Ram And The Next Gen Consoles The Memory Manefesto
I think that the biggest jump in performance for consoles will come when their makers stop staving them in the memory department. RAM costs money, but not too much and certainly not as much as it used to. SONY and Microsoft spent so much on getting special CPUs and GPUs and then they have taken these top notch parts and starved them.
Why can't [or won't] they design consoles as if they were making a decent budget build instead of inventing a high performance parts where low performance ones can do? Is it that the cheap parts then wouldn't cut it? Maybe. That's not the case now though. If I remember correctly, the xbox will have ATI graphics. We should also assume that the console will be DX11 capable. Sony's should be DX11 as well. I haven't heard much on what CPU each plans to use, but I don't think it will be a deciding factor in performance, save the particular difficulty in coding the game.
So, getting back to graphics. In general, the Xbox graphics are usually better. The textures are usually richer and AA is implemented more often. There are exceptions as the PS3 does have some fantastic looking titles. There aren't enough of these wins for the PS3 to reclassify these winners to something other than exceptions. And this is all because even though both systems have the same amount of RAM, the Xbox's memory is more flexible in how it is allotted and so uses more memory for graphics production. I would hope that the next round of consoles have at least 1GB of RAM and maybe, possibly 1.5GB with 1GB dedicated to the GPU. Between all the specialized hardware and optimizations, the increased RAM will help in letting the consoles stay with PCs in the graphics department longer. It will permit them to use higher textures and AF/AA. If you want an easy way to pick the better of the two [3?] consoles, pick the one that has the most memory for video.
I know many here at OCN see consoles as the bane of PC gaming. Games are made for consoles first now much of the time and PCs get ports just marginally improved. I'm not as bothered by this so long as the game still looks good and so long as that is the case the rest is cherry because that just means I won't need new hardware. But when the console version is cheap looking with blurry textures and they use depth of field to water it down more [Risen comes to mind] there is only so much that can be done for the PC version. It is for that reason PC gamers should hope there is plenty of RAM in the next generation of consoles. The better console games look, the better PC games will look. For that reason alone we should all hope that the console makers go a little overboard on the memory.
Why can't [or won't] they design consoles as if they were making a decent budget build instead of inventing a high performance parts where low performance ones can do? Is it that the cheap parts then wouldn't cut it? Maybe. That's not the case now though. If I remember correctly, the xbox will have ATI graphics. We should also assume that the console will be DX11 capable. Sony's should be DX11 as well. I haven't heard much on what CPU each plans to use, but I don't think it will be a deciding factor in performance, save the particular difficulty in coding the game.
So, getting back to graphics. In general, the Xbox graphics are usually better. The textures are usually richer and AA is implemented more often. There are exceptions as the PS3 does have some fantastic looking titles. There aren't enough of these wins for the PS3 to reclassify these winners to something other than exceptions. And this is all because even though both systems have the same amount of RAM, the Xbox's memory is more flexible in how it is allotted and so uses more memory for graphics production. I would hope that the next round of consoles have at least 1GB of RAM and maybe, possibly 1.5GB with 1GB dedicated to the GPU. Between all the specialized hardware and optimizations, the increased RAM will help in letting the consoles stay with PCs in the graphics department longer. It will permit them to use higher textures and AF/AA. If you want an easy way to pick the better of the two [3?] consoles, pick the one that has the most memory for video.
I know many here at OCN see consoles as the bane of PC gaming. Games are made for consoles first now much of the time and PCs get ports just marginally improved. I'm not as bothered by this so long as the game still looks good and so long as that is the case the rest is cherry because that just means I won't need new hardware. But when the console version is cheap looking with blurry textures and they use depth of field to water it down more [Risen comes to mind] there is only so much that can be done for the PC version. It is for that reason PC gamers should hope there is plenty of RAM in the next generation of consoles. The better console games look, the better PC games will look. For that reason alone we should all hope that the console makers go a little overboard on the memory.
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