Shadow of The Tomb Raider
1080p Highest In-Game Settings SMAA 4X
We have included a couple more games in this review than normal, to really get a hands-on the 4GB versus 8GB differences. We included Shadow of the Tomb Raider. We are running the game at the highest in-game settings. We have manually turned on all the quality options to the highest values. In this test at 1080p we are also running SMAA 4X. SMAA 4X is the hardest shader-based AA mode, it is very graphically intensive and does make the game unplayable.
As you can see, performance is unplayable with SMAA 4X. However, at these settings, there is a performance difference with 8GB on the Radeon RX 5500 XT. The 8GB Radeon RX 5500 XT is 11% faster than the 4GB Radeon RX 5500 XT. It seems this game does like the more VRAM. However, even though 8GB is faster, it isn’t fast enough to make this setting playable. So, let’s go down to SMAA 2TX below and see what happens.
1080p Highest In-Game Settings SMAA 2TX
In the graph above we are keeping at 1080p with the highest in-game settings but we have moved down to SMAA 2TX AA which is much easier on performance. The game is now at playable levels on these video cards.
It is clear, even with SMAA 2TX this game really likes more VRAM as the 8GB Radeon RX 5500 XT is 11% faster than the 4GB Radeon RX 5500 XT. That brings performance from 54FPS up to the 60FPS mark improving the gameplay experience. This is a great example of a game that therefore benefits in the gameplay experience of 8GB.
1440p Highest In-Game Settings SMAA 2TX
We also increased the resolution to 1440p to see what would happen with SMAA 2TX. We still see a performance increase, this time 18% with the 8GB Radeon RX 5500 XT over the 4GB Radeon RX 5500 XT. This kind of difference can be enough between playable and not playable.