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F'DUPTON 3: Back in the Tub with 5.0/5.5/6/7/several Inches of RAM-Flavoured Water

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Becky

Banned
In hindsight its not bloated. But with those old rumors of PS4 only using 1 GB vs 3GB it really did seem bloated.

But most people here have no clue what they are talking about.

MS is lucky. 5 GBs was not going to be enough for games over the lifetime of this gen but now it will be plenty.
 

eunao

Member
When it comes to software development it's more educational to optimize code than to brute force it, hence the small amount of RAM at the beginning of the generation. The idea is to learn new techniques to run your game, not just fill it up and go. This should be applied to any type of hardware and especially new one.
 

Vestal

Gold Member
I have my reservations in regards to this. Would love to hear a comment from someone who has worked in console dev, but wouldn't it be more advantageous to use the standard approach of requesting from the OS instead of having to deal with your own memory and manipulation software?
 

ghst

thanks for the laugh
How much RAM does a dev need to do this?

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That is the only amount I care about.

to do something like that in a playable environment with a respectable framerate, RAM is the least of the PS4s concerns.
 

140.85

Cognitive Dissonance, Distilled
So am I reading some of the more technically proficient posters in here right?

It's actually physically impossible to write code that would use over 5.8 GB in a 30 FPS game? (On PS4)
 

tapedeck

Do I win a prize for talking about my penis on the Internet???
You're missing the part where Sony never mentioned any numbers, but we made up the 1GB OS part. So people are pissed that a made up number based on nothing isn't correct.

(To be fair they're also confounded as to how either machine could possibly need such a large OS)
Yeah I know the 1GB number was made up (which just furthers my point). I will acknowledge that 3GBs of fast ram seems like an awful lot for an OS but who knows what features they have in the works.
 

mrklaw

MrArseFace
If you look at something more recent and concrete, like the sudden indie program MS has, we can make better guesses. The general assumption was that MS was using their Windows 8 partition in the Xbox One to run those indie games, and although MS is saying that won't be the case, it's not a bad idea from a technical and security perspective.

If Sony wants to do something similar, where anyone can run their own code on the PS4, they can consider something like having the Android libraries running in memory with the memory and CPU that's rumored to be reserved. The controller already has a touch screen that seems to be designed to work with touch-screen enabled apps.

I think that's the kind of thing we're talking about with the memory reservation. Not a single feature so much as an entire separate app (and/or game) ecosystem. Doesn't have to be Android; could be Playstation Mobile (likely, except the SDK is useless for apps), could be OtherOS again, but running in a VM with a Sony-supplied BSD kernel, or something completely different. Or maybe none of those. But the point is they're reserved enough space so they could.


I'm wondering this too. Could Sony pop a version of android in there for app support? I'd love stuff like plex or other apps readily available. Either android or whatever is powering sony's Bravia smart TVs
 

MercuryLS

Banned
Microsoft is using so much because they are a bloated media box.
Sony is using it to future proof the machine. Which is good.

I hope this is a joke. It's obvious that MS and Sony have the same goals of being the one box to rule them all. Sony's messaging has been better by appealing to core gamers, that's the only difference.

The days of game consoles just being game consoles is dead. This gen showed that shift, next gen both Sony and MS are going all in with the media functions. They ultimately want to sell lots of boxes, by including more media functions they can appeal to the wider market (at least they hope so). Gamers that want as much of the console power/ram to go towards gaming are just going to have to suck it up or go PC. I hope Sony aggressively cut down the OS/multitasking overheard over this gen while still maintaing a strong featureset for the platform. This stuff isn't set in stone, they will hopefully dial back the amount of ram used for system functions over time.
 

mrklaw

MrArseFace
So am I reading some of the more technically proficient posters in here right?

It's actually physically impossible to write code that would use over 5.8 GB in a 30 FPS game? (On PS4)

No, that is obviously bollocks and a gross simplification

It may be technically impossible for the GPU to use more than that amount per frame in a 30fps game. But what if you turn around?
 

Ishan

Junior Member
So am I reading some of the more technically proficient posters in here right?

It's actually physically impossible to write code that would use over 5.8 GB in a 30 FPS game? (On PS4)

Wtf really ? Let me assure whoever posted this anyone with basic coding skills can write a 10 line program which can eat up all memory if they wanted to. Seg faults ftw
 

ElTorro

I wanted to dominate the living room. Then I took an ESRAM in the knee.
I have my reservations in regards to this. Would love to hear a comment from someone who has worked in console dev, but wouldn't it be more advantageous to use the standard approach of requesting from the OS instead of having to deal with your own memory and manipulation software?

It can be very advantageous to be able to implement your own memory layout and management since you can optimize it for the access patterns that your game uses. With memory managed by the OS you cannot control the physical fragmentation. Conversely, for data where fragmentation is not a big deal, it is advantageous to not have to bother with it.


This makes a lot more sense now. It seems to me that Sony is guiding developers to take advantage of GCNs virtual addressing features by allocating an always dedicated adress space. Smart if true. Should allow for some nice virtual textures and maybe even some HSA functions.

Virtual memory as an OS-feature has nothing to do with partially resident textures in GCN nor with any other aspect of the GPU.
 

calder

Member
You're missing the part where Sony never mentioned any numbers, but we made up the 1GB OS part. So people are pissed that a made up number based on nothing isn't correct.

(To be fair they're also confounded as to how either machine could possibly need such a large OS)

Agree with the first part, super agree with the second part.

I'm pretty much indifferent to the Great RAM Wars of July '13, but I will admit to being a bit baffled as to the *why* of the large RAM reservation for the OS. I'm relatively sure in the next couple of months - if not at Gamescom shortly after - Sony will show us something that will help explain the relative size of the OS, because surely there has to be a tangible benefit to the OS or non-game feature set that required it. If Sony really just said "let's reserve a full gig or so of extra RAM for the future, just in case we think of something next year we want to do" than that's a bit silly imo.
 

V1cK dB

Banned
Sony fanboys are funny. Before this rumor 8GB DDR5 was all the rage and XBOX One was getting murdered for only using 5 of 8 GB for games. Now Sony does it and all of a sudden those same people are saying that if true it's more than enough anyway? Wow.

edit: I play both PS and XBOX. Just pointing this out.
 

DPJ

Banned
Okay, so we're getting no numbers on the split from Sony and the only claims we have on this are those from Leadbetter and his "sources"?

Welp, guess until someone gets their hands on actual hardware or something I can go back to assuming this is more tales from Richie's anus.
 

quickwhips

Member
I dont think Sony is doing anything wrong. The only thing I don't get is MS has a plan for the future. It might suck it might be awesome who knows yet. Sony seems to be waiting to see what things MS and Wii do that work well and just copy it. Nothing wrong with that....I was hoping with this bleeding edge power house console they would lead the way and make nintendo and MS follow them not other way around.
 
Op has a comment from Sony confirming this I thought I read
You didn't read the whole quote, did you?

Sony's statement
We would like to clear up a misunderstanding regarding our "direct" and "flexible" memory systems. The article states that "flexible" memory is borrowed from the OS, and must be returned when requested - that's not actually the case.

The actual true distinction is that:
"Direct Memory" is memory allocated under the traditional video game model, so the game controls all aspects of its allocation
"Flexible Memory" is memory managed by the PS4 OS on the game's behalf, and allows games to use some very nice FreeBSD virtual memory functionality. However this memory is 100 per cent the game's memory, and is never used by the OS, and as it is the game's memory it should be easy for every developer to use it.

We have no comment to make on the amount of memory reserved by the system or what it is used for.
To me, this can be interpreted a number of ways, none of which fall upon DF being accurate. Look at that last line - we are aware they are doing a few things with the OS already, but to reveal all their cards before even completing software development wouldn't make a lick of sense.
 

AlphaDump

Gold Member
I have my reservations in regards to this. Would love to hear a comment from someone who has worked in console dev, but wouldn't it be more advantageous to use the standard approach of requesting from the OS instead of having to deal with your own memory and manipulation software?

my guess is so you can read/write between the 1 gig reserved in that virtual address space on the fly. So if your RAM hits the max threshold of 4.5 gbs you can still use that 512 reserve to exceed that number, and continually change depending on the scenario. like adding and removing parts of the level once you pass a point. you can have those parts wait in the virtual space essentially.

please correct me if i am wrong
 
I have my reservations in regards to this. Would love to hear a comment from someone who has worked in console dev, but wouldn't it be more advantageous to use the standard approach of requesting from the OS instead of having to deal with your own memory and manipulation software?
Your question is worded pretty strangely.


But there really is no "memory manager" that a developer could write. It's always the OS that manages memory. What this is, is a virtual address space.
 
Before this rumor 8GB DDR5 was all the rage and XBOX One was getting murdered for only using 5 of 8 GB for games. Now Sony does it and all of a sudden those same people are saying that if true it's more than enough anyway? Wow.

At face value I can see how it looks that way, but what changed my mind were the developer reactions relayed by some of the insiders here. If this is a non-issue to developers, more than enough memory for the time being, and game quality won't suffer at all because of it, then it really isn't all that important. If it was the other way, like, "we only have 5GB of RAM so we had to drop X, Y and Z from our game" then it would be an obvious problem.
 
So am I reading some of the more technically proficient posters in here right?

It's actually physically impossible to write code that would use over 5.8 GB in a 30 FPS game? (On PS4)
Pretty close to impossible yes. You would hit GPU and CPU limits far earlier then 6 GB of RAM. 8 GB is overkill compared to the GPU and especially CPU used in the PS4. It will take years before devs are going to find ways to use it efficiently and when that time comes the PS4 OS will be optimized enough to give devs all the RAM they need. Until then 5 GB is plenty, for most devs it will still be too much to even use.
 
At face value I can see how it looks that way, but what changed my mind was the developer reactions. If this is a non-issue to developers, more than enough memory for the time being, and game quality won't suffer at all because of it, then it really isn't all that important. If it was the other way, like, "we only have 5GB of RAM so we had to drop X, Y and Z from our game" then it would be an obvious problem.
Yea this is a small issue, just like the Xbox one was at the time. Do you know where I can find these developers reactions BTW?
 

V1cK dB

Banned
I dont think Sony is doing anything wrong. The only thing I don't get is MS has a plan for the future. It might suck it might be awesome who knows yet. Sony seems to be waiting to see what things MS and Wii do that work well and just copy it. Nothing wrong with that....I was hoping with this bleeding edge power house console they would lead the way and make nintendo and MS follow them not other way around.

Software isn't Sony's strength. We will see.
 

quickwhips

Member
Pretty close to impossible yes. You would hit GPU and CPU limits far earlier then 6 GB of RAM. 8 GB is overkill compared to the GPU and especially CPU used in the PS4. It will take years before devs are going to find ways to use it efficiently and when that time comes the PS4 OS will be optimized enough to give devs all the RAM they need. Until then 5 GB is plenty, for most devs it will still be too much to even use.

Sup Bill Gates.
I dont know anything
 
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