| disolitude said: @ Aby_da_wolf and Portable_Toe While I do wish microsoft would add as much ram as possible in to the 360 sequel...I'll totally pay extra 40 bucks for a console with 8 gigs of ram vs 2 (but other people may not). However 6 months ago I had some bottleneck issues with my PC when I slapped dual GTX 580s in a an AM2+ architecture. I did some very thorough benchmarking to find it and noticed that lack of system ram for very high end PC games isn't a bottleneck. Memory controller and FSB on the other hand were... Believe me, I'd love for one of these console manufacturers to come out with a 1000 dollar console. SSD, dual GPUs, 8 gigs of PC3-17000 ram, dual Xeon CPUs :)... But since this is real world, I don't see my dream coming true. |
I totally believe you about current RAM requirements, but this is because game devs still develop for 32bit architectures, with 4GB total RAM limits of which 3.5GB at most, or lower, available in user space. MS being very late to provide a decent 64bit version of Windows kept SW a lot behind HW true possibilities, but this won't last forever, when users will start phasing out XP, 32bit user base will start becoming less relevant, and in 2014 MS extended support for XP will end, so, if it won't have happened before, 64bit will become the majority, then. 2014 will be very early in the life of next gen consoles, so, while perfectly fine for Nintendo, that relies the most on 1st party exclusives, for MS and Sony, that thrive on huge 3rd party multiplats too, being avaricious on RAM could be quite short sighted and risky. 4GB RAM instead of 2GB won't add more than $5 to XB720 production cost, by 2013, so it's worth to play safe. I don't even suggest 8GB, although, like you, I'd like it too, but I'm quite sure that once devs assume 8GB will have become standard on PCs, 4GB will become the true safe minimum for consoles. Not now, but in the near future.
