I do not really care if they go with eDRAM, shared RAM, or a separate GPU pool. My concern is that if the total system memory is 256MB + 64MB of eDRAM you are looking at a very small pool for textures.
If we are looking at the new consoles having advanced AI, extremely dynamic levels with many items having physics based properties, huge meshes with millions upon millions of verticies, normal maps and high res mip map textures we are talking about needing substantially more memory than the current consoles. Xbox has 64MB of memory, so we are talking about cramming a ton more info into the general RAM and a requirement for more textures to keep pace with larger worlds with more detail--all on HDTV. Games take a hit just trying to make textures look good at HDTV, add on top of that all additional needs advanced games need and I still think memory is going to be an issue if 256MB is the final decision.
Remember, we are no longer talking about 480i as the baseline. How many of us play computer games at 640x480? Next gen consoles are built around HDTV (720p is baseline I would guess) and working on PC Monitors (Nintendo has already made statements that their new systems will work on monitors and I think MS also had some leaks that indicate the same). Higher resolutions exploit the lack of high quality textures and it looks nasty.
It is nice to have all the power of CELL and XeCPU and the ATi/nVidia GPUs, but without enough memory to have large, interactive, diverse, colorful, sharp worlds it is kind of pointless. It is just me, but I am tired of low res textures that look nasty up close. As great as the D3, HL2, and FarCry Engines are the boring/low res textures get old. Shaders will help some, but what happens when you want 500 people on screen with different clothing?
But MSN (Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo) know this, so hopefully they are doing things behind the scenes to help memory limitations. Whatever they can do to help developers is a good thing.
If we are looking at the new consoles having advanced AI, extremely dynamic levels with many items having physics based properties, huge meshes with millions upon millions of verticies, normal maps and high res mip map textures we are talking about needing substantially more memory than the current consoles. Xbox has 64MB of memory, so we are talking about cramming a ton more info into the general RAM and a requirement for more textures to keep pace with larger worlds with more detail--all on HDTV. Games take a hit just trying to make textures look good at HDTV, add on top of that all additional needs advanced games need and I still think memory is going to be an issue if 256MB is the final decision.
Remember, we are no longer talking about 480i as the baseline. How many of us play computer games at 640x480? Next gen consoles are built around HDTV (720p is baseline I would guess) and working on PC Monitors (Nintendo has already made statements that their new systems will work on monitors and I think MS also had some leaks that indicate the same). Higher resolutions exploit the lack of high quality textures and it looks nasty.
It is nice to have all the power of CELL and XeCPU and the ATi/nVidia GPUs, but without enough memory to have large, interactive, diverse, colorful, sharp worlds it is kind of pointless. It is just me, but I am tired of low res textures that look nasty up close. As great as the D3, HL2, and FarCry Engines are the boring/low res textures get old. Shaders will help some, but what happens when you want 500 people on screen with different clothing?
But MSN (Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo) know this, so hopefully they are doing things behind the scenes to help memory limitations. Whatever they can do to help developers is a good thing.
