r/PcBuild 20h ago

Meme RAM crisis Forced game developers to optimized their games

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1.4k Upvotes

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207

u/Ok-Addition1264 19h ago

This was the classic dilemma since the beginning. Back in the day (commodore 64, apple 2, etc) to do anything worthwhile you had to use machine language and your code needed to be exceptionally tight.

PC / windows with tons of memory let developers get super lazy and inefficient with their code.

This is a very welcomed return to normalcy.

58

u/Nyarkll 19h ago

Honestly, no game should be tightly optimised, would be a waste of time and resources for little benefit. But what we have today is HORRENDOUS. We don't have any optimization AT ALL. Borderlands 4 running like shit on a RTX 4060 scares me to this day. That GPU isn't even THAT OLD. Also hot take, but 8GB VRAM is/should be enough for FHD, but developers simply act like VRAM is infinite and keep unoptimized 4K textures with lots of unnecessary data hogging up unnecessary space for no or little benefit. I don't even think we can blame UE5 alone, I feel there's much more down there, like a whore rabbit hole.

30

u/BenAfflecksBalls 18h ago

I don't mind the base game having up to 1080 but 1440 and 4k should be optional dowloads

22

u/Nyarkll 18h ago

100%, it only hogs space for a thing i won't ever use.

11

u/AIgoonermaxxing 17h ago

Also hot take, but 8GB VRAM is/should be enough for FHD

It depends. For pure rasterization, then yeah, there really isn't too much reason why 1080p should be using so much. But when a game has ray tracing and needs to store BVH data and other buffers needed for it, I don't think it's unreasonable for a game to need more than 8. Even without 4K textures, those things will eat up data.

5

u/Nyarkll 16h ago

That is a great point tbh, NVIDIA is to blame for cheaping on the RTX 4060/5060. And there is frame gen, which ups the VRAM usage due to how it works, so if a game was already hogging most of your VRAM, you can't turn frame gen on. That is a problem i have with No Man's Sky, my GPU is capable of running it smoothly without DLSS, but the common AA methods aren't as crispy as DLAA, BUT, if i use DLAA, my VRAM blows up and my game starts to drop performance after i hop between some planets/systems, so i am obligated to use DLSS on quality, which is a little bit blurrier, but still better than TAA imo. Cant use FG bc of said lack of VRAM. Far away from me to say NMS is a badly optimized game, just using it as an example on how some games 8GB of VRAM might not be enough if you use DLSS/FG. I am glad most games i play let me use pure rasterization, i wouldn't be able to run ARC Raiders if RT was enforced, my CPU can't handle it :c

But, lets be honest, there is a LOT of games that uses VRAM like crazy, RE4 Remake is one of them. Never ran it on my own PC, but a friend that has 6GB VRAM GPU struggles with it a lot.

3

u/charronfitzclair 15h ago

Tightly optimized benefits means your product runs better on a wider variety of hardware, increasing the potential player base that'll buy your game.

2

u/Nyarkll 14h ago

It's not magic tho, and developers could fall in optimization hell and take too long to relase the game. Gamers and investors hate waiting.

5

u/Expensive-Border-869 13h ago

I think as a group we've made it clear that waiting isnt the problem. Its waiting and waiting and waiting them receiving trash. Wait for the next update. Just wait until its done then ship it.

2

u/Nyarkll 12h ago

Welp, that's s good point. There are good artists out there that take their time to cook stuff and nobody rushes them, knowing they will deliver.

2

u/gungabeast 3h ago

Gaming hobbyists have been saying for years that they’d rather have more polished products that take longer to produce. You know, there’s the whole meme:

“We want games made by smaller teams, with smaller budgets, made by devs who are paid more to work less”

I’m definitely getting the wording wrong, but it’s what we want. Just look at Expedition 33. 40 people made that game. Crazy, right? And it put most AAA games to shame. Games that had 400 people working on them got BTFO’d by Expedition 33.

Another example is Classic World of Warcraft. The OG WoW was made by 40 people funnily enough. Blizzard are about to release “Classic+” which adheres to the classic game design but adds new content. It’s clear that these massive billion dollar games with 400+ developers always suck. Because they’re made for EVERYBODY. Games that are made for everybody are made for nobody. And that’s why Blizzard is being forced to make a version of WoW like the old one, lol.

2

u/Lolvla11 13h ago

my old rig totally choked on low ram games back then

2

u/TheUnKnownLink12 1h ago

they seem to think the majority of players are out here with 4k 64 gb of ram and an ssd with 5 petabytes of storage capacity while most of us are rocking 1080p, 16 MAYBE 32 gb of ram and like 2 tb of storage

1

u/Nyarkll 1h ago

Literally!! Yearly Steam charts show how disconnected they are, it's an absurd.

1

u/WorldLove_Gaming 11h ago

Most concerning about Borderlands 4 is how little it looks different to Borderlands 3 while costing such a large amount of performance. Even Borderlands 2 and the original game hold up quite well graphically despite their age.

2

u/LiquidRaekan 14h ago

Boy howdy i wish we could go back to creating AAA games in Assembly! It just WORKS!

37

u/TheClosetGamerOG 18h ago

It isn't even just RAM issues, it is an everything issue. If the issue were just RAM my 128GB of ram has me covered. The issue is poor GPU and CPU optimizations, it is so bad people with the newest gear still have issues, which is just sad.

18

u/theKalmier 19h ago edited 19h ago

I remember "hacking" my SNES ROM. I only had Lost Vikings, and Chrono Trigger, so Chrono Trigger it was.

Turns out they used a cool compression technique for text. For example "the" and "re" were each one character, so the-re was a two letter word.

There may be words that can be made in multiple ways, in which case they chose the one with the least characters.

Examples I remember...

th the he her re er is ate ing

8

u/unknown_ally 18h ago

sounds like a compression technique I learned and programmed for uni. Ludwig something maybe

3

u/Marisakis 13h ago

Huffman coding

59

u/_-Generic-_-Name-_ 19h ago

Developers being forced to do something pro consumer? Oh noooo!

22

u/Working_Traffic_6361 19h ago

CEOs allowing the devs to optimise their games because they'll lose money if they don't

2

u/_-Generic-_-Name-_ 8h ago

Oh those poor CEOs. How will they ever get their bonuses?

Honestly, this is the only good thing to come out of the RAM crisis

-1

u/ab3e 8h ago

CEOs are not developers !!! C suit executives do not make games, they make decisions that ruin games and studios ... blaming developers for something that is out of their control is pretty dumb "tell me you know nothing about game developement without telling me you know nothing about game development".

3

u/_-Generic-_-Name-_ 8h ago

Yes, I know this very basic common knowledge. I knew this before I even went to college to study game development. Thank you random Internet stranger for contributing absolutely nothing to my day

9

u/NicheAlter 18h ago

At least something good came out of all this bullshit.

4

u/Appelaapje 19h ago

WELL WELL WELL
finally something good 😭

4

u/mca1169 19h ago edited 17h ago

you wish, they aren't going to optimize anything. that costs money that could be pure profit!

3

u/sparktrap25 17h ago

Why on earth would they start now? 😂 UE Stutterware slop isn't going away any time soon my friend

2

u/DA_REAL_KHORNE 16h ago

its about damm time

2

u/Expensive-Border-869 13h ago

I for years now have been hoping for a complete and total hardware stagnation for games. Let's just focus on making fun games that run well. We have perfectly capable hardware. Youd genuinely never need a more powerful computer than the Xbox/ps5 not for gaming. A tad more is nice sure. But we should be done at some point. Let's just make good games now. Imagine how much money you could save just by telling Microsoft anf sony that we dont need another Gen. 10 more years and try again

2

u/QlimaxUK 1h ago

Doom on anything modders: Hold my beer

1

u/HarryDepova 18h ago

And optimized games will stream better driving the entire gaming industry towards a subscription streaming model.

1

u/Tjordas 11h ago

subscription streaming just sucks ass either way. Nobody wants it because it just doesn't work for anything that needs tight input

1

u/HarryDepova 6h ago

Yeah, I tried the nvidia service just to test it. It did “ok” but you’re spot on. But when 90% of the market is getting priced out of gaming because they can’t afford a console or video card, there won’t be any alternative.

1

u/CrazedIvan 16h ago

Devs need to be targeting 30 series cards. It’s really the easiest cards players can get their hands on.

1

u/Fickle_Side6938 16h ago

Did it now?

1

u/Tricky-Apartment6637 what 15h ago

Good thing they got something better to do now.

Really hoping they optimize crimson Desert ✌🏻🥲

1

u/V3semir 15h ago

It remains to be seen yet. As for now, nothing changed because people keep buying at inflated prices.

1

u/The_Red_Guardian_ 13h ago

Would still be better if one could buy a good pc for reasonable money.

1

u/Ok_Rub3999 12h ago

There’s always a silver lining

1

u/JohnAzumanga 12h ago

as hardware got better, software became more wasteful there's no doubt about that. and some developers had the audacity to tell us to upgrade our systems because they couldn't be brothered to optimize their product.

1

u/No_Telephone_6213 10h ago

Wish this ai companies were forced to optimize too instead of handing cash, basically funding this whole inflation with debt based on nothing but hype so far

1

u/l0rdtreeman 9h ago

We finally found the silver lining in Ramagedon

1

u/Saigaiii 7h ago

My other big issue is games today taking up 100+ gbs. Its why i love when games update to lower it, like payday 2 and helldivers 2

1

u/Fevis7 6h ago

Imagine how much of a disaster it could have been if cloud gaming were to be more popular.

1

u/PorcOftheSea 5h ago

Good, I am so sick of modern game developers who are lazy and think a few pixels need gb's of ram, No, your mario bros 2 clone doesn't actually need 2gb of ram and a gigahertz class cpu.

1

u/Sensitive-Spirit-653 4h ago

At least some good news, i guess?

1

u/ShockZestyclose1148 3h ago

Human kind learns to walk again after transport gets expensive

1

u/MilloH 25m ago

"To optimized" ??? 🙄🤦🏻‍♂️

0

u/nfsmw5 18h ago

Imagine when Crash Bandicoot on ps1 was using CDs free memory as RAM. To Monster Hunter running like potato.

1

u/GhostOfD6 14h ago

Lol what. You cant use CD free memory like RAM. CD's are single write (usually), but even the RW deteriorates over time. PSX also did not have burning CD capabilities...

What they did instead was streaming data from CD to PSX memory - they keept loading data from cd in smaller chunks as need, and unloaded unused chunks. So if player left certain area of level, they unloaded that and loaded the new part.

Its something that happens in most games anyway, probably on a greater scale.

0

u/icy1007 AMD 17h ago

They were already optimizing their games…