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curl-6 on 16 April 2013
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fillet said:
curl-6 said:
fillet said:
curl-6 said:
fillet said:

Crikey you're determined to prove me wrong but I'm afraid this is not the case.

Textures still need to pass through the system RAM and be stored there, they don't just jump from the hard drive/media to the video RAM. They get decompressed to the video RAM and that's why so much video RAM is needed for a scene for example, one reason anyway.

Anything that is in video RAM has been in system RAM at some point.

Even game worlds that are streamed have to pass through system RAM to be processed.

But at any one time the PS3 can have around 200MB worth of system data and 256MB of video data in memory.


As already explained, that 256MB of video data cannot hold a "game world", it's only for rendering the scene.

I think we've reached full circle here :p

The GPU renders the scene, VRAM stores textures and such, which are part of the game world too. Switch of the PS3's VRAM and your game just got a hell of lot less... well, video. ;)


I haven't got the motivation to continue this. It's up to you what you want to believe but it doesn't make it true.

I'll leave it at this...

The memory setup in the PS3 has been a problem for developers with certain types of games (open world specifically). There is a consensus that this is because the 512MB total RAM available is divided between 256MB for system and 256MB for video as opposed to a shared pool for the Xbox 360.

By your logic, that would mean that this divide isn't a problem at all.

Just to be clear to anyone else who isn't reading the context here of previous posts (so I don't get flamed for making the comparison). This is not about saying the Xbox 360 is better, this is about compring the 88MB of available system RAM in the Wii to the 200MB available on the PS3.

If you want to say otherwise, curl-6 then it's up to show that video RAM can be used as system RAM on the PS3.

The divide is an issue, but open worlds don't just require system RAM, they require VRAM as well, otherwise your world will exist as black screen.

It doesn't make sense to discount the PS3's VRAM  when it's essential to containing much of the data a game world requires. Part of the 360 and Wii's RAM is taken up by video assets as well. Games don't just need to be run, they need to be displayed. What good is a complex world running on a blank screen?