reach3

@Salarn said:

RAM is used for a lot of things in games, the vast majority of RAM in the current generation of consoles is used for textures, animation, sound, and other presentation elements. Following that you'll see a good chunk of RAM being used for middleware such as Havok, SpeedTree, and the system dash. Finally, you end up with the smaller segment of memory used for gameplay.

The 360/PS3 have 512mb of ram, the PS3 splits it into two 256mb sections, but that split is pretty much meaningless.

Adding more RAM will improve the video quality of games because they could use higher resolution textures, the sound quality of games by higher bit rate sound, gameplay would improve because larger and more complex AI nav meshes can be used, the user experience would improve due to fewer loading hallways and larger size levels.

However, since there is no significant improvement in display devices for consoles, support for resolution over 1080p would be limited in value to the consumer. That likely makes the sweet spot of memory for the next set of consoles ~2gb range, it'll be interesting to see if they push for 4gb considering the switch in memory addressing.

But didnt the 56 page MS leak say the new xbox was like between 5-8 gb? (i forgot numbered amount)

@doobie:

not after reading why its neccesary

@nintendoeats said:

@reach3 said:

@nintendoeats: nobody really told me i just read people say stuff like 360 and ps3 graphics are bad because they have low ram, so i assume low ram = the reason graphics settings were very low?

It's way more complicated than that, but lack of RAM is a big factor. RAM is like a hard-drive: it stores information. The difference is that HDDs are very slow (much slower than your processor) and RAM is very fast. RAM is where all of the data that a CPU and GPU are actually working on lives. If there is more RAM, then the processors can work on more data at once. This can translate to better graphics, but it can also be used to do many other exciting things. the bottom line is that more RAM allows developers to do more stuff.

Oh. I am not very experienced with tech but you explained it very well and I understand now. Thank you!

@nintendoeats: nobody really told me i just read people say stuff like 360 and ps3 graphics are bad because they have low ram, so i assume low ram = the reason graphics settings were very low?

I thought ram powered the graphics? like make allow games to turn setting shigher. guess not. sorry I was misinformed.

I mean really, I constantly see people bitch about the 360 and ps3 being low on Ram. Its BS.

Lets just say instead of a 360 having 512mb of ram, it had 2gb of ram. There would still barely be any difference in graphics after the upgrade in ram. So please cut the crap and bitching about the ram in 360 and ps3. also next gen systems dont need a lot either