Past weekend Skyrim was released for PC, PS3 and XBoX, I went for my PC copy and the shop was demostrating PS3 and PC versions so you can go and play with both. At first sight it was clear that PC version graphics were clearly superior to these of the PS3, and the PC version was running in "Normal" detail mode. To experiment a bit I did exit the game and switched the config to High detail level. Now Skyrim was looking clearly even better but the game was not playable at all, every few steps of when you were turning your sight around, the game starded to swap forever with the harddisk. With this level of detail Skyrim ran out of memory in a PC with 2GB RAM plus other 2GB in the video card.

RAM should be considered by Nintendo as one of the key values for the Wii U, and surpasing the competitors here should be easy having the PS3 with only 256MB.

I'm confused at this? You ran the game at high power on a rig that couldn't support it, and you're surprised??

1.5 at the least
2 at mid range
4 at the highest

I guess that by allowing multiple controllers (tablets) for the wii u, the RAM thingy becomes more and more important to have. These tablets just act as a recipient and do not have processors themselves.

What's the big deal with RAM these days? Did the NES, Super NES, N64, PS1, PS2, etc. all need a large amount of RAM to run their games?

No Aviator, what surprised me is that the most demanding resource to run it at highest setting was just RAM.

Oh, they make for more immersive games and enable more complex levels to give game makers a lot more choices. Take Call of Duty for example: the Wii versions had to rely on streaming maps from the disk to the RAM while the HD counterparts were able to load all of the maps.

You do realize ram is needed on the OS side of things. One of the biggest things I hated about the 360 was II couldn't listen to music from zune pass or last.fm while playing a game. That's also the reason the ps3 doesn't have cross game chat .

I'd be surprised if Nintendo was to include a gratuitous amount of video RAM in their Wii U; wouldn't it drive up the cost of the system? Yay! I could see Mario's strands on his mustache (maybe)!

The way Mario is rendered you wouldn't be able to see that. As good as the Galaxy and DCKR games looked their is room for improvment

Now I miss rare.

The Wii U will most likely have a good amount of RAM, since it will be streaming video to the TV and the tablet's screen, plus the potential for extra tablets down the road.

Don't be ridiculous! We need a realistic Mario game! Bring on the goombas!

Dear God im out.

Certainly not, and if Nintendo aims the Wii U specs to be able to run at least NES games then more than probably 128K would be enough (I heard rumors that, only perhaps, the Wii U might be able to run games even more complex than these of the GBA) ...

Meh i'm calling N64 at the best.

Really?
NES: 4kB ... upto 12kB on the cartridge
SNES: 128kB
N64: 4MB, 8MB with the memory expansion
GC: 43MB RAM

...... so in short, yes, for the time old consoles did need a fairly large amount of RAM to do what they did at the time. Not as much as the computers of the day used because consoles tend to just run games but yeah, a fair amount of RAM.

As for the Wii U and the OP, I'm not sure if RAM will be much of a bottleneck. Sure if you're trying to run a modern game with a full modern OS and probably a few applications running in the background (messenger, a browser, media player, virus scanner etc) 2GB of system RAM will be a problem. The Wii U? Probably not so much of a problem. Your OS and few background apps probably chew up almost 1GB RAM before you even LOAD the game, a comparatively very restricted console OS could probably get away with around 100MB.

Long story short:

• Desktop OS with 2GB RAM you have probably 1GB to play around with
• Console OS with 2GB RAM and you probably have 1.8GB to play around with

Also the amounts of ram i n those older systems were considered amazing for the time.

Also the amounts of ram i n those older systems were considered amazing for the time.

Also the amounts of ram in those older systems were considered amazing for the time.

Also the amounts of ram in those older systems were considered amazing for the time.