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[benny_a]

Both consoles may have 8 GB RAM, but the amount which developers can use for games will likely vary, according to rumors it's 5-5.5GB (Xbox) vs 7.5GB (PS4), which would be quite substantial.

Do you believe this? 2-3GB just dedicated for OS seems absolutely insane.

I mean it would allow them to launch the Pizza Hut app and Browser concurrently with a game, which would be cool but I don't know if I think that is worth it.
Clever engineering and suspend functionality and a little wait time would allow this as well.

Spoiler

Clever engineering is not easy

 

[Alex]

Well the original Xbox was losing MS a lot of money. I don't think we'll see the same this time around. They do have some great digital games coming out (State of Decay, LocoCycle for example). It wouldn't surprise me to see some new games announced at E3, especially if they're going to put out an Xbox Mini.

Original Xbox got Phantom Dust and the Conker Remake in it's death throes. Not too shabby!

 

[BruceLeeRoy]

Of course the performance difference will affect multiplatform games: "Multimedia" apps don't require much processing power, they would run equally well on a machine of much lower specifications.

Developers will have to deal with the differences and will have to find ways around some of the Durangos limitations: This will complicate development. That's why people are hoping for GDDR5, which isn't going to happen (at least I don't expect it to). The more similar these machines are, the more efficient development could be: Similarities are in our gamer's best interest.

Yup

 

[FranXico]

Clever engineering and suspend functionality and a little wait time would allow this as well.

Windows 8 does suspend apps when they lose focus.

If Durango is running a customized version of Windows 8, that shouldn't be a problem. And it wouldn't need a 3GB footprint either.

 

[travisbickle]

I have heard one of devs top complaints about Durango to MS was the amount of OS reserve (2nd was lack of raw flops). Since it's rumored at 2 cores and 3GB, I doubt they're worried too much about freeing up one CPU core (especially since we hear SHAPE audio block lightens the load). So it means at least they'd like more than 5GB with certainty.

Where have you heard this?!?!

 

[enzo_gt]

I hope the 3GB on reserve for OS isn't just for rumoured DVR-anywhere capabilities. Not sure if I'm down with that trade off in the long run.

Though I'm not quite sure what else it could be for. Just not down with having like 35%+ of your RAM for not just games.

 

[onQ123]

Where have you heard this?!?!

I heard it too.

 

[benny_a]

Windows 8 does suspend apps when they lose focus.

If Durango is running a customized version of Windows 8, that shouldn't be a problem. And it wouldn't need a 3GB footprint either.

Then I don't understand what would necessitate such a huge amount of resources. I find it absurd.

 

[SpartanN92]

This might be just me but I am delighted that there might be so much RAM for the OS. My biggest pet peeve regarding current gen is how damn slow the 360 nav bar is. It is so laggy.

 

[Izick]

Then I don't understand what would necessitate such a huge amount of resources. I find it absurd.

Then it either doesn't use that much RAM or there's something (features) we don't know about.

 

[JaggedSac]

Latency is not a real concern with GDDR5, that's why we're very likely to see computers with a GDDR5 shared memory pool in the future (and DDR3 for more lower-end applications) - AMD is working on such a shared memory architecture with hUMA (which will be similar, but probably less capable than the PS4 Supercharged architecture) which we'll see at the end of 2013 with their Kaveri APUs. JEDEC is also working on a GDDR5 SO-DIMM specification for such purposes.

Cerny, is that you? lol

 

[FranXico]

This might be just me but I am delighted that there might be so much RAM for the OS. My biggest pet peeve regarding current gen is how damn slow the 360 nav bar is. It is so laggy.

Personally, I would prefer if a dashboard/system UI is faster as a consequence of being lighter on resources, rather than by hogging a large chunk of the RAM for itself.

 

[enzo_gt]

How much RAM does WinRT use at baseline?

I assume they'd use at least 1GB for OS, and more if DVR capabilities are universal across games/apps.

 

[eso76]

Then it either doesn't use that much RAM or there's something (features) we don't know about.

Such amounts of reserved ram and cpu cores paired with always online requirement would only really be explainable with cloud computing of sorts.
Maybe each console actively 'builds' a small part of a huge persistent world people on live can explore, maybe Xbox live has become some kind of virtual world / rpg global social game.

Or maybe it's just bull !

 

[Iced_Eagle]

How much RAM does WinRT use at baseline?

I assume they'd use at least 1GB for OS, and more if DVR capabilities are universal across games/apps.

Windows 8 has 2GB listed as the min spec for the 64-bit version. That could almost certainly be optimized too by removing any unnecessary dependencies. Not sure about Windows RT, but there are devices that are using it that have 1GB RAM, so that means the OS is probably < 768MB since they also need RAM for apps.

 

[BlastProcessing]

Then I don't understand what would necessitate such a huge amount of resources. I find it absurd.

I would guess that the whole 5GB devkit thing just came from a time when things where in flux and Microsoft wasn't sure how much of a footprint they would need so they played it safe. I would think that by the fall the OS footprint will be more reasonable.

If they don't, I agree with you 3Gb is absurd. Maybe it is a case where Kinect processing has it's own dedicated ram pool? No idea.

 

[DieH@rd]

What can MS do?
- They cant use clamshell mode and easily increase DDR3 amount because clamshell is exclusive feature of GDDR.
- If cant simply drop DDR3 and start using GDDR5. That would force them to CHANGE THE APU and its integrated memory controller. NOT CHEAP, and would make ESRAM pointless [slower than the unified pool].
- 8 GB of DDR3 already uses sixteen 512MB memory chips. If they want to add more, they need to redesign the motherboard [and cooling, and entire case] and increase its cost of the mobo by including new data lines. Data lines are the most expensive part of the mobo.
- Would integrated DDR3 memory controller even support more than 16 chips? If it is 128bit controller, each chip already uses modest 8bit connection.


IMO, chances of them switching to GDDR5 are zero. Expensive ESRAM is here because they wanted to have a lot of cheap DDR3 memory. As for more DDR3, that is possible, but unlikely.

 

[Kill Your Masters]

I would guess that the whole 5GB devkit thing just came from a time when things where in flux and Microsoft wasn't sure how much of a footprint they would need so they played it safe. I would think that by the fall the OS footprint will be more reasonable.

If they don't, I agree with you 3Gb is absurd. Maybe it is a case where Kinect processing has it's own dedicated ram pool? No idea.

3gb is insane. I mean, a PC doesn't need that much memory for Windows 8 and a PC is not a closed system, and has different setups and scenarios.

Why should a closed system without any "unknowns" need more?

 

[NemesisPrime]

Then I don't understand what would necessitate such a huge amount of resources. I find it absurd.

It isn't true. Let the fanboys roll with it.

 

[nhlducks35]

3gb is insane. I mean, a PC doesn't need that much memory for Windows 8 and a PC is not a closed system, and has different setups and scenarios.

Why should a closed system without any "unknowns" need more?

Kinect + Ads

 

[Mung]

How much RAM does WinRT use at baseline?

I assume they'd use at least 1GB for OS, and more if DVR capabilities are universal across games/apps.

PS3 has DVR capabilities with a tiny amount of RAM. Don't think it will add much.

 

[GoofsterStud]

The PC isn't putting dedicated resources to the Kinetic.

Microsoft is doing this so developers don't have to allocate resources. This comes at a cost of fixed memory and processing power.

For Microsoft's sake, the new Kinetic better be worth the extra $$$ and system resources.

 

[DieH@rd]

3gb is insane. I mean, a PC doesn't need that much memory for Windows 8 and a PC is not a closed system, and has different setups and scenarios.

Why should a closed system without any "unknowns" need more?

It has an unknown. We dont know how much freedom MS will give us with the Win8 OS fork that will be on it. What if you can run [almost] unlimited amount of MetroUI apps, including its games?

 

[Ninja Moomin]

What can MS do?
- They cant use clamshell mode and easily increase DDR3 amount because clamshell is exclusive feature of GDDR.
- If cant simply drop DDR3 and start using GDDR5. That would force them to CHANGE THE APU and its integrated memory controller. NOT CHEAP, and would make ESRAM pointless [slower than the unified pool].
- 8 GB of DDR3 already uses sixteen 512MB memory chips. If they want to add more, they need to redesign the motherboard [and cooling, and entire case] and increase its cost of the mobo by interesting new data lines. Data lines are the most expensive part of the mobo.
- Would integrated DDR3 memory controller even support more than 16 chips? If it is 128bit controller, each chip already uses modest 8bit connection.


IMO, chances of them switching to GDDR5 are zero. Expensive ESRAM is here because they wanted to have a lot of cheap DDR3 memory. As for more DDR3, that is possible, but unlikely.

fully agree.

everything I've read on beyond 3d suggests the architecture is very well balanced in paper.

if there is a change then the architecture we knew about got ditched long before February... And in February both digital foundry said the 1.2tf performance figure.

be very interesting to see what is under the hood.

I think the specs are fine as they ate though. The leap from 360 is huge... And if all u care about is gpu power then you shouldn't be a console gamer anyway.

 

[omonimo]

So, correct me if I'm wrong, I'm trying to resume. Basically, MS which is in a better position of sony after ps3, will propose 7790 GPU vs 8870 ps4 gpu, 8 RAM of ddr3 vs gddr5 & it seems with a more expensive base price (I'm trying to extrapolate the rumours.). Thanks to kinect success eh. I don't know what will happen to the event, but time ago would been hard to believe that company would have propose a console with those specs.

 

[jaosobno]

Nope. I'm standing by the GDDR5 claim. Guess you'll find out, in a couple weeks

Then would you care to explain this; what's the point of having GDDR5 + eSRAM? eSRAM, being quite large and expensive solution to increase bandwidth, seems completely redundant when you have high bandwidth GDDR5. Not to mention that GDDR5 makes DME completely unnecessary (IIRC, DMEs were performing some kind of optimization to enable faster transportation between DDR3 and eSRAM and vice versa). GDDR5 completely changes the architecture of console.

Account bets are awesome.

Oh.... Well, it's been nice knowing you Vustadumas.

 

[Kill Your Masters]

It has an unknown. We dont know how much freedom MS will give us with the Win8 OS fork that will be on it. What if you can run [almost] unlimited amount of MetroUI apps, including its games?

Well for us definitely, but for MS, they exactly know how much they need and if they need 3gb then I think their priorities are all wrong.

I doubt we will get a fully fledged Win8. Probably a gimped version, even more gimped than RT.

 

[Maximilian E.]

Then would you care to explain this; what's the point of having GDDR5 + eSRAM? eSRAM, being quite large and expensive solution to increase bandwidth, seems completely redundant when you have high bandwidth GDDR5. Not to mention that GDDR5 makes DME completely unnecessary (IIRC they were doing some kind of optimization to enable faster transport between DDR3 and eSRAM and vice versa). GDDR5 completely changes the architecture of console.



Oh.... Well, it's been nice knowing you Vustadumas.

Obviously the ESRAM is confused with L2/L3 cache for the CPU. Yes, Durangos CPU has 32mb cache

Obviously... (Man, we really need the 21st to be NOW!!)

 

[dragonelite]

What can MS do?
- They cant use clamshell mode and easily increase DDR3 amount because clamshell is exclusive feature of GDDR.
- If cant simply drop DDR3 and start using GDDR5. That would force them to CHANGE THE APU and its integrated memory controller. NOT CHEAP, and would make ESRAM pointless [slower than the unified pool].
- 8 GB of DDR3 already uses sixteen 512MB memory chips. If they want to add more, they need to redesign the motherboard [and cooling, and entire case] and increase its cost of the mobo by interesting new data lines. Data lines are the most expensive part of the mobo.
- Would integrated DDR3 memory controller even support more than 16 chips? If it is 128bit controller, each chip already uses modest 8bit connection.


IMO, chances of them switching to GDDR5 are zero. Expensive ESRAM is here because they wanted to have a lot of cheap DDR3 memory. As for more DDR3, that is possible, but unlikely.

Or they have multiple prototypes with different configuration.
And just send the weakest one to devs and made sure that the games developed on that version works on the more expensive but more powerful version. Hence all that via api talk. I can understand that sony can't pull that off financially so they play safe but i can see microsoft do it.

/Story from my ass...

 

[specialguy]

What can MS do?
- They cant use clamshell mode and easily increase DDR3 amount because clamshell is exclusive feature of GDDR.

they can just use higher density chips.

16gb would be just double density chips, so they may go for that. it's still WAY cheaper than 8GB GDDR5.

arguable whether they can use all 16gb, but it might be easier than a weird quantity like 12gb on 256 bit bus. and would certainly provide a wow factor. can always reduce loading if nothing else.

 

[benny_a]

they can just use higher density chips.

16gb would be just double density chips, so they may go for that. it's still WAY cheaper than 8GB GDDR5.

arguable whether they can use all 16gb, but it might be easier than a weird quantity like 12gb on 256 bit bus. and would certainly provide a wow factor. can always reduce loading if nothing else.

16 GB DDR3 is not better than 8GB GDDR5 if everything else about the system stays the same. It wouldn't be a wise move for MS to increase the factor by two.

Earlier rumors were 4GB GDDR5 in Orbis vs. 8GB DDR3 + 32MB esRAM and people like Timothy Lottes (Now at Epic, previously at Nivida) said he'd prefer the 4GB GDDR5 setup.

Don't buy the hype that the 8GB DDR3 + 32MB esRAM setup is bad. It isn't better than completely unified of PS4 but it's nowhere near as shit as what the PS3 had comparatively.

 

[thuway]

i'd much rather see 12gb of ddr3 and esram than 8gb gddr5. heck i'd rather probably even see 8gb ddr3 and esram than 8gb ddr5, and play the cost advantages, see what you can do with the esram latency, etc etc. i dont want equal. the cpu's are already the same, the more components are exactly the same the more boring it is.

also, xbox was likely at least 2x ps2 and it didn't even matter that much. the gap between ps4 and 720 as rumored will be smaller. xbox had twice the ram of ps2 (64mb vs 32), ps4 vs 720 both have 8gb.

I think you need to wake up. Developers have all echoed AAA development is expensive, people are losing jobs, and programmers are at their wits end. Artchitectural differences are inhibitive to the design process. Parity was always what Sony and Microsoft wanted, but were afraid to admit publicly. The mass market has zero idea what is more powerful, the more worrying question is whether the current machine will produce visuals that showcase a true next generation leap.

 

[something fishy]

Cerny, is that you? lol

Is this supercharged bull to describe a ram choice going to be the cell fairy dust of this gen?

Decent gpu, average CPU aren't made suddenly vastly more poweful by ram choice.

Smart console design for price and performance sure but supercharged is marketing talk.

 

[dragonelite]

Is this supercharged bull to describe a ram choice going to be the cell fairy dust of this gen?

Decent gpu, poor CPU aren't made suddenly vastly more poweful by ram choice.

Smart console design for price and performance sure but supercharged is marketing talk.

Come on if latency wasn't an issue we would have had GDDR5 in our gaming rigs 2 years ago who doesn't want 3 times higher bandwidth for some extra cost i would pay for for some low latency 176GB/s GDDR5 ram anytime of the day.

I wish we had some hard proven numbers you could then maybe plot theoretical behavior and see if there is a point the lines DDR3 + Esram meets GDDR5.

 

[Brad Grenz]

Is this supercharged bull to describe a ram choice going to be the cell fairy dust of this gen?

Decent gpu, poor CPU aren't made suddenly vastly more poweful by ram choice.

Smart console design for price and performance sure but supercharged is marketing talk.

The "superchared" part isn't just the RAM. PS4 also features a tightly coupled CPU and GPU that includes additional compute queues and busses that bypass the cache and other similar enhancements no PC with an off the shelf CPU and video card can match. And you shouldn't be so quick to dismiss the benefits of a large, unified, high speed memory bus.

 

[something fishy]

Oh it's never a bad thing though with the amount being shoved in graphics cards now ddr3 for system use is more than good enough. It's a factor in performance but its not like it suddenly ups your processing power. There'll be brand flunkies out there now believing this nonsense and thinking you could whack a bit of extra gddr in your phone and make it a flipping super computer next.

 

[Into]

I do not think we will know about the RAM or get the rumor confirmed come reveal date, if MS is really cheeky (as the brits put it) they should just say "we also got 8 gig of RAM!" and just let Don smile.

 

[netBuff]

Is this supercharged bull to describe a ram choice going to be the cell fairy dust of this gen?

Decent gpu, average CPU aren't made suddenly vastly more poweful by ram choice.

Smart console design for price and performance sure but supercharged is marketing talk.

"Supercharged" is, from what I've gleaned from interviews, what they (Sony) call their architecture - similar to how AMD refers to their plans for unified memory as "hUMA".

And no, a system that is smartly designed to allow for optimal utilization of its resources is not "marketing talk" - high bandwidth RAM is an important component in a console system with a heavy emphasis on GPU processing.

Oh it's never a bad thing though with the amount being shoved in graphics cards now ddr3 for system use is more than good enough. It's a factor in performance but its not like it suddenly ups your processing power. There'll be brand flunkies out there now believing this nonsense and thinking you could whack a bit of extra gddr in your phone and make it a flipping super computer next.

You really shouldn't write about things you know absolutely nothing about. The idea that Sony doesn't have a tangible advantage in this respect is wishful thinking.

Come on if latency wasn't an issue we would have had GDDR5 in our gaming rigs 2 years ago who doesn't want 3 times higher bandwidth for some extra cost i would pay for for some low latency 176GB/s GDDR5 ram anytime of the day.

I wish we had some hard proven numbers you could then maybe plot theoretical behavior and see if there is a point the lines DDR3 + Esram meets GDDR5.

Most gaming rigs do contain GDDR5 graphics memory: And, as I wrote earlier, with the coming rise of APUs with an unified memory architecture and the proposed JEDEC GGDR5 SO-DIMM standard, we will see it in use as system memory in the future.

 

[KidBeta]

I do not think we will know about the RAM or get the rumor confirmed come reveal date, if MS is really cheeky (as the brits put it) they should just say "we also got 8 gig of RAM!" and just let Don smile.

If they don't say much about the hardware they will be in a way confirming the rumours, after all wouldn't it be best to point out where you best the competition and gloss over where you fall short.

 

[DieH@rd]

they can just use higher density chips.

16gb would be just double density chips, so they may go for that. it's still WAY cheaper than 8GB GDDR5.

But first you would have to find 8 gbit [1GB] DDR3 chips. I don't think anybody is producing them yet.

 

[Brad Grenz]

Oh it's never a bad thing though with the amount being shoved in graphics cards now ddr3 for system use is more than good enough. It's a factor in performance but its not like it suddenly ups your processing power. There'll be brand flunkies out there now believing this nonsense and thinking you could whack a bit of extra gddr in your phone and make it a flipping super computer next.

Well, it's not really an imaginary problem, or you wouldn't see both Intel and AMD starting to move away from sockets, and towards things like EDRAM daughter dies, or interposers with stacked RAM, both soldered onto motherboards. We've been stuck with some pretty slow dual channel DDR in our PCs for a long time, and the performance of GPUs and CPUs are both outstripping the old interconnects like DIMMs & PCI-E which were designed mostly for modular upgradability and not performance.

 

[DieH@rd]

Good old time when even 4 GB of GDDR5 ram was a dream. I fought for it, but many did not believe even in that.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=46312776&postcount=6116

 

[specialguy]

But first you would have to find 8 gbit [1GB] DDR3 chips. I don't think anybody is producing them yet.

but i dont think anybody is producing 512mb gddr5 chips either, which is why most thought 8gb gddr5 was impossible for ps4. but sony came up with them...probably some sort of special order.

theoretically ms would do the same type of thing.

 

[DieH@rd]

but i dont think anybody is producing 512mb gddr5 chips either, but sony came up with them...probably some sort of special order.

theoretically ms would do the same.

512MB [4 Gb] GDDR5 chips are confirmed to be real, look at my post above. They are produced in ordinary manufacture, you can expect nVidia and ATI to start using them soon.

 

[specialguy]

512MB GDDR5 chips are confirmed to be real, look at my post above. They are produced in ordinary manufacture, you can expect nVidia and ATI to start using them soon.

of course they're real since ps4 will be using them, but i dont think they were on any major manufacturer website and so on. causing people to doubt the feasibility.

all this bickering is tiresome, the 21st will settle things (well, it better lol)

 

[DieH@rd]

This is far from bickering.

Anyhow, 10 days & 6 hours until the unveil.

 

[benny_a]

Good old time when even 4 GB of GDDR5 ram was a dream. I fought for it, but many did not believe even in that.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=46312776&postcount=6116

Nice. And you were arguing for 4GB GDDR5 if I'm reading that right. Interesting to see that even that had many posters doubting the feasibility of this.

And that was a month before the unveiling of the PS4.

 

[DieH@rd]

Nice. And you were arguing for 4GB GDDR5 if I'm reading that right. Interesting to see that even that had many posters doubting the feasibility of this.

And that was a month before the unveiling of the PS4.

Yeah, I really wanted for Sony to start using those Hynix 512 MB chips, but even I thought that it was not possible/financially feasible that they will chose to use 16 of them. Edge Magazine mentioned that there is a chance of 8GB pool before PSmeeting, but when the Cerny dropped the ram bomb... my mind was blown.

Can anyone dig up thread for PSmeeting livestream? The screams of GAF that happened then was so epic.

 

[Brad Grenz]

Yeah, my hope for 8GB in PS4 was mostly founded on the potential for a stacked memory on interposer solution. It seemed that would be ahead of the curve, but Sony used stacked memory already in the Vita before the spec was finalized. 8GB of GDDR5 just felt too expensive, if not a technical impossibility.

 

[iceatcs]

I remember someone here said 8GB GDDR5 is overkill, cannot use all the data because GPU is too low.

I'm wondering how they will feel if MS move to GDDR5. I hope they can handle it.