News Xbox Series S Suffers from VRAM Limitations, Just Like 8GB GPUS

[Admin]

The Xbox Series S suffers from memory limitations that cause Borderlands 3 to crash, according to Reddit thread.

Xbox Series S Suffers from VRAM Limitations, Just Like 8GB GPUS : Read more

 

[Sleepy_Hollowed]

Dang, this came quick for consoles.
Either SDKs make it easier to take care of this, or the underlying framework does, or else games are going to cost a lot much more to make, which usually means in USA more hours and less pay for developers.

 

[thestryker]

Developers may complain about this, but it's on them to actually be competent. There is absolutely no reason why they can't easily work within the boundaries set other than it would require more resources. The vast majority of the problems appear to be centered around textures which means they're likely using textures larger than necessary for lower resolutions.

 

[ohio_buckeye]

On the series s there shouldn’t be any reason they can’t reduce textures/details. When I bought the Harry Potter game, I actually bought and played it on a series s. It really runs quite nicely if you use the performance mode.

 

[beckerjr]

This again? The game can run on PCs with as little as 2GB of VRAM and has been released on last gen consoles too. It has nothing to do with the S hardware. This is on the game and the developers.

 

[ET3D]

beckerjr has a good point. This is an old games and much newer games run fine on the Series S. It's a bug.

That doesn't mean that 10GB isn't a real limitation. 10GB for the OS + game + VRAM is really not much, and game devs are struggling with this.

It should be easy for Microsoft to upgrade the RAM without a redesign of the console. It could release an updated version with 12GB, for example. However, with millions of Series S already on the market, that won't really save the devs from having to continue optimising for 10GB.

 

[Gahl1k]

If things go on like this, by 2025 even the Series X and PS5 will have problems due to only having 16GB of VRAM. It seems new developers didn't learn memory management and allocation, and with DirectX 12 it's gonna get worse.

 

[Upacs]

I feel sorry for those developers. They are likely overworked as it is, and here we are telling them that they don't know how to do their jobs.

Most likely they know perfectly well how to solve the problem, but don't have the resources, and are unwilling to work more than the 12hr days they are already pulling. All in the hope that the game becomes a big hit and can walk away with a decent paycheck.

 

[usertests]

That doesn't mean that 10GB isn't a real limitation. 10GB for the OS + game + VRAM is really not much, and game devs are struggling with this.

It should be easy for Microsoft to upgrade the RAM without a redesign of the console. It could release an updated version with 12GB, for example. However, with millions of Series S already on the market, that won't really save the devs from having to continue optimising for 10GB.

Is it known exactly how much of the memory is used by the OS and unavailable to games? If so, that number should be in the article. I think it was slightly over 2 GB but may have been reduced to around 1.5 GB. So you're looking at less than 9 GB for a game.

I agree on a 12 GB update. It won't fix the problem; the damage is done for at least the rest of this decade. But it could be a quick fix for anybody who buys an updated model, without needing much extra attention from developers.

 

[cknobman]

Maybe game devs/pubs should focus on just making a quality game that runs good on the hardware that exists instead of trying to push graphics to the limit?
I'd rather have a game that plays stable with fewer bugs that one pushing the edge of graphical fidelity.

 

[ItsASpider]

Other systems that experience the exact same issue in Borderlands 3: Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5.

It's not the VRAM, it's the game.

 

[atomicWAR]

While I was never thrilled with the XBSS specs, I think this has a lot more to do devs pushing the machine to hard with huge textures, some bugs and optimization issue. I get its a lot of work and its easy to just blame the devs but a lot of this could have been avoided if they keep their texture sizes in check. They know exactly how much vram resources they have and there is little reason to exceed them.

 

[Nanfoodle]

I made an account just to reply to this nonsense. These type of write ups are just to cause negative clicks. Series S has lots of life left. I have been playing Jedi Survivor on this console and it runs it better then the Series X that I also own. If new games can still optimize for a 1660 with minimum specs. Series S will do just fine.

 

[Deleted member 2947362]

I had that happen on my Series S when I owned one, good little system. It amazed me how they get what they do out of 100Watt system!
The game I was playing when it happened was Guardians Of The Galaxy, happen a couple of time in different places.
Sold it to my neighbour and he's had no issue, although I think it has happened to him before as well, don't know what game he was playing when it happened though. I'd have to ask him.
I upgraded to the series X but still waiting for Xbox to make a game that takes full avantage of all the hardware features to show off what this box can do.

 

[Nanfoodle]

I had that happen on my Series S when I owned one, good little system. It amazed me how they get what they do out of 100Watt system!
The game I was playing when it happened was Guardians Of The Galaxy, happen a couple of time in different places.
Sold it to my neighbour and he's had no issue, although I think it has happened to him before as well, don't know what game he was playing when it happened though. I'd have to ask him.
I upgraded to the series X but still waiting for Xbox to make a game that takes full avantage of all the hardware features to show off what this box can do.

I wonder if your Series S was defective? I completed Guardians Of The Galaxy on my Series S with no hiccups

 

[Deleted member 2947362]

I wonder if your Series S was defective? I completed Guardians Of The Galaxy on my Series S with no hiccups

I don't know? I never really thought of it like that, I was always in the mind of, it's a software bug either in the game or the series S firmware that addresses the memory allocation for games and O/S, should be an easy fix with a firmware update if Xbox find an issue in the firmware or driver, so I don't think it's anything to really worry about but who knows.
I would be more concerned on the wear limit of a 500 gig ssd if people have to keep moving and reinstalling games from internal drive to external drive or even delete and install new games, makes me wonder what tech and wear limits the xbox series S Nand uses?

From what little I could find out about the series S SSD it didn't look good on the wear limit side of things but I had no way to confirm if the info was correct? But saying that I think the Xbox upgrade ssd that plugs in the back is based on same type of flash nand that used with digital camera's which is supposed to have a good wear limit but again take all that with a pinch of salt because I don't know for sure it's correct, just things I have read in past.