In this episode of The Full Nerd, Brad Chacos, Adam Patrick Murray, and special guest Brad Shoemaker of Nextlander and Brad & Will Made A Tech Podcast (if you love Full Nerd, you’d love BWMATP too!) dig deep into the controversies swirling around PC gaming this week.

First, we kick things off with a discussion around whether 8GB of graphics card VRAM is enough these days, after Sony’s disastrous Last of Us PC port gobbled that (and more) even at 1080p resolution. Other games like Hogwarts Legacy and Resident Evil 4 Remake also suffered on 8GB GPUs recently. Are they outliers, or should we expect this to be the norm now that next-gen consoles with 16GB of (shared) RAM are the development focus for many studios?

Or could it just be another bad PC port like Forspoken and a swath of others? These terribad cross-platform performers land in our crosshairs next, as that topic’s deeply intertwined with the 8GB conversation.

Next, that upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 RT Overdrive mode with full path tracing looks absolutely sick.

Finally, we wrap things up by answering the nerdiest questions poised by the live audience and Full Nerd Discord members, then teasing the live PC build we’ll be doing with Brad Shoemaker on April 13.

You can witness it all in the video embedded above. You can also watch The Full Nerd episode 251 on YouTube (subscribe to the channel while you’re there!).

If you prefer audio alone, you can subscribe to The Full Nerd in iTunes (please leave a review if you enjoy the show). We’re also on Pocket Casts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or you can point your favorite podcast-savvy RSS reader to: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/IDG8935300959

If you want to wear your geekiness on your sleeve, check out our Full Nerd merch!

Have a PC or gaming-related question? Email [email protected] and we’ll try to answer it in the next episode. You can also join the PC-related discussions and ask us questions on The Full Nerd’s Discord server. Finally, be sure to follow PCWorld on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitch to watch future episodes live and pick our brains in real time! 

Author: Brad Chacos, Executive editor

Brad Chacos spends his days digging through desktop PCs and tweeting too much. He specializes in graphics cards and gaming, but covers everything from security to Windows tips and all manner of PC hardware.

Recent stories by Brad Chacos:

Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Super review: The 4K graphics card you wantNew Arc drivers provide huge DX11 performance boost for Intel GPUsAudio Radar gives hearing impaired gamers a fair shot