AMD Radeon RX 9050 4GB Tested – Is it terrible?
Hardware Unboxed calls AMD’s Radeon RX 9050 4GB its “dodgiest GPU ever”
Hardware Unboxed has acquired AMD’s OEM-exclusive Radeon RX 9050 4GB graphics card. Why? They wanted to put it through its paces and compare it with AMD’s 8GB RX 9050 model. Will both GPUs perform similarly, or will AMD’s VRAM downgrade significantly impact performance? Well, the answer is in Hardware Unboxed’s thumbnail: “it’s a scam”.
What’s wrong with AMD’s RX 9050 4GB?
AMD’s Radeon RX 9050 4GB isn’t just an RX 9050 8GB with lower-capacity GDDR6 VRAM chips. It has fewer VRAM chips, and that has a huge impact. Moving from 8GB to 4GB moves the GPU from a 128-bit memory bus to a 64-bit memory bus, halving the GPU’s available memory bandwidth. It also halves the GPU’s Infinity Cache size from 32GB to 16GB, further reducing available memory bandwidth.
Having just 4GB of VRAM is also a problem, as modern games can often use much more than that. For this reason, Hardware Unboxed’s tests are mostly limited to 1080p at low, medium, or minimum game quality settings.
Game performance
In 007 First Light at 1080p Low settings, AMD’s RX 9050 8GB GPU delivered 53% more performance than its 4GB counterpart. Clearly, this memory downgrade gives these two GPUs fundamentally different performance profiles. Far more benchmarks are available in Hardware Unboxed’s video, so please watch it.
(007 First Light Benchmarks from Hardware Unboxed)
In Forza Horizon 6 at 1080p Medium settings, the RX 9050 8GB was 47% faster than its 4GB counterpart. While both GPUs ran the game at over 60 FPS, the 8GB GPU model delivers a much smoother experience, and enough overhead to target higher graphical settings at 60+ FPS
(Forza Horizon 6 Benchmarks from Hardware Unboxed)
These two GPUs shouldn’t both be called Radeon RX 9050
With such different performance profiles, AMD’s 8GB and 4GB 9050 GPUs shouldn’t have the same name. Many would also argue that the 4GB RX 9050 shouldn’t exist. As an OEM-only product, its product name feels like a deliberate attempt to mislead consumers. Less informed consumers wouldn’t know the difference between a 4GB and an 8GB RX 9050. The problem is that the difference is vast. The RX 9050 8GB can be over 50% faster than its lower VRAM counterpart. That fact alone should justify a different name for the RX 9050 4GB. Perhaps RX 9040 is more suitable?
Thankfully, the RX 9050 4GB will not be widely available. It will only be available in some OEM PCs. Regardless, consumers should watch out for this GPU, as it isn’t anywhere close to an 8GB RX 9050 in performance terms. The RX 9050 4GB isn’t a good product, and it isn’t worth recommending.
Join the discussion on AMD’s 4GB 9050 on the OC3D Forums.
