4G would be useless.

The only reason 4Gb is any good on PCs is that first Vista use a lot of memory, second you can run several applications at the same time and each can use up to 2Gb of ram...

OS on Consoles are not memory hungry like Vista and you're not going to run 2 games at the same time..

And the maximum amount of memory a single application can use on 32 bits processors is 2Gb...

So it won't be above 2Gb for the main memory.

You have to add the graphics card memory to that though.

But all in all my guess is it's going to be 2Gb total..

With N64 you could add the Expansion Pak for 4MB extra RAM... totalling 8MB

Although as that was part way through the generation I suppose it still fits your theory.

Tech Changes

The point of my thread was to see what people think future consoles will contain in terms of ram. Technology created tomorrow won't be the same as the kind we have today, and we won't know how it works until it's already made. The next set of consoles mite be using up alot more RAM than we can think of, we don't know. Could you imagine everything the ps3 has right now 5 years back??? Could you have imagine that a console would be released with a processor as strong as the Cell, and use an optical storage media with a maximum size of 100GB on a single disc in 2008??? [Both Hitachi and Pioneer have made 4layer BD's that can run on current BD players with nothing but a single firmware update needed... that includes the ps3.]

Darn... I wonder if I can change it right now....

Can somebody please explain to me what does it mean to "have ray tracing capabilities"? I know quite well what ray tracing is, hence the question. And, for one thing, why would we need or want to have "ray tracing capabilities" in a game console? That is, assuming they are something else than being able to produce ray traced renderings, which requires no extra capability of the computer/console whatsoever.

perhaps his version is just fancy talk for "really big stuff"..... [no clue what am talking about]

My guess is 3 GB's, mainly to be different and i remember hearing somewhere that 4gb wasnt much better than 3gb. It loses efficiency after 3gb...

Feel free to tell me how wrong i am and how incredibly ignorant i sound...

Lol. Awesome Post dude. And 3GB doesn't sound half bad.

It all depends on which graphical paradigm succeeds, and the reduction in cost of the tech. If the Wii does as well as some people are predicting it will, I think sony and MS will go with the 'a little bit better graphics + streamlined controls' method that made it so successful. Then they don't need ridiculous graphics, so 2 gigs of ram would be totally fine. Of course, by then the technology might be so cheap that there is no good reason to have less than that.

If the PS3 is actually the winner this generation, then I predict the PS4 is going to have, like, 16 gigs of Ram, and cost >1000$ american.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_tracing_(graphics)

At this point, it's impossible to render in real-time because current computers aren't powerful enough. It may be possible in 4-5 years, but I personally doubt the next-gen consoles will have the capability to do it. Maybe the next-next-gen though.