• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

PS Vita System software 3.50 adds 30% more memory for game use.

mike4001_

Member
It's obvious that the PS4 is next, Sony always does that. question is when? I hope they sort out all the PS4 OS stuff soon so they can free up the memory for the devs.

Don´t think so.

They can do this when they have all the features in which could potentially need this RAM.

Maybe in 3-4 years ...
 
PSP and PS3 did this also. PSP also introduced higher CPU clocks.

I don't believe PSP locked away memory and then freed it... It was that later models had double the ram (64 versus 32) and thus later games could take advantage of it. Older games could using caching that the new ram provided, but it gave very little genuine benefit since the games weren't designed around it.
 

RoboPlato

I'd be in the dick
Nice. Hopefully PS4 follows shortly.

I wish stuff like this was announced ahead of time instead of us having to find out after the fact.
 

Inuhanyou

Believes Dragon Quest is a franchise managed by Sony
When they unlocked the CPU, did anyone complain their battery life was now lower? Of course this would only happen on newer games at the time that actually were programmed for the higher clock speed.

I never noticed it since by then I was using custom firmware to rip my games off UMD's onto my memory card and had an extended battery installed. The power saving from no disc drive and bigger battery easily offset the overclock I had manually set to 333mhz for everything.

As you say, the upclock would have only taken effect for games that were designed from the start(or patched) to take advantage of it after the fact. Like the God of War PSP games for example.

Of course, the lower battery life would have probably been noticed if the downclock had never happened i think, because it would always be there instead of at a point where it didn't really matter.
 

dab0ne

Member
Serious question:

Could a game that's already out, like borderlands 2, take advantage of this through a game update or does it have to be implemented during development?

Edit: holy Shit possibly answered above lol
 
I don't believe PSP locked away memory and then freed it... It was that later models had double the ram (64 versus 32) and thus later games could take advantage of it. Older games could using caching that the new ram provided, but it gave very little genuine benefit since the games weren't designed around it.

^This.

Some game very late into PSP's life could not do some functions on PSP-1000 (and they were openly stated).

Final Fantasy Type-0 is one of them (the multiplayer part IIRC).
 

vicnorris

Banned
^This.

Some game very late into PSP's life could not do some functions on PSP-1000 (and they were openly stated).

Final Fantasy Type-0 is one of them (the multiplayer part IIRC).

For what I remember the PSP had more processing power and was used in God of War (I don't remember if it had more ram or not).
With CFW we could lock the processor to be 333mhz instead of 266mhz if I recall correctly.
 

OmegaDL50

Member
The important thing to ask is.

Will this fix the stuttering during large maps in Disgaea 4.

I figure the slowdown was a direct cause of hitting the memory limit, now that there is 30% more memory accessible, then this slowdown effect shouldn't have as big an impact, no?

Hell even PSOne Classics like Suikoden II when you cast a spell like Dancing Flames the game has noticable slowdown (This issue doesn't even exist when running the game on PS3 by the way)

I would hope the additional memory allocated means these slowdowns have been almost eliminated.
 

Shinriji

Member
Serious question:

Could a game that's already out, like borderlands 2, take advantage of this through a game update or does it have to be implemented during development?

Yes, it can. Other games already did that. On the top of my head, Jet Set Radio and other games improved performance with patches after firmware updates.
 
For what I remember the PSP had more processing power and was used in God of War (I don't remember if it had more ram or not).
With CFW we could lock the processor to be 333mhz instead of 266mhz if I recall correctly.

Yeah Sony had it pushed down to 222Mhz since launch, saying that it was just the processor speed.
The later models having extra RAM and memory card installs really fixed the problems of that platform
except for piracy :(
.
 

KemoSabe

Member
Will it still matter?
Im afraid not. Its too late for something like this.
Even Sony themself abandonend the vita some time ago. All we will get are downgraded ps3 ports.


Too Bad since Imo the vita is one of the best handhelds ever.
 
For what I remember the PSP had more processing power and was used in God of War (I don't remember if it had more ram or not).
With CFW we could lock the processor to be 333mhz instead of 266mhz if I recall correctly.

I... don't get what your point is, considering I'm replying to a post that says that the PSP-1000 and PSP-2000 (onwards) had different RAMs amount, unlike that of the Vita/etc that had some RAM reserved for something else.
 

Sitrus

Member
For some examples, try playing Senran Kagura Estival version 1.02 on the 3.36 FW versus 1.02 on the 3.50. Don't have a capture card here so can only describe the change: Scenes lags, especially the panning like it's still loading the assets on FW 3.36. Dropped frames occurs too, especially at the beginning of each scene.

On the 3.50, the panning is a lot smoother, you no longer have those weird dropped frames at the start of each scene. Not perfect, but a lot better.

I think games have to be patched to use them, but this may improve games that suffers from slowdowns due to the lack of memory.
 

OmegaDL50

Member
For some examples, try playing Senran Kagura Estival version 1.02 on the 3.36 FW versus 1.02 on the 3.50. Don't have a capture card here so can only describe the change: Scenes lags, especially the panning like it's still loading the assets on FW 3.36. Dropped frames occurs too, especially at the beginning of each scene.

On the 3.50, the panning is a lot smoother, you no longer have those weird dropped frames at the start of each scene. Not perfect, but a lot better.

I think games have to be patched to use them, but this may improve games that suffers from slowdowns due to the lack of memory.

Hopefully this means slowdowns during Disgaea 4 on large maps is almost eliminated, as well as slowdown during some PSOne Classics (Suikoden II spell effects for example)
 
Will it still matter?
Im afraid not. Its too late for something like this.
Even Sony themself abandonend the vita some time ago. All we will get are downgraded ps3 ports.


Too Bad since Imo the vita is one of the best handhelds ever.
Even if it is too late so?

In any case Sony made the classic mistake of assuming that just because your technology is superior doesn't mean it will sell the most.
 
Hopefully this means slowdowns during Disgaea 4 on large maps is almost eliminated, as well as slowdown during some PSOne Classics (Suikoden II spell effects for example)

It'd require a patch. Which I don't think NIS would bother with at this point. And I think there's even less of a chance of NISA patching the western version of the game.

Best thing to hope for is they use the extra memory in Disgaea D2 when that inevitably comes.
 

HooYaH

Member
Even if it is too late so?

In any case Sony made the classic mistake of assuming that just because your technology is superior doesn't mean it will sell the most.

I don't think Sony made superior tech, just tech that is the most cost effective at the time. Most of the parts were a tweaked version of mobile devices which is better than doing R&D for a whole new setup.

Where Sony falls is how they targeted their market and their support for their lineup. Sony doesn't have a dedicated first party for their Handheld like Nintendo does.
 

mrklaw

MrArseFace
I think such moves would be delayed by Sony for PS4 because of Morpheus and the path that it will take PS4 god knows where to.

I don't think they would need to wait that long. The amount of ram they need is based on a couple of factors

1) background tasks. What can the PS4 do in the background while playing a game? That is stuff like streaming to twitch, playing spotify etc. That is at least in part also bound by the amount of CPU/GPU available to those background tasks, and they aren't likely to need a ton of RAM. Arguably Sony would be able to estimate likely amount of RAM that would be enough for the rest of the generation, and free some up if necessary. Likewise maybe they could free up some CPU time too?

2) apps. This is less clear cut, because apps can in theory use all the CPU/GPU when run in the foreground (don't know if this is actually allowed, but I don't see why now), but if a game is suspended then the foreground app can only access whatever ram is reserved for the OS. This is a much more flexible amount, and less easy to predict. But I still think it is most likely used for media streaming (netflix, spotify) and bluray playback. I doubt there will be much that is hugely more RAM intensive, so I hope Sony can get a bead on that and possibly free up some RAM from the OS soon.
 

Trojita

Rapid Response Threadmaker
The PSP situation was interesting since hackers unlocked the higher clock speeds via Custom Firmware well before Sony did so officially. I recall emulator coders highly recommending the clock speed change to properly run some of the demanding games.

That switch from 222 to 333. Ate the battery faster, but it was nice. Even most regular games not optimized for that clock ran better.

I remember when the feature was first unlocked "Don't go 333 your PSP is going to blow up. Sony never meant for us to use that clock!".
 

Shin-Ra

Junior Member
Cerny bless DirectX12.

iV4ZMDw0WllYd.gif
 

dab0ne

Member
Yes, it can. Other games already did that. On the top of my head, Jet Set Radio and other games improved performance with patches after firmware updates.
Awesome! Let's hope some of the games that need to take advantage of this haven't been abandoned by their devs.
 

antibolo

Banned
Will it still matter?
Im afraid not. Its too late for something like this.
Even Sony themself abandonend the vita some time ago. All we will get are downgraded ps3 ports.


Too Bad since Imo the vita is one of the best handhelds ever.

Strawman much? Nobody is pretending that this will magically save the Vita from its current fate. But for future games (yes, there are still many Vita games being made in Japan) this is very good news. But then again you probably don't even own a Vita so whatever.
 
Hmm, hope some already released games get patches to take advantage of this. Killzone is a free game this month on plus and it looks fantastic but you can definitely see some stutter/loads, maybe this could fix that. Terraria would also benefit greatly as it has noticeable slowdown compared to every other version of the game.
 

androvsky

Member
The Suikoden II slowdown doesn't even occur when running the game on the PS3. so it's not emulation related but Vita / PSTV specific.
It's most likely a CPU speed issue. Keep in mind the PS1 had about 3 MB of memory, which leaves many times that for the emulator. And memory usage isn't going to vary much while running a game. CPU speed per thread is usually the limiter for emulation, and that's something the PS3 has a decent amount of. Or it could simply be a bug in how the Vita emulator handles transparencies.
 

OmegaDL50

Member
I'm a bit confused by this gif. A person sticks a ram stick into the slot and doesn't actually put it all the way and then a guy smiles awkwardly?

Is there a reference here I should be getting?

When the PS4 design docs leaked under the code name of ORBIS it was going to have 4GB of ram TOTAL....after some consideration Mark Cerny (the guy in the image above who designed the PS4 by the way) opted to go with 8GB instead, before everything going final.

If it wasn't for that last minute change, the PS4 could have very well had 4GB of ram instead of the 8GB, which would have completely changed the differences between the XB1 and PS4 in terms of multiplatform releases and likely not in the PS4's favor. Very likely some first party games would have suffered as well.
 

antibolo

Banned
Oh wow, this is an interesting one.... This has to be to help the 60 fps remote play...

Real-time streaming has pretty much nothing to do with RAM. It's not like there's any room for buffering when you're trying to get latency to be as small as possible.

Besides the Remote Play app on the Vita doesn't even count as a "large" app, it can run alongside other apps. So it effectively means that in 3.50 the Remote Play app actually has LESS memory to work with than before.
 

Shinriji

Member
The Suikoden II slowdown doesn't even occur when running the game on the PS3. so it's not emulation related but Vita / PSTV specific.

PS1 emulation on vita is restrained by the PSP backend, since is actually based on PSP emulation.

The already released games that can benefit from the extra RAM are the popular and constantly updated ones, like Minecraft and the F2P games. Asking patch support for old games is futile.
 

Prelude.

Member
When the PS4 design docs leaked under the code name of ORBIS it was going to have 4GB of ram TOTAL....after some consideration Mark Cerny (the guy in the image above who designed the PS4 by the way) opted to go with 8GB instead, before everything going final.

If it wasn't for that last minute change, the PS4 could have very well had 4GB of ram instead of the 8GB, which would have completely changed the differences between the XB1 and PS4 in terms of multiplatform releases and likely not in the PS4's favor. Very likely some first party games would have suffered as well.
Eeh, not really, it wasn't because of Cerny. They just listened to devs.
https://twitter.com/DuvalMagic/status/344921270011453441

more memory for senrans and falcom :3c
Senran is kill, Valkyrie Drive is where the hometowns will be at.
 
Good stuff. Hope it get utilized. The "too little too late" comments are probably missing the point anyway. Even if this happened three months into the Vita life cycle it wouldn't have made a lick of differnece in terms of the system's success.
 
Top Bottom