It’s been a tough few months for video games. With the latest AAA titles consuming more and more VRAM, it’s great to come across Baldur’s Gate 3. Surprisingly, the final title consumes no more than 8GB of VRAM, even in 4K! After Hogwarts Legacy, Star Wars Jedi Survivor and Last of Us, it’s a welcome change.
Baldur’s Gate 3: it runs great with 8GB of VRAM!
If your graphics card only has 8GB of VRAM, you can start breathing a sigh of relief. Yes, Baldur’s Gate 3 turns out to be very light on memory consumption. According to TechpowerUp, the title consumes just 7.7 GB in UHD with the VulkanAPI, which is more demanding than DirectX 11. Using Microsoft’sAPI, the game consumes just 6.3GB in UHD.
As far as framerate is concerned, the situation is far from catastrophic, since the vast majority of cards can run the game in 1080p, with full details. Where it gets complicated is for the smaller RTX 3050 and RX 6500 XT, especially under DirectX 11. AMD’s little card gets away with an average of 33 FPS, compared with 46.1 FPS under Vulkan. Incidentally, if you have an AMD card, enabling Vulkan can only be beneficial.
Finally, TechpowerUp’s test shows that if you want to reach 60 fps, you’ll need at least :
- 1080p: RTX 3060 12 GB (DX11) – RX 6600 (Vulkan)
- 1440p: RX 5700 XT (DX11) – RTX 4060 (Vulkan)
- 2160p: RX 6800 (Vulkan and DX11)
If not, don’t hesitate to adjust your graphics settings downwards.
TechpowerUp’s performance test is here!