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justinian on 13 September 2012
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JazzB1987 said:
radishhead said:
How come PCs require so much more RAM than consoles?


Consoles directly access the games and the games are made so the hardware can directly access it.   Pc's have windows the OS is always turned on not like on consoles  and therefore uses ram and PC ressources.  The games also cant directly communicate with the hardware  they need  for example DirectX DirectSound etc...  all this needs ressources and thats one of the reasons why your Pc has to be better than your console to play the same games with same graphics.

The other reason is because of 100 different geforce or amd cards etc the games cant use the graphics cards etc. whole power because programming all software to use the maximum of every gpu, cpu etc. out there  costs to much money and time. You cannot optimize games on PC  like you can on a console.

This makes a lot of sense to me. PC game developers do have to take into account the numerous types of processors, graphics cards - maybe even different versions of Windows and direct x - out there to get the widest market, while a console only has one set spec to get the ultimate performance.

To me this also explains why the large majority of  PC games are not miles ahead of the current crop of HD console games in terms of how a games looks.

I have played Crysis, Battlefield 3 and Metro 2033 maxed out on an  intel 6 core, AMD 6990,  8GB DDR3 RAM, Win7 64 PC and expected far better than what can be achieved on a 512MB PS3/x360. Yes they are better looking on the PC but not near the margin I expected running these games on a PC above the games's  recommended hardware spec.

What I am saying simply is that I am not really impressed with what a top spec PC is able to achieve above a HD console. Obviously this my opinion, others may think different.

So from that I believe a 2GB total memory console will do amazing things compared a current HD 512 total RAM console.

But I still can't help but to think ahead regarding the competion.

I am a big nintendo fan and I will be honest here. I do not want a similar situation next gen were the wii is this gen. An underpowered console ignored by developers who want their triple A titles to look pretty - or at least tolerable. To some ninty fans this doesn't matter but it does to me.

Will a PS4 with 3 or 4GB total RAM be far superior? I don't know, I am not that knowledegable in such things but I guess it will.

I happy with the processor, graphics, pad and everything else the wii u has keepng cost in mind.

I will keep the faith that the wii u's RAM is enough to keep it close in terms of power to the yet to be revealed competition.