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

M

Mandoric

Banned
M3d10n said:
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.
Click to expand...

The PS3's already going to be doing constant background writing due to predictive downloading and game data caching, why not another 2 or 3MB/sec?
Not sure I'd want to do it on a SSD but it should be no problem for a mechanical drive.

200MB is way too small of an estimate, too. I've been working with busy 30fps game footage, and even with x264's more CPU-intensive modes you can push close to that per minute at 720p, at a relatively conservative quality goal. 1080p 60fps... Yeah, if it's 15 minutes you're basically looking at all of the added 4GB of RAM just as a video buffer.
 
N

Napalm_Frank

Member
512 at start but they will keep another 512 locked just in case they need it for the future. Unlock it late in life if they don't. 7GB fast ram is quite enough. Is this feasible?
 
I

i-Lo

Member
Napalm_Frank said:
512 at start but they will keep another 512 locked just in case they need it for the future. Unlock it late in life if they don't. 7GB fast ram is quite enough. Is this feasible?
Click to expand...

7GB would be a true wet dream for developers. But things like background recording and multitasking could take up more. To put things into perspective, PS3's current OS does a plethora of things with ~50MB footprint. A ten fold increase is massive as it is but a 20 fold would be even more so but many here including me are expecting a 40 folds increase (which through the comparative study is gargantuan).
 
K

Killthee

helped a brotha out on multiple separate occasions!
Gintoki313 said:
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.
Click to expand...
That's the last thing I want them to do next gen. I hated that I never knew what I was gonna get when launching a PS3 game. Would it support in game music? What about screenshots? Youtube? Remote play? Etc... Not to mention the things they couldn't incorporate into the system (cross game chat) cause they had already freed up the RAM to devs. It sucked and I hope they learned their lesson this gen and follow what MS did with the 360 on the PS4.
 
R

royalan

Member
With all the features packed into the OS (suspending gameplay, sharing features, always recording gameplay, background downloading/patching, etc.) I think it's obvious it'll be using more than just 512MB of RAM. I'll be surprised if the OS takes up less than 2GB. Those features don't come cheap.

That's said, with all the RAM Sony's stuffing into the thing, they can afford to bloat the OS with features. MS is rumored to only be going 4-6GB of DDR3, right? If that turns out to be true Sony could easily afford to allocate 2-4GB of GDDR5 RAM to the OS and STILL have a better RAM situation than Microsoft at the end of the day.

Man, just thinking about it though makes me wonder how much this baby is going to cost.
 
X

xJavonta

Banned
Definitely no more than 2GB. I just don't see how it could. The only way I get above 2GB on my PC is with a fuckton of Chrome tabs open.
 
I

IHaveCandy

Banned
SquiddyBiscuit said:
I think they'll start out 2GB just to be safe.
Then cut it down to 1GB if they can't figure out another use for the empty OS memory.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I could see them reserving extra RAM for now and see how things go later on. They may want to add a lot more OS features later. And you don't want to let inefficient games that hog RAM just because it's there hold you back because they break when you take away some RAM for the OS.
 
M

Miles Quaritch

Member
Alex said:
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.
Click to expand...

Indeed. I'm leaning toward the large part of the additional 4gb of ram being used for OS features and won't be accessible to games. This might change as time goes on, but in the beginning, I feel 2-3gb will be reserved for the OS to ensure a smooth, snappy and responsive UI.

If Microsoft also have similar features planned, this might also explain why they've had to reserve 2-3gb of their ram for OS.
 
I

IHaveCandy

Banned
Mandoric said:
The PS3's already going to be doing constant background writing due to predictive downloading and game data caching, why not another 2 or 3MB/sec?
Not sure I'd want to do it on a SSD but it should be no problem for a mechanical drive.

200MB is way too small of an estimate, too. I've been working with busy 30fps game footage, and even with x264's more CPU-intensive modes you can push close to that per minute at 720p, at a relatively conservative quality goal. 1080p 60fps... Yeah, if it's 15 minutes you're basically looking at all of the added 4GB of RAM just as a video buffer.
Click to expand...

With them going to 8 GB RAM, I'm sure they will store the last 15 minutes of video in RAM. Hopefully they will have a "keep recording" option that will simply write it to the HDD. But it is absolutely pointless to constantly write to the HDD like that. It will increase heating issues and wear on the HDD FAR more than the occassional background update/download.
 
K

KAL2006

Banned
We all should remember the Vita has multitasking, standby low power mode, cross chat, screenshot and custom music support. All on 256MB RAM. Also remember PS4 has dedicated hardware for background downloading, streaming, uploading, recording.
 
S

StealthGoblin

Banned
Alex said:
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.
Click to expand...

It has separate additional HW that does that. It doesn't take anything away from the RAM available to developers.
 
G

GazzaScotland

Member
Alex said:
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.
Click to expand...

I'd go along with that, makes sense. No way do I see it being as low as 512MB.
 
M

MORT1S

Member
Galvanise_ said:
It has separate additional HW that does that. It doesn't take anything away from the RAM available to developers.
Click to expand...

It doesn't work like that. That hardware handles processing, it will still need to store data processed and data to be processed
 
D

disappeared

Banned
1GB would be a nice round figure, give or take depending on what the console's doing at the time. It'd certainly make the overall experience smoother.
 
T

TheKurgan

Member
I still can't get my head around 8GB of GDDR5 - seems like massive overkill. Did a quick look online and top PC video cards like the GTX 690 only have between 4-6GB of GDDR5 and are designed to run at much higher resolutions than 1080p. With a lot of those video cards coming in at $400++ How much is the PS4 going to cost? Also why would you need GDDR5 for the OS? PC run fast with a bloated OS on DDR3, a streamlined console OS will be blinding fast on DDR3

If I had to guess I would say no more than 4GB of the GDDR5 will be used for games. The rest will be used for OS, video sharing, voice, social networks, motion tracking, and all that other crap they announced.
 
S

szaromir

Banned
Durango is rumored to reserve almost 3GB, and I expect Sony to reserve the same amount. If only to be able to rip off gamechanging features from MS if such emerge. They don't want to have the same situation they had with voice chat on PS3.
 
R

RoboPlato

I'd be in the dick
It depends on if they added OS features based on the RAM increase or not. They were aiming for 512mb before so I wouldn't think it would be much bigger than that, certainly not over 1gb unless they bloated everything they had already optimized.
 
I

i-Lo

Member
Thunder Monkey said:
7.5GB.

Games will have a whole 512MB to play with!
Click to expand...

That'll be still more than what the PS3 had with around 462MB. A full staggering factual increase of 50 god fearing Mega Bytes.

RoboPlato said:
It depends on if they added OS features based on the RAM increase or not. They were aiming for 512mb before so I wouldn't think it would be much bigger than that, certainly not over 1gb unless they bloated everything they had already optimized.
Click to expand...

Hey Robo, a bit OT, but do you like the controller design now?
 
A

AzaK

Member
TalesOfWin said:
I'd say PS4 is future proof yes.
Click to expand...

Nibel said:
So, 8GB is a lot of RAM - does this mean we'll get a 10 year+ console lifecycle?
Click to expand...

I guess it depends how the industry changes over the coming years (It' going to be cataclysmic me thinks). If high end machines are still doing well I can see it reaching 8-10 again. If Wii U is actually alive and being supported by Nintendo and third parties then it could last too.

Nintendo will have to make a decision soon as far as planning their next machine goes. Do they try and mid gen upgrade (4-5 years from now) and give their new machine 3-4 years on market before Sony and MS do the PS5 and XBOX 4? Or do they hold on as long as possible and hopefully release a year before the others, or at the same time? Both have pros and cons.

Given Nintendo's lack of competitiveness with power, having head to head launches could work against them. Jumping early might make them look like the most powerful machine out there, but come the PS5 et al, it will be 3-45 years older tech. That might not matter because Nintendo seems to aim for a "grunt factor" of about 5 years behind anyway.

It will be interesting.
 
D

daveo42

Banned
TalesOfWin said:
I'd say PS4 is future proof yes.
Click to expand...

I think what will eventually hold it back will be the GPU. We might see graphics plateau in only a few years because it's supposed to be much easier to code on the PS4 than past systems.

EDIT: I'm sticking with the 512 limit on the OS. I'm sure they're pretty much using the same ideology as they did with the Vita on the PS4 when it comes to the OS (multi app, lower power state, ram allocation for active vs minimized games).
 
S

spwolf

Member
szaromir said:
Durango is rumored to reserve almost 3GB, and I expect Sony to reserve the same amount. If only to be able to rip off gamechanging features from MS if such emerge. They don't want to have the same situation they had with voice chat on PS3.
Click to expand...

voice chat on PS3 was 12 MB :).

They will probably use up to 1GB... if they developed all this time for 512 MB, even 1024 MB is more than enough for anything else they can think of eventually.
 
B

brain_stew

Member
No launch window games will be designed around the increased RAM so there's no harm starting out by reserving a large chunk. Start by reserving 2GB and reduce from there. 6GB is going to be more than enough for launch window games and the OS size can always be decreased but it can never be increased. Better to be safe than sorry, it's a nice luxury to have.
 
J

JohnnySasaki86

Member
i-Lo said:
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?
Click to expand...

1GB. Its simple answer IMO, they doubled the RAM, so I believe they'll double the OS footprint. Every other leak and rumor was spot on with the specs, therefor we can assume that the OS footprint at one time was definitely 512mb.
 
I

i-Lo

Member
brain_stew said:
No launch window games will be designed around the increased RAM so there's no harm starting out by reserving a large chunk. Start by reserving 2GB and reduce from there. 6GB is going to be more than enough for launch window games and the OS size can always be decreased but it can never be increased. Better to be safe than sorry, it's a nice luxury to have.
Click to expand...

JohnnySasaki86 said:
1GB. Its simple answer IMO, they doubled the RAM, so I believe they'll double the OS footprint. Every other leak and rumor was spot on with the specs, therefor we can assume that the OS footprint at one time was definitely 512mb.
Click to expand...

Both these replies have merit. I assume then we are not looking to go north of 2GB in almost any event.
 
M

Mandoric

Banned
IHaveCandy said:
With them going to 8 GB RAM, I'm sure they will store the last 15 minutes of video in RAM. Hopefully they will have a "keep recording" option that will simply write it to the HDD. But it is absolutely pointless to constantly write to the HDD like that. It will increase heating issues and wear on the HDD FAR more than the occassional background update/download.
Click to expand...

But a 15-minute RAM buffer makes no sense from the other direction. For 1080p/60 content, like I said, you'd be reserving the entire new 4GB just for video, all to avoid 3MB/s or so average writes. If you're concerned about constant wear, sure, use 128MB or 256MB of a 512MB or 1GB reservation and buffer 30 or 60 seconds of video between scheduled writes (or probably, 20 or 50 seconds in between deferrable scheduled writes under the assumption that most engines won't be maxing out HDD access on their own for more than 10 seconds at a time). But a larger buffer than that makes absolutely no sense; this is obviously a major USP for the system, which entered in the early planning stages (hence the addition of true hardware H.264 encode to the 7970M rather than AMD's existing GPGPU implementation) and would have been given its own buffer far earlier if necessary.

Which is isn't. This thing is going to be easier on hard drives than even a Tivo, which makes do with 512MB of RAM counting its own OS overhead, UI, and support for multiple streams (so lots of seeking!) at once.
 
I

inky

Member
With all the streaming and other shenanigans going on in the background I suspect around 2GB. Maybe they'll improve on it, but for starters that seems like a reasonable amount.
 
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