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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Emily Rogers: Switch has 4GB of ram in RETAIL units, leaked specs might not be farfetched

The development kit leak if correct had 4GB so it was only ever going to be up to 4GB and could have been less. 4GB seems absolutely ideal and was expected/hoped for.

There is absolutely no reason the Switch can't run the same games as xbone and ps4 because it has a lower resolution and much lower performance graphic hardware. That's why graphics card's capable of higher resolution and higher performance have more memory installed because they need it. I don't think the Switch will get a lot of Triple A ps4 and xbone games but not because of this. More because of commercial reasons or being arm rather than x86 based.

Again many people with very unrealistic expectations.



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AZWification said:
Barkley said:

Errr.... Wii?

Good installbase does not mean good third party support.

The Wii actually got some good 3rd party games, they just weren't the ones the PS3/360 got. It had games like Sin & Punishment 2, Tatsunoko and Capcom, House of the Dead: Overkill, Sonic Colors, No More Heroes and others.

And from the big guns, the Wii with it's 88MB of Ram in comparison to the 512MB which was in the PS3/X360 at the time was still capable of doing some damn nice ports of games like Call of Duty simply because when you have a console in 100m homes then companies are going to put in a bit of effort to get their games on them, because even if 1 in every hundred buys your game, you've still got a million units sold.

The power gap between the Wii and the PS360 was absolutely massive, yet there was still tons of games being ported to it all during it's lifespan,  WWE series, Fifa, Call of Duty, guitar hero etc. Third parties go where the money is, if the switch sells like hotcakes then games will go to it, wouldn't matter a fuck of if the thing was using a motorola 68000 with blast processing, companies will make games for where money is to be had, end of story.



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malistix1985 said:
Miyamotoo said:

Beacuse Nintendo console never had full 3rd party suport since SNES. You can bet even Switch is more stronger than PS4 Pro it woldnt had full 3rd party support.Look at list of Switch 3rd party partners and supporters and you will see what kind of games exactly you can expect for Switch.

Switch hardware will be more than enough for PS4/XB1 ports running at 720p, totally different thing some developer will make game for Switch.

 

 

Do we have actualy prove that all PS4/XB1 games use whole RAM for games!?

You can always little optimise your game to run with less RAM, people forgetting that PS3/Xbox 360 have 256MB Ram for games and they still run games like GTAV or Skyrim. 3GB Ram for games will not be problem that Switch run PS4/XB1 ports running at 720.

Theres quite a lot of proof of games using all the ram, when I look at the games on PC (Forza Horizon 3, Quantum Break, Gears of war 4) you can see they won't run well with less then 4GB V-ram, and use around 2-3GB of internal memory too, on Xbox Settings, full hd on max settings or 4k pushes to settings only 8GB Vram and combined with a lot of DDR3/4 ram can handle

Battlefield 1 on medium settings also push memory hard (ps4/xbox settings) same as titanfall on the 60fps settings, so yeah, judging by the PC results, from many results, like guru3d, digitalfoundry, hardware.info and many many other sites that test these things, the consoles to use their available ram.

I believe the PS4 has 5GB and the Xbox One has 5.5GB (with no kinect support in game) available for games, also remember almost all games use heavy harddisk-cashing in combination with these ram requirements.

Now the most important part is, if you have less ram, it needs to be faster so you can load and replace the textures faster from going from scene to scene, one of the reasons the PS4 is superior in power is the difference in ram speed, the ps4 has something  around 17x Gb/s if I remember correcttly and the XBox close to 70GB/s with a Eram buffer, so the NX could potentially make up some lossess here if it has faster memory and a very lite (less then 512MB) operating system.

Else its going to be a complete mess in games like mentioned above and future titles like mass effect, bethesda games, red dead, a complete mess. It will (AGAIN) require additional time to push the games to a lower level of ram to function, not to mention, other things will be different.

People can defend Nintendo all they want its their right, its an amazing company that pushes their own technical limits and manages to make great games on weak hardware, but since the N64 until now they have alienated third party developers themselves, wether its the prices and limits of the N64 cardridges, weird small discs on the gamecube, or waving sticks in combination with weaker hardware, its their own fault.

Sales numbers will decide if switch makes an effort, but if the 4GB is true, developers WILL have to make MORE of an effort which meens again if the sales are low, third parties will avoid the NX like it was never build in the first place.

PC can eat more than 8GB easily, we here talking about consoles.

3rd party without bigger effort can make ports of XB1/PS4 game that will run at 720p on Switch with available 3GB RAM for games, you can always optimise your game to use less RAM. GTAV run on PS3/Xbox360 that have 256MB of RAM available for games.

Also Nvidia+ARM is very modern tech that is very easy to work with, espacily with tools and support Nintendo is providing.



PwerlvlAmy said:
Seems about right for a handheld. Wish Kimishima would stop lying and just tell everyone the truth. This is a handheld first,HC second,not the other way around like he claims

I think they are waiting until after the holidays before they do this to keep 3DS sales very strong over the holidays, I have no doubt that from the 12th January until launch Nintendo will refer to the Switch as a handheld as much as they will a home console.



If that's true then the console won't have good third-party support.



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freebs2 said:
Darc Requiem said:

THe 360 and PS3 had massive userbases, a familiar development environment, and owners with a history of buying 3rd party games. The Switch has none of those. In addition it has different architecture from the XB1 and PS4.

In terms of architecture X360 and PS3 were as different, if not more, compared to PS4 and XB1. For the rest I agree. The main point is, whether the Switch will get 3rd party games or not is due to single publishers and developers business decinions. It's not a matter of technical feasibility. It may be the case for a few games but not for 3rd party games in general.

I would add, 3rd party games sell pretty well on 3DS. On Wii/WiiU 3rd party publishers don't have a history of releasing decent games.

True but that wasn't my point. My point was that developers had already been working on the 360 and PS3 for several years by the time the XB1 and PS4 launched. The Switch is a new platform with an unfamilar architecture. 



Miyamotoo said:
potato_hamster said:

Quick questionL What makes you think that whatever is forcing Sony and MS to dedicate 3 gb of RAM to their OS that Nintendo is somehow exempt by this limitation? What makes you think their OS can be significantly less resource demanding and still go toe-to-toe with PS4/X1 in terms of OS features, apps,  video sharing, networking, etc. that people have come to expect out of their home consoles.

Because the Switch is a home console first and foremost according to Nintendo. Like it or not, that means the PS4 and X1 are the NS's direct competition.

Because there is a info saying that Switch OS will actually use 800MB, and I having hard time beliving that Switch OS will eat 2GB and that they will leve just 2GB for games.

Thats just Nintendo PR because they have 3DS to sell this holiday season and at least until Switch arrives and because Wii U is already dead, from Switch video it's very obvious that Switch is hybrid.

Your very passionate, never change, but read all the comments, some are biased but overall a lot of people are right, developers don't hate Nintendo they just want to earn money and if the sales numbers are low and they need to put time and money into a device that is purchased by people that will mainly buy just nintendo games its just not going to happen.




Twitter @CyberMalistix

Ganoncrotch said:
AZWification said:

The Wii actually got some good 3rd party games, they just weren't the ones the PS3/360 got. It had games like Sin & Punishment 2, Tatsunoko and Capcom, House of the Dead: Overkill, Sonic Colors, No More Heroes and others.

And from the big guns, the Wii with it's 88MB of Ram in comparison to the 512MB which was in the PS3/X360 at the time was still capable of doing some damn nice ports of games like Call of Duty simply because when you have a console in 100m homes then companies are going to put in a bit of effort to get their games on them, because even if 1 in every hundred buys your game, you've still got a million units sold.

The power gap between the Wii and the PS360 was absolutely massive, yet there was still tons of games being ported to it all during it's lifespan,  WWE series, Fifa, Call of Duty, guitar hero etc. Third parties go where the money is, if the switch sells like hotcakes then games will go to it, wouldn't matter a fuck of if the thing was using a motorola 68000 with blast processing, companies will make games for where money is to be had, end of story.

most of those were cross gen games and sometimes not even the same game (hell Fifa just released the same game over and over) so those arent good examples



SvennoJ said:
4GB is barely enough for today's games in 1080p, which is what the switch is supposed to do when docked? But isn't this thing supposed to last for at least 5 years. 4GB ram in 2022?

Also noticed people comparing it to the Vita, yet they're forgetting the Vita had more memory than the ps3 and 360 coming out 5 years after those. Switch is releasing 4 years after the ps4 and x1 with half the memory.

You compare Sonys Vita with Sonys PS3 as a great leap forwards, but then compare Nintendos Switch... to Sonys PS4, why not compare it to Nintendos Wii-U? Oh... because this rumour would exactly set it in line with the same leap forward the Vita was as a handheld over the PS3.

If you are jumping between machine types though it could also be said that the PS4 launched in Nov 2013 with 8GB of ram and my PC from 2005 has 14GB in total, what's up with that? how can they expect it to play any games?? (just an example of how it doesn't work to compare apples and oranges, other than the fact that both of them are lovely)



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Miyamotoo said:
daredevil.shark said:

Then why new mass effect and red Dead isn't coming? By third party do you mean niche Japanese games? Or do you mean bigger ones including Japanese AAA (kingdom hearts, FF XV)?

Beacuse Nintendo console never had full 3rd party suport since SNES. You can bet even Switch is more stronger than PS4 Pro it woldnt had full 3rd party support.Look at list of Switch 3rd party partners and supporters and you will see what kind of games exactly you can expect for Switch.

Switch hardware will be more than enough for PS4/XB1 ports running at 720p, totally different thing some developer will make game for Switch.

Also Nvidia+ARM is very modern tech that is very easy to work with.

 

 

malistix1985 said:
4GB isn't good news, most games require more then 4GB these days, 8 would have been much smarter. Just make it the same as the ps4 and xbox one base models, even if its slower, the amount of ram is always the most important.

And no, since a lot of games already run on 720-900p on xbox one and 900p-1080p on ps4 the small bump to the 720p from the NX will not make 50% less ram acceptable.

The ram will also most likely be a lot slower... so thats going to make it even harder to keep up,

No its not a problem for FIRST PARTY GAMES yes its a terrible indication towards ports.

Do we have actualy prove that all PS4/XB1 games use whole RAM for games!?

You can always little optimise your game to run with less RAM, people forgetting that PS3/Xbox 360 have 256MB Ram for games and they still run games like GTAV or Skyrim. 3GB Ram for games will not be problem that Switch run PS4/XB1 ports running at 720.

Yes. ALL PS4/X1 games use all of the RAM available. RAM is one of the biggest bottleneck console developers face. Otherwise, pretty much every PS4/X1 game would be running at 1080p/60fps minimum. Yet we don't see that. That's mostly because they've had to cut back on their memory budget for rendering to ensure the game does what they want it to in other areas. You have many X1 games running at 900p/30fps because that's all of the performance those devs can get out of the X1. Now you're going to turn around and say "sure the NS can run that game with approximately half the resources because the resolution the image we need to render is 30% smaller".

You're going to have to back that up with a technical explanation as to why you can so firmly believe this is easily doable.

Also, what are your sources for the NS having 3GB of RAM available for devs?