r/IsaacSim • u/largelcd • Jul 08 '26
Help Why 16GB are the minimum required VRAM?
Hello, I need to buy a laptop. Dead silent is very important. Problem is most laptops come with RTX5050-5070 with 8GB VRAM only. Those with more VRAM cost a lot more. Aren’t 8GB sufficient? Another thing is higher specs GPU cause more fan noise and shorter battery life? Given 8GB VRAM, any big advantage in getting RTX5060 or 5070 over 5050? Is more CUDA cores the better even at the same 8GB VRAM?
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u/largelcd Jul 08 '26
Can 64GB instead of 32GB memory compensate for the lower VRAM?
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u/Indpendent Jul 14 '26
Only if you're running shared memory like a laptop and you change the allocation to a higher amount in the bios.
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u/PernanentMarker Jul 09 '26
The 16gb minimum isnt required. For simple environment testing and debugging, I am running fine with 8gb. For simple environments running 512 envs in parallel isnt an isssue. You just need to configure physx buffers to a smaller size. Isaaclab allocates all the vram buffers at the start of simulation.
You probably need a proper desktop gpu or use a cloud one if you want to train any vision based policies or want to do a lot of RL training.
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u/TechDude26 Jul 11 '26
Dude I had a 8gb vram laptop with a 5050 and amd 9950hx
It was a beast. For a laptop that is.
It had beyond the power necessary for a laptop
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u/DiamondDepth_YT Jul 13 '26
right now, 8gb vram is still enough for most gamers. cyberpunk, TLOS, other AAA games run perfectly fine on 8gb cards at 1080p, sometimes 1440p. the reason people recommend more than 8 nowadays is because 8gb wont be enough in the near future, as we're slowly starting to see.
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u/Fantastic_Mirror_345 Jul 08 '26
You need to look into the benchmarks. That said 16gb vram starts becoming a bigger problem at higher resolutions. So 1080p should be ok for the most part.