superchunk said:
Slimebeast said:
superchunk said:
Because they are developers and will ask for what best to them. More memory allows them to focus less on optimization and overall development time. i.e. it reduces their costs to manufacture their products.
However, console manufacturers will do what is going to provide a base that will meet the needs for the next 5 years plus keep cost of manufacture and heat displacement down. 4GB of shared RAM on a heavily optimized device now and 5 years from now is easily equal to a 512MB device over the last 6 years when everyone has 4GB/1GB in their PCs.
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The reason why most PC games have recommended specs of 4GM RAM and 1GB video RAM is because we are at the end of a generation.
RAM was the biggest shortage this gen. Many developers complained about those 512mb, especially PS3's 256+256mb.
4GB is only 8 times 512MB and since next gen GPUs will be around 8 times faster you can see that 4GB is the absolute minimum and with 4GB we will have the same situation next gen where developers complain about running out of memory. 8GB is much prefered, especially as memory is dirty cheap this time around unlike last gen when memory was comparatively expensive. And memory doesn't draw much power or generate heat.
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Even games that are clearly 'next-gen' like Battlefield 3 and others have recommended specs of 4GB RAM and between 1 and 2GB of video RAM.... AND that game when optimized with some stuff reduced runs on PS360's 512MB shared. It would be running on high everything on a optimized set of 3GB shared RAM.
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BF3 is not next gen. BF3 doesn't look significantly better than Bad Company 2 and it's clearly designed with consoles in mind. Only minor X11 effects are on the PC version of BF3 but the main assets are the same between PC and console versions, such as character models, amount of polygons, base textures, mipmaps.
In a couple of years you will see Frostbite 3 engine that will be truly designed for next gen consoles and the PC versions of Frostbite 3 games will have 16GB recommended system RAM and 4 GB video ram.
