Global Hardware July 4-10 - PS5 Sales Top 10 Million

[Alby_da_Wolf]

curl-6 said:

Alby_da_Wolf said:

Agree that graphics ar e scalable and CPU is just a little downclocked, the critically crippled part is RAM size, 10GB instead of 16GB is a >30% shrink, and in the mid and long term, with 16GB already cheaper enough per GB than 8GB to make a 16GB PC just a few euros more expensive than a 8GB one and so becoming the norm, multiplats will become less and less comfortable with less than 16GB RAM. Yes, you could cut a couple GB considering consoles lightweight OS and less services and additional SW running than on PC, you could cut another two GB limiting max RAM used by the less powerful GPU, but in a 16GB+ PC world, 12GB becomes the bare minimum for modern consoles, cutting another two GB wasn't a brilliant move, for a really puny cost reduction MS took a great risk of making devs start having problems too soon. And potential buyers could already be predicting the problem now.

You don't need as much RAM once you dial down the graphics settings. In a 1080p game you don't really need 4K textures for example, so you can save a bunch of memory there.

Once devs start considering 16GB the norm, they also start making less efforts to fit games in lower RAM size. Sure, scaling down graphics you save a lot of memory, and initially 10GB won't be a problem, actually for cross-gen games that must run on old gen too, with its 8GB, they will never be a problem, but they could become later for current gen-only games and even worse for current and next gen cross-gen games. 12GB is 50% larger than last gen RAM, but 10GB is just 25% larger. With better CPU and GPU even just those additional 2GB can make us feel the generation leap at the beginning of this gen, and graphics scalability will keep problems away from graphics on top end models too until the end of this gen life, but later it could arrive the moment when having to run in the base model's 10GB will force to underuse the CPU, as CPU usage scales down much less downscaling graphics, particularly levels size and its logic, not graphic detail, so game world management related to it, and gameplay don't scale down at all, neither do physics, except particle systems, that are managed by the GPU, anyway, as the CPU isn't parallel enough to do it efficiently and fast.
Anyhow, large game worlds with lots of details not limited to graphics, but also regarding items interactivity, will eventually become the worst enemy of systems with smaller main RAM, and most probably only exclusives will manage to keep the problem away for the whole gen.

@DonFerrari This is also at least a partial answer to your point, I totally agree that scalability will keep graphics out of troubles, the problem will be the RAM needed by the CPU for all the things that can't be scaled down.

Last edited by Alby_da_Wolf - on 31 July 2021