Except you don't need that much pre-loading on the RAM. Especially in games that aren't linear, caching to the RAM isn't the best option. The CPU still has to shift through the 8gb worth of info to load what it needs, and that in itself is inefficient.

What are these guys complaining about again? Let me know when they actually make a decent game. And not just survive on pretty graphics.

Paging is a cludge that you turn to when you have no other choice, it introduces overhead in terms of predicting what data should be loaded and unloaded and can cause stutter if the data isn't loaded before it needs to be used. It is alwayse better to have everything possible already loaded into RAM. loading from the HDD is slow as shit and you want to do that as little as possible. The CPU doesn't have to "shift through the 8gb worth of info" either that is not how it works. There is a reason it's called Random Access Memory and that is because you can load or right to any part of the memory at the same speed regardless of how it is ordered. So loading 1MB of data is the same speed if it is the only 1MB of data stored in RAM or if all 8GB is full and the 1MB of data is scattered across the memory cells in a random order. Unlike a HDD or a optical disc which has a physical read head that has to move to where each peice of data is in order.

Did you people even bother to read the OP? It sounds like you are just reacting to the title and the name Crytek rather than what was actually said...

There is something called "latency". You cannot instantly call everything from the RAM, it still takes time to do the request.

I did unlike the rest of the condescending haters ... (To be fair that factor is quite small in comparison to other issues.)

this was kinda my first reaction after reading the OP and then i scroll down a few comments and see that someone took the words right out of my mouth! Touche (: 

Latency has nothing to do with how full the RAM is. Again the point of RAm is that the latency is the same regardless of how the memory is ordered. The latency of a memory access will alwayse be roughly the same.

Unless you are talking about badwidth, which I guess given your "instantly call everything from the RAM" comment you are actually referring too. Of course reading 5GB of data from memory will take longer than reading 5MB. That is decided by memory bandwidth which for the PS4 for example is 176 GB/s which means each second you could read all 8GB of RAM 22 times every second. Of course having more data stored in RAM at once doesn't actually mean you have to use more bandwidth, it's actually the opposite. If you are using paging and swapping stuff into and out of memory constantly that consumes bandwidth. If however you fill all available RAM with data you don't have to swap out as much because more is pre-loaded. And for example for each room in a game if you only keep the lets say 1GB of textures and models etc you need in memory and then for the next frame you unload the lets say 100MB of textures you don't need and load in 200MB of new assets you need that takes extra time and bandwidth that you could be using for other things like say frame buffer effects, however if you pre load all 5GB (both consoles reserve around 3GB for the system so games only get around 5) of assets for the entire building you then don't have to waste bandwidth loading and unloading assets each time you move to a new room. And boom you have made your game more optimised by eliminating redundant asset loading and filled up all available RAM.

I dont see how having 8 GB could ever be a bottleneck. You have the OS which uses 2 GB or so so you really only have 6 GB to work with which should be PLENTY. The only games on PC (which have far better textures and larger maps than anything on consoles) that use more than 2 GB are games like Skyrim that have been HEAVILY modified and run at resolutions greater than 1080p. Since console games run at ~1080p or less 2 GB for video memory should be more than enough. That leaves 4 GB for the code which should be more than sufficient since on my PC even running the OS I never need more than 4 GB total.

There is NO reason why the amount of ram would be a bottleneck. The cards on the consoles are far too weak to push anything higher than 1080p (if that much even) and lack the grunt needed to utilize anything more than 2 GB or so.

Actually I could see why 8GB could become a bottleneck ...