360 in need of more RAM?

[MattyD]

Perhaps your friend isn't aware that, unlike a Crysis-standard PC, the 360 was designed purely to play games and doesn't come with any of the dead weight of a massive OS, drivers and resources for unnecessary hardware, bottlenecked BIOS etc etc.

And given that for the same price you could buy a 360 and half a dozen great games, and the hassle-free Live experience, I know which I'd choose

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?

The reason dead bodies, blown up cars etc etc vanish in games is not because the machine lacks RAM per se, it's more of a housekeeping chore. Every videogame does this to some extent, because otherwise the more stuff you killed / blew up, the more system memory would be gobbled up remembering it all, and the more power you'd need to render it all, until the program eventually collapsed under the weight of dead stuff.

IN THEORY this would not be a problem if you had unlimited RAM and processing power, but in the real world you do not and there are people who will deliberately do stupid things like pile up 6,000 dead bodies just because they can, and the game will lock up.

There is a middle ground solution where you save the state of certain important things (such as important people or items) onto a hard disc cache, and load it in as and when necessary. But even this has downsides. For one thing, it bloats your save files (quicksaves for Hitman Blood Money on the 360 are over 200 megs for instance). Second, when you're handling files that big on-the-fly, that also sucks up processing time as the machine searches the file for the relevant data, parses it into memory and then gets on with whatever it was supposed to be doing. Access times for HDDs are in any case intolerably for most console games and would cause stutter anyway, so that doesn't really solve anything.

There was a really good article on this over at MTV.com recently with quotes from the designer of Resistance: Fall of Man, which has semi-persistent dead bodies saved to the HDD. But it seems to be down at the moment

[Kotatsu Neko]

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.


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.

Your friend is pretty far off the mark. 512mb is an exceptional amount of a game console. Slowdown could be related to all manor of issues, but it's unlikely to be memory. Could be down to run time model set-up issues, decrompressing animation, lots of stuff.

Development for the 360 is somewhat similar to the PC, in that they both use Direct X and potentially XNA, but the GPU is a custom affair and not a PC component (unlike the PS3, which is an off the shelf part), and the CPU is compeltely different. It's a Power PC derivative, but the PC is of course x86. They are radically different chips.

As for Crysis, we shall see. PCs have tremendous overheads to deal with, namely Windows and all it's myriad of background tasks all working away while a game tries to run. Consoles are incredibly streamlined, which is why you see stuff like Doom 3 on Xbox 1 running well on what was for the time very low end hardware.

[Synthesthesia]

Development for the 360 is somewhat similar to the PC, in that they both use Direct X and potentially XNA, but the GPU is a custom affair and not a PC component (unlike the PS3, which is an off the shelf part), and the CPU is compeltely different. It's a Power PC derivative, but the PC is of course x86. They are radically different chips.

Yeah, he said that the CPU couldn't be the problem because it has 3 cores and 3.2ghz each..and he also said that the graphics card was the same as his in his PC practically, it's custom though right?

I'll see if i can get him to sign up and fight his point

[Kotatsu Neko]

Yeah, he said that the CPU couldn't be the problem because it has 3 cores and 3.2ghz each..and he also said that the graphics card was the same as his in his PC practically, it's custom though right?

I'll see if i can get him to sign up and fight his point

He's talking nonsense again. The GPU is an entirely custom part, and is a kind of half way house between DX9 and DX10. Very advanced for it's time, although clearly beaten by the new DX10 GPUs available for the PC. It is however quicker and more advanced than the RSX in the PS3, which really is an off the shelf previous gen PC GPU.

[Salsa Party Animal]

It is load of crap, it is down to programming skills and the game engine development. Ram will make thing easier, but it is down to the development skills in the end.

[Hombre]

It's not all about size, it's how you use it!

(please note: I'm hung like a horse)

[DarkAvengerRyan]

Xbox 360 could do with more ram

Hey guys, I was shown this post tonight and decided I would defend my statement that I claimed to synthesthesia.

My statement was that the xbox 360 is in need of more ram. Its been pretty much a one sided thing so far so please read that I have wrote and consider all my points.

Just a little bit of information about the hardware: 3 x 3.2ghz processors (3 cores)
Even if a game was not optimized properly to work with 3 cores you would still be running one, which is extremely powerful in itself however even games that aren?t optimized for 3 cores will still make use of the other two, just not to their potential. There is always 3 cores working on a thread at one time. This is something to be proud of.

The graphics card on the xbox 360 is based on my current pc graphics card which is an x1900 series. Any xbox 360 fan boy will back me up on that. Anyone who comes back and says ?no it isn?t, the graphics chip is custom? well they are correct, it?s only custom because it?s a customised/tweaked x1900 graphics chip, which is direct x 9. Therefore it is based on the x1900 graphics chip, which is a top of the range direct x 9 chip.

As for the Ram, 512mb DDR3 (same ram that the x1900 series has) is shared.

So, we have a superb 3 core processor, a top of the range direct x 9 graphics chip, and erm?. 512mb of ram, does that sound right? Hmmm, two great hardware chips and only 512mb sounds like a bottleneck to me.

Would you build a pc system with 3 cores, an x1900 series graphics chip, with only 512mb for gaming? Not unless your intending on sticking to the mid range games.

Now I already know that an xbox 360 isnt a pc, however it is similar. They both use the exact same hardware, ie ram, processor, graphics card, power supply, and motherboard.

There are differences between performance though, as someone already said an xbox 360 isnt bogged down by drivers and an operating system which uses a lot of ram. It does have its own operating system though but it doesn?t exactly use much ram as its very simplified in comparison to windows. I doubt the xbox 360 operating system uses more than 32mb of ram to be honest.

My point about crisis: Crytek stated in a press release last year that the xbox 360 isnt capable of handling the game because of the lack of ram, they even admitted it was a bottleneck for the console. If the xbox 360 had more ram then it would be capable of running crisis.

Now I know someone will say, the xbox 360 is two years old! How can it run a direct x 10 game! Well the E3 demo of crisis was running on the x1900 graphics chips, which is direct x 9 and they were running the game on high detail with I think 1280 x 1024 resolution. The xbox 360 graphics chip runs on direct x9. I see some sort of similarity, don?t you? So, the graphics card can run the game! As for the processor, well?. One 3.2ghz meets the requirements for the game, but the xbox 360 has 3 cores! That?s more than enough! Now the next question is, is 512mb enough for the game to run on the xbox 360? No! That?s the bottleneck in the console.

Someone is going to come along and say that console and pc games are completely different to develop, well? not entirely! Both the xbox 360 and pc have the same components, which gives a foundation for developers making a game for both consoles and pc?s. The xbox 360 runs on direct x9, so does the pc. This gives a foundation for graphics and the rest of the hardware. Now, im not saying that making an xbox 360 game is exactly the same as a pc game, because they both use a different combinations of hardware, pc games need to take into account every pc processor in the market, every graphics chip, every bit of hardware to play a game basically, whereas when you need to make a game for the xbox 360 you only need to bear in mind one processor, one graphics chip, one type of ram etc.

I understand that there is a difference when making a console game over a pc game, you cant just put a console game in a pc and it will work, but there are a lot of similarities. Games on pc and the xbox 360 can now use the same engine because they both use the same hardware almost. Unreal engine, valve?s engine etc. They both utilize direct x 9. im sure there are loads of other similarities but they are just a couple of ones straight from the top of my head. All im saying is that there isn?t a huge difference.

For example, all need for speed games are pretty much the same on all consoles and pc, with the exception of online gameplay. EA games manage to bring them all out on the same date, I know it?s a huge company but they can do so because consoles like the ps3 and xbox 360 are made with the same foundations as a pc game. The same for any multi format game really.

Back to the ram issue though, as someone already said about crackdown the game needs to remove unused objects and cars because it will bog down the ram. Why do you think the game plays so well!!! Because it removes these objects! It isn?t capable of storing them all in the ram because there isn?t enough of it! If the xbox 360 had more ram, it wouldn?t need to remove objects like this! You kill someone and he stays there! You blow up a car, and it stays there! Wouldn?t that be great? The fact is, the xbox 360 cant handle storing this information in the ram because there isn?t enough of it.

Someone is going to argue back and say, well look at dead rising and kameo, loads of zombies/ fat green monsters on the screen at once! Omg! How amazing! How is the xbox 360 capable of this! Well, its simple, how fast do they move? Not very?. They barely move unless your close to them, which is how the xbox 360 pulls it off. If every zombie on the screen and every green thing ran around and started fighting with each other then the xbox 360 wouldn?t be able to handle it. For those of you who say we haven?t seen the full potentional of the xbox 360 then your right, but as for ram, its pretty much maxed out! Developers are having to find new ways around this by storing information on the hard disk, or making items disappear when you leave them (oblivion?s items are stored on the hard disk), enemies disappear when you kill them, etc.

Developers are having to find these new ways around the restrictions of having only 512mb of shared ram between the graphics and gameplay, and as graphics are getting better in games they require more ram, which means there is less ram to store information such as items around the game that you have dropped, dead bodies, and cars etc. If the xbox 360 had more ram it would be capable of so much more! It wouldn?t have to force these stuff to disappear all the time!

Oblivion is only capable of this as it stores weapons on the ground, dead bodies etc on the hard disk (one of the methods I mentioned above).


The xbox 360 is just crying out for more ram so that gameplay is much better! Remember how on grand theft auto the cars used to disappear right infront of you? Even when they were driving!? Well this happens on the xbox 360 too! On games such as crackdown and oblivion it only loads a radious of the map around you as the ram can only handle a limited amount of information due to its size, which means when you leave that area the xbox removes it from the ram, and loads up the new area, which means more loading times.

More ram would mean the xbox 360 is capable of much more, less loading times in games as the information can all be loaded at once, cars and bodies stay on the floor and don?t disappear. On the pc version of Oblivion, there are less loading times than the xbox 360 version when running around the open land because the pc loads more data at once as there is more ram available, the xbox 360 cannot do this with only 512mb of ram. As Synthesthesia mentioned, dead rising does stutter when you hit about 20 zombies, that?s because they require ram to react, the processor can easily handle this information and process it, but the ram cant. Sure, I know games cant be perfect, but if there was more ram then the information may possibly load quicker.

Yeah I fully understand the cost implications and that a games console cant be too expensive, but an extra 512mb of ram costs less than ?30 for a pc, and probably about the same for an xbox seeing as its pretty much the same damn thing! Fair enough its DDR3, so lets say an extra ?50, but I for one would love to have the option of paying an extra ?50 for a better model of the xbox 360, which was capable of so much more!

So, does everyone still think the xbox 360 doesn?t need any more ram? Even when professional games developers admit they are restricted on how games are made because the xbox 360 only has 512mb of ram, which is evidenced by having to find new methods of how games load information.

Another thing, gears of war is a great game but over hyped, have you tried shooting the water? Not even a splash! Just thought I would add that seeing as someone mentioned it earlier.

[Yoshimax]

Yes I still think it has enough RAM.

That post was waaaaay too long.

Also, they said Doom3 and HalfLife2 couldn't be done on Xbox1. They were wrong and it had 64mb

And if 360 is "bottlenecked" in terms of it's ability to push data then PS3 is completely ****ed.

If you're wanting to bet Crysis won't see light of day on 360 I'll happily take that bet right now - In fact I'd hazard MS are hard at work signing that one up as a console exclusive to 360 so they can tie it in with the PC version and run them across LIVE a-la Shadowrun !!!

As for disappearing objects in games like Crackdown I think you'll find that given the amount of **** going on in that game it'd be kinda tricky to just leave all the debris lying about and it'd be the processor and graphics card that'd pay the price for it all before the RAM became a problem. It's gameplay over what's technically possible. They're always going to opt for level of detail over sheer volume of polys drawn hence games like GTA/Crackdown will always come down to a trade-off between the two.

And have you seen how awesome the water in Gears of War is ? I couldn't give a **** whether it splashes or not evidently the designers felt the memory/process requirements for that were better spent elsewhere - Like I said, practicality over technically possible.

[Brats]

Oh god, PC fanboy alert!

The graphics card on the xbox 360 is based on my current pc graphics card which is an x1900 series. Any xbox 360 fan boy will back me up on that. Anyone who comes back and says ?no it isn?t, the graphics chip is custom? well they are correct, it?s only custom because it?s a customised/tweaked x1900 graphics chip, which is direct x 9. Therefore it is based on the x1900 graphics chip, which is a top of the range direct x 9 chip.

Wrong. The Xenos chip is not a tweaked x1900 chip. ATI started development of this chip two years before the release of the 360. MS own the copyright on the chip. The core of the chip is closer to the R600 rather than the R520 used in the current x1000 range of cards.

The fundamental difference is the 48 unified shaders on the Xenos and the unified memory architecture of the 360.

My point about crisis: Crytek stated in a press release last year that the xbox 360 isnt capable of handling the game because of the lack of ram.

Crytek are notoriously close to the PC. I wouldn't believe word they say on the subject. Needless to say we will see games looking better than Crysis on DX9 hardware (if we haven't already).

You're comparing the 360 architecture to a PC which is fundamentally flawed. They are massively different and originally the PC crowd were concerned by the differences between the arhcitectures (as evidenced in Dean Takaheshi's book on the 360). Any differences in performance on games like Oblivion are solely down to a PC developer getting used to a new system.

I'm not saying the 360 will always compete with a PC (and you make some concessions to that) but there is no 'bottle neck' that you speak of with the 360. More ram is always nice, but it would put the cost up, which means it becomes more niche and has a reduced variety of games developed for it (hey, kind of like the PC! ).

[Yoshimax]

Also, as I forgot, I believe the 360 OS sits on its own 32mb of flash ? That's how they've got the whole live/dash integration down so well which PS3 won't be able to manage - Again, I could be wrong

[DarkAvengerRyan]

Oh god, PC fanboy alert!



Wrong. The Xenos chip is not a tweaked x1900 chip. ATI started development of this chip two years before the release of the 360. MS own the copyright on the chip. The core of the chip is closer to the R600 rather than the R520 used in the current x1000 range of cards.

The fundamental difference is the 48 unified shaders on the Xenos and the unified memory architecture of the 360.



Crytek are notoriously close to the PC. I wouldn't believe word they say on the subject. Needless to say we will see games looking better than Crysis on DX9 hardware (if we haven't already).

You're comparing the 360 architecture to a PC which is fundamentally flawed. They are massively different and originally the PC crowd were concerned by the differences between the arhcitectures (as evidenced in Dean Takaheshi's book on the 360). Any differences in performance on games like Oblivion are solely down to a PC developer getting used to a new system.

I'm not saying the 360 will always compete with a PC (and you make some concessions to that) but there is no 'bottle neck' that you speak of with the 360. More ram is always nice, but it would put the cost up, which means it becomes more niche and has a reduced variety of games developed for it (hey, kind of like the PC! ).

I knew someone would come back with the "The fundamental difference is the 48 unified shaders on the Xenos and the unified memory architecture of the 360"

Well just for the record, the x1900 series is based around the r580, and the pc version of the chip is actually better than the xbox 360 version as it has faster RAM, faster GPU speed, more transitors, etc. So the xbox 360 version isnt closer to the r600 in any way! Your are correct in saying there is a difference between the unified shaders and memory though but this is the only upper hand that the xbox 360 gpu has over the x1900 series.

[DarkAvengerRyan]

Also, as I forgot, I believe the 360 OS sits on its own 32mb of flash ? That's how they've got the whole live/dash integration down so well which PS3 won't be able to manage - Again, I could be wrong

I couldnt possibly comment on this to be honest, first i have heard of it but i havent really looked into it.

[Brats]

I knew someone would come back with the "The fundamental difference is the 48 unified shaders on the Xenos and the unified memory architecture of the 360"

Well just for the record, the x1900 series is based around the r580, and the pc version of the chip is actually better than the xbox 360 version as it has faster RAM, faster GPU speed, more transitors, etc. So the xbox 360 version isnt closer to the r600 in any way! Your are correct in saying there is a difference between the unified shaders and memory though but this is the only upper hand that the xbox 360 gpu has over the x1900 series.

So I was correct then.

The unified shader architecture is a mahoosive difference and the Xenos is closer to the architecture (not performance - durrrrr) of the R600 than the R500.

The R520 and R580 are simply variants of the R500. They are both completely different designs to the R600.

I couldnt possibly comment on this to be honest, first i have heard of it but i havent really looked into it.

It's not 100% right, but is much closer to the truth than your post. Basically, you're just admitting you have no idea what you are comparing your beloved PC to.

[Gerry Helmet]

So what are teraflops then ?

[Yoshimax]

As regards bottlenecks :

The interface to the system?s memory is 128-bit. Isn?t this a bottleneck considering the bandwidth-intensive tasks performed in the GPU? Why was a 128-bit bus selected when PC parts already implement 256-bit buses in their high-end editions?

Bob Feldstein: Excellent question because it gets to the heart of what is right in the system design. We have a great deal of internal memory in the daughter die referred to above. We actually use this memory as our back buffer. In addition, all anti-aliasing resolves, Z-Buffering and Alpha Blending occur within this internal memory. This means our highest bandwidth clients (Z, Alpha and FSAA) occur internally to the chip and don?t need to access main memory. This makes the 128 bit interface to system memory, and the ensuing bandwidth, more than enough for our needs because we are offloading the bandwidth hogs to internal memory.