VRAM — video memory — is what your graphics card uses to store textures, lighting data, shadows, reflections, and all the other visual assets that make your PC games look the way they should. That data is then processed by the GPU in real time to render each frame you see on your monitor. If your GPU's VRAM is too small, it has to start swapping that data in and out of slower system memory — your RAM and SSD — and that's when you get lag, weird and blurry textures, hitching cutscenes, or games refuses to launch entirely. That's why VRAM matters more than most people think.

The amount of VRAM you need will depend on the games you play, and the resolution you're targeting — and the answer isn't always "as much as you can afford." If you're playing esports titles like "Valorant," "CS2," "Fortnite," or even "Warzone," you won't need much. Right now, the safe floor for those games at 1080p resolution is 8 GB of VRAM — most players are running low setting presets anyway to boost frame rates and reduce input lag.

Most modern singleplayer games will chew right through those 8 GB even at 1080p with high settings. If you don't want to trade graphics quality for fps or just want to keep your GPU for longer, you'll need at least 12-16 GB of VRAM. You don't even need to be maxing out every setting out to hit the VRAM wall, especially not today. Once you understand how games use VRAM — and how to check what your system needs — it gets a lot easier to buy smart.