(assuming both GPUs have a similar price)
12 GB VRAM vs 16 GB VRAMI guess the important question, not answered here, is: Do any games exist, where 12 GB VRAM are not enough in 1080p or 1440p?
I know of Indiana Jones And The Great Circle in 1440p Full Ray Tracing (youtu.be/qPGDVh_cQb0?t=227 ("Worst 70 Series Ever, GeForce RTX 5070 Review"), but a 5060 Ti is not fast enough for that, even if the 16 GB VRAM are enough.
Ray-tracing, path-racing and energy efficiencyGenerally: In ray tracing, NVIDIA is approx. 20% more energy efficient and in the much more visually transformative path tracing, NVIDIA is approx. 50% more energy efficient[1].
From a quick search, in Cyberpunk 2077 in 1080p at the "Overdrive" preset/path tracing setting, the 5060 Ti renders at roughly 60 FPS.
[1]
QuoteSince RDNA4 is 50% behind NVIDIA RTX 40 and RTX 50 series in path tracing power efficiency / FPS per Watt¹ (both, RTX 40 and 50 series, have the same power efficiency -- unfortunately RTX 50 series didn't improve in power efficiency), AMD would need to improve their path tracing FPS/Watt performance by at least like 3 times in the PS6 APU.
¹ pcgameshardware.de/Geforce-RTX-4090-Grafikkarte-279170/Tests/-1489086/4/
Cyberpunk 2077 "Overdrive" preset at 4K (4K, so that the test is GPU-bound):
Geforce RTX 5070 Ti (300 Watt TDP): 25.6 FPS (0.0853 FPS/Watt)
Radeon RX 9070 XT (304 Watt TDP): 16.7 FPS (0.0549 FPS/Watt)
Radeon RX 7900 XTX (355 Watt TDP): 14.0 FPS (0.0394 FPS/Watt)
0.0853 / 0.0549 = 1.55 times -> The 5070 Ti is 55% more power efficient in path racing than the 9070 XT / RDNA4.
AI / LLMs5060 Ti 16 GB: 16 GB VRAM @ 448 GB/s.
9070 GRE: 12 GB VRAM @ 432 GB/s.
The additional 4 GB are very handy for offloading LLM models to the GPU's much faster VRAM than the PC's much slower system RAM.