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[Death Dealer]

once again, very much doubt anything more than 1 GB.

Maybe they only will need 1gb system ram, but it will need at least 1gb of vram as well. So minimum 2gb total. Although I hope it's got at least 1.5gb system and 1.5gb vram, or 3gb unified. But 4gb would be ideal and not too far fetched if they retail for at least $400 and don't try and profit from selling hardware day one like Nintendo.

 

[FoxSpirit]

What's the point of having so much memory then if you're basically streaming new content all the time? I would also imagine we would have to put up with tons of unskippable cutscenes.

The major bottleneck we have now on consoles is not memory. Yes, more memory means the possibility to have larger levels, but that means absolutely nothing if you don't have enough fillrate, bandwidth and shader throughput. Sense tells us that those things are not going to scale comparatively as much as they did last gen, so having far more memory than is required by top PC games (large-ass texture mods aside) doesn't seem like a very plausible thing.

As far as I know, you nowadays can stream during gamepay. Good example is Darksiders, there is no loading during the whole game. Just one giant consistent world which is constantly streaming into memory.

It's an amazing technology and maybe 8GB of RAM would allow for some awesome streaming tricks?

 

[low-G]

If the next gen of consoles only have 1GB of RAM that will be incredibly disappointing indeed. 2GB = OK. 4GB = very cool. 8GB = WTF, my console has more RAM than my PC.

 

[MidgarBlowedUp]

As far as I know, you nowadays can stream during gamepay. Good example is Darksiders, there is no loading during the whole game. Just one giant consistent world which is constantly streaming into memory.

It's an amazing technology and maybe 8GB of RAM would allow for some awesome streaming tricks?

They also did this on PS2 and possibly PS1. I can't remember the names exactly but, I'm pretty sure Naughty Dog / Insomniac. The problem is you can only stream as much data per second as the disk will allow not to mention the cost of seek/read times. And I don't know what else but, probably decompression of all the data too.

It would be nice if Next Gen consoles used some form of installation of games. Like what if you had a BluRay drive that could dump all of the "game" data to a consoles HDD (Flash Drive) The other data such as cutscenes, movies, etc could just stay on the disk. Shit I guess that's what some games do now on PS3 but, the point is you could stream right off the Flash Drive which would be infinitely faster than streaming the content from the disc.

 

[Log4Girlz]

As far as I know, you nowadays can stream during gamepay. Good example is Darksiders, there is no loading during the whole game. Just one giant consistent world which is constantly streaming into memory.

It's an amazing technology and maybe 8GB of RAM would allow for some awesome streaming tricks?

Also, if a HDD is standard, makes streaming that much easier.

 

[Melchiah]

They also did this on PS2 and possibly PS1. I can't remember the names exactly but, I'm pretty sure Naughty Dog / Insomniac.

Crystal Dynamics' Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver used a sophisticated streaming technique on PS1. There was no loading times whatsoever during the game.

 

[gblues]

this wasnt the case when XBLA games had a 50MB limit. couldnt they have loaded the entire game into the ram ? why were there still load times then ?

I expect that XBLA games are highly compressed, so it has to decompress the assets before it can use them. The more aggressive the compression, the longer it takes to decompress. That's where the load times come in.

A smart loading algorithm can virtually eliminate load times, like is done with the GTA games or with Soul Reaver on the PS1. Load the stuff for the menus first, then the stuff for the initial area, then create a prioritized list of assets to load into RAM based on the player's position (closer to player = higher priority). This creates a fairly small load time at the beginning, with drastically lower load times for the rest of the gameplay. Once everything is loaded, the DVD drive can be shut off and the game can run entirely from RAM.

 

[Version 3.0]

Crystal Dynamics' Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver used a sophisticated streaming technique on PS1. There was no loading times whatsoever during the game.

Well, to be fair it was a sophisticated streaming technique called "walk through this empty, twisty hallway while we load the next area", but it was still pretty cool.

I have 8GB of RAM on my newest PC, and I feel kinda bad for it, just sitting there twiddling its thumbs. If Crytek gets their wish, it will only be because the next round of consoles arrives very late.

 

[MidgarBlowedUp]

Crystal Dynamics' Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver used a sophisticated streaming technique on PS1. There was no loading times whatsoever during the game.

Hmm, I wonder if I still have my copy I'd like to play that again.

 

[Clott]

Well, to be fair it was a sophisticated streaming technique called "walk through this empty, twisty hallway while we load the next area", but it was still pretty cool.

I have 8GB of RAM on my newest PC, and I feel kinda bad for it, just sitting there twiddling its thumbs. If Crytek gets their wish, it will only be because the next round of consoles arrives very late.

Pretty damn impressive for a PS1 game, I though the corridor trick was mainly from this generation of consoles, Mass Effect 2 does it so blatantly sometimes.

 

[Version 3.0]

Pretty damn impressive for a PS1 game, I though the corridor trick was mainly from this generation of consoles, Mass Effect 2 does it so blatantly sometimes.

It was doubly impressive since it was the sequel to Blood Omen, a contender for worst load times of the gen...though of course not done by the same studio.

I thought the real-time world morphing was much cooler, though.

 

[erick]

I see mainly two suspect assumptions on the past few pages.

1) 8GB is too much, because there's no way an optical drive will be able to fill it fast enough.

Excuse me, who said that the new generation will have optical drives? I can see why Sony would opt for some kind of a beefed up Blu-Ray (mainly to boost their standard), but pray tell what exactly would Microsoft use? They don't want to use Blu-Ray and DVD9 is not enough to hold all the game data and Full HD video anymore.

In the meantime, not a single new standard for optical drives has emerged.

So my guess is that they will move to a purely digital sales approach and just opt for a big hard drive. It's hard to tell if they see the performance benefits and longevity of SSDs as important enough to put aside the issue of less space.

However, a mainstream SSD in 2013 will have no trouble pumping out a continuous 500MB/s (top consumer drives do that already), thus filling the 8GB RAM in 16 seconds and 16GB RAM in 32 seconds.

2) RAM sticks are cheaper than RAM chips soldered straight on the motherboard.

This is plainly not true. Compared to chips soldered straight onto the motherboard, RAM sticks means A LOT of extra PCB, materials and electric traces (remember, you have to build the slots and then the sticks themselves) - they also take up more room and add complexity to the design.

Ideally the developers would like to see more RAM - and trust me they don't care if its all uniform or not. 2-4GB of fast GDDR5 is enough for graphics, if you have let's say 4GB of slower main RAM to back it up and hold the game info (this is an important factor in considering level sizes, which can become ridicuolously small in X360/PS3 as soon as the graphics quality is cranked up).

An example from real life - what does 512MB unified GDDR3 mean compared to 2GB DDR2 + 512 MB GDDR3? It means that Crysis 2 in 2011 has smaller levels than Crysis 1 from 2007.

/rant

 

[REMEMBER CITADEL]

Excuse me, who said that the new generation will have optical drives? I can see why Sony would opt for some kind of a beefed up Blu-Ray (mainly to boost their standard), but pray tell what exactly would Microsoft use? They don't want to use Blu-Ray and DVD9 is not enough to hold all the game data and Full HD video anymore.

Why do you think they would not want to use Blu-ray?

 

[falconzss]

So my guess is that they will move to a purely digital sales approach and just opt for a big hard drive. It's hard to tell if they see the performance benefits and longevity of SSDs as important enough to put aside the issue of less space.

Sorry, no way this will happen next gen.

 

[conman]

So my guess is that they will move to a purely digital sales approach and just opt for a big hard drive.

There are still far too many offline consumers for third-party publishers to go along with a download-only platform. The only reason a company like Apple can pull that off is because their storefront is on multiple devices and infrastructures that already depend upon network service of some kind (cellular networks and PCs). Consoles are still a good decade or so away from that. Maybe in two gens, but definitely not next gen.

 

[Mr_Brit]

Why do you think they would not want to use Blu-ray?

BD XL, probably a custom design with higher bandwidth than normal blu ray drives is a guaranteed lock for both Sony and MS next gen. They could easily include something like a 16x-20x BD XL drive with customisations to increase load speeds for a low $30> price, this would mean shorter load times than this gen especially since next gen streaming will be the norm in games compared to the relatively few games that do it today.

 

[Sqrt_minus_one]

I see mainly two suspect assumptions on the past few pages.

1) 8GB is too much, because there's no way an optical drive will be able to fill it fast enough.

Excuse me, who said that the new generation will have optical drives? I can see why Sony would opt for some kind of a beefed up Blu-Ray (mainly to boost their standard), but pray tell what exactly would Microsoft use? They don't want to use Blu-Ray and DVD9 is not enough to hold all the game data and Full HD video anymore.

In the meantime, not a single new standard for optical drives has emerged.

So my guess is that they will move to a purely digital sales approach and just opt for a big hard drive. It's hard to tell if they see the performance benefits and longevity of SSDs as important enough to put aside the issue of less space.

/rant

Not everyone has permanent high speed access to the internet, eliminating drives all together will also spell the end for the home media crowd, those crazies who use the xbox to play DVDs. Thats a whole lot of market you are turning away.

 

[erick]

Why do you think they would not want to use Blu-ray?

1) Still too slow.
2) The writing is on the wall for physical media.
3) The issue of sales of second hand games? *Poof!* gone.
4) The license fees for every sold device and disc would mean they would effectively be filling their primary competitor's R&D wallet.

 

[Mr_Brit]

1) Still too slow.
2) The writing is on the wall for physical media.
3) The issue of sales of second hand games? *Poof!* gone.
4) The license fees for every sold device and disc would mean they would effectively be filling their competitor's R&D wallet.

*sigh* Not this fanboy spiel of MS won't want to pay Sony pennies for each Blu Ray drive. Sony use MS products on their laptops and couldn't care less about it.

 

[erick]

*sigh* Not this fanboy spiel of MS won't want to pay Sony pennies for each Blu Ray drive. Sony use MS products on their laptops and couldn't care less about it.

I'm sorry, but does Sony have ANY viable second option?

Not everyone has permanent high speed access to the internet, eliminating drives all together will also spell the end for the home media crowd, those crazies who use the xbox to play DVDs. Thats a whole lot of market you are turning away.

This "not everyone has permanent high-speed internet access" is so 2005 argument. Where do you think most of the profits are made for MS? In the US. Does US suffer from broadband issues? Probabaly not, if you look at all the Live accounts, right?

Western Europe, the secondary market for the Xbox 360 is even more ahead in high-speed broadband penetration. In any case, the inherent profits from moving to the digital sales model will more than offset the few missed sales in such dark, pirate -infested corners of the world like Asia, Russia and South-America. And Eastern Europe.

And DVDs? What are those? Have you heard of Netflix and iTunes?

 

[G Rom]

1) 8GB is too much, because there's no way an optical drive will be able to fill it fast enough.

Excuse me, who said that the new generation will have optical drives? I can see why Sony would opt for some kind of a beefed up Blu-Ray (mainly to boost their standard), but pray tell what exactly would Microsoft use? They don't want to use Blu-Ray and DVD9 is not enough to hold all the game data and Full HD video anymore.

In the meantime, not a single new standard for optical drives has emerged.

So my guess is that they will move to a purely digital sales approach and just opt for a big hard drive. It's hard to tell if they see the performance benefits and longevity of SSDs as important enough to put aside the issue of less space.

However, a mainstream SSD in 2013 will have no trouble pumping out a continuous 500MB/s (top consumer drives do that already), thus filling the 8GB RAM in 16 seconds and 16GB RAM in 32 seconds.

At best, as I've said in another thread, we could have an ODD-less SKU but nobody will go DD only next-gen :

1) The average speed of Internet connection far from being high enough. I think it was around 2 Mb last time a world survey surfaced. Even by 2012/2013, high speed Internet (>10 Mb) won't have reached an high enough adoption rate and even 10 Mb might not be enough (see 2)). Look at the most recent Steam hardware survey, at least 50% of users have connection of 2 Mb or worse.

2) The size of games will probably grow a lot because of better textures and no limitations from one console disc format (hopefully, everyone will be riding with BD)

3) The PSP Go might have put to rest any future DD-only SKU

4) A DD-only SKU would be mainly targeted at hardcore games (at least at first) so MS or Sony would need to have a much more aggressive Steam-like strategy on prices than this gen. The current GoD offer on the XBLM is a rip-off.

5) Retailers wouldn't push a DD-only SKU as it would be bad for their business. The market is just no ready yet and I don't think by 2012/2013 this will have changed...

There's also no way SSD will find their way in next-gen consoles. Manufacturers will want the biggest storage to help drive XBLM/PSN sales of DLC/games/Avatar hats/etc and SSD will still be too damn expensive per GB, even in 2012/2013.


I've said it before, the only company which has a chance to make the first successful DD-only console is Apple.

 

[nubbe]

Not everyone has permanent high speed access to the internet, eliminating drives all together will also spell the end for the home media crowd, those crazies who use the xbox to play DVDs. Thats a whole lot of market you are turning away.

Peasants can't stand in the way of progress

 

[REMEMBER CITADEL]

1) Still too slow.
2) The writing is on the wall for physical media.
3) The issue of sales of second hand games? *Poof!* gone.
4) The license fees for every sold device and disc would mean they would effectively be filling their primary competitor's R&D wallet.

There's no way in hell Microsoft will go with a DD-only machine yet. The infrastructure is just not in place for way too many people, and even in some places where it is, there are bandwidth limits. Considering how next gen games will probably be 20+ GB in size, that's a serious problem. Something like detachable units used for transferring data from stores to hard drives could work in theory, but only in theory. There are too many potential problems for that approach to be viable.

Microsoft wouldn't be paying Sony for the license, they would be paying BDA which Sony is a member of. So not that different from what they're already doing with DVD. Even if they would be paying just Sony, I don't think you understand how business works.

I think a proprietary disc format is more likely, but there's literally nothing stopping Microsoft from licensing the Blu-ray technology for their next console.

 

[erick]

At best, as I've said in another thread, we could have an ODD-less SKU but nobody will go DD only next-gen :

1) The average speed of Internet connection far from being high enough. I think it was around 2 Mb last time a world survey surfaced. Even by 2012/2013, high speed Internet (>10 Mb) won't have reached an high enough adoption rate and even 10 Mb might not be enough (see 2)). Look at the most recent Steam hardware survey, at least 50% of users have connection of 2 Mb or worse.

Do you see that stopping them from using Steam, a platform dedicated to pushing full-size games?

There's also no way SSD will find their way in next-gen consoles. Manufacturers will want the biggest storage to help drive XBLM/PSN sales of DLC/games/Avatar hats/etc and SSD will still be too damn expensive per GB, even in 2012/2013.

We'll have to see about that. Probably you're right and they will opt for a standard HDD (which can still push out ~130MB/s) in the mainstream SKU but I'd be surprised if at least one next gen SKU does not incorporate the SSD goodness.

 

[FoxSpirit]

Peasants can't stand in the way of progress

I'm sorry, I have a 15Mbps connections and downloading 20GB games is still not something I look forward to. If I spend 60 bucks, I rather start playing right away instead of waiting 5-6 hours until I can play. Unless it's weekend and download speeds suck.

So yeah, give me a disc I own.

Spoiler

My Steam account is pretty large but I still love discs for consoles. Best without installs.

 

[PetriP-TNT]

One of the BIGGEST markets (I'm looking at you, North America) is still in halfway to stone-age with internet connections (hello download caps!) and there is absolutely NO WAY IN HELL that one of the big three console makers would go with fullhd and digital only route

 

[G Rom]

Do you see that stopping them from using Steam, a platform dedicated to pushing full-size games?


We'll have to see about that. Probably you're right and they will opt for a standard HDD (which can still push out ~130MB/s) in the mainstream SKU but I'd be surprised if at least one next gen SKU does not incorporate the SSD goodness.

Remember that a lot of retail games now require a Steam activation so a user doesn't translate to a downloader.


Honestly, I don't know why they would bother with a SSD SKU, what would be the point ?
Faster drives would target hardcore users (casuals don't care about that stuff). Why sell them a speedier but far smaller drive when you can get them a rather speedy HDD which can hold a lot more of premium content (which hardcore gamers buy a lot) ?
A SSD SKU could maybe net a short term profit but in the long term, the user will hit the disk full wall much more rapidly and thus will not buy as much thing (we've seen it with people still rocking 20 GB consoles this gen).


Edit :

One of the BIGGEST markets (I'm looking at you, North America) is still in halfway to stone-age with internet connections (hello download caps!) and there is absolutely NO WAY IN HELL that one of the big three console makers would go with fullhd and digital only route

Ah yes, I also forgot to mention download caps (a thing of the past here).

 

[erick]

So yeah, give me a disc I own.

Do you want that with extra scratches?

DD has certain bonuses. No one can physically harm your game copy (or steal it unless you share your account details with strangers on a regular basis).

DD also means that the whole of your game library is always available and accessible no matter where you are in the world, if you can access internet you can access your games.

While that won't probably be a very representative example of broadband penetration, I will share it anyways, for background info.

I come from Estonia. Yep, that's in Eastern Europe. While I live in a decent sized city (well maybe not according to your standards, pop 100 000) and basically could have access to a 100Mbit/s connection for 45 USD a month, my parents live in a small village in the middle of a forest (pop 400).

They have a 12Mbit/s connection that costs marginally less.

If i wanted, I could get a USB receiver for something like 25 USD a month that would allow me to connect to Steam from a swamp if I needed, @ 1-4Mbit/s speeds. (this thing has coverage all over our small country, including forests and bogs).

So DD is a major advantage here.

 

[Sqrt_minus_one]

Do you see that stopping them from using Steam, a platform dedicated to pushing full-size games?




We'll have to see about that. Probably you're right and they will opt for a standard HDD (which can still push out ~130MB/s) in the mainstream SKU but I'd be surprised if at least one next gen SKU does not incorporate the SSD goodness.

My modern warfare 2 (CD-ROM, shop purchase no less) mandated a steam install before I could play. Secondly steam pushes full games from a few hundred megabytes to several gigabytes. Steam does a lot of indie business as well. After downloading 2 games via steam I also got a kindly worded letter from my ISP about bandwidth usage, so that to me is another obstacle in front of the DD only dream.


Meh seriously doubt you will see SSD maybe some flash based storage for a base model SKU with 16GB or 32GB of space.

 

[falconzss]

Do you want that with extra scratches?

DD has certain bonuses. No one can physically harm your game copy (or steal it unless you share your account details with strangers on a regular basis).

DD also means that the whole of your game library is always available and accessible no matter where you are in the world, if you can access internet you can access your games.

While that won't probably be a very representative example of broadband penetration, I will share it anyways, for background info.

I come from Estonia. Yep, that's in Eastern Europe. While I live in a decent sized city (well maybe not according to your standards, pop 100 000) and basically could have access to a 100Mbit/s connection for 45 USD a month, my parents live in a small village in the middle of a forest (pop 400).

They have a 12Mbit/s connection that costs marginally less.

If i wanted, I could get a USB receiver for something like 25 USD a month that would allow me to connect to Steam from a swamp if I needed, @ 1-4Mbit/s speeds. (this thing has coverage all over our small country, including forests and bogs).

So DD is a major advantage here.

Yes it is a major advantage for you. DD has certain advantages and disadvantages, no doubt about that. I am also sure if DD was a viable option right now, the big three wouldn't waste a second thought and go with it. Reality is, that it isn't a viable option unless you are willing to alienate a large percentage of your userbase.

 

[Diablos]

Is that what Uncharted 2 ran at?

Wow, thanks, I never knew Uncharted 2 as was the only next-gen game that mattered.

And, no, it didn't run at 540p. But it also required a level of mastery and polish that most developers do not have the time or resources to handle, particularly for multiplatform games. Next-gen console architecture needs to be far more accessible and easy to use.

 

[REMEMBER CITADEL]

DD has certain bonuses. No one can physically harm your game copy (or steal it unless you share your account details with strangers on a regular basis).

No one but the service provider, that is. When they decide it's time to move on for whatever reason - or, hey, go out of business - you're out of luck.

DD also means that the whole of your game library is always available and accessible no matter where you are in the world, if you can access internet you can access your games.

Internet and the required hardware, that is, and providing internet infrastructure is well developed in that part of the world. Regardless, it's a really nice feature that I'm sure 99% of people have no practical use for.

But this is not a discussion about strengths and weaknesses of digital distribution, there are some of both. This is about one of the big three embracing it exclusively for their premium titles and I just don't see that happening yet. By the end of the next generation, maybe. In the next 2-3 years? Hell no.

 

[G Rom]

Do you want that with extra scratches?

DD has certain bonuses. No one can physically harm your game copy (or steal it unless you share your account details with strangers on a regular basis).

I hope you're joking, BD are scratch-less and we don't have cardboard boxes anymore...
Steal is debatable, a smart thieve would go for the computer before looking for game boxes, if you happen to have all your password saved then the thieve easily steal you account...

DD also means that the whole of your game library is always available and accessible no matter where you are in the world, if you can access internet you can access your games.

While that won't probably be a very representative example of broadband penetration, I will share it anyways, for background info.

I come from Estonia. Yep, that's in Eastern Europe. While I live in a decent sized city (well maybe not according to your standards, pop 100 000) and basically could have access to a 100Mbit/s connection for 45 USD a month, my parents live in a small village in the middle of a forest (pop 400).

They have a 12Mbit/s connection that costs marginally less.

If i wanted, I could get a USB receiver for something like 25 USD a month that would allow me to connect to Steam from a swamp if I needed, @ 1-4Mbit/s speeds. (this thing has coverage all over our small country, including forests and bogs).

So DD is a major advantage here.

In France, we also have one of the best ISP offering : from 30/8 up to 100/8 Mbit/s in a lot of cities via cable, up to 28 Mbit/s via DSL and 100/50 Mbit/s with optical fiber. All of those offers are available for 30/40€ with unlimited free calls (to landline in dozens of countries and more recently to mobile phones) and TV.
This doesn't change the fact that the US are still lagging and a lot of countries which have great connections also have download caps.

 

[Kinan]

Assuming Sony will use 12x BD Disks in PS4, the loading times will be more or less the same like in this generation, if PS4 will have <=3GB of total memory. If, as I suspect, they will go with 2GB or less (optimally with 128MB eDRAM for 1080p FB), the loading time can be actually better.

To fill a 8GB RAM one will need over 2.5 minutes of loading (realistically over 3). Or a mandatory install onto SSD/HDD for every game.

 

[NemesisPrime]

If the next gen of consoles only have 1GB of RAM that will be incredibly disappointing indeed. 2GB = OK. 4GB = very cool. 8GB = WTF, my console has more RAM than my PC.

True.

I am 99% sure they will have more than 1GB. I don't expect 8 though.

Assuming Sony will use 12x BD Disks in PS4, the loading times will be more or less the same like in this generation

12x will make noise and run hot. They might be facing the same probs as the 360 now. I hope next gen consoels dump optical media and go (back) to solid state. Probably price will block this sadly. Then again a big SSD (or HDD) and the option to install ALL games like on 360 now could solve that problem. They can just be delivered on an optical format then.

 

[Magni]

Do you want that with extra scratches?

DD has certain bonuses. No one can physically harm your game copy (or steal it unless you share your account details with strangers on a regular basis).

DD also means that the whole of your game library is always available and accessible no matter where you are in the world, if you can access internet you can access your games.

While that won't probably be a very representative example of broadband penetration, I will share it anyways, for background info.

I come from Estonia. Yep, that's in Eastern Europe. While I live in a decent sized city (well maybe not according to your standards, pop 100 000) and basically could have access to a 100Mbit/s connection for 45 USD a month, my parents live in a small village in the middle of a forest (pop 400).

They have a 12Mbit/s connection that costs marginally less.

If i wanted, I could get a USB receiver for something like 25 USD a month that would allow me to connect to Steam from a swamp if I needed, @ 1-4Mbit/s speeds. (this thing has coverage all over our small country, including forests and bogs).

So DD is a major advantage here.

I just got back from Tallinn, great city. Estonia is a miracle in terms of technology, but it's not everywhere like that, you have to take that into account.

I am willing to bet my account that none of the next-gen consoles will launch without an optical drive (talking Big 3 home consoles here). We *might* see an SKU down the road without, but certainly not at launch.

 

[Thunder Monkey]

My prediction is 12GB.

Monkey hath spoken!

 

[itxaka]

I think they will have around 3 Gb. 1,5 vram and 1,5 general would be a good quantity for a dedicated gaming system.

Is there any method of having unified ram that can be shared between the gpu and the system? Kind of what integrated grphics do but without being crappy? That would be good as developers could choose what to use ram for. If Im not mistaken, textures get a high load in gpu ram intead of normal ram no?

 

[REMEMBER CITADEL]

Is there any method of having unified ram that can be shared between the gpu and the system? Kind of what integrated grphics do but without being crappy? That would be good as developers could choose what to use ram for. If Im not mistaken, textures get a high load in gpu ram intead of normal ram no?

Xbox and Xbox 360 use that.

Anyway, speaking of load times, I don't know why people presume data on the disc is the same as data in memory. When loaded from the disc, a lot of data is then decompressed before being stored in memory so load times wouldn't necessarily be that long.

For what it's worth, I expect between 4 and 6 gigs of shared memory in next gen systems.

 

[G Rom]

I think they will have around 3 Gb. 1,5 vram and 1,5 general would be a good quantity for a dedicated gaming system.

Is there any method of having unified ram that can be shared between the gpu and the system? Kind of what integrated grphics do but without being crappy? That would be good as developers could choose what to use ram for. If Im not mistaken, textures get a high load in gpu ram intead of normal ram no?

The Xbox 360 already has shared memory. Developers can chose to do whatever they want with the 512 MB of GDDR3. It would seem logical to retain this design for next-gen.

Edit : Beaten... :-D

 

[RaijinFY]

Assuming Sony will use 12x BD Disks in PS4, the loading times will be more or less the same like in this generation, if PS4 will have <=3GB of total memory. If, as I suspect, they will go with 2GB or less (optimally with 128MB eDRAM for 1080p FB), the loading time can be actually better.

To fill a 8GB RAM one will need over 2.5 minutes of loading (realistically over 3). Or a mandatory install onto SSD/HDD for every game.

Some L3 cache on CPU could be nice too?
Does L3 cache has any benefit in a console environment?

 

[Racer30]

1GB embedded dram on-die gpu; 1TB bandwith

4GB system

Make it happen!

 

[itxaka]

Xbox and Xbox 360 use that.

Anyway, speaking of load times, I don't know why people presume data on the disc is the same as data in memory. When loaded from the disc, a lot of data is then decompressed before being stored in memory so load times wouldn't necessarily be that long.

For what it's worth, I expect between 4 and 6 gigs of shared memory in next gen systems.

Ahhh, ok. Thanks for the clarification. I thought there was something like that as I had read an article about it but it was a long time ago so I couldn't remember if it was from one of the consoles or a PC

 

[Death Dealer]

1GB embedded dram on-die gpu; 1TB bandwith

4GB system

Make it happen!

Rambus is supposed to have some TB bandwidth ram in the pipeline.

 

[erick]

Some L3 cache on CPU could be nice too?
Does L3 cache has any benefit in a console environment?

L1/L2/L3 caches are quite expensive to produce and add a lot of complexity to the final chip.

The 3,2GHz 3core 6thread Xenos in X360 has only 64KB L1 cache per core and 1MB L2 cache for the whole thing.

In any case the current CPUs of the consoles are not what's bottlenecking the system. Number 1 bottleneck is insufficient RAM, and number 2 bottleneck would be the GPU.

While it is possible to optimize the hell out of CPU code and sometimes make it run better by orders of magnitude, it is very hard to do the same with vRAM and GPU without adverse effects on picture quality.

 

[Kinan]

Some L3 cache on CPU could be nice too?
Does L3 cache has any benefit in a console environment?

It will strongly depend on the CPU design. At this point of time is really hard to guess what will be used. Cell2? Out of order execution? Massive multithreading?
L3 inclusion will improve performance, but in many cases the few percent win will not be worth additional costs/added complexity/die area.

 

[smurfx]

True.

I am 99% sure they will have more than 1GB. I don't expect 8 though.



12x will make noise and run hot. They might be facing the same probs as the 360 now. I hope next gen consoels dump optical media and go (back) to solid state. Probably price will block this sadly. Then again a big SSD (or HDD) and the option to install ALL games like on 360 now could solve that problem. They can just be delivered on an optical format then.

sony and microsoft are better off putting some gigantic hardrive in the system and forcing players to install the games onto the system. what will be the norm by then? 4TB?

 

[RaijinFY]

sony and microsoft are better off putting some gigantic hardrive in the system and forcing players to install the games onto the system. what will be the norm by then? 4TB?

For some reason, I think that's what will happen eventually...

 

[Gorgon]

True.

I am 99% sure they will have more than 1GB. I don't expect 8 though.

99% sure? I'd say 100%. It's not even worth considering that they won't have more than 1GB. 8GB will not happen. 4GB may happen if we are lucky but it's by no means garanteed. At least 2GB is more than certain, 100% garanteed. There's no way in Hell it will be less than that. And most probably it will be shared too.

 

[eso76]

willing to bet next gen consoles will ship with at least 4 GB.
8 is probably too much but who knows, maybe if devs like Crytek and Epic push hard enough...