it had 1gb but you needed at least 1.2, doom3 max needs 512 but high-end at the time only had 256, and then crysis, the 8800gtx couldn't max it, nor the GTX 280, the 480 could at 1080 but the 590 was needed for 1600p.

This is all to say that what's your experiencing isn't all that uncommon, it used to be expected to turn down settings on mid-range cards I'm not defending in video I think their prices are insane but the old expectation was you can't run max settings on the flagship let alone the mid-range.

When I had my 7600 GT do you think I was maxing out fear or oblivion lol