Will Next Gen Consoles have Enough Memory?

[Acert93]

Hello Beyond3Ders!

Long time lurker, first time poster. With the nVidia/Sony news, the insanely long thread debating CELL and GPU power and what it means for next gen consoles, and E3 and other events around the corner I thought I would ask a question that has been bothering me. With supposed Xbox2 spec leaks available and the ever mounting CELL & PS3 hype/facts coming to the surface one thing has left me uneasy about the upcoming consoles: Memory, or better yet, the lack of it.

We hear a lot about CPUs, GPUs, and so forth, but in my mind one of the single most limiting factors on any system, and especially consoles, is the memory. I always thought in the last generation that the console makers cut corners on the RAM (for obvious cost reasons), and in the end this is one of the major reasons, outside of developing for the lowest denominator and porting upward, that games on the GC, PS2, and Xbox are so similar graphically. Especially in the case of the Xbox, I think extra RAM would have made a world of difference. One of the three major reasons I tend to play more PC games over console games is because console games tend to have bland, blurry, and repetitive textures (the other reasons are resolution and multiplayer).

Looking forward to the new consoles I get the feeling we are going to be in a similar situation, especially with techniques like normal mapping and the like that use up extra memory (see: Doom 3). If game developers are already asking for 512MB of video RAM for new GPUs, will the rumors of a mere 256MB of total system memory be a serious pigeon hold on the next generation consoles?

I could be wrong, but I am getting the feeling that all the debates about the GPUs and CPUs on the next consoles is overlooking the memory factor. I am assuming most HDTV games will be 720p (1280x720), this means that while GPU and CPU power are great things, it would seem that 256MB of memory would be a significant limitation of the new consoles. Considering that is typically agreed that we are heading toward more and more diminishing returns in the graphics department I think this is an issue. A lot of posters here already believe there wont be a whole lot of difference between how PS3 and Xbox2 games look. And in many ways I get the feeling that even if the Xbox2 and PS3 are 30% faster than the Revolution, if they are all running around with ~256MB of memory that in the end we wont see a whole lot of differences on the TV/Monitor regardless of the power difference.

Onto my questions:

1. What are the chances of the Xbox2 having more than 256MB of memory? What are the PS3 rumblings in regards to system/video memory?

2. Will limited system/video memory offset some of the power difference of the next generation. Why are why not?

3. Are we going to see some new techniques that will overcome the memory limitations? What examples do we know of?

4. How do developers feel about memory constraints? Would they rather have a good CPU/GPU and more/great memory or a great CPU/GPU and less/ok memory?

5. And most importantly, what would the consumer perception be of a console with a little less power but a lot more memory? Crisp textures and varied textures/environment are one way to convey the "power" of a console to a consumer. Could 2x the memory (512MB vs. 256MB), and the results in game, be enough to convince a consumer that a system is more powerful than a system with 20-25% more raw GPU/CPU power?

Thanks for taking the time to read my post and questions. Feel free to give your input or correct any incorrect ideas. I am excited since the Xbox2 and Revolution are stated to work on monitors (yay! Hopefully PS3 also). I personally want more varied environment and better AI/Physics/Animation in games and most important continued progression in game play (I am going to be upset when Madden 2006/7 cuts out all the franchise, stat, and other game play elements for their new engine). Graphic goodies are nice, but they are only part of presenting a virtual world. I am just hoping memory limitations do not become an issue that hinders creativity. Just my 2 cents.

 

[cthellis42]

Hello Beyond3Ders!

Long time lurker, first time poster.

Damn, now I feel like a radio show!

 

[Tagrineth]

We hear a lot about CPUs, GPUs, and so forth, but in my mind one of the single most limiting factors on any system, and especially consoles, is the memory. I always thought in the last generation that the console makers cut corners on the RAM (for obvious cost reasons), and in the end this is one of the major reasons, outside of developing for the lowest denominator and porting upward, that games on the GC, PS2, and Xbox are so similar graphically. Especially in the case of the Xbox, I think extra RAM would have made a world of difference. One of the three major reasons I tend to play more PC games over console games is because console games tend to have bland, blurry, and repetitive textures (the other reasons are resolution and multiplayer).

Xbox DOES have extra RAM. PS2 has 32MB with 4MB texture/frame cache... GCN has 24MB main, 16MB "random junk" RAM and ~1MB texture, ~2MB frame cache... Xbox: 64MB for anything you damn well want.

And your texturing comment suggests that you've mostly been looking at PS2 and/or Halo games... *ahem*.

Looking forward to the new consoles I get the feeling we are going to be in a similar situation, especially with techniques like normal mapping and the like that use up extra memory (see: Doom 3). If game developers are already asking for 512MB of video RAM for new GPUs, will the rumors of a mere 256MB of total system memory be a serious pigeon hold on the next generation consoles?

I could be wrong, but I am getting the feeling that all the debates about the GPUs and CPUs on the next consoles is overlooking the memory factor. I am assuming most HDTV games will be 720p (1280x720), this means that while GPU and CPU power are great things, it would seem that 256MB of memory would be a significant limitation of the new consoles. Considering that is typically agreed that we are heading toward more and more diminishing returns in the graphics department I think this is an issue. A lot of posters here already believe there wont be a whole lot of difference between how PS3 and Xbox2 games look. And in many ways I get the feeling that even if the Xbox2 and PS3 are 30% faster than the Revolution, if they are all running around with ~256MB of memory that in the end we wont see a whole lot of differences on the TV/Monitor regardless of the power difference.[/quote]

A 640x480 full double buffer takes less than 4MB. 1280x720 is just under 4x that... I don't know the exact math behind calculating frame buffer size, but I'll assume that scaling is linear, so less than 16MB. The largest frame buffer we can expect next gen would be 1920x1080, which would be another 2.25x that, so still under 36MB, under my assumptions... (please, hold off on the beheading if my numbers are inaccurate, I'm throwing numbers out off the top of my head as an example!).

That'd very easily and comfortably fit into even 128MB while offering more space for "other stuff" than any of the three current consoles.

256MB should be plenty.

Keep in mind rendering in console games tends to be a hell of a lot more optimised than PC games, with more optimally compressed textures etc.

1. What are the chances of the Xbox2 having more than 256MB of memory? What are the PS3 rumblings in regards to system/video memory?

I'd assume the norm next gen will be 256MB. One console might dare to break 300, but none will go past 320MB maximum, mostly due to cost reasons but also because it really isn't necessary in a console environment.

2. Will limited system/video memory offset some of the power difference of the next generation. Why are why not?

It might affect the AVERAGE content from devs that aren't very good at optimising... but judging by what has been accomplished in PS2 and GCN's wonderfully small texture caches and RAM, I wouldn't bet on memory being that severely limiting next gen.

3. Are we going to see some new techniques that will overcome the memory limitations? What examples do we know of?

We'll very likely see all or most of ATi's HyperZ technology in both MS and N's next systems, and we might see some new techniques from nVidia if they really did have input in the PS3's graphics. ATi will also surely push 3Dc compression on both of their target consoles.

4. How do developers feel about memory constraints? Would they rather have a good CPU/GPU and more/great memory or a great CPU/GPU and less/ok memory?

I'll defer this one to the developers.

5. And most importantly, what would the consumer perception be of a console with a little less power but a lot more memory? Crisp textures and varied textures/environment are one way to convey the "power" of a console to a consumer. Could 2x the memory (512MB vs. 256MB), and the results in game, be enough to convince a consumer that a system is more powerful than a system with 20-25% more raw GPU/CPU power?

Compare early PS2 to late Dreamcast... the public doesn't seem to care at all about texturing, because PS2 can do "66 million polys per second!!!"... It's all about perceived power, and whatever the companies choose to market... and of course, whether the consumers buy into the marketing or not.

 

[Megadrive1988]

probably not as much memory as developers would like

it's looking like 256 MB main memory plus some eDRAM. some eDRAM for Xenon (10 MB?) more eDRAM for PS3 (64 MB+64 MB or 32MB + 32MB) and probably more eDRAM for Revolution than Xenon, but less than PS3.

i hope main memory on all 3 consoles gets bumped to 512.

 

[Dave Baumann]

Hello Beyond3Ders!

Long time lurker, first time poster.

Damn, now I feel like a radio show!

When did B3D become your show?

 

[Guden Oden]

256MB will hamper game design, if not so much now, at least later in the consoles' lives. It will annoy developers and cause extra headache trying to fit in all the stuff these machines will be capable of rendering, they will inadvertedly waste power because there won't be room for everything.

 

[wco81]

I know this isn't going to happen but it would be nice to have enough memory so that you can run more than one application without rebooting or even loading from disc.

In particular, how about a shell/OS where you have an instance of the game running and then some smaller utilities like an instant messaging program, perhaps a browser or some kind of file transfer/sharing utlity?

No that would be too PC-like.

 

[Brimstone]

I'll say 512 MB of GDDR-4 will be in X-Box 2. But I won't be surprised by some new type of memory standard since ATI is working with VIA on XDDR.

The Flash Drive acting as a hard drive replacement is an intresting possibility. I guess it would be possible to have a blank flash disk connected to the X-Box 2 and use that as a pool of virtualized memory.

 

[London Geezer]

There will never be enough Ram.
It's like cherries, Devs always want "just one more".

Seriously, there will always be a RAM limitation because consoles stay the same for 5 years, while PCs can just keep adding RAM as they see fit. While i'm not commenting on the fact that some PC applications are outrageous from a RAM requirement point of view (ok i commented right there...), unless console manufacturers put as much RAM in consoles as there should be 4 years down the line (don't put the "necessary now", put the "necessary in 4 years" if you know what i mean), devs will always complain.

 

[Dio]

A 640x480 full double buffer takes less than 4MB. 1280x720 is just under 4x that... I don't know the exact math behind calculating frame buffer size, but I'll assume that scaling is linear, so less than 16MB. The largest frame buffer we can expect next gen would be 1920x1080, which would be another 2.25x that, so still under 36MB, under my assumptions... (please, hold off on the beheading if my numbers are inaccurate, I'm throwing numbers out off the top of my head as an example!).

You have not considered antialiasing...

 

[Shifty Geezer]

A 640x480 full double buffer takes less than 4MB. 1280x720 is just under 4x that... I don't know the exact math behind calculating frame buffer size, but I'll assume that scaling is linear, so less than 16MB. The largest frame buffer we can expect next gen would be 1920x1080, which would be another 2.25x that, so still under 36MB, under my assumptions... (please, hold off on the beheading if my numbers are inaccurate, I'm throwing numbers out off the top of my head as an example!).

That'd very easily and comfortably fit into even 128MB while offering more space for "other stuff" than any of the three current consoles.

You have not considered high texture resolutions...

At that 4x resolution, are people going to be happy with the small textures already on current consoles? No, we'll want hires texures. And multiple textures. And varied scenery. The RAM requirements are going to go up in leaps and bounds, needing more RAM for higher model resolutions, greater animation details, better AI, larger worlds, more stuff on screen than ever before...

I share the view that RAM is going to be the big bottleneck. I'd like to see a gig of RAM and know there's room for 2000 NPC's all living their independant lives simultaneously and know there's room for 400 orcs on screen at once in epic battles. At the current expectations PS3 might have the processing to cope with this but won't have the other resources.

However, streaming data is an art-form on consoles and as long as the medium is fast enough (how quick is BluRay/HD-DVD?) smart devs can work around quite a bit.

 

[London Geezer]

I share the view that RAM is going to be the big bottleneck. I'd like to see a gig of RAM and know there's room for 2000 NPC's all living their independant lives simultaneously and know there's room for 400 orcs on screen at once in epic battles. At the current expectations PS3 might have the processing to cope with this but won't have the other resources.

As you said, that is not directly dependant on RAM, since you could have 1000 characters on screen at once with very little memory - if they all look the same

I think RAM will always be the big limitation in consoles, and i also think that this is the reason why console manufacturers tend to focus on huge processing capabilities to make up for it.

PS1 - PS2 was a 8x-10x leap... i think? So one could assume that PS3 might have at least a 8x leap on PS2 = around 320MB RAM (if we consider PS2's total RAM as 40MB).

RAM in the GB areas would be nice, but let's not forget that RAM size seems the last thing manufacturers think about, it's liek they make the console, see how much it costs, then add as much RAM as they can afford. And at a certain cost point, they stop. If it's enough, good, if it's not, Developers will have to come up with ways to work around it. Like they always have.

 

[Rodéric]

You can compensate low RAM quantity by using High Order Surface and Procedural generation, but you would need a huge computing power.
Of course the best is still to have a trade of between both, I dunno which ratio would be nice though.
Sofar consoles have released pretty good games with what we consider 'low' RAM quantity (compared to PC), but lets not forget that we have huge bloated OS on the PC, lots of software/drivers running in the background... all eating up valuable ressources, which consoles don't have.

 

[London Geezer]

You can compensate low RAM quantity by using High Order Surface and Procedural generation, but you would need a huge computing power.
Of course the best is still to have a trade of between both, I dunno which ratio would be nice though.
Sofar consoles have released pretty good games with what we consider 'low' RAM quantity (compared to PC), but lets not forget that we have huge bloated OS on the PC, lots of software/drivers running in the background... all eating up valuable ressources, which consoles don't have.

That's all true, but lately PC graphics cards (which only have graphics data obviously, so no OS overhead), have had quite a jump in memory size. 256MB in a graphics card is a lot, and i wouldn't want my next console to have as much RAM in total as my PC graphics card has all for itself... See what i mean?
Not only it sounds freaky, but I'd want these new super duper processors (both in X2 and PS3) to be able to run at their fullest without having to worry about such a simple thing as RAM.

 

[Cryect]

That's all true, but lately PC graphics cards (which only have graphics data obviously, so no OS overhead), have had quite a jump in memory size. 256MB in a graphics card is a lot, and i wouldn't want my next console to have as much RAM in total as my PC graphics card has all for itself... See what i mean?
Not only it sounds freaky, but I'd want these new super duper processors (both in X2 and PS3) to be able to run at their fullest without having to worry about such a simple thing as RAM.

Same was true with this generation with video cards having 32 & 64MB's of RAM

 

[London Geezer]

Same was true with this generation with video cards having 32 & 64MB's of RAM

Yeah i know, but i'm older now and i usually want more of everything.

 

[GwymWeepa]

You can compensate low RAM quantity by using High Order Surface and Procedural generation, but you would need a huge computing power.
Of course the best is still to have a trade of between both, I dunno which ratio would be nice though.
Sofar consoles have released pretty good games with what we consider 'low' RAM quantity (compared to PC), but lets not forget that we have huge bloated OS on the PC, lots of software/drivers running in the background... all eating up valuable ressources, which consoles don't have.

*coughcellcough*

 

[Fafalada]

Not only it sounds freaky, but I'd want these new super duper processors (both in X2 and PS3) to be able to run at their fullest without having to worry about such a simple thing as RAM.

How about running to their fullest in order to make that ram 'look' bigger?
Currently the realtime compression schemes we use are pretty weak in terms of efficiency (especially texture) so it's not like we couldn't save a lot more space if the processing power was there...

Granted we'll always want more memory, right now I'm cheering for 512 because 256 is probably going to be it - but if 512 looked likely we'd be asking for 1Gig... etc

 

[Tagrineth]

You have not considered antialiasing...

At 1920x1080?

We aren't going to have AAed 1920x1080 for the next gen consoles... this gen we don't even have (consistent) AA on our 640x480! Hell, we had more AA last gen (N64) than this one...

You have not considered high texture resolutions...

At that 4x resolution, are people going to be happy with the small textures already on current consoles? No, we'll want hires texures. And multiple textures. And varied scenery. The RAM requirements are going to go up in leaps and bounds, needing more RAM for higher model resolutions, greater animation details, better AI, larger worlds, more stuff on screen than ever before...

I share the view that RAM is going to be the big bottleneck. I'd like to see a gig of RAM and know there's room for 2000 NPC's all living their independant lives simultaneously and know there's room for 400 orcs on screen at once in epic battles. At the current expectations PS3 might have the processing to cope with this but won't have the other resources.

However, streaming data is an art-form on consoles and as long as the medium is fast enough (how quick is BluRay/HD-DVD?) smart devs can work around quite a bit.

Consider the RAM on a scale, along with the res.

If you have 8x res, then you'll probably end up with ~8x content... in which case, you're using the same percentage of RAM as in the previous generation... which means you STILL have more room to play with.

I know, I'm oversimplifying things, but do consider what has been accomplished this gen, especially looking at the poor PS2's graphics buffer.

Consoles don't need 512MB yet... if anything, it would encourage sloppy coding practices, considering how much power the next consoles will have to begin with.

 

[GwymWeepa]

You have not considered antialiasing...

At 1920x1080?

We aren't going to have AAed 1920x1080 for the next gen consoles... this gen we don't even have (consistent) AA on our 640x480! Hell, we had more AA last gen (N64) than this one...

You have not considered high texture resolutions...

At that 4x resolution, are people going to be happy with the small textures already on current consoles? No, we'll want hires texures. And multiple textures. And varied scenery. The RAM requirements are going to go up in leaps and bounds, needing more RAM for higher model resolutions, greater animation details, better AI, larger worlds, more stuff on screen than ever before...

I share the view that RAM is going to be the big bottleneck. I'd like to see a gig of RAM and know there's room for 2000 NPC's all living their independant lives simultaneously and know there's room for 400 orcs on screen at once in epic battles. At the current expectations PS3 might have the processing to cope with this but won't have the other resources.

However, streaming data is an art-form on consoles and as long as the medium is fast enough (how quick is BluRay/HD-DVD?) smart devs can work around quite a bit.

Consider the RAM on a scale, along with the res.

If you have 8x res, then you'll probably end up with ~8x content... in which case, you're using the same percentage of RAM as in the previous generation... which means you STILL have more room to play with.

I know, I'm oversimplifying things, but do consider what has been accomplished this gen, especially looking at the poor PS2's graphics buffer.

Consoles don't need 512MB yet... if anything, it would encourage sloppy coding practices, considering how much power the next consoles will have to begin with.

Sloppy code practices=cheaper development cost, may as well allow developers to be a little lazy.