The Last Of Us Part 1 PC Problems May Be Due To GPU VRAM

gameranx.com:

This new analysis of The Last Of Us Part 1 on PC seems to have identified the issue most gamers have found running it on the platform. It may surprise you to learn what exactly the issue is.

Let’s cut to the chase – The Last Of Us Part 1 uses a lot of the GPU’s VRAM. It uses as much as 12 GB VRAM on Ultra settings, and when it doesn’t get that much VRAM, it leads to performance issues.

This is inherent to how the game is programmed, and it isn’t clear if it’s something that Naughty Dog and Iron Galaxy can fix, or perhaps more importantly, should fix.

As explained by YouTube channel Hardware Unboxed, Steam surveys have indicated that most Steam users are still using older GPUs instead of upgrading. This does work fine for the majority of games that are on Steam, and is even fine for some newer games.

However, The Last Of Us Part 1 is not a port of the PlayStation 3 original. This was a remake built from the ground up for the capabilities of the PlayStation 5. That means Naughty Dog have pushed the game on PlayStation 5 hardware to the best that it can be on this generation of hardware. And so gamers who haven’t upgraded their PCs accordingly aren’t ready to run this game.

The tests Hardware Unboxed made with the game indicated that graphics cards that had 8GB of VRAM weren’t capable of running the game well at Ultra settings. While having 12 GB of VRAM seemed ideal, even graphics cards that have 10 GB of VRAM were still able to provide acceptable performance at Ultra settings, even if barely so.

At Ultra and with 8 GB of VRAM, The Last Of Us Part 1 demonstrated stutters, framerate issues, and other indications that would suggest that the game just wasn’t programmed well. But here’s the surprising solution.

According to