TechSpot has tested the 4 GB Radeon RX 9050, the version sold only inside prebuilt PCs. Across 18 games at 1080p, the regular 8 GB RX 9050 came out 37% faster on average, even though both cards carry exactly the same name. Reviewer Steven Walton calls the cut-down card a scam and says it should have been named the RX 9040.
How the 4 GB card differs
AMD announced the RX 9050 in late July with a suggested price of 280 dollars. Both versions use the same Navi 44 chip with the same number of compute units. The difference is the memory: the 8 GB card has four GDDR6 chips on a 128-bit bus, the 4 GB card only two, which cuts the bus to 64 bits.
| RX 9050 4 GB | RX 9050 8 GB | |
|---|---|---|
| Where it is sold | prebuilt PCs only | retail in some countries |
| Stream processors | 1024 | 1024 |
| Boost clock | 2600 MHz | 2600 MHz |
| Memory | 4 GB GDDR6, 18 Gbps | 8 GB GDDR6, 18 Gbps |
| Bus | 64-bit | 128-bit |
| Bandwidth | 144 GB/s | 288 GB/s |
| Board power | 92 W | 92 W |
144 GB/s is exactly what the Radeon RX 6500 XT had, a budget card from 2022. AMD's site does give this version its own page with 4GB in brackets, but in a prebuilt's spec list that suffix is easy to lose, and a buyer who read RX 9050 reviews ends up with a very different card.
What the testing showed
TechSpot's test bench was the best case for this card: a Ryzen 7 9800X3D, PCI Express 5.0 and fast DDR5. A fast bus and fast system memory soften a VRAM shortage, so in a prebuilt with PCIe 3.0 and DDR4, which is where this card is actually sold, results will be worse. Even so, the gap was large.
- 007 First Light: 38 fps at the lowest preset the game offers. The 8 GB card is 53% faster, and Intel's Arc B570 manages 59 fps.
- Rainbow Six Siege X: 180 fps against 111, a 62% gap. The most surprising result, because the game does not even fill 4 GB and the card still drops back on its narrow bus.
- Battlefield 6: 98 fps against 71 at medium settings.
- Cyberpunk 2077: almost no difference, 80 fps against 74.
Across all 18 games at low settings the 10 GB Arc B570 averaged 112 fps and came out 5% ahead of the 8 GB RX 9050. The full RX 9050 beat the cut-down one by 37%, which makes the 4 GB card roughly a quarter slower.
How not to buy one by accident
TechSpot got its sample in a 750 dollar CyberPowerPC prebuilt, together with a Ryzen 5 5500, 8 GB of single-channel DDR4 and a 500 GB SSD. By the site's own sums, the same money builds a PC with a noticeably faster graphics card. If you are looking at a prebuilt with an RX 9050, check the amount of video memory in the specs. If it says 4 GB, or does not say at all, ask the seller or pick a different configuration.
Sources
TechSpot: AMD Radeon RX 9050 4GB, tested 22.09.2026. AMD: Radeon RX 9050 (4GB) product page. Screenshot from the official 007 First Light Steam gallery.
