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sc94597 on 15 November 2023
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Pemalite said:

1. Considering how low-performing an RTX 2050 is, it would likely be a waste having more than 4GB of memory, it's not pushing high-end 1440P/4k visuals, not with only a paltry 112GB/s of memory bandwidth anyway...

Which is literally 1/3rd the speed of an RTX 2060 desktop part which already is a struggle at  1440P in most modern titles.

2. That is blatantly false.

The Switch 2 will not allocate RAM for any specific uses. That is 100% up to the developer, always has been, regardless of console platform.

Keep in mind that Console vs PC OS bloat is pretty much equal these days.

The Xbox One/Playstation 4/Xbox Series X/Playstation 5 ALL allocate at-least 2.5GB of Ram OR MORE for the OS, which is actually a little more than Windows. - Obviously you want more than just 2.5GB of Ram to make any of these devices usable so you can run more than just the OS.

It's not 2001 anymore.

3. Look. Developers work within the confines of the hardware.

There are GPU tasks which are not very VRAM heavy, which will simply be emphasized more in a VRAM limited environment.

4. Plus the whole stream-from-SSD thing with compression/decompression has made big improvements in terms of efficient memory utilization.
PC also tends to stream data from disk to system memory and/or video memory (Sometimes both!), which is dynamically optimized by the system drivers for maximum utilization with minimal developer interference.

5. People need to stop over-hyping the Switch 2 to be something it's not.

It's not high-end hardware, never was, never will be... And simply cannot be in a mobile device.

1 We don't even need to discuss 1440p/4k, which I didn't bring up and don't expect the Switch 2 to be able to achieve natively in demanding titles. Just being able to run modern games at 1080p is starting to be a limit for 4GB GPU's. Here is what Cyberpunk 2077 uses at the settings in the Digital Foundry video (Medium, DLSS Quality, 1080p.) Roughly 4.5 GB of GPU memory and 3 GB of system ram. 

There have been many other examples: Hogwarts Legacy, The Last of Us Part 1, etc. released this year. 

2. You said "the Switch 2 will not allocate RAM for any specific uses" and then "The Xbox One/Playstation 4/Xbox Series X/Playstation 5 ALL allocate at-least 2.5GB of Ram OR MORE for the OS."

Anyway, I said "be able to allocate", not that it is some system-determined reservation. After you account for the OS's minimum reservation, CPU-workload demands for the game, etc. you should expect about 6-8 GB out of about 12-16GB to be available. 

Using the numbers we have here for example, assuming at least 2.5GB for the OS (which I still think is an overestimate for Nintendo's feature sparse systems), ~3GB for CPU-based game-related tasks; 12GB - 2.5GB - 3GB = 6.5GB left unallocated.

3. I mean that is even more reason why alleviating a VRAM bottleneck could lead to performance gains.

4. There has been a lot of efforts to streamline the pipelines to work around the memory-hierarchy, I don't disagree. But at least in the current PC gaming situation VRAM is a big issue, even for 1080p. 

5. Eh, when I said the neutered 2050 is an "underestimate" I wasn't thinking something crazy like the Switch 2 will be able to output at 1440p native 60fps or anything. I suppose I should've put the word "bit" before it. Basically I suspect we'll get more capacity to hit native 1080p low-medium settings with the Switch 2 than the defanged 2050 was able to in Digital Foundry's videos. That's not an unrealistic expectation for low-end hardware at the end of the year 2024. 

Last edited by sc94597 - on 15 November 2023