Almost 35% PC Gamers Still Surviving on 8 GB Graphics Card Shows How Unreal Engine 5 Destroyed Budget Gaming With Exorbitant System Requirements

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Almost 35% PC Gamers Still Surviving on 8 GB Graphics Card Shows How Unreal Engine 5 Destroyed Budget Gaming With Exorbitant System Requirements

PC gaming has grown leaps and bounds in the past couple of years, especially with regard to hardware capabilities. Gone are the days of janky 3D animations; we now have proper motion capture, cinematic storytelling, and breathtaking visuals that are often shockingly close to real life.

However, next-gen games require next-gen hardware, and in particular, copious amounts of video memory. Current-gen games are notorious for demanding absurd amounts of VRAM, which leaves multiple (still perfectly capable) GPUs in the dust.

Nearly 35% of PC gamers still use an 8 GB graphics card

As per a recent

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(April 2025), nearly 35% of PC gamers are still using a graphics card with 8 GB of VRAM.  That is quite a significant number, even if it has seen a rather minuscule decline from the previous month.

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GB VRAM GPUs is steadily increasing | Image Credits: Nvidia

8 GB VRAM GPUs have lost their market share by around 1.27% from last month. On the other hand, there has been a steady increase in the adoption of cards with 12 GB of VRAM or higher in the past few months alone.

In particular, 16 GB VRAM is appearing to be the next sweet spot, showing a healthy 0.81% increase from March 2025. Additionally, it would appear that 12 GB cards are the next most popular alternative, holding exactly 18.58% share of the Steam user base.

This, however, does not discount the fact that there still is an overwhelmingly large number of users who possess cards with 8 gigabytes (or lower) of VRAM.

35% is not a small number, and largely consists of users who have yet to upgrade their GPUs from perfectly capable last-gen versions, or those who were unfortunate enough to buy a newer model with 8 GB VRAM in 2025 (which is still a thing unfortunately!).

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GB GPUs are still very popular | Image Credits: AMD

Much of this decline can be attributed to the fact that modern game engines (in particular, Unreal Engine 5) have often absurd PC system requirements, forcing players to use stronger cards with unnecessary features such as ray-tracing, and the like.

Players are as such, forced to purchase newer GPUs to play these games – even if it has been proven time and time again, that last-gen cards can most certainly handle AAA gaming with some workarounds in place.

Modern video game development is an unoptimized mess

It is no secret that video game system requirements have been scaling up at absurd rates for the past few years. As games get more graphically demanding, the need for more expensive, next-gen hardware increases.

It can also be argued that these visual ‘upgrades’ do feel a bit pointless – after all, the average gamer is very unlikely to notice these additions when locked into a heated battle. Additionally, games also appear to run worse at launch on PCs, thanks to terrible ports.

Most players are better off waiting for the game to get patched a few months down the line – in addition to being discounted at the same time.

To make up for this terrible native performance, games employ methods such as upscaling (DLSS/FSR) and frame generation, which are more akin to a band-aid fix. It should be emphasized here that DLSS and frame generation should not be used as a crutch for boosting performance, and developers should optimize their game engines first.

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#Gamers #Surviving #Graphics #Card #Shows #Unreal #Engine #Destroyed #Budget #Gaming #Exorbitant #System #Requirements

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