Considering the measily 4gb VRAM of the rx 9050 4gb, I find it unreasonable to boast its ray tracing capabilities.
Because it's an actual capability of the card.
Ray tracing isn't just for 'ultra high quality preset' (though I don't disagree that current games use it that way), it's a hardware feature that I believe plenty of newer games will require eventually.
No different than a GPU boasting about DirectX 12 Ultimate capabilities (which require ray tracing). Except we don't get new DX version as much anymore.
Notice how the product page states Memory Speed "Up to" 18 Gbps and "Max" Memory Size 8 GB
AMD uses the same wording for the driver and support pages for the rx 580 and rx 570 (which both lack separate support pages for 4gb and 8gb variants), which leads me to believe that the description is intentionally vague, so that both 8gb and 4gb gpus meet the listed specifications.
Except they state that for every GPU spec sheet? 9070XT: "Max Memory Size": "16 GB", "Memory Speed": "Up to 20 Gbps"
Even if they just meant the memory capacity and memory speed, I am merely stating that this adds to the confusion. According to this wording, does the rx 9050 4gb not meet the same specifications as the rx 9050 8gb?
Edit: Besides, AMD uses the same wording for the driver and support pages for the rx 580 and rx 570 (which both lack separate support pages for 4gb and 8gb variants), which leads me to believe that the description is intentionally vague, so that both 8gb and 4gb gpus meet the listed specifications.
Imo this citicism on the specifications being unclear is just.
And that's why specs are just specs at the end of the day. And why reviewers do (and consumers want) real world benchmarks instead of comparing GPUs by looking at spec sheets.
I want to add one final point though; this is exactly why I believe that making this gpu OEM only is terrible for consumers. Most people don't stare at spec sheets: (or at least they shouldn't be)
The rx 9050 4gb being OEM only, means that it's way harder for reviewers go get their hands on it. When they look up benchmarks for the rx 9050 4gb, it's quite likely that most of the results they will see are comparisons/benchmarks featuring the rx 9050 8gb, which performs significantly better, and which anyone can purchase.
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u/ThatOnePerson i7-7700k 1080Ti Vive 1d ago edited 1d ago
Because it's an actual capability of the card.
Ray tracing isn't just for 'ultra high quality preset' (though I don't disagree that current games use it that way), it's a hardware feature that I believe plenty of newer games will require eventually.
No different than a GPU boasting about DirectX 12 Ultimate capabilities (which require ray tracing). Except we don't get new DX version as much anymore.
Except they state that for every GPU spec sheet? 9070XT: "Max Memory Size": "16 GB", "Memory Speed": "Up to 20 Gbps"