Microsoftdecided to do something very different for this generation. It decided to launch two consoles at once: one that took the crown for the most powerful machine and one that was smaller, cheaper, and less powerful. The idea was to appeal to the hardcore gamers with the Xbox Series X and sweep up the more price sensitive with the other.
It seemed to pay off, especially as pandemic lockdowns led to components shortages and unprecedented demand for consoles. The Xbox Series S was in greater supply and Microsoft won plaudits from industry analysts as it sold the S and Game Pass into homes around the world. But as this generation has rumbled on, there has been persistent chatter among owners, first seemingly just background slights by tribal gamers, but now becoming more vocal, that the Xbox Series S might have some issues.
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Over on the popular Gaming subreddit, one recent post about the Xbox Series S has attracted major interest. “Apparently the Series S can run out of VRAM…” it’s titled, and illustrating the point with a photo of a TV with an Xbox Error message. “Out of video memory trying to allocate a rendering resource,” it reads. “Make sure your video card has the minimum required memory, try lowering the resolution and/or closing other applications that are running. Exiting…” over a frozen image of Borderlands 3.
Apparently the series S can run out of VRAM…
byu/jokekiller94ingaming
First of all, let’s dig into what VRAM actually is. Video RAM refers to any type of random access memory used to store image data for a video display and its specific purpose is to ensure the smooth execution of graphics display. Looking at the specs of the Xbox Series S it has 10GB of VRAM, of which 8GB are dedicated to games with the remaining allocated to the OS. In contrast, the beefier Xbox Series X has 16GB of VRAM.
This seems significant but it is important to remember that the Xbox Series S was always built to run games at 1440p at maximum while the Xbox Series X targets 4K. Meanwhile, the memory issue related to the Series S is something Microsoft has known about, as this August 2022 article inThe Vergeattests, with the company extending additional memory to developers in order to ease the issue.
One Redditor joked in the above thread, “Well if there’s anything the PC community taught me, it’s time to do surgery on an Xbox and give it a GPU transplant.” This is a quip just to be very clear as the console cannot have its GPU switched out. However, the VRAM issue also seems to be particular toBorderlands 3as one comment, heavily upvoted, backs up.
“This happens on Borderlands 3 all the time. That or a straight-up freeze/crash. For some reason it runs well on the Series S until it doesn’t. Several crashes per (lengthy) game session; seems Gearbox did a shit job of optimising it. Runs fine on the Series X, though,” itreads.
So there you have it. While the Series S does have significantly less RAM to play with than its bigger sibling, it’s also the case that developers can better optimise their games since it seems Borderlands 3 is a particular problem for the console. But it does beg the question of how the RAM issue might affect the Series S going forward as the generation carries on.
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