AMD hides its claim that 4GB of VRAM is ‘not enough’ just as it launches a 4GB GPU – The Verge

AMD claimed back in 2020 that 4GB of VRAM was “insufficient” for modern PC games and could result in error messages, warning limits, lower framerates, and even gameplay stutter or pop-in issues. Today, AMD is launching the $199 RX 6500 XT with… 4GB of VRAM, and the blog post featuring AMD’s original claims has mysteriously disappeared.

KitGuru reports that AMD has hidden the blog post today, as it was previously accessible yesterday, and a Google cached view version from January 16th has the post in full. “AMD is leading the industry at providing gamers with high VRAM graphics solutions across the entire product offering,” said Adit Bhutani, a Radeon marketing specialist for AMD, in the blog post from 2020. “Competitive products at a similar entry level price-point are offering up to a maximum of 4GB of VRAM, which is evidently not enough for todays games.”

After this article was published, the blog post suddenly reappeared. AMD has not responded to requests for comment.

At the time, AMD was promoting its own GPUs for 1080p gaming that included 6GB or 8GB of VRAM. The company performed a series of tests showing how much better an 8GB model of its RX 5500 XT was compared to a measly 4GB model. It looks like this blog post magically disappeared just as AMD is about to launch a new 4GB GPU today. Mysterious.

The new entry-level RX 6500 XT is supposedly priced at $199 and is available to purchase today (if you’re lucky). AMD’s marketing for this new GPU included a media roundtable earlier this month, where Radeon vice president Laura Smith claimed “even with the four gigs of frame buffer, that’s a really nice frame buffer size for the majority of triple-A games.” Awkward.

Now, this could all be a totally innocent mistake or the most coincidental technical glitch we’ve ever seen, so we reached out to AMD to comment on the missing blog post. The company hasn’t responded, but it is back on the site.

Update January 19th, 12:15PM ET: Updated to reflect that the missing forum post has been conveniently restored.