What is the future of GPU VRAM in view of next gen consoles with unified system memory?

[MeMeMeMe]

Sorry but that is just wrong. Only the complete top end could think about trying to run it on highest settings and even then 'playable' was more like 25 fps.

He didn't say highest settings. He said high settings: there or 4 standard configs, Low, Medium, High, Very high.
Plus, with tweaking, you could achieve High or Very High appearance with less of a performance hit.

You could certainly reduce your resultion to 720p, and get High quality settings on a lot of computers, put it on a big screen and sit 10 feet away with your controller, and it would look way better than any console game, and play perfectly well.

Also remember, console games are usually designed to run at 720p and target 30fps. there's a big jump between that and what PCs were capable of in 2007/8.

The game actually wasn't that great when you consider a masterpiece like BioShock was released the same year. Crysis was more like a tech demo. It had sandboxy elements but once you knuckled down to play the game and got a few levels in it wasn't anything special. Far cry 3 released last year was a much better example of what that sort of game should be like.

?? How is this relevant to a discussion about graphic performance. Or was it that we were talking about graphic performance, and when a game is brought up that smashes your argument, you can't resist bashing it?

 

[FrankJH]

PC reigns supreme, always. Unless you can break the laws of physics and economics.

economics will ALWAYS be on the side of the console (far more consoles / games for consoles are sold than games for a pc -or any gaming hardware you care to mention)

The ONLY reason Intel (and to a lesser extent AMD) are in business is because of the millions of corporate pc's they (help to) sell every year. The tiny fraction of gaming cpu's sold (and the premiums on them)pay for the tech inside business pc's for years to come.

With this new generation, now that the consoles are going to be locked down mini-pc's (but without the annoying Windows /Direct X layers and all that involves) these new consoles may finally have a fairer fight on their hands.

Consoles have always required less powerful hardware to manage to do the same "effect" as a pc, because of the additional effort the pc has to manage. Npw with developers being able to use the same tools (on console and pc versions of any game) there is huge potential for the consoles to become clearly better (until a year or two down the line when there is another leap in pc technology)

Sony and MS don't care anywhere as much about the billions they each pumped into the last gen of consoles, because its the millions of games sold that bring in the licensing revenue for them. This will only increasee this time around (because the more "generic" hardware used this time should have cut console development costs dramatically).

This is an enthusiast community, where top end cards are common.

And the sales of these enthusiast cards are minimal (fractions of 1 percent) in comparison to anything used in the consoles.

 

[VincentHanna]

?? How is this relevant to a discussion about graphic performance. Or was it that we were talking about graphic performance, and when a game is brought up that smashes your argument, you can't resist bashing it?

The thing is, a lot of people seem to have misunderstood my argument. At no point did I say console graphics were better. I said look how good they were 5 years ago on comparably worse hardware.

Of course Crysis looked amazing, it was the best looking game available when it was released. Here is some perspective from 2009:

http://www.bit-tech.net/blog/2009/12/15/crysis-did-you-upgrade/

 

[Five.Stars]

The remaining 2GB I assume, I did link to an article stating that Killzone was only using about 512-1GB for game engine/levels



Yes I remember quite clearly, and no bugger could run it at high settings for about 3-4 more years...

Yet if you had run it at the comparative console settings - ie lower than 720p at 30fps - it would still have looked far better than anything that was released on any of the consoles at the time!