360 in need of more RAM?

[Synthesthesia]

I've got a friend who seems to think that the 360 needs more RAM, and stutters because of it. His key point is dead rising, which stutters when you hit 16 zombies with a chair or something.

I said that the 360 originally had 256mb of ram, but because of gears they bumped it up. He claims it's still not enough because it won't run Crysis.

What he isn't getting is that it's a 2 year old console, that costs £280, and Crysis is a game being made with the highest spec cards/ components in mind.

He also claims that development for 360 and PC (and any console) is the same practically because they all have ram, a processor and a graphics card.

Any developers/people in the know on here want to comment on this?

I'm pretty sure i'm right...but i'd just like to rub his nose in it because he's a cocky ****

[Synthesthesia]

He's just added the pearl of wisdom that Viva pinata would have had a bigger garden and more pinata's if it had more RAM....i can't make this up people!

[xXIShadowIXx]

The 360 is fine with the amount of RAM it has imo. Any more would be pointless considering the effect it would have on the cost of the system.

[Dirty Sanchez]

Is he a developer or just your common garden know **** all?

[Brats]

Saying it doesn't have enough RAM is stupid. Kameo copes with a thousand trolls on screen andd doesn't stutter when you charge them with a horse (and that was a launch game).

Likewise, my 48k Spectrum can run the whole world of Mercenary without issue. It's more to do with graphical quality vs performance. Capcom could have got the game to run with zero stutters but would have had to sacrifice some effect. There reaches a point where the trade off becomes not worth bothering about.

The Viva Pinata Garden is clearly a gameplay decision. A larger garden would allow the player to have more and more creatures and plants which would completely ruin the balance. The design document (and the garden size) would have been decided yonks before the graphics engine was complete.

Tell him we don't know what he's on, but it's definately not Planet Earth .

[andrewfee]

I've got a friend who seems to think that the 360 needs more RAM, and stutters because of it. His key point is dead rising, which stutters when you hit 16 zombies with a chair or something.

That's intentional; it's like you get in Zelda and many other action games - the game pauses for a frame or two when you hit something with a big weapon to make it seem like it has more impact.


As for the rest; your friend is clearly an idiot.

[Leon Retro]

The 360 is more like 16months old. 1gig of ram would be nice, but seeing the PS3 is also 512mb, I think MS & Sony must think it's an o.k amount.

Crysis won't look as good on the 360. It's one of those games that's made for cutting-edge hardware. I bet it will need the latest £1000+ machine to look its best upon release.

With consoles, devs have to really optimise code, be clever, and basically push a machine harder. I think we'll see a lot of games that continue to impress. There is a lot of untapped power. Even though the amount of ram isn't high compard to modern pc's, clever programming etc.. can overcome that problem.

Look at some of the great things the Xbox1 did with only a 700mhz CPU and 64megs of Ram.

[sj33]

Your friend is correct in saying the 360 was going to have 256Meg RAM, but they bumped it up for Gears - it's well known that MS increased the main RAM to 512Meg after Mark Rein showed them Gears w/ 256Meg compared to 512Meg.

As for Crysis, the Crysis bloke did state he felt neither the 360 nor PS3 were powerful enough for Crysis, but I think he was just tooting the horn about Crysis more than anything else, since it seems the whole hype about the game is based on the DX10 graphics.

His claim that development for the 360 is similar to a PC is way off though.

[Synthesthesia]

Is he a developer or just your common garden know **** all?

He's the second of those! but he thinks he's 100% right.

That's intentional; it's like you get in Zelda and many other action games - the game pauses for a frame or two when you hit something with a big weapon to make it seem like it has more impact.


As for the rest; your friend is clearly an idiot.

Lmfao. I agree. And i told him about the pause because of the impact...but he still says it's RAM *sigh*.

Your friend is correct in saying the 360 was going to have 256Meg RAM, but they bumped it up for Gears - it's well known that MS increased the main RAM to 512Meg after Mark Rein showed them Gears w/ 256Meg compared to 512Meg.

As for Crysis, the Crysis bloke did state he felt neither the 360 nor PS3 were powerful enough for Crysis, but I think he was just tooting the horn about Crysis more than anything else, since it seems the whole hype about the game is based on the DX10 graphics.

His claim that development for the 360 is similar to a PC is way off though.

Yeah, and he didn't say the 256mb thing btw, that was me .

His other arguement was that it only had 256mb of ram...and that it was shared. Then he realised he was talking about the PS3....

He also said something about if there was more RAM, games would be able to remember where you left stuff (IE leave a car on crackdown and come back and it's there) but i replied with oblivion...because i left something there at the start, and it was there when i went back at the end. He says that that's just because of the size of the save game- can anyone tell me how the hell more RAM would help that?

[Synthesthesia]

The 360 is more like 16months old. 1gig of ram would be nice, but seeing the PS3 is also 512mb, I think MS & Sony must think it's an o.k amount.

Is the PS3 the same though? Isn't it 512mb split between the RAM and the Video card? and the 360 has 512mb RAM and 256mb Graphics?

[sj33]

Well, 360 has 512Meg shared, PS3 has 256Meg Main RAM, 256meg VRAM

RAM would not be able to 'remember where you left stuff' because the RAM is cleared when you power down the machine... it'd be the HDD that does all that, but you know that

It's a common misconception mind. But like how many people who don't know much about PC's say 'the computer needs more memory' when in fact their HDD is full, and that's what they are talking about!

[bignige]

To be honest, he's got a point. You can never have enough RAM.

[sj33]

It ain't free though.

[EJG1980]

512MB is a nice balance. It's enough to get amazing visuals like Gears of War (and you can bet we'll see even better visuals than that before the end of the 360's life) but not so much that the price is bumped up too high. We'd all have been complaining if it'd had 1GB of ram but was much much more expensive.

[Family Fry]

Just ask you friend is he stuck in 1990?
ALSO does he know that the Xbox 360 is 1265-BIT where as the PS3 is a mere 1264-BIT, that 1 Bit make ALL the difference y'know.
It shouldn't even be about RAM anymore as a gamesplayer, the only people who should be worrying about RAM is developers, all we should be worrying about is the games.
Suppose the slowdown in Burnout Revenege on 360 is caused by RAM and not a sloppy conversion from xbox to 360.