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Potable_Toe on 15 November 2011
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disolitude said:
Potable_Toe said:
disolitude said:
This is prolly not true but what's with people going crazy saying you need more than 2 gigs of ram? You guys should run hardware monitor while playing games on PC more often. With no windows running on the console 2 gigs is plenty for next Gen. If they have Another 1.5 gigs of video ram and 2 gigs of system ram they are set. I dont use up 4 gigs of ram when gaming on 3 screens with windows eating 500 mega of ram on its own...

It may be alright now, and even 1-2 years from now but if you think how far games are being pushed now and then think how far they will be in 5-6 years time after the system would be approaching the usual halfway mark of its generation it will, once again, be a big bottleneck let alone towards the end of the generation. Personally I would like to see an 'ultra-beast' console but realisticly speaking around 4gb of RAM should be their minimum target, not two... most laptops these day have more than 2gb of RAM. Ofcourse this is likely inaccurate so in the end this may well be moot but the point still stands.

First of all, laptops, computers and such are not a good comparison for system ram needed for gaming as operating systems, browser tabs and other thing things take up a good chunk of system ram by themselves before the game even boots up...Below is a screenshot of my system ram usage as I am replying to this. I am not gaming and half of my ram is taken up...

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-OmR9Jz-kc7E/TsH4W6gBvCI/AAAAAAAAAgI/hEeWqXreFI0/s567/system%252520ram.jpg

Secondly, I think people will have to lower their next gen expectations. Microsoft and Sony next gen consoles are not going to pack a dual GTX 580 or 6990 video cards due to cost, power consumption and heat. Best we can hope for is something along the lines of gtx560Ti or 6950 like performance brought down to a 28 nm chip which consumes a maximum of 120W by itself.  So realistically for next gen people need to expect a slight bump in detail along with 1080p gaming at 60 frames per second and true 720p per eye 3D gaming @ 30 fps as a best case scenario. HD TV's that 99% of the people who play consoles opwn do not support higher settings than that so there is no point for them to deliver something better than that.

Lastly, next gen games will eat up video ram more than they eat up system ram. Something like Metro 2033 on 3 monitors maxed out already needs more video ram than system ram. Microsoft will be smart to give their video card as much ram as sytem ram. If people are expecting Avatar like graphics, be prepared for 2GB of video RAM to be used needed at least. System ram however really doesn't need to be much higher than 2 GB if there is dedicated video memory...assuming Xbox 720 doesn't run on windows vista :)


I'd like to point out that I am aware that we wont be seeing top of the range GPUs, let alone 2, because of heat, power consumption and cost. and my comment about wanting an 'ultra-beast' console was mostly made in jest knowing full well not to expect anything near the specs of any truely powerful PC and nor does a console need that much power. Nor do I expect a resolution jump from 1920X1080 because not many people would be able to take advantage of that rendering it mostly useless, it will be 2 or 3 generations (10-15 years) before that happens I would say. It just seems to me that 2GB total memory is a little low.

 

EDITED out useless mumbling.