With the new consoles having 8gb RAM, will PC's need more for gaming?

[MooseParade]

For awhile now the minimum needed to game was 4gb and 8gb was the "sweet spot". With XBone using 8gb DDR3 and PS4 having 8gb GDDR5 will the minimum and sweet spot be raised on PC's?

[Anult]

Not for a while at least.

 

Not to mention, both systems don't have access to the whole 8gb of ram heck the xbone only has 5gb at it's disposal due to the 3 operating systems onboard.

[Night]

For awhile now the minimum needed to game was 4gb and 8gb was the "sweet spot". With XBone using 8gb DDR3 and PS4 having 8gb GDDR5 will the minimum and sweet spot be raised on PC's?

Doubt it. Our systems are split up where these new consoles are sharing that RAM across everything.

For instance I have 16GB memory, but my video card has 2GB. So...I have like..18GB of ram...But...ones DDR3 and the other is GDDR5...and the speed at which the RAM runs at differs between the video card and the system memory...

Soooo... Yea, I doubt we will have to change anything at all.

[Nertballs]

not to forget that's shared memory so it's less in total.

 

and also something to note, with some games being a little "Ram heavy", much of this was because of optimisation. with the new consolols, PC games will be more optimised out of the box with the new architecture on console

[Night]

not to forget that's shared memory so it's less in total.

 

and also something to note, with some games being a little "Ram heavy", much of this was because of optimisation. with the new consolols, PC games will be more optimised out of the box with the new architecture on console

This is a fairly good point. I recall Skyrim having a mod so that it could utilize more than 2GB of ram, pushing it up to 4. All PC gamers were basically getting screwed over because we just have more ram anyway, but games were only designed to work with low amounts.

The multi core optimization is going to be a good thing but the amount of ram and the usage of that ram is most likely going to be a benefit aswell, UNLESS...developers only use GDDR5 memory, possibly making all our DDR3 worthless and maxing out the GDDR5 on our video cards.

[MooseParade]

This is a fairly good point. I recall Skyrim having a mod so that it could utilize more than 2GB of ram, pushing it up to 4. All PC gamers were basically getting screwed over because we just have more ram anyway, but games were only designed to work with low amounts.

The multi core optimization is going to be a good thing but the amount of ram and the usage of that ram is most likely going to be a benefit aswell, UNLESS...developers only use GDDR5 memory, possibly making all our DDR3 worthless and maxing out the GDDR5 on our video cards.

 

I'm glad you brought up the cores, Night. Right now, we don't see any games utilizing more than 4 cores, threads, modules. Will that change? Will games start to be written for 6/8 cores or is that a little ways off too?

[david cassar]

A lot of people still use 32 bit systems which don't utilise more than 4gb ram, so if they begin making a minimum of 8gb a lot sales will be lost. Also since the consoles are apus they will use 2-3 gb of the ram as vram and further use the resources for background stuff. So i still say that in 2 years time 4gb will still be enough.

[ShiverMePenguins]

A lot of people still use 32 bit systems which don't utilise more than 4gb ram, so if they begin making a minimum of 8gb a lot sales will be lost. Also since the consoles are apus they will use 2-3 gb of the ram as vram and further use the resources for background stuff. So i still say that in 2 years time 4gb will still be enough.

because we (companies) give a rats ass about poor people still using 32 bit for gaming on a pc? we don't care about pc as is. there is no money in the pc market against a single console.

[MooseParade]

Arokhantos, on 22 Jun 2013 - 08:45 AM, said:

who care's pc gaming is held back by consoles not by 32 bit users.

the ps4 will have 7 gb avaible for gaming the xbox one 5 gb avaible for gaming sooner or later pc games will follow this up asswell in 1 or 2 years.

This is what I've been thinking. After the first year of development on consoles PC's will have to be upgraded. If you're using a 32-bit OS for gaming you're already behind the times. The move to 64-bit really started with Vista (XP has it but XP isn't supported much anymore. Activision is just one publisher that said all upcoming games will not run on XP) and is a no brainer now. Not to mention both consoles will bu using 64-bit OS'es, there won't be any support for 32-bit

[david cassar]

who care's pc gaming is held back by consoles not by 32 bit users.

the ps4 will have 7 gb avaible for gaming the xbox one 5 gb avaible for gaming sooner or later pc games will follow this up asswell in 1 or 2 years.

I am not saying it is being held back by the 32 bit users. I am saying that companies would like to maximize their profit and in order to that they also need to maximize sales , and there are a lot of people still using 32 bit systems.

 

 

[zach71593]

And honestly even if it did get to the point to buy more ram its only 80 dollars for 8gb RAM any way, not unless you have a laptop but even then you can upgrade the sticks.

[TTesla]

The minimum? probably. The sweet spot? Ehhh maybe, but not for a while. Especially if your playing older games, then nothing will change. But if your planning on playing new console ports, then yes the minimum and sweet spot will be raised, again the sweet spot less likely since the games are going to be designed for 8gb anyways.

[PCBudgetSolutions]

Remember, it's shared GDDR5 memory which for system wise does not work as well as DDR3.  Only about 2GB will be usable for rendering graphics, because the GPU doesn't have enough power to utilize anymore.

[Night]

I'm glad you brought up the cores, Night. Right now, we don't see any games utilizing more than 4 cores, threads, modules. Will that change? Will games start to be written for 6/8 cores or is that a little ways off too?

I think games are going to be made with a quad core in mind now. The graphical power needed to play most current games requires a more badass video card, and you dont really see those in low end machines. So I think its safe to asume devs will just hit quad cores, but then for those with 6+ cores/threads I think you may not be getting much of a difference. It probably costs devs more to figure out how to optimize for more cores and I dont think its worth it to them on a business level.

We might see a lot more console only games wth no ports simply because of the higher core count, and higher GDDR5 count. Which I think in turn would either kill us or make us even more elite and specialized.

Edit:

Just read PCBudgetSolutions previous comment. If they are only hitting 2GB for video rendering that puts PC's in a much nicer position.