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

anthony64641 on 30 October 2016
pokoko said:
Well, that's it, then. If true, this alone will result in substantially decreased third-party support. Pretty much every new AAA game has 8GB as a minimum recommendation on PC. That doesn't mean some of those games wouldn't play on a 4GB console system but almost certainly means some of them would not.

If RockStar was able to put GTA 5 on a 512mb ps3... Sorry I mean 256mb (since the other stick was for the OS). and also make it work good on a 8gb ps4...... im sure the switch will stil get games




'Video games are bad for you? That's what they said about rock-n-roll.'
-Shigeru Miyamoto

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setsunatenshi on 30 October 2016
anthony64641 said:
pokoko said:
Well, that's it, then. If true, this alone will result in substantially decreased third-party support. Pretty much every new AAA game has 8GB as a minimum recommendation on PC. That doesn't mean some of those games wouldn't play on a 4GB console system but almost certainly means some of them would not.

If RockStar was able to put GTA 5 on a 512mb ps3... Sorry I mean 256mb (since the other stick was for the OS). and also make it work good on a 8gb ps4...... im sure the switch will stil get games

howcome R* wasn't able to put GTA5 on the Wii U though?



Goodnightmoon on 30 October 2016
setsunatenshi said:
anthony64641 said:

If RockStar was able to put GTA 5 on a 512mb ps3... Sorry I mean 256mb (since the other stick was for the OS). and also make it work good on a 8gb ps4...... im sure the switch will stil get games

howcome R* wasn't able to put GTA5 on the Wii U though?

Because it was a big fat failure and targetted to a different market where games like GTA tend to perform much worse?



Ganoncrotch on 30 October 2016
StarOcean said:
Ganoncrotch said:

It's weird too but the Vita can be played on a TV screen... albeit a different model of Vita but still the PSTV is quite a fine little console when it's hooked up to even big screen TV's. sure it isn't on the same level as ps4 but it's still a very nice little system capable of running 720p visuals from it's rather underpowered cpu/ram for a home system.

whats cool is there is an add on for the PS TV that lets you use it as a handheld 

:o the Dekavita 7... a 7 inch VitaTV adaptor for €200 I'm not sure if I'm tempted by that or horrified by the form factor of it being so ugly.



Why not check me out on youtube and help me on the way to 2k subs over at www.youtube.com/stormcloudlive

setsunatenshi on 30 October 2016
Goodnightmoon said:
setsunatenshi said:

howcome R* wasn't able to put GTA5 on the Wii U though?

Because it was a big fat failure and targetted to a different market where games like GTA tend to perform much worse?

point taken



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potato_hamster on 30 October 2016
Miyamotoo said:
potato_hamster said:

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?

Actual far biggest bottleneck for PS4/XB1 is AMD Jaguar CPU that is in PS4/XB1, RAM was never describe like bottleneck in PS4/XB1.


I don't know how to put this any other way. This is factually incorrect. Obviously, the APU might be the biggest bottleneck in terms of optimal performance, because that's essentially doing all of the processing, and the RAM supports it. However,  if a technical limitation comes up that is impeding the performance of a particular aspect of a game, it's almost always because of its memory footprint. I have literally heard conversations where modifications had to be done to the audio engine because its memory footprint had to be cut in half due to a push from management to free up RAM  to try and achieve 60 fps on our game. In fact, last generation, Sony released an update that reduced the memory footprint of the OS, and gave developers access to an additional 70 mb of RAM. Why would they put in the effort to reduce the memory footprint of their OS by 30-40% if developers weren't maximizing the use of the available RAM on their console?

https://www.engadget.com/2010/02/23/70mb-of-additional-ram-unlocked-for-ps3-developers/

RAM is absolutely critical, and having less of it is definitely a game development limitation.  You won't come across too many PS4/X1 games that aren't using every single megabyte of  RAM that is available to them.



SuperNova on 30 October 2016

Nvidia and Nintendo are making the witch veeeery easy to port for by the sounds of it, so if 3dr partys want to throw a port on it, they will be able to, 2GB less ram or not.

Everything we've heard so far about the system powerwise is encouraging. It will be insanely powerful by handhels standarts and modest by home console ones, wich should be enough to get ports as long as it sells well.



Fei-Hung on 30 October 2016
SvennoJ said:
Ganoncrotch said:

When comparing potential of a handheld console you could also think of it as around 8 times what is inside the Vita, and that thing is capable of some beautiful worlds.

Skip to around 4 mins for gameplay

8 times that... yes please.

Criminal this was never released on a home console. Wipeout needs the big screen and 5.1 surround sound. No wonder the series died. I tried playing it on the psp before wipeout hd came out, pretty boring game on a handheld. Btw who ever is playing sucks :) Looks like they're using the d-pad to steer?

From the good ol' Driver Club days, I can say with full confidence that your racing skills are insane and possibly non human. it's a good thing you never saw me play lol



Miyamotoo on 30 October 2016
potato_hamster said:
Miyamotoo said:

Actual far biggest bottleneck for PS4/XB1 is AMD Jaguar CPU that is in PS4/XB1, RAM was never describe like bottleneck in PS4/XB1.


I don't know how to put this any other way. This is factually incorrect. Obviously, the APU might be the biggest bottleneck in terms of optimal performance, because that's essentially doing all of the processing, and the RAM supports it. However,  if a technical limitation comes up that is impeding the performance of a particular aspect of a game, it's almost always because of its memory footprint. I have literally heard conversations where modifications had to be done to the audio engine because its memory footprint had to be cut in half due to a push from management to free up RAM  to try and achieve 60 fps on our game. In fact, last generation, Sony released an update that reduced the memory footprint of the OS, and gave developers access to an additional 70 mb of RAM. Why would they put in the effort to reduce the memory footprint of their OS by 30-40% if developers weren't maximizing the use of the available RAM on their console?

https://www.engadget.com/2010/02/23/70mb-of-additional-ram-unlocked-for-ps3-developers/

RAM is absolutely critical, and having less of it is definitely a game development limitation.  You won't come across too many PS4/X1 games that aren't using every single megabyte of  RAM that is available to them.

I clearly remember reveal of PS4/XB1 when developers were very pleased with amount of RAM with PS4/XB1 and they actually were saying they can be very relaxed with development with that amount for RAM. But some developer were saying that CPU is actually huge bottleneck, because amount of RAM is huge and GPU is powerful but CPU is weak. 8GB RAM in PS4/XB1 is definatly not bottleneck, actualy you are first person that I heard saying something like that.

I really dont see point of comparing PS3 512MB RAM with 8GB PS4 RAM, of course that in 2010. 256MB of RAM for games was little for those games.



h2ohno on 30 October 2016

So the Switch is basically as powerful as the Wii U should have been in the first place, but because of the mobile functions it's using the most advanced tech it really could.

The Wii U was supposed to benefit from modern engines being more scalable, but between the initial sluggish sales and being weaker than anyone predicted that didn't exactly work out. Maybe between being both more powerful and more advanced the Switch will benefit more. At the very least it should be able to handle scaled down Unreal Engine 4 games.