Benefits of having 2x the RAM? (Xbox2)

[Ender]

It seems more and more that Xbox2 will be first out of the next gen consoles. Many says that just because of it, Xbox2 will most likely be the "least" powerful and sure, it makes sense.. first out = "older and slower"-tech.

My wondering is, how would XBox2 benefit of having at least double the RAM of the competitors? RAM on the next gen will probably be in the 512Mb area, 256Mb in 2005 (and must last for at least 5 years) seems kinda low. MS is apparently taking the wait and see approach, if Sony puts 512Mb, they will have 512Mb.

What many hopes but what seems not so likely is having about 1Gb RAM.
RAM costs money, of course but it would at least help out a great deal by having more. Devs are often memory hungry, the more the merrier...am I right?

With XNA, MS atempts to closen the gap between PC and consoles (Xbox2) even more. By having a huge RAM pool, Xbox2 could benefit from PC-games that come more intact than now (example, Doom3 and its levels, which are being modified to fit into RAM on Xbox).

Well, my question is... How much would it help Xbox2 out by having 2x RAM against competitors? (suggesting that PS3 and N5 will have 512Mb).
Could that be a way to go for MS to "tip the scale" more in favor of Xbox2? Would more RAM make Xbox2 more dev-friendly? MS has always said that it is software that drives sales, but by having a machine that helps devs out in the memory-area, would certainly make Xbox2 more dev-friendly... right?

 

[jvd]

personaly i think all those who feel that the next gen systems will have huge amounts of ram are wrong

I don't expect more than 512 megs in any of the systems

these systems are going to be massed produced and are going to be tied to limited pools of high speed memory that will cost a load of money.

This isn't ddr 400 we are talking about . This is expensive rambus or gddr 3 ram.

 

[London Geezer]

If PS3 comes out as late as many people are saying, the Sony can pretty much put as much RAM as they want, even double that of MS, since they would have 12 months or so to do what they want. So MS can only say "If Sony has 512MB, we will have 512MB" if X2 and PS3 come out at the same time.

But it seems Sony will wait.

 

[Deadmeat4]

...

The problem is that both Xbox Next and PSX3 will have unified memory architecture and will have limited memory chip count(4 Max) to keep the assembly cost down.

Thanks to memory market depression, most DRAM producers kept operating older facility beyond their intended life span and the DRAM density has not increased accordingly. Most DRAM parts still come out in 512 Mbit density, and having 4 of these will give you 256 MB tops. This certainly is the case with PSX3 and Xbox Next will have something similar...

 

[jvd]

If PS3 comes out as late as many people are saying, the Sony can pretty much put as much RAM as they want, even double that of MS, since they would have 12 months or so to do what they want. So MS can only say "If Sony has 512MB, we will have 512MB" if X2 and PS3 come out at the same time.

But it seems Sony will wait.

i don't think that its so much they will wait . Its they have no choice but to wait

 

[wco81]

Well RAM prices are hard to predict aren't they? Weren't they cheaper a couple of years ago than they are now?

More RAM would always be good. Especially if they want to make these things have media server functions or whatever so that you can run multiple applications without having to reboot.

Even from a pure gaming perspective, it would be nice if you can be online, have some kind of IM app. running, meet people and then load the game you want to play. Plus even have a browser/email running in addition to IM so that you can exchange game save files and the like.

But of course, all of this would be "too PC like" and would be very costly.

 

[AlNom]

512MB of RAM in combination with streaming levels like Halo would be wicked. 8) High-res textures

and.... maybe the devs will use 3Dc

 

[London Geezer]

i don't think that its so much they will wait . Its they have no choice but to wait

Yeah, whatever the reason, whether they HAVE to or not, if PS3 comes out a full 12 months after Xbox2 like it seems, it WILL have more RAM. It's only natural.

 

[jvd]

i don't think that its so much they will wait . Its they have no choice but to wait

Yeah, whatever the reason, whether they HAVE to or not, if PS3 comes out a full 12 months after Xbox2 like it seems, it WILL have more RAM. It's only natural.

mabye.

It may have the same amount of ram but faster . Or it could have both more and faster ram. It all depends i guess on the ram they are going to use. How good the yields are , how high they can clock and how much they can make

 

[London Geezer]

i don't think that its so much they will wait . Its they have no choice but to wait

Yeah, whatever the reason, whether they HAVE to or not, if PS3 comes out a full 12 months after Xbox2 like it seems, it WILL have more RAM. It's only natural.

mabye.

It may have the same amount of ram but faster . Or it could have both more and faster ram. It all depends i guess on the ram they are going to use. How good the yields are , how high they can clock and how much they can make

If there's something i'm not worried about is the amount of RAM. Now i want to see what on earth Sony will come up with for the VPU.

 

[Paul]

Now i want to see what on earth Sony will come up with for the VPU.

You've already seen what they are planning to build as far as VPU.

 

[London Geezer]

Now i want to see what on earth Sony will come up with for the VPU.

You've already seen what they are planning to build as far as VPU.

Errrrrmmmm.... No...? And i'm here 10 hours a day, i'd have seen it.

As it is now, it's not even 100% sure whether it will be Cell based!! Likely, but we just don't know anything!

I'm just so looking forward to see the full specs. Of ANY next gen console.

 

[Guden Oden]

Re: ...

This isn't ddr 400 we are talking about . This is expensive rambus or gddr 3 ram.

Sony will fab their rambus memory themselves, you know this since long, why keep repeating this old nonsense? They won't pay any more for that memory than raw fabrication costs + rambus royalty.

The problem is that both Xbox Next and PSX3 will have unified memory architecture

PS3 isn't UMA, and neither is nextbox by the looks of it, if that leaked document tells the truth.

[quoteMost DRAM parts still come out in 512 Mbit density, and having 4 of these will give you 256 MB tops. This certainly is the case with PSX3[/quote]

You're such a goofball troll, deadmeat. Sony will make its memory at the Oita fab, a state-of-the-art facility by any standard on this planet. Stop spreading around such obvious BS.

 

[Paul]

Errrrrmmmm.... No...? And i'm here 10 hours a day, i'd have seen it.

As it is now, it's not even 100% sure whether it will be Cell based!! Likely, but we just don't know anything!

I'm just so looking forward to see the full specs. Of ANY next gen console.

Again you have seen the Broadband Engine in it's "preferred embodiment", this is what Toshiba and SCE are planning to build.

There are few secrets when it comes to PS3, everything is just so patently clear.

We know the name of the VPU, the rough performance estimate of the thing based on what Sony wants, we know the system will feature 256mb(maybe more) of XDR DRAM at likely 25.6GB/s. We know that they plan on having 32mb e-DRAM for the GPU(VS), we know that they plan on using BD-ROM.

There will be no shockers when PS3 is announced.

Of course we don't know the EXACT configuration, but we know enough that nothing will really be a shock.

 

[London Geezer]

Errrrrmmmm.... No...? And i'm here 10 hours a day, i'd have seen it.

As it is now, it's not even 100% sure whether it will be Cell based!! Likely, but we just don't know anything!

I'm just so looking forward to see the full specs. Of ANY next gen console.

Again you have seen the Broadband Engine in it's "preferred embodiment", this is what Toshiba and SCE are planning to build.

There are few secrets when it comes to PS3, everything is just so patently clear.

We know the name of the VPU, the rough performance estimate of the thing based on what Sony wants, we know the system will feature 256mb(maybe more) of XDR DRAM at likely 25.6GB/s. We know that they plan on having 32mb e-DRAM for the GPU(VS), we know that they plan on using BD-ROM.

There will be no shockers when PS3 is announced.

Of course we don't know the EXACT configuration, but we know enough that nothing will really be a shock.

Well that doesn't really tell much about what the VPU really is or is capable of. I mean, Parhelia looked amazing on paper before coming out (256bit bus, hardware displacement mapping, blah blah blah), and look what came out of it.... I'm just giving an example, not comparing the 2.....

 

[Paul]

Capable in terms of Polygon rendering power? Particle?

We know that they plan on having the thing deliver a Teraflops and a TOPS performance.

If it's polygon power your talking about... BE, assuming a Teraflops, would be able to deliver more polygons than you could ever use.

On a side note, could you imagine ZOE3 with 25X the particles flying around? Maybe I'm even being conservative.

 

[Megadrive1988]

512MB of RAM in combination with streaming levels like Halo would be wicked. High-res textures

I think the potential of streaming from flash memory (or whatever solid-state storage they use) to 512 MB RAM would be pretty awesome. flash memory being much faster than even a fast HDD. 8)

 

[London Geezer]

On a side note, could you imagine ZOE3 with 25X the particles flying around? Maybe I'm even being conservative.

Oh, i've been imagining for so long... ZOE3 would be one of the few games that will sell me a next gen console. Whatever it is, in the end it's not guaranteed ZOE will be Sony exclusive forever.
In any case.

 

[jvd]

Even if sony fabs the ram (never heard that before )

They still ahve to pay to make the fab , they still ahve to pay for all the stuff in the fab , all the stuff used in the chips , and then the chips , the bad yields and blah blah blah.

Not only that but unlike ddr400 ram this ram will only go into one thing .

The ram will be expensive.

Esp at the start .

THen you get into the part where if the system isn't coming out till 2006-7 your going to have alot of fabs sitting around doing nothing which costs money.

You guys seem to think that fabing chips don't cost money.

Fabing chips is hugely expensive. THe margins in which tsmc and other places exist on are razor sharp.

The same will be for sony . Perhaps even worse since they are going to be eating money on this system.

 

[Fafalada]

PS3 isn't UMA, and neither is nextbox by the looks of it, if that leaked document tells the truth.

Eh...?
That Xenon diagram was pretty explicitly an UMA as far as I could see. All the system parts address and feed off the same memory pool.

PS3 is uncertain at this point - it may be hybrid like the PS2, but frankly I hope Sony has learned a lesson and will give Visualizer the capacity to address main memory directly.
Then the only question that remains is the sound part - which will probably tie in with emulation. If the new RDRam solution can somehow work compatibility with PS2 chipset, you'll have a full UMA, otherwise the 32MB of legacy RDRam would probably double as sound memory.