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Xbox 360 Will Have 512Mb Memory
- Thread starter The Faceless Master
- Start date
midnightguy
Member
DopeyFish said:
true.
my more than 3 year old Dell 4400 (P4 1.8 GHz) which I got in Feb 2002 has 512 MB of DDR1.
my brother's older Dell (P3 450 Mhz, Win98SE) which he got in September 1999, had 256 MB SDRAM
Tenacious-V
Thinks his PR is better than yours.
I still don't undserstand why people are comparing PC RAM specs to consoles. You're damn right a PC better have more, it's a general purpose machine built to do everything. A console is NOT, it's a closed system meant for 1 task and 1 task only, and programmers develop strictly for that 1 purpose.
They have nothing to do with each other. 512MB ram in a console is a good chunk of change, 512 in a PC is not. Anyone comparing a PC to console in this regard is a fool.
They have nothing to do with each other. 512MB ram in a console is a good chunk of change, 512 in a PC is not. Anyone comparing a PC to console in this regard is a fool.
People are comparing the ratio of console RAM to average PC RAM at launch, which is a legitimate comparison.Tenacious-V said:
At the moment, I would say 1 GB is the average for a decent-not-great gaming PC. Launching with a 50% console/PC ratio is about right.
256MB would have been a frigging disaster in the long run. Microsoft seems to have made the right decision, and hopefully they have set the standard for this gen of hardware.
Namomura said:
no shit. Its a swirl black hole of green. 360 sounds so stupid.
The Abominable Snowman said:
Soul Calibur 2 had incredibly detailed character models for a fighting game and still supported 720P (the Xenon's bare minimum) and was a miniscule 1.2 gigs (when you disregard dummy data). Ninja Gaiden has very nice texture work and extremely detailed models/stages. This game was around 6 gigs. However it had over 3 gigs of video and another gig for the added Japanese audio track.
Next Gen I expect the usage of FMV to be reduced in favor of in engine stuff cutting a huge chunk off the size of most games. There will also be more advanced tricks thanks to the more powerful cpu. Superior compression for one thing...less need for multiple texture instances (ala Rallisport 2) thanks to faster seek time and more ram for another. It's all about how dev's use the space to work with.
Tenacious-V
Thinks his PR is better than yours.
Rhindle said:
But you can't guage performance whatsoever. Amount okay, but SDR/DDR/DDR2 ram in a PC is different from the 1T-Sram in GC, the UMA of XBox, the XDR of PS3, the RDRam of PS2, they're all different. Speed wise 1 meg of 1T-Sram in GC is much faster than 1MB in Xbox. Amount is only 1 factor. Take that into consideration of the PC to console comparison and it basically becomes moot.
So comparing PC RAM to Console is pretty much pointless, as well as the purposes of said RAM in each type of system.
Duckhuntdog
Member
Blimblim said:I've been quite convinced since a few weeks that there was 512 MB of RAM, but I still do not have any "official" confirmation from one of my sources.
But of course if DuckHuntDog say it is so, then it's a much better confirmation than anything I could ever say
Hey, this is what my little birdie told me. Could he be wrong, sure. But so far he hasn't been. Win some lose some, it could change back, as the 360 is very "bean counter" friendly.
I realize there are other factors that impact overall system performance, but I don't see how that makes comparisons of RAM capacity "pointless." By that measure, you could never compare any specs at all, because the performance contribution of each variable is impacted by all the others.Tenacious-V said:
Tenacious-V
Thinks his PR is better than yours.
Rhindle said:
I agree, you can't. The only thing that can be compared is amount, I never disputed that. Which is why I stated PC shouldn't be compared to console in the first place.
1) PC purposes and console purposes are completely different
2) RAM speed constantly changes and evolves
3) Types of RAM differ from device to device, PC to PC, console to console
This is why I said not to compare them because you can't guage performance. People who think 512MB for X360 is a low number cause their PC has 1 gig is a bad comparison right from the beginning. Yes PC has more, but it doesn't mean it's better. That's my point. You can't guage performance of anything from just that one number.
Yes you can compare the amount of console RAM relative to it's PC counterpart time wise, but you can't compare it performance wise. That's all I'm saying. Why compare it when there's no relevance?
Fafalada said:Reminds me of old times running Warp 3.0 and Win95 on 4MB 486s...Hey it ran stuff like what you list above just fine
Ha, Warp 3?
I rushed out and bought a copy of OS/2 2.0 and a 4MB RAM upgrade when it first came out to run it on my 4MB 486-50, cause I didn't want to run Windows 3.1.
I still have the tray of 21 floppies it came on in a box somewhere.
I ran OS/2 2.0, 2.1, Warp 3, Warp 3 Connect, and the Merlin beta before I finally gave up on OS/2 and switched to NT.
Starting at NT4, there was nothing significant to me that OS/2 could do that NT couldn't do better.
Agent Icebeezy
Welcome beautful toddler, Madison Elizabeth, to the horde!
aaaaa0 said:
I couldn't function with specs that low
Similar thing here - I started late - with 3.0, but I kept OS/2 until Merlin final, and ran Merlin/NT in dual boot for awhile. But yeah, once I got to NT4, I was basically using OS/2 for not much more then DOS games so I eventually dropped it.aaaaa0 said:
Warp 3 was cool though - the first PC OS where I felt like I actually moved up from Amiga days... With 16MB upgrade, I was able to run rendering with VistaPro for Windows in background, while browsing and running dos windows in foreground
Kleegamefan
K. LEE GAIDEN
Very happy about this news (if true)
Fafalada said:Similar thing here - I started late - with 3.0, but I kept OS/2 until Merlin final, and ran Merlin/NT in dual boot for awhile. But yeah, once I got to NT4, I was basically using OS/2 for not much more then DOS games so I eventually dropped it.
Warp 3 was cool though - the first PC OS where I felt like I actually moved up from Amiga days... With 16MB upgrade, I was able to run rendering with VistaPro for Windows in background, while browsing and running dos windows in foreground
Ya, I was a first gen Amiga guy, got mine Christmas 1985. I think my old A1000's still around somewhere. Lots of memories there.
Jumped to OS/2 2.0 from that, skipping Win3.1 entirely, and I somehow managed to avoid Win9x all these years as well.
How does the ratio of polygon models : textures work out in current games?
Cause if PS3 does have two separate banks of memory, one for the GPU and one for hte CPU, then it might be limited compared to Xbox2 if some games use lowpoly counts but huge amounts of textures - you don't have that flexibility if you have only 256MB for textures and 156MB for polys/program.
Cause if PS3 does have two separate banks of memory, one for the GPU and one for hte CPU, then it might be limited compared to Xbox2 if some games use lowpoly counts but huge amounts of textures - you don't have that flexibility if you have only 256MB for textures and 156MB for polys/program.
THAT depends entirely on what topology of the memory subsystem is like.
You can have many multiple banks that are still logically unified(as shown in practice by some recent system(s)). In that case having different speed banks offers more venues for optimization then your classical UMA, and doesn't impose any particular limitations.
On the other hand, yes, you can have a different situation with the banks only accessible from their local unit, in which case what you said applies for restrictions in regards to data placement. Example for this one is basically your standard PC+GPU.
understood. I'd hope that there would at least be *some* connectivity between banks, but that would be slower than the optimised speeds for each bank to its respective chip.
So you could use some of the 256MB CPU RAM as cache ram and move it around when needed, but its still not ideal.
Do you know what an average game might use %wise for textures Vs vertex and program data? Would a 50/50 split be so bad?
So you could use some of the 256MB CPU RAM as cache ram and move it around when needed, but its still not ideal.
Do you know what an average game might use %wise for textures Vs vertex and program data? Would a 50/50 split be so bad?
On average the split probably weights more heavily towards the GPU, I'd think..
Having seperate pools with faster or slower access to both from each device sounds reasonable to me. Yes, having equally fast access to both would be ideal, but at least in this scenario, neither device is sucking up the others bandwidth to their local memory (?) whereas in a UMA, bandwidth would be shared. Or are we talking about pulling data through the CPU to the GPU, and vice versa (over FlexIO)?
Having seperate pools with faster or slower access to both from each device sounds reasonable to me. Yes, having equally fast access to both would be ideal, but at least in this scenario, neither device is sucking up the others bandwidth to their local memory (?) whereas in a UMA, bandwidth would be shared. Or are we talking about pulling data through the CPU to the GPU, and vice versa (over FlexIO)?
Duckhuntdog
Member
rastex said:
what? that the bean counters have that much influence over the Xbox 360 design? Hey, they want to make money, can't say I blame them.
Either that or you are really afraid of the PS3, but since you aren't MS, why would you be??
j^aws
Member
mrklaw said:
There is never an 'ideal' situation' but only situations!
The CELL<=>GPU will have two-way communication via the FlexIO. The FlexIO is ~ 45 GB/s bandwidth in the GPU direction and ~32 GB/s in the CELL direction. So the flexibility is there to use the bandwidth how you see fit...
OK, thats pretty quick, so it'd be feasible to use one or other pool as a temp store, or use the CELL to create procedural textures for example, then transfer to GPU local memory if required.
Of course, you might not need all that bus speed (you could argue GS edram bandwidth is overkill), so even at 32GB/s might be plenty for transferring textures direct to GPU via flexIO.
Of course, you might not need all that bus speed (you could argue GS edram bandwidth is overkill), so even at 32GB/s might be plenty for transferring textures direct to GPU via flexIO.
Lord Error
Insane For Sony
Hey, welcome to the club. I was a big Amiga fan too. I knew about Faf, but never thought you'd be one too
Argh, yes. I wanted to quote Cockles.
I disagree. When DC was the console to own, there was nothing on PC that looked as good as DOA2 or Shenmue. I thought the same thing about MGS2, DOA3, Ico and some other games too with their respective consoles and release dates. I expect the future consoles to offer some kind of advance over the PC stuff like Unreal 3 or 3D Mark 2005 that we've already seen, but that will be nothing I haven't experienced already.
Nick Laslett
Member
shpankey said:
I believe this statement might be untrue, although I'm happy to be corrected.
The PS1 launched 3rd December 1994 with Ridge Racer.
Please can someone name a PC titles released before then that eclipsed this game. It would be helpful if the title was 'lightyears' ahead of Ridge Racer :lol And a racing game.
What was the first PC title to equal Ridge Race? When was this released?
Could it be "Screamer" released December 1995? I'm no expert on PC gaming
Other notable early PSOne releases:
Battle Arena Toshinden was released 1st January 1995
Tekken was released 31st March 1995
Ace Combat was released 30th June 1995
Wipeout was released 29th September 1995
Twisted Metal was release 1st October 1995
Notable PC releases
Myst was released in Fall 1994
Wing Commander III was released in 1994
Star Wars: Tie Fighter was released in 1994
Doom 2 was released 10th October 1994
(PSOne releases in the same timeframe were lightyears ahead of this.)
Quake 1 doesn't come out until 22 June 1996.
Command and Conquer was released 31 August 1995
Voodoo 1 chip wasn't released until 1996.
Spider_Jerusalem
Member
Dr_Cogent said:
The universal flood sounds to me at least like an hotfix :lol
j^aws
Member
mrklaw said:
Yeah...Also you can just look at it as a memory heirarchy with different latencies but both CELL and GPU have access.
mrklaw said:
There's never too much!
However, it's a question of balance and if that isn't there then you'll get the laws of diminishing returns and unnecessary bottlenecks.
Kleegamefan
K. LEE GAIDEN
We should also keep in mind (and some of us in this thread have) that PCs have much more need for large amounts of memory than consoles..
Just think about the OS footprint of XP alone....very big....then there is all the other non-gaming stuff you have running in the background and its easy to see why so much memory is needed in PCs..
Although it is true Consoles Operating Systems are growing with each generation (though the same could be said of PCs too....Don't even want to THINK about how large Longhorn will be) the are much, much more lean than PCs so a much greater amount of the RAM is actually used for the game and a smaller amount for stuff in the background and whatnot..
Very hard to do a direct comparison (PCs vs. Consoles) if you take this into consideration...
Just think about the OS footprint of XP alone....very big....then there is all the other non-gaming stuff you have running in the background and its easy to see why so much memory is needed in PCs..
Although it is true Consoles Operating Systems are growing with each generation (though the same could be said of PCs too....Don't even want to THINK about how large Longhorn will be) the are much, much more lean than PCs so a much greater amount of the RAM is actually used for the game and a smaller amount for stuff in the background and whatnot..
Very hard to do a direct comparison (PCs vs. Consoles) if you take this into consideration...
Kleegamefan said:
Very true, although console OSes are no longer the invisible resource-users they once seemed to be. I know it's not like a PC at all, but we're already seeing that (apparently) X360 will have 32MB of its RAM reserved for the OS, we saw similar reserved RAM in PSP, and I'm sure we'll see resources reserved for the OS in PS3 too..
But yes, PC comparisons still don't hold.
shpankey
not an idiot
If you notice in my quote I specifically said Voodoo. And you will also notice I said the ps,n64,saturn "era" and not their "launch" which seems to be what you are doing ^^ there.Nick Laslett said:
also, some of the early voodoo titles that "wowed" me were: Tomb Raider, GLQuake, Whiplash, Moto Racer to name a few and those imo absolutely obliterated playstations ridge racer. i could never stomach those playstation graphics anymore after that.
i walked into circuit city and seen tomb raider and was so blown away i unded up buying a $1,500 pc for gaming, even though i knew next to nothing about pc's.
anyhow, the whole "era"
had a ton of even much more graphically impressive pc games.p.s. just an anecdote... I also wasn't as overwhelmed at the graphics at Playstation launch as most gamers due to the fact that I had already been playing on 3DO; which wasn't as far behind the playstation graphically as the SNES and Genesis consoles; which most gamers were coming from. so the super duper "wow" factor wasn't really there. I got that when I jumped from the SNES/Genesis to playing 3DO the first time when we loaded up this masterpiece called The Need for Speed. what's weird is that 3DO version was superior in ever way to the first version that the playstation got, oddly enough.
Lord Error
Insane For Sony
That's an unfair comparision. If you look at the whole "era", I'm sure next gen consoles will not impress technically either, compared to the PC games and demos released in later years. It only makes sense comparing them close to launch which is what he was doing.
shpankey
not an idiot
Actually that's not really "what he was doing there" as you say. He was actually responding to something I said earlier and claiming what I said was wrong. Which it wasn't, as I pointed out to him. So you seemed to have gotten confused there.Marconelly said:
As far as your point... i kind of disagree. just b/c i think this next gen will be different. during their cycle, i actually think this next generation of console games will [graphically] hold up to even late gen pc games. i may be wrong, but i just don't see the pc side of things catching and passing them too fast due to the limit of x86 processors. the real strength of this next generation of consoles are their incredible CPU's. PC's will first have to switch to 64 bit cpu's (which they have started but imo is gonna be hella slow) just to even catch up; and even then they will be combating multiple cpu, multiple core console systems with all the advantages of locked in hardware. add to that the HDTV high resolution for consoles, thereby eliminating one of PC gaming's biggest advantages graphically, and remembering that PC games must account for lowest common denominator, i actually think that console gaming will probably stay ahead of PC gaming for most of, if not all of next generation (5 year cycle). maybe only getting passed near the end, if even then.
again, i could be hella wrong, but that's what i think right now; and that was kind of my whole point really... this generation is really kind of weird in that whole aspect.
dream said:
WPS had neat features that I really liked, but I definitely don't miss having to clean my os2.ini regularly with unimaint, or having the WPS lose its mind and boot to blank desktops with broken icons, or having assorted random behavior from my system.
os2.ini was like the Windows Registry, but actually worse in my experience.
Marconelly said:Hey, welcome to the club. I was a big Amiga fan too. I knew about Faf, but never thought you'd be one too
I was a big Amiga fan in the eighties, but I've long since moved on.
It just couldn't keep up with the PC hardware wise, and the Amiga OS, while being lightweight and efficient, wasn't exactly the model of stability (no memory protection), and the platform ended up lacking a lot of take-it-for-granted features PC OSes started getting by the 1990s.
I still occasionally boot up UAE for kicks though.
i kinda know where he is coming from. i dont know what was available in 1994 to compete with Ridge Racer, but like a few months after in 1995 we had a stunning version of Tomb Raider that pretty much blew away anything on psx, n64, saturn...and it kept getting better. screamer came ou t in 1995 as well i believe and was graphically stunning.Marconelly said:
but moving into this gen, even a few years after launch, there had been games on the consoles that were comparable to PC games (riddick, DOA ultimate, ninja gaiden, and god of war, MGS3 for recent titles).
only recently as in last year...PC games have surpassed the bar for this gen of consoles IMO.
on a scale, consoles got stronger, and they will get even stronger next gen.
shpankey
not an idiot
yeah i think so too (as i elaborated on in my last post). i really think this next gen of consoles is going to be special in that regard.nitewulf said:
this gen, pc's were already right with, if not ahead of, the consoles when they launched. whereas this next gen, the pc's won't be and will have some serious catching up to do! i of course am only basing this off of rumored specs, so it's still up in the air.
Kleegamefan
K. LEE GAIDEN
In addition to these amazing Multi-core CPUs next-gen, and state of the art GPUs you are going to see the average next-gen console game take advantage of absolute cutting edge ROM tech (blu ray) as well as very,very fast memory and memory bandwidth....and of course, they are closed architectures, which are a performance advantage in and of itself...
With PCs, perhaps a dozen or so titles per year can use what the best PC hardware have to offer (stuff like Doom 3, FarCry, HL2 are these days) whereas you will probably see at least that many cutting edge games on *Just* the Xbox 360 platform ALONE!! (not to mention the crazy Nintendo games on Revolution and probably lots and lots of PS3 games too)...
I am not trying to start a war with PC guys but when you compare them to these next-gen
consoles coming out, there is no comparison, IMO...