PS3: less RAM needed for the OS = old games run faster?

[Fafalada]

and implement on top of that a streaming mechanism to allow open world exploration?

Well DeanA already covered this better then I could, but just to add something.
Streaming mechanisms for game assets tend to be high-level to begin with - unless you are willing to engineer custom data-structures for your assets. So if you want to go the route you're suggesting, you'd just allocate a big chunk of virtual memory and use it as if it were all local, and live with HDD stutters when/if they occur.
If you want a solution that does better(and still takes away most of the real work/testing) - it would have to be a much higher level interface then "malloc".

Speaking of the topic question - not memory, but if OS cpu usage characteristics have changed at all - that 'could' potentially make a (small)difference in older games.

 

[rounin]

Good point. I seem to recall one months back, but then again I don't browse that long or often on the PS3 (although the frequency is increasing).

Yesterday, I visited the full screen youtube URL (www.youtube.com/tv), singing free karaoke with my family for an hour.

There were brief loading occasionally. I was waiting for an out of memory error but it never come.

Need to fire up some Flash games to try for real.

Off topic, but what do you mean by free karaoke? Did you use the singstar mics?

 

[patsu]

We have SingStar but the song selection is limited compared to the vast library of youtube karaokie videos. Sometimes, we drop into youtube and look for non-SingStar songs to sing along with the kid