[Hardware] From the Atari to the PS5, how much RAM do the consoles have?

[Draeno]

 

Since the arrival of SONY's PS5 and Microsoft's Xbox Series X|S, there has been a wide debate regarding the RAM memory of consoles; It is a hardware component that has evolved a lot through the generations of all manufacturers, and now the controversy has returned to learn that the PC port of The Last of Us Part I requires 32 GB when on consoles it worked perfectly with 8 GB. So, in this article we are going to look back to tell you how much RAM all the most famous consoles on the market have... surely more than one will surprise you.

Keep in mind that, in this article, we are not going to list each and every one of the consoles that have been on the market, but we are going to base ourselves on the most used and well-known ones that have been on the market, starting with the famous Nintendo NES. Therefore, we are not going to mention the consoles of almost marginal use nor the portable consoles (well, one like the Nintendo Switch is mandatory to mention) but we are going to stay with those that we consider to have been the most important in history. .

RAM memory in consoles through history
We are going to start with the Atari 2600, which although it was not the first commercial console in the world, it was one of the ones that had the greatest impact with more than 30 million units sold, as well as one of the most iconic. This console had just 128 bytes of RAM, so imagine what we had on our hands in 1977 when it came out.

We continue with the famous Nintendo Entertainment System, better known as the NES Nintendo. Historically, this console sold almost 62 million units, and although half of the memory addressing was in the cartridges, the hardware was equipped with 2KB of RAM linked to its CPU. Two years after the NES came SEGA's Master System to compete with it, with revolutionary hardware that not only incorporated 8KB of RAM but also 16KB of VRAM for video.

After that generation of consoles came another two of the most famous and sold, the SEGA Genesis (Mega Drive) that sold more than 35 million units and the Nintendo Super NES that sold more than 49 million units. Contemporary to these two consoles we must also mention the Neo-Geo. The Mega Drive had 64 KB of RAM with another 64 KB of VRAM and, mind you, 8 KB of RAM for audio, while the Super Nintendo had 128 KB of RAM and 64 KB of VRAM (the latter, also shared for audio ). The Neo-Geo had 64KB of RAM with 84KB of VRAM and 2KB dedicated to audio.

We put aside the Sega 32X, the Mega-CD and other consoles whose sales were almost marginal to move on to the Sega Saturn, launched in 1994 and which sold more than 9 million units. This Japanese console already had 2 MB of RAM, 1.5 MB of graphics memory and 512 KB for sound... what a leap in performance!

But the Saturn was also almost circumstantial because in the same year (in fact, just 11 days later) the first SONY PlayStation was launched, which sold 102.49 million units. Technically it was not much superior to the Saturn, since in fact it had 2 MB of RAM and 1 MB of VRAM, but without a doubt the developers turned to this console and it was the key to their success (after all, the consoles became They sell for the games, right?).

Three years after the first PlayStation came the Nintendo 64, which managed to sell almost 33 million units. This 64-bit console had 4 MB of RAM (RDRAM) and could be expanded to 8 MB with an Expansion Pak (that's right, they called it that, “Pak”). Another three years later, the SEGA Dreamcast hit the market, and managed to sell just over 9 million units. It was equipped with, eye to the data, 16 MB of RAM, 8 MB of VRAM and another 2 MB for audio.

 

https://hardzone.es/noticias/equipos/memoria-ram-consolas/