Today the extra VRAM gets you a degree of futureproofing.
Theoretically the extra VRAM on a 3Dfx Voodoo did that as well. But in reality not really. 3D accelerators were blossoming so quickly that old cards were obsoleted, fast.
Probably even more relevantly, games didn't have as many tweakable graphics options. Today's games are multiplatform and built to run on a wide variety of spec'd devices, from PS4/XBOne era hardware up to superpowered gaming PCs. If I've got an older card with lots of memory running a newer game I can keep everything else at medium and bump texture quality to high. Games in 1997 generally weren't really built quite that flexibly.
Theoretically the extra VRAM on a 3Dfx Voodoo did that as well. But in reality not really. 3D accelerators were blossoming so quickly that old cards were obsoleted, fast.
Probably even more relevantly, games didn't have as many tweakable graphics options. Today's games are multiplatform and built to run on a wide variety of spec'd devices, from PS4/XBOne era hardware up to superpowered gaming PCs. If I've got an older card with lots of memory running a newer game I can keep everything else at medium and bump texture quality to high. Games in 1997 generally weren't really built quite that flexibly.