GDC: RAM-memory going to be a major limitation of next-generation consoles
- Thread starter doncale
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Doom_Bringer
Banned
I think he's only talking about Xbox 2
doncale said:sounds like 256 MB is going to be the standard, maybe a little more or a little less, for next-gen consoles. looks like 512 MB is out.
*CRY*
It makes sense. You're going to need increasingly more and more modern PC-like specs in a console in order to keep up with the demand for improved graphics and real HD-support. I don't know how the hell they're going to keep the cost of the upcoming gen of consoles reasonable and still have impressive specs. Yeah, Sony has alot of in-house technology, but RAM gets pricey, especially mass quantities of fast RAM...
Doom_Bringer said:
I think he was talking about next-gen consoles in general, as well as Xbox 2.
.....the PS3 isn't likely to have 512 MB of memory, either. if you remember, last year, it was announced that PS3 would be using 256 megabit XDR memory chips. that's 32 MB - and only 4 of these chips for a total of 128 MB. now recently, it was announced that PS3 would go back to using 512 megabit chips (64 MB) but still, likely only 4 chips, for a total of 256 MB. It is highly doubtful PS3 will be getting 8 memory chips (512 megabit each) that would be needed to reach 512MB.
Out of all the hardware specs for either platform, this is the one that I am keeping my eye on. If both systems come out with 256 mb of ram, I will be very disappointed. 512 mb should be what Sony and MS are shooting for.
In terms of cost, what I would suggest is that MS and Sony ditch the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD drives. There's absolutely no need for it this generation. Standard dvd is just now hitting it's peak and there's simply not enough high def tv owners out there to justify this move. I would rather have the next generation systems use standard progressive scan dvd playback and have more RAM.
In terms of cost, what I would suggest is that MS and Sony ditch the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD drives. There's absolutely no need for it this generation. Standard dvd is just now hitting it's peak and there's simply not enough high def tv owners out there to justify this move. I would rather have the next generation systems use standard progressive scan dvd playback and have more RAM.
Doom_Bringer
Banned
doncale said:
Well don't these guys have two Xbox 2 games in development? Gears of War and Unreal 3 or whatever (which is supposedly running at 60FPS with max settings on Xbox 2)
Epic probably don't have the PS3 dev kits but doncale you are right PS3 might have 256 MB ram.
Xenon even with 256 MB memory doesnt look like it will be outclassed by PS3 too badly.
It is somewhat in doubt that even a full spec Cell (like the one shown at ISSCC) will be used in PS3. that would be 4.0 to 4.6 GHz and 8 SPEs. it sounds like PS3 CPU will be clocked lower and have 4 to 6 SPEs. that would be sub-200 GFLOP performance, and Xenon is probably getting a 90~100 GFLOP CPU. PS3 CPU will have higher flops for sure, but not even close to an order of magnitude beyond Xenon CPU. And the PS3 Nvidia GPU is *likely* to be only a small-to-modest step up from Xenon's ATI VPU (ATI's and Nvidia's current offerings are pretty comparable, each with some advantages & disadvantages over the other) and as i pointed out, PS3 is not likely to have 512 MB RAM, but more like 256 MB.
the difference between Xenon and PS3 is likely to be smaller than the paper-spec difference between Gamecube and Xbox (they both have comparable graphics, each better than the other in certain areas) and not even close to the difference between DC and PS2.
It is somewhat in doubt that even a full spec Cell (like the one shown at ISSCC) will be used in PS3. that would be 4.0 to 4.6 GHz and 8 SPEs. it sounds like PS3 CPU will be clocked lower and have 4 to 6 SPEs. that would be sub-200 GFLOP performance, and Xenon is probably getting a 90~100 GFLOP CPU. PS3 CPU will have higher flops for sure, but not even close to an order of magnitude beyond Xenon CPU. And the PS3 Nvidia GPU is *likely* to be only a small-to-modest step up from Xenon's ATI VPU (ATI's and Nvidia's current offerings are pretty comparable, each with some advantages & disadvantages over the other) and as i pointed out, PS3 is not likely to have 512 MB RAM, but more like 256 MB.
the difference between Xenon and PS3 is likely to be smaller than the paper-spec difference between Gamecube and Xbox (they both have comparable graphics, each better than the other in certain areas) and not even close to the difference between DC and PS2.
Rob said:
Remember when there was like a 20-page thread about this debate :lol
Seriously, I couldn't agree more. More RAM is the most important non-locked-in variable on these next gen consoles, IMO. Sticking at 256 seems ridiculous, especially looking at historically how the price of RAM drops (i.e. very quickly).
Unison said:
yep.
so it looks like Xbox 2 | Next | 360 | Xenon will only have 4 times as much memory as the current Xbox. that is a pretty small increase, and LESS than some of the Chihiro arcade boards which have 512 MB memory. Chihiro is basicly an Xbox-based board for arcades.
http://www.system16.com/sega/hrdw_chihiro.html
....although Xbox2's *likely* 256 MB memory amount will be much faster than the 512 MB in some Chihiro boards (OutRun2's Chihiro has 512 MB)
you might recall, towards the start of PS2's lifecycle, developers said that it should have had 128 MB of main memory alone (not 32 MB).... I agree, and I think the original Xbox should have had 256 MB....split between the CPU + MCPX getting 128 MB and the GPU getting the other 128 MB.
then Xbox Next and PS3 should have been getting 2 GB at least.
Deg said:RAM in consoles always seem low but they are better than what they sound.
It's still a bottleneck. As great as the Xbox has been graphically, it would've been so much better with 128MB of ram. It's probably the difference between a 30 fps Halo and a 60 fps Halo. It also would've probably meant more high def support, better anti-aliasing (PS2 isn't the only system with jaggies, you can find them in Xbox titles as well), and more bump mapping.
With the large complex environments that developers will undoubtedly create next generation, something will have to be sacrificed. Man, now I'm not so sure if we'll see a lot of 720p/1080i support next gen. 256MB of ram just seems way too skimpy.
Rob said:
128 mb of RAM in Xbox would have sucked! :lol thats only 16 MB! mb or Mb = megabit :lol
MB = MegaByte.
seriously though, I know what you meant and pretty much agree
Xbox should have had either 2 pools of 128 MB, each with their own memory bus. one for the CPU + MCPX, and one for the GPU alone. or 256 MB shared between the 3 main chips, but seperate busses or at least one bus with higher bandwidth (12+ GB/sec instead of 6.4 GB/sec) ..... either of these configurations would have allowed for higher framerates and more use of anti-aliasing, higher resolution, etc.
doncale said:
I think 512MB would be fine and infact I think it's very much do-able. At this point there's no reason to panic. E3 is still a couple of months away and there's plenty of time for MS and Sony to adjust their specs (and they probably will).
I'm hoping that the powers that be for both companies are seriously considering what I suggested regarding the blu-ray/hd-dvd drives. At first I thought it would be cool to have high def playback. However from a purely gaming perspective it's not at all cost-effective and like I said before, it's virtually unsupported at this time. I would just go with a fast standard progressive scan dvd drive (which costs peanuts these days) and take that extra cost and apply it to having more RAM. Then by the time the NEXT next generation is here, high def playback should be starting to break into the market. Plus hopefully by then an industry standard will be decided on and there will be no splitting the dvd market.
Is it just me or does that make too much damn sense?
By all accounts, Xbox2 *doesn't* have a next-gen blue-laser optical drive and yet we still have this talk of low memory...so it doesn't seem to be the cost of drive parts that are keeping RAM low by developer's standards. Maybe its just the cost of the RAM that's genuinely expensive on its own and there's no way to squeeze in more without sacrificing several things (not just one) to keep costs in line with what they want.Rob said:
Right, but Sony has another agenda in pushing the BluRay drives.
Also, there's the added benefit of having a disc that's four times the size of your competition, so that when the next GTA-size hit comes around, it makes porting it to the other systems after the fact a bit more difficult.
Also, there's the added benefit of having a disc that's four times the size of your competition, so that when the next GTA-size hit comes around, it makes porting it to the other systems after the fact a bit more difficult.
themadcowtipper
Smells faintly of rancid stilton.
Nerevar said:
Do you remember the thread title, I would like to read that.
sorryaboutdresden
Member
Damm, I might not have to buy a PC for gaming anymore. It looks like I'll be fine with my mac and consoles for my gaming needs. That amount of Ram is amazing.
The End said:
Maybe it's just me, but if I were Sony, I'd rather have the added benefit of having twice the system RAM as my competition rather than 4x the disk space. At least that's a feature that could potentially make games on my system look and run better than on my competition's system.
You are right though about Sony having another agenda in pushing Blu Ray. I just happen to think it's a mistake. Partly because deep down I believe that HD-DVD is going to ultimately win out over Blu Ray, and partly because I just don't see the extra cost being worth it.
CrimsonSkies
Member
Damn. Well I guess it's 256.
So, to round up...
Nintendo DS
-3DM card (8MB to 256MB+)
-4.5MB RAM
PSP
-UMD-ROM (1.8GB dual layer)
-36MB RAM (28MB for game data)
Xbox 360
-DVD-ROM (8.5GB dual layer)
-256MB RAM
PlayStation 3
-BD-ROM (50GB dual layer)
-256MB RAM+
...still waiting on Nintendo Revolution (likely XB360/PS3 spec) and Game Boy Evolution (likely PSP spec).
Nintendo DS
-3DM card (8MB to 256MB+)
-4.5MB RAM
PSP
-UMD-ROM (1.8GB dual layer)
-36MB RAM (28MB for game data)
Xbox 360
-DVD-ROM (8.5GB dual layer)
-256MB RAM
PlayStation 3
-BD-ROM (50GB dual layer)
-256MB RAM+
...still waiting on Nintendo Revolution (likely XB360/PS3 spec) and Game Boy Evolution (likely PSP spec).
Rob said:
I agree for the most part. I would not go with Blu-Ray or HD-DVD yet. I would go with the fastest possible DVD-ROM drive that could be reasonably made (16x speed or faster) with some extra cache to speed things up or help with certain aspecs of loading....plus some flash memory or slower RAM like the A-RAM (DRAM) that Gamecube uses, to further improve loading & streaming performance.
by the time Xbox3-PS4 would be coming (2011-2012) we could have a super fast, highly refined Blu-Ray drive in both. read and write, not just the read-only drive that PS3 is likely to get. that or some newer disc (HVD, FMD, other)
Just look at it like this. Look at 2 of the biggest releases last year.
Half Life 2 which only ran well with around 1GB MAIN + 256MB of Video RAM
San Andreas which ran decently with 32 MB of RAM
And in terms of scale, GTA was exponentially bigger than HL2, had no loading times OR stuttering. So while heaps of RAM is certainly nice, it doesn't neuter devs in the least, only the lazy ones that can't budget correctly and do proper streaming. Plus, with the advent of procedural textures and advanced shaders, and new advanced compression techniques means the space needed for textures will be less. There are some other things to keep in mind that may or may not been talked about
Half Life 2 which only ran well with around 1GB MAIN + 256MB of Video RAM
San Andreas which ran decently with 32 MB of RAM
And in terms of scale, GTA was exponentially bigger than HL2, had no loading times OR stuttering. So while heaps of RAM is certainly nice, it doesn't neuter devs in the least, only the lazy ones that can't budget correctly and do proper streaming. Plus, with the advent of procedural textures and advanced shaders, and new advanced compression techniques means the space needed for textures will be less. There are some other things to keep in mind that may or may not been talked about
kaching said:
I guess we'll know come E3. One thing's for sure, MS seems hell bent on making Xbox2 profitable from the get go. I guess from a business perspective this totally makes sense. However as a gamer it concerns me because I immediately start thinking about what corners will be cut. Regarding Sony, we don't know enough really to make any kind of guess.
Rob said:
You mean he loves Norton Anti-virus? ;P
anyway, stop moaning about RAM. Xbox manages very well on 64, compared to PCs with 256MB cards and 1GB Ram. It ain't what you've got, its what you do with it.
consoles are much more efficient in their use of ram, so although more is always better, 256 sounds about right. Its 8 times what PS2 had, and PS2 had 8 times what PSOne had.
rastex said:
Half Life 2 is running fine on plenty systems with 512MB of RAM and 128MB video cards, so I'm not quite sure how you drew that conclusion. While in terms of raw scope, yes, GTA:SA is impressive, but I think you need to take in account the SEVERE graphical differences between the games. Honestly, GTA:SA is pretty fugly in alot of spots. Additionally, its physics system can't touch the one implemented in HL2 in addition to a great number of other factors. So yes, a lack of RAM is a limiting factor. Can smart programmers work their way around it? Yeah, but the games will ultimately suffer for it.
Within the full context of the question put to Rein, he's just acknowledging a truism of console architecture (they have comparatively low amounts of memory) and saying how they are working to cater their engine to better scale for such architectures than it did in previous iterations.Rob said:
Cutting corners is an integral part of console hardware apporach. Its about what you can get away with as much as it is about how you can design more efficiently in order to create a box you can sell for a "mass market" price and then sell boatloads of proprietary content for.
tedtropy said:
690MB is still a hell of a lot more than 32MB, about 20x as much right?
And physics is far more a function of the processor than the RAM. All that's needed for physical representation is some bounding boxes with some associated physical properties (mass and such). And HL2s really isn't that advanced, it was just presented rather well. Hell, they didn't even have per-surface material types, which isn't supported by Havok out of the box (to my great frustration).
rastex said:
more RAM itself doesnt really allow for faster framerates. faster/better memory that has higher bandwidth and lower latancy, allows for faster framerates. or at least can contribute to faster framerates. although pixel fillrate is one of the main factors as far as framerate.
but as far as faster/better higher bandwidth, lower-latency memory
that's why we often see better framerates in PS2 and Gamecube games. PS2 and GC both have higher bandwidth graphics memory built into their graphics chips. ...a stunning 48 GB/sec for the 4 MB eDRAM in PS2's Graphics Synth. and something like 10 to 20 GB/sec for the 3+ MB built into GC's Flipper--and in the case of GC, lower-latency main memory *and* embedded memory as well ...thanks to the MoSys 1T-SRAM...
the Xbox GPU has *no* embedded, built-in graphics memory. therefore, on Xbox, EVERYTHING has to go through the main memory bus which is only 6.4 GB per second. So although that 6.4 GB bandwidth is higher than the main memory bandwidths of PS2 & GC (3.2 GB/s and 2.6 GB/s respectively) the PS2 & GC have much higher bandwidth for graphics thanks to the embedded graphics memory that I mentioned, which Xbox doesnt have-- a key weakness of Xbox - no embedded graphics memory AND a UMA memory configuration to add insult to injury (UMA is a shared memory architecture, the 3 main chips in Xbox: CPU, MCPX, GPU all share the same bus to memory, and therefore have to fight for bandwidth)
its a good thing Xenon | Xbox Next is probably getting embedded memory on the ATI graphics processor. although, the new Xbox is still apparently getting a UMA. the processors will still fight for bandwidth on a memory bus that could be as little as ~22 GB/sec...according to Xenon 'leaked documents' ....hopefully that is not accurate or old, and that Xenon's main memory bandwidth is 50 to 70 GB/sec, plus even higher-bandwidth eDRAM on the VPU as well.
Shogmaster
Member
jarrod said:
XBox 2 is still possibly 512MB. The official decision is not made yet. Soon though.
Shogmaster
Member
doncale said:
Why do you need a source? Isn't it logical that things like RAM amount will be decided on the last minute? Call it final when MS announces the hardware. Until then, it's 256MB+.
Even Mark in that article says "probably" 256MB. It's not final yet.
mrklaw said:
sorry, that's wrong.
PS2 had 16 times the amount of main system memory that PS1|PSOne had.
32 MB compared to 2 MB.
and PS2 had ~11.5 times as much *total* memory than PS1. 40 MB vs 3.5 MB
therefore, if PS3 and Xbox2 only have 256 MB RAM, that is a smaller[/i increase from going from last generation (PS1, N64) to this generation (PS2,Xbox,GCN)
