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Just how much RAM is going to the Xbox360's dashboard?

JMPovoa

Member
OK, those of us who have an Xbox360 (or are interested in getting one) know by now (or at least should) that the Dashboard is always available for use while playing games. What that means is that the Dashboard itself has resources allocated for it while we play them. So how much RAM do you think is allocated for it. Do you think that if it wasn't there in the first place, we could actually benefit technically on the games, or is it just a small portion of the overall resources and has more advantages being there than not? What do you think?
 

Gahiggidy

My aunt & uncle run a Mom & Pop store, "The Gamecube Hut", and sold 80k WiiU within minutes of opening.
Well.. its certianly not 32 megs while the game in in progress. Right? I figure holding the dashbaord in standby takes alot less resources than actually running it.
 
I was expecting the dashboard to use up above 50 megs, or higher....I mean, there's no possible way that the dashboard looks THAT good, and moves THAT smooth....on 24 or 32 megs.
 

Yusaku

Member
You guys are confusing terminology. That blade that slides open during games is the Xbox Guide, not the dashboard. I'd be suprised if it needed 32MBs for what amounts to an mp3 player, but this is Microsoft we're talking about.
 

gofreak

GAF's Bob Woodward
32MB is reportedly what is reserved by the OS, which isn't necessarily just what you see in the dashboard. It may also incorporate "headroom" for planned future updates and the like. I think the 32MB number was reported by a mod site that got their hands on a dev kit or something?
 

Excelion

Banned
It was from CEDEC: http://pcweb.mycom.co.jp/articles/2005/09/09/cedec1/

Among 3 cores in Xbox 360 CPU (codenamed "PX"), Core 0 is primary and Core 1/2 are secondary. Core 0 is fully usable by a game program. Core 1 and Core 2 are shared by a game program and the Xbox 360 system. Network stacks, services, drivers such as a USB driver run on those secondary cores. 5% computation usage of both core 1 and core 2 are reserved by the system.

-Game data is managed per user account and saved in HDD, but 64MB Memory Unit is also usable for checkout/backup. The Memory Unit slot is 2.5MB/sec write, 8MB/sec read.
In its 512MB RAM, 32MB is allocated for the system. The RAM is GDDR3 SDRAM @ 700MHz (22.4GB/sec).
 
Gahiggidy said:
Well.. its certianly not 32 megs while the game in in progress. Right? I figure holding the dashbaord in standby takes alot less resources than actually running it.

That would be true if there were a hard drive to store the swap memory.
 

Blimblim

The Inside Track
Hajaz said:
why would it use more ram then the xbox1 dash, witch is in 3d?

x360 dash is 2d right?
3d doesn't take more space than 2d. It's all about texture (or flat 2d surfaces) quality.
The Xbox Dashboard wasn't kept in memory at all when you started a game, so it could have used all 64 MB of RAM anyway. It was also much bigger on the hard drive than just 3 MBytes.
Also keep in mind that the new dashboard does all the Xbox Live and music stuff by itself, it's not the game's problem anymore.
That's the kind of stuff that allows people to chat while playing 2 different games for example.
 
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