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wraggster
October 9th, 2008, 20:53
Nintendo's DSi will be loaded with more RAM than the DS Lite, according to Opera CEO Jon von Tezchner. In an interview with TechTree, the man responsible for web surfing on Nintendo's handheld said that Opera would be sure to use the memory boost “efficiently.” That's great and all, but what does this mean for games?

http://gizmodo.com/5060883/nintendo-dsi-will-come-loaded-with-extra-ram
trugamer
October 9th, 2008, 22:36
Not much I reckon, most dsi only games will probably only use the camera or be a download so bot need that much ram anyway. Of course the question is how much, my money is on 8MB.

Of course this could be good for homebrew, seeing as it'll probably be faster than current slot 2 expansions.
luminouslight
October 9th, 2008, 23:14
Not much I reckon, most dsi only games will probably only use the camera or be a download so bot need that much ram anyway. Of course the question is how much, my money is on 8MB.

Of course this could be good for homebrew, seeing as it'll probably be faster than current slot 2 expansions.

8 MB of ram of free ram or total? If I am not mistaken, the nintendo ds has 8 MB of ram total
ethd
October 9th, 2008, 23:28
8 MB of ram of free ram or total? If I am not mistaken, the nintendo ds has 8 MB of ram total

I'm afraid you are mistaken. The DS has 4 MB of RAM by default, more with a memory expander. But even the Opera expansion pack offers roughly 8 MB of RAM as it is, bumping up the total to 12MB. So what gives with this 8MB of RAM?
Of course, someone will come by and say I'm mistaken too and the Opera pack offers like 4MB or something.
123Waffle101
October 10th, 2008, 03:42
I knew it!
no wonder why they removed gba...its for the extra ram
Aryn
October 10th, 2008, 06:50
"I knew it!
no wonder why they removed gba...its for the extra ram"

This theory is not far off. The DSi does cram a camera, SD card slot, extra RAM, better speakers, a slightly larger screen, and a longer stylus...into a package that is close to the same size as the DS.

Of course, gamers are harder to tempt these days, so I, like others, will be waiting to see what is done with this hardware before determining whether or not to purchase it.
trugamer
October 10th, 2008, 13:27
The reason I came with 8MB is I don't see them going off their powers of 2 and I don't see them wanting to put 16MB in.

I'm also not entirely sure if the RAM is added together like that or if the Opera browser only uses the expansion pack as RAM.
ethd
October 10th, 2008, 19:28
The reason I came with 8MB is I don't see them going off their powers of 2 and I don't see them wanting to put 16MB in.

I'm also not entirely sure if the RAM is added together like that or if the Opera browser only uses the expansion pack as RAM.
Well, DSLinux adds it together, that's where I got my 12MB figure. And if they didn't add it together, the Opera browser for DS would be painfully slow due to lack of fast memory.
Wait...
DanTheManMS
October 10th, 2008, 20:33
You can indeed add it together. Main RAM is much faster than slot-2 RAM, so my guess is that the DS's 4 MB of main RAM is used for running the Opera program itself, while the 8 MB RAM pack is used for storing downloaded images and holding them while displaying them on the screen.

There's been speculation that the DSi might even include up to 32 MB of RAM, which would allow them to offer GBA games off the downloadable service. This is pure guesswork though.
blowbomber
November 8th, 2008, 16:58
NDSi has 256mb or ram.If you think about it i think that when the ndsi get to be hackable a whole world of applications will open up for it.Remember what happen with quake 2 for nds...it was so slow just because of the ram..it required 16 mb of expantion ram and the ram was a lot slower than the internal one.256 of internal ram memory will boost the capability of homebrew and who knows if with the ndsi the who ported quake and quake 2 get to make quake 3 for the NDSi and plus the speed of the SD card which supports HCSD or something like that...WOOOOTTT just imagen!.Im going to get one when it come out on U.S.
simonjhall
November 8th, 2008, 20:08
There's not 256 megs of RAM in a DSi!
trugamer
November 8th, 2008, 22:05
I'm pretty sure the 256mb (MB?) is just flash memory.

It's still RAM by definition but not quite what you mean.

Do we have any word on expanded RAM yet? Or does it just work as Dan said using flash to save web pages to.
bah
November 9th, 2008, 07:06
blowbomber: Your either mistaken about the 256 figure, thinking of flash storage not RAM, or you mean 256 Mb (which is 32 MB).

RAM is given in bytes, ROM in bits.

The DS and DS lite have 4MB RAM.
According to wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_DS_Browser#DS_memory_expansion_pak) the Opera browser slot2 cart added 10MB of (slower than the inbuilt) RAM giving 14MB total.

Since the DSi has no slot 2 and it has an inbuilt web browser (also a version of Opera like the old one), it will need to have at least as much extra RAM as the old slot2 add-on provided.

256MB RAM is not going to happen though.
blowbomber
November 9th, 2008, 22:34
The 256 Mb of flash memory can be used has ram, As long as its programed on whatever homebrew is used.
trugamer
November 10th, 2008, 18:21
Yes it can be used as RAM as can all flash memory, but it can't be used as RAM for applications properly as it simply isn't quick enough. It would be like using a flash disk as RAM for your pc.
blowbomber
November 11th, 2008, 23:51
The DSi has more inbuilt ram and is like 16mb to 32mb.So in anyway the DSi is better than DS lite in hardware.Even Quake 2 will run at full speed on the NDSi.

Edit: Now Someone founded out that the Nintendo DSi has either a AMR9 running at 266Mhz or a AMR11 running at 533Mhz and that the reson for the ndsi draning the battery was because of that...He was like from a "awesome" to a "WTF" when he was studing hes NDSi.It is indeed imposible to believe but yeah that is the same impression that the one who found it out had.If so the future of the NDSi homebrew is going to have lots of suscessful ones, and i see somebody porting Quake 3 for NDSi. YES simon:D?
DanTheManMS
November 23rd, 2008, 21:29
According to wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_DS_Browser#DS_memory_expansion_pak) the Opera browser slot2 cart added 10MB of (slower than the inbuilt) RAM giving 14MB total.
Wikipedia is wrong. The Opera RAM pack has 8 MB, so the total is 12 MB.


The 256 Mb of flash memory can be used has ram, As long as its programed on whatever homebrew is used.
Unless the DSi contains an MMU (which the DS and DSLite both lack), then this is wrong. There needs to be an MMU in order to use disk space as virtual RAM.


Yes it can be used as RAM as can all flash memory, but it can't be used as RAM for applications properly as it simply isn't quick enough. It would be like using a flash disk as RAM for your pc.
Vista has a built-in option for using a flash drive as RAM for your PC. It doesn't really add anything, but it's there.
krazedkat1
November 23rd, 2008, 22:25
It has to come loaded with extra RAM... It would be a rip off to the buyers of the original Web Browser if it didn't :P..