You might have noticed that some new games are starting to recommend, and in some cases even require 32GB of RAM, and yet the console version of that game will run using nothing more than 16GB RAM total, including VRAM.
This is true even when the games are running at similar settings on both PC and console, but why? It turns out this is a question with lots of components and more of them than I can cover here, but it does make sense.
Consoles are built around a fixed memory budget
A console comes with a fixed amount of RAM. You can’t upgrade it, and so developers have no choice but to make it work with the memory budget on offer. You might recall that Larian Studios, the developers of Baldur’s Gate 3, had to delay the release of their game because the developers couldn’t get certain aspects of the game to work with the lower amount of RAM in the Xbox Series S.
However, if they want their game to sell on that platform, they have to make it work and that goes for any console game. Of course, memory between modern consoles and PCs isn’t entirely comparable. For one thing, because both the GPU and CPU use the same unified pool of memory, there’s no need to duplicate data you would on a computer, where much of what’s in RAM is also in the GPU’s separate pool of VRAM.
Modern consoles also have guaranteed fast storage. Consider that with hardware-accelerated decompression, a PlayStation 5 offers up to 8GB/s of throughput. Since developers know exactly how fast they can stream data to memory, there’s no need for a large RAM buffer to preload data. On a PC, although fast SSDs and technologies like GPU data decompression exist, there’s no guarantee a computer will have them. So RAM recommendations have to take that into account.
Windows itself consumes more memory than console operating systems
Windows is a full PC operating system with hundreds or thousands of processes running at any time. Although we now have special game modes on operating systems like Windows and macOS that shut a lot of that stuff down while a game is running, there’s still no comparison compared to a console.
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How many consoles let you complete Elden Ring on a dance mat?
Even the Xbox Series consoles, which run a heavily-modified version of Windows, only need about 2–3 GB of RAM for the OS, with all the rest available for game developers. While modern consoles do run some processes (like downloads) in the background, fixed resources are strictly reserved for the games themselves. The Xbox Series S RAM issue I mentioned earlier was even partially resolved when Microsoft managed to reduce the OS footprint further, to free up a few hundred megabytes more for games (via The Verge).
Windows 11’s base memory footprint isn’t actually much more than that, clocking in at around 4-5 GB, but thanks to caching and other jobs a full-fat OS has to do so that it can be more than just a video game machine, that number has to inflate if you want good performance.
PC graphics pipelines rely more heavily on system RAM
I alluded to this already when I mentioned unified memory and fast SSD streaming, but the simple fact is that PC memory architecture looks quite a bit different to that of a modern console. The pipeline from disk to GPU is more streamlined and unified on consoles. With a PC a lot of what ends up in the GPU’s VRAM is first copied to the system memory, though there are various modern direct-memory access tricks on PC and the GPU itself can now take over some tasks from the CPU that break this pipeline a little too.
On consoles, the part of memory that’s solely used by the CPU for CPU-related tasks in games is relatively small compared to the portion used by the GPU, and there’s no need for duplication. Then again, developers on console have to be careful to ensure that the CPU and GPU don’t interfere with each other when using the same data in the shared pool of memory, but the end result is that you can do more with less.
Developers prioritize scalability over efficiency on PC
This is just my personal opinion, but I think the PC versions of games are developed with a different overall philosophy than consoles. This was perhaps more true when RAM was cheap (remember that?) but I think the assumption was that RAM is one component players can easily get more of, and will tend to have more than the minimum required. So, if you have more memory to play with, you can use that space to speed up load times, improve asset quality, and act as a buffer against performance lows.
When you don’t have to turn every bit around twice to make ends meet, your approach changes, and what was a few extra GB between friends? Well, with RAM prices what they are, perhaps we’ll see some of that console memory management philosophy shine on PC ports too. One can only hope!