The RAM Crisis Is Getting So Bad, AMD Is Bringing Back 4GB Graphics Cards

It's nary concealed that representation prices person exploded successful the past year, and it's causing everything utilizing the worldly to spell up successful price. But now, seemingly to combat the rising prices and springiness radical an enactment they tin really afford, AMD has launched a caller graphics card, the Radeon RX 9050.

There are 2 versions of the RX 9050, an 8GB exemplary launching astatine $279, that you tin find connected store shelves soon, and a 4GB exemplary that'll beryllium exclusive to OEM partners, according to Tom's Hardware. That means that the 4GB exemplary volition lone beryllium disposable successful low-end pre-built gaming PCs. The 4GB mentation volition besides person a slower 64-bit representation bus, with representation bandwidth astatine conscionable 288GB/s. So, not lone is determination not a batch of memory, it'll beryllium rather dilatory too, which means much demanding PC games are going to struggle.

But it's apt that astir games are going to conflict connected either mentation of the graphics card. Both versions of the Radeon RX 9050 person the aforesaid GPU, with 1,024 shading cores dispersed retired crossed 16 Compute Units. For comparison's involvement the Radeon RX 9060 XT has 32 compute units, and the Steam Machine has 28. No substance what, this volition apt beryllium constricted to 1080p gaming, and adjacent past you're going to person to settee for mean settings.

I've spotted respective aftermarket variants of the Radeon RX 9050 from the likes of Powercolor, ASRock and Sapphire, but nary of them are disposable to acquisition rather yet. However, they'll apt marque their mode to Newegg oregon Amazon wrong a week. You tin bargain a pre-built gaming PC with the 4GB 9050, though. CyberpowerPC has a rig with the caller card, paired with a Ryzen 5 5500 processor and 8GB of DDR4 for $889 astatine Best Buy.

However dire that looks, the RAM situation astir apt isn't going to extremity immoderate clip soon. Even Valve spoke up earlier this month, claiming that the prices we spot connected store shelves is lagging down supplier prices by a fewer months. And it's not conscionable gaming PCs feeling the heat, the Xbox Series X is astir to get its 2nd terms summation successful little than a twelvemonth acknowledgment to AI information halfway demand, and Xbox CEO Asha Sharma expects things to get adjacent worse.

Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor astatine IGN and the PC components queen. You tin travel her @Jackiecobra