Jeff, I've heard everything from as low as 600 megs up to 1.25 gigs memory usage with nothing else running. The point is that Win7 is one HELL of an operating system (and this is coming from a guy who primarily works under OS X at home) and isn't the memory whore that Vista (and to an extent, XP) was during its day. In 2010, 1 gig for the OS is completely acceptable considering the amount of RAM the average computer comes with.
Then again, as someone else said, RAM doesn't really matter and they're *partially* right. RAM is a great (and highspeed) overload buffer that can make or break a game. Back on topic, I think the fact that the PS3 has stupid-slow video RAM and only 256 megs of it is the real deal-breaker, not "normal" RAM. Stream all you want but when a PC game can use a gig of VIDEO RAM (plus whatever 4+ gigs that machine would probably have), it doesn't need streaming or any of those necessary features (though streaming is still available on any U3-powered game, I believe).
In short, Crysis beat the shit out of anything the PS3 or 360 will EVER produce.
Crysis 2 will make them look like a fucking ATM machine in comparison.
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