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How much RAM do you think the PS4 OS will use?

i-Lo

Member
The current string of rumours just prior to the unveiling had pegged its OS footprint to be ~512MB. Now, seeing how Sony wants to match MS's rumoured feature set (sleep, resume, background download, instant play etc) has the footprint increased leading Sony to opt for 8GB GDDR5 instead of the original 4GB?

If so by your best estimate:

  1. How MUCH of the 8GB would be actually available for game development?
  2. Like the PS3, are we likely to see reduction in OS footprint (even with the addition of new features) over the years?
  3. Is there a chance the OS will have different footprints depending upon when a game is being played and otherwise, akin to Vita?
 
1. I guess 4-5GB for games to use in the start. Especially if they want to put entire games to the RAM.
2. Yeah, there is a good change the OS gets optimized over the years looked already pretty lightweight.
3. Depends of course some parts of the OS can be unloaded when a game is played, but the question is if the time it takes to load those parts again is doable in a justifiable timeframe.
 

AndyD

aka andydumi
I dont imagine the OS taking any more than 1GB, so 7 left for devs. The question is whether Sony will OS implement a lot of the streaming/chat and so forth or whether devs will have to budget for it like the PS3.
 

i-Lo

Member
1. I guess 4-5GB for games to use in the start. Especially if they want to put entire games to the RAM.
2. Yeah, there is a good change the OS gets optimized over the years looked already pretty lightweight.
3. Depends of course some parts of the OS can be unloaded when a game is played, but the question is if the time it takes to load those parts again is doable in a justifiable timeframe.

At least 4GB for games would be my guess now.

Pertaining to unloading, while flash memory is not as expedient as say SSD, it could still be a great avenue for this kind of work. Wouldn't it?
 

Osiris

I permanently banned my 6 year old daughter from using the PS4 for mistakenly sending grief reports as it's too hard to watch or talk to her
512MB minimum, 1024MB Maximum used by O/S.

7GB+ available for Games.

Sounds awesome to me.

Where on earth people are getting the idea of 2GB to 4GB just for the O/S from considering up until yesterday the console was believed to have a total of 4GB I have no idea. Paint huffing I suspect.
 

i-Lo

Member
I also think it'll be around like 512mb.
Sony pushed the whole developer thing over and over at this conference so I doubt they'll take away any of their tools.

Well earlier rumours said 3.5GB, isn't an additional 1.5 to 2.5 (5GB to 6GB) is a huge jump as it is?
 

Killthee

helped a brotha out on multiple separate occasions!
I don't care as long as they offer devs the same amount MS does. I would actually prefer they reserve a huge chunk upfront that they slowly minimize over time just to be safe. I don't want to get a repeat of this gen (leaving out stuff like in game music and remote play from working system wide & not adding cross game chat cause of RAM constraints).
 

Azure J

Member
So, 8GB is a lot of RAM - does this mean we'll get a 10 year+ console lifecycle?

I really have reservations against another extended generation like this again, but if the PS4 is the benchmark for what's to come, I think it'll happen (while being a much more comfortable ride than with PS3) and one that's mandatory as Sony attempts to go from taking the loss (if any) to profitability.
 

Guess Who

Banned
[*]Like the PS3, are we likely to see reduction in OS footprint (even with the addition of new features) over the years?

They can't make the OS memory footprint larger than it is at launch because it would break any older games that relied on the extra memory, so it'll either stay the same or be reduced.
 

Noirulus

Member
I'm going to say 512MB as well. They've specifically said that they have extra processor chips in order to handle diffcult OS-level tasks such as game recording. The memory footprint won't be too big IMO.
 

kadotsu

Banned
If you want to find a bottleneck for the PS4 it isn't the RAM. The GPU could potentially be a problem in a few years but they are golden on RAM right now. And why stop with HW the SDK and documentation is far more important short term.

The real bottleneck for the next few years is production cost and engineering capabilities anyway
 

Iksenpets

Banned
They didn't show anything to suggest that you'll be running apps and games simultaneously, which seems like its a big source of MS's OS memory demands. The big thing is going to be the backlog of recorded HD video of gameplay. That'll take up at least a couple hundred megs, depending on how much video they store. My guess is 1GB for OS.
 

Ty4on

Member
Edit: ^^^^^ What are the odds?

Considering the extra stuff don't need high speed memory and are almost separate with their own chips, isn't it possible that they could also have their own little RAM pool? I can dream can't I :p

If it does use some of the main memory I kinda struggle to see how much over 1GB it could use.
 

kitsuneyo

Member
I'm gonna say 6GB at the absolute least for games. That's such an insane amount for a console, it should let developers to do amazing things!
 

Durante

Member
To provide one data point, if they want to offer background recording for the last 15 minutes in decent 1080p video quality that's almost exactly 1 GB right there.
 
I expect 2GB for OS and rest for gaming. That 2GB can decrease when features are optimized; that and some of it can be reserved (i.e. OS maybe using 1GB but they reserve 2GB) in hopes of future expansion and features.
 

sangreal

Member
They didn't show anything to suggest that you'll be running apps and games simultaneously, which seems like its a big source of MS's OS memory demands. The big thing is going to be the backlog of recorded HD video of gameplay. That'll take up at least a couple hundred megs, depending on how much video they store. My guess is 1GB for OS.

er, didn't they though?

Additionally, users can boot a variety of applications including a web browser when playing a game on PS4.
 

i-Lo

Member
They didn't show anything to suggest that you'll be running apps and games simultaneously, which seems like its a big source of MS's OS memory demands. The big thing is going to be the backlog of recorded HD video of gameplay. That'll take up at least a couple hundred megs, depending on how much video they store. My guess is 1GB for OS.

Oh, if MS does it so will Sony. Just you wait till E3.

That's why I wondered whether there will be a two stage OS, part of which can be offloaded to flash chip during gaming locking out certain features.
 

Guess Who

Banned
They didn't show anything to suggest that you'll be running apps and games simultaneously, which seems like its a big source of MS's OS memory demands. The big thing is going to be the backlog of recorded HD video of gameplay. That'll take up at least a couple hundred megs, depending on how much video they store. My guess is 1GB for OS.

Two things.

1) They did say you can multitask to some extent, such as having a browser and game open at the same time.
2) They have a hard drive. It'd be absurd for them to cache the whole video in RAM. They'll do what FRAPS and other similar programs do and write video straight to the HDD to record with minimal RAM usage.
 

mclem

Member
They'll probably be conservative at first; I wouldn't be surprised if they allocated a stupidly large (I'll say 2GB, but it's a random figure) amount of RAM for the OS. They can always scale it back if necessary, but this gives them ample space to expand into if they need to.

It's always worth remembering that an OS can always take *less* RAM later on, but it can never take *more*, hence the conservative approach being wise.
 

bee

Member
have they mentioned the speed of it yet? bar the throughput, it's obviously not gonna be like 7ghz (effective) like on an overclocked nvidia card but with ddr4 speeds starting at 2133mhz soon it's gotta be pretty fast
 

gofreak

GAF's Bob Woodward
1. I guess 4-5GB for games to use in the start. Especially if they want to put entire games to the RAM.

I think you only suspend one game at a time. One is kept in RAM. So the OS doesn't need to keep any RAM for that, it just lives in the game space...

On a more general note, I think all these features were planned before Sony upgraded the RAM.
 

Osiris

I permanently banned my 6 year old daughter from using the PS4 for mistakenly sending grief reports as it's too hard to watch or talk to her
To provide one data point, if they want to offer background recording for the last 15 minutes in decent 1080p video quality that's almost exactly 1 GB right there.

You don't think that can be cached and streamed straight to HDD?

I imagine there will be a buffer in RAM for this feature, but enough for a full 15 minutes? - doubtful, that would be a hellish waste of resources.
 

Killthee

helped a brotha out on multiple separate occasions!
They didn't show anything to suggest that you'll be running apps and games simultaneously, which seems like its a big source of MS's OS memory demands. The big thing is going to be the backlog of recorded HD video of gameplay. That'll take up at least a couple hundred megs, depending on how much video they store. My guess is 1GB for OS.
The press release seems to imply multi tasking.


Immediate Gameplay

PS4 radically reduces the lag time between players and their content. PS4 features “suspend mode” which keeps the system in a low power state while preserving the game session. The time it takes today to boot a console and load a saved game will be a thing of the past. With PS4, gamers just hit the power button again and are promptly back playing the game at the exact point where they left off. Additionally, users can boot a variety of applications including a web browser when playing a game on PS4.

PS4 also enables games to be downloaded or updated in the background, or even in stand-by mode. The system takes it one step further by making digital titles playable as they are being downloaded. When a player purchases a game, PS4 downloads just a fraction of the data so gamers can start playing immediately, and the rest is downloaded in the background during actual gameplay.
 

Durante

Member
2) They have a hard drive. It'd be absurd for them to cache the whole video in RAM. They'll do what FRAPS and other similar programs do and write video straight to the HDD to record with minimal RAM usage.
I think that would be a bad idea, and is unlikely. It would use up a significant chunk (basically, almost all of) of your HDD transfer rate at all times.

No, background video recording will be stored in RAM.

You don't think that can be cached and streamed straight to HDD?

I imagine there will be a buffer in RAM for this feature, but enough for a full 15 minutes? - doubtful, that would be a hellish waste of resources.
See above. I don't think it's a waste of resources at all, it's a good use of resources.
 

Mandoric

Banned
The current string of rumours just prior to the unveiling had pegged its OS footprint to be ~512MB. Now, seeing how Sony wants to match MS's rumoured feature set (sleep, resume, background download, instant play etc) has the footprint increased leading Sony to opt for 8GB GDDR5 instead of the original 4GB?

If so by your best estimate:

  1. How MUCH of the 8GB would be actually available for game development?
  2. Like the PS3, are we likely to see reduction in OS footprint (even with the addition of new features) over the years?
  3. Is there a chance the OS will have different footprints depending upon when a game is being played and otherwise, akin to Vita?

Sleep/resume and instant play take zero to minimal RAM, and background downloading has extremely minimal requirements even if it isn't handled by the coprocessor they mentioned. I didn't see much yesterday that would bump OS requirements up from rumors assuming the rumors took the sharing aspects into account.

On the other hand, I'm not sure why they wouldn't implement Vita-style swapping, even just as a "just in case" measure. It's extremely similar to the sleep/resume function technically, isn't it?

I think that would be a bad idea, and is unlikely. It would use up a significant chunk (basically, almost all of) of your HDD transfer rate at all times.

No, background video recording will be stored in RAM.

Yes and no? It's probably piped directly to the built-in H.264 encoder rather than writing raw video, so at 1080p/60 it -might- be eating a few megabytes/second of write, all of which is easily preemptable. Meaning an output buffer of perhaps 64MB is more than enough.
 

mclem

Member
2) They have a hard drive. It'd be absurd for them to cache the whole video in RAM. They'll do what FRAPS and other similar programs do and write video straight to the HDD to record with minimal RAM usage.

I wonder if the HD will be user-replacable again, and if so, if they'll explicitly block out hard drives that are too slow.

Also, FRAPS works on the assumption that you *will* want to save the data you're exporting. the PS4 needs to operate on the assumption that you *won't* - otherwise it'll have to start deleting the stored feed from the hard disc very rapidly indeed.
 

Guess Who

Banned
I think that would be a bad idea, and is unlikely. It would use up a significant chunk (basically, almost all of) of your HDD transfer rate at all times.

Would it? Seems to work alright on PCs.

FRAPS works on the assumption that you *will* want to save the data you're exporting. the PS4 needs to operate on the assumption that you *won't* - otherwise it'll have to start deleting the stored feed from the hard disc very rapidly indeed.

Hmm, yeah, I think this is actually a problem - if it's a rolling fifteen minute feed, that does mean it would once the video hits fifteen minutes long it'll have to start deleting earlier data, and of course if you quit the game without sharing it'll have to delete the whole feed altogether.
 

Mandoric

Banned
Hmm, yeah, I think this is actually a problem - if it's a rolling fifteen minute feed, that does mean it would once the video hits fifteen minutes long it'll have to start deleting earlier data, and of course if you quit the game without sharing it'll have to delete the whole feed altogether.

MPEG-4 is a streamable format anyway, so couldn't it just be a 5GB or so partition that gets a raw dump of encoder output, with the OS keeping a pointer to the current write point/jumping back to the beginning when it reaches the end? This would also cut down on time wasted seeking.
 
My completely made up and 100% speculative prediction says 6GB RAM dedicated to games and 2GB dedicated to the OS and all of its special features. I bade this on the face that I am running Windows 7 64-bit right now and it is using <2GB so I can't see how a home console will use more than that even with video recording/sharing features.
 

M3d10n

Member
Two things.

1) They did say you can multitask to some extent, such as having a browser and game open at the same time.
2) They have a hard drive. It'd be absurd for them to cache the whole video in RAM. They'll do what FRAPS and other similar programs do and write video straight to the HDD to record with minimal RAM usage.

There's no way they'll keep the video in the HDD: it means the PS3 will be constantly writing to the HDD while you play anything, which would increase wear and tear by quite a lot for no need at all, since only a fraction of that video will be actually saved.

Also, the PS3 has a hardware h.264 encoder, so the videos are going to be far smaller than FRAPS video, probably under 200MBs.
 
Maybe if the devs want to push more RAM into the game they could make the game do what Uncharted Golden Abyss does on the Vita. If the game is too power savvy with all the other crap in the background, it can turn it off when the game starts to use the other amount of power. It wouldn't be so bad seeing as how it wasn't bad with Uncharted Golden Abyss, just have to make sure too turn off all other apps before playing that certain game.
 

Alex

Member
2GB~

My assumption is that the RAM was hiked when they started realizing just how much memory their OS would devour to remain snappy with all those features and recording consistently.
 
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