The Xbox 360 has 512MB of revolutionary new Unified RAM that is much more advanced than the Non-Unified RAM used in the Playstation 3.
The Xbox 360 is the ONLY videogame console to use the new Unified RAM format. In an effort to keep costs as low as possible, the Playstatation 3 was forced to use the same old outdated Non-Unified RAM technology that has been used for decades.
Game developers are the ones who decide how to partition the fully optimized Unified RAM in any way they want. You can read about that here: http://www.xbox.com/en-US/hardware/xbox360/powerplay.htm
One of the reasons why the Xbox 360 version of Call of Duty 3 is better than the Playstation 3 version is because the Xbox 360 RAM is so much superior to the Playstation 3 RAM.
Both the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3 have 512MB of RAM; however, the Xbox 360 uses revolutionary new Unified RAM technology that is fully optimized to work with both the Unified Shader GPU and the tri-core CPU.
Like I previously mentioned, the Playstation 3 uses the same old Non-Unified RAM technology that has been used for decades.
Basically, what this means is that the Non-Unified 512MB RAM in the Playstation 3 has two separate sections of RAM. The first section of RAM is 256MB of System RAM that is optimized to work with the CPU. The other section of RAM is 256MB of dedicated Video RAM that is optimized to work with the GPU.
Although the Playstation 3 GPU does technically have access to the CPU System RAM, it is VERY important to remember that the CPU RAM is NOT optimized to work with the GPU; that is NOT its primary function.
Whenever there is a need to use more than 256MB of Video RAM, the Playstation 3 is at a MAJOR disadvantage when compared to the Xbox 360, because the Non-VRAM CPU System RAM of the Playstation 3 offers a very ineffient level of performance when used by the GPU, simply because of the fact that the CPU System RAM is NOT a form of fully optimized Video-RAM.
In other words the PS3 is limited to 256mb of video ram and will always lag behind the 360.
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[QUOTE="CarlosPontinas"][QUOTE="the-very-best"][QUOTE="CarlosPontinas"][QUOTE="the-very-best"]God, I hope not.
I've worried so much about this but I have a lot of faith in Rockstar and I know they're going to amaze me. They continue to do it every time they release a new GTA so I don't see why this time will be an exception.
This is the major reason I don't like games going multiplat.
mentzer
You act as if the dynamic is in PS's favor!! Truth be told it's the 360 owners who should be worried about getting a delayed version with washed out mapping and terrible draw distances, just so as to placate the cows.
SA, a last gen game with rather mediocre graphics took up 4GB from memory.
I don't want Rockstar to feel constrained to have to try and fit GTAIV in 9GB when they have the potential for so much more. There's rumours GTAIV will be (or was supposed to be) 9 times the size of SA.
I want GTAIV to be the best it can be, and I don't feel it's going to be now that it's on 2 platforms from day one but I'd love to be proved wrong by Rockstar because GTAIV is by far my most anticipated game of this year.
The problem here is you don't understand what it takes to fill GBs of disk space. If SA is 4GB (and that's a huge game BTW), then what makes you think RS needs more than twice that space for GTA IV? What are you expecting-- photorealism? Also what makes you think your PS3 could handle that? It only has 256mb of RAM. PS3 has 512MB of RAM.Â
I do see possible problems that R* could face on the 360 version due to the media, since Blu-Ray allows for so much content and doesn't burden the developer with having to make sacrifices due to needed compression routines.
GTA is all about content, content and content. I'm sure R* is smiling about Blu-Ray and frowning about DVD9.
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