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[Live Free or Die]

I want to know why you would keep a secret like that. Aren't you hindering development speed in the short term?

It's simple. They didn't want a memory leak.

 

[Whiteshirt]

This is what I don't get, if Sony can do this, why can't MS do the same thing?

People are very likely reading far too much into this. Sony probably didn't want to pick higher density RAM but tons of devs complained about the specs so they caved and gave they what they want.

 

[Metalmurphy]

It's simple. They didn't want a memory leak.

Ha

 

[KAL2006]

I thought RAM has nothing to do with FPS, so why mention Thief 4 and 30 FPS.

 

[CorrisD]

I wonder, does that mean the 8GB are for games only?

Probably just means that Sony has already set a hard limit on the OS, as Sony updated the XMB on the PS3 they also slowly released memory back to developers over the years, they went from like 120+ to around 45ish iirc. The PS4 is probably taking 512-1GB and that wont ever be released back to future proof anything they need to do.

I think 8GB was a last minute thing. Which is why I don't put much weight in the XBOX specs, if Sony put it to third parties that PS4 would have 4GB and then changed it, what's to stop MS from doing the same thing? It's not too late.

At this point MS could probably bump up the amount of Ram if they wanted, if the rumours of the OS taking up 2-3GB for whatever they will be doing it true then I could see them bumping it up so that the memory available to games is more inline with the PS4. Changing Ram type though isn't as easy, so I wouldn't expect them to suddenly jump to GDDR5 too unless they are willing to absorb to cost of a change like that and the time to make it happen before release.

As mentioned in the topic, a few things had to happen for Sony to offer 8GB, if higher GDDR5 densities hadn't become available we would no doubt still have only 4GB.

 

[KojiKnight]

I thought RAM has nothing to do with FPS, so why mention Thief 4 and 30 FPS.

Because gaming journalists aren't technology buffs and thus spout things that sound good.

 

[DeFiBkIlLeR]

DDR5?

lol, tech-savy dev

Why do people have to pick up on the slightest typo, when it's perfectly obvious what he means, just in order to make some smart alec remark.

Seriously.

 

[X05]

Of course not.

Then saying that doesn't make much sense, the PS3 system memory was "ring-fenced" too.

EDIT: ok, that makes more sense.

 

[faridmon]

No wonder the Devs are crazy about it. I suppose, if they knew about it beforehand, they wouldn't make as much positive remarks about the console as they are now.

 

[Naked Snake]

"especially DDR5 memory, because it's so fast you don't have to have everything there at once. You can swap it in and out instantly, effectively.

Wait. Where exactly are they swapping memory instantly in and out of? Surely not the blu-ray disc or the HDD.

 

[Rollo Lawson]

I thought we knew this...

The console's impressive 8GB of GDDR5 RAM came as a surprise to many gamers - and even some developers we spoke to who have worked with PS4 dev kits.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-02-22-ps4-pc-like-architecture-8gb-ram-delight-developers

 

[tapedeck]

So Deep Down was running on at most half the RAM that the final kit has. Thats pretty crazy.

Spoiler

If it was actually running on a dev kit and not a pc of course

 

[Jean Valjean]

It's simple. They didn't want a memory leak.

Edge leaked the info anyway

 

[CosmicGroinPull]

So, where is that GAFer that kept replying "You keep on believing that" when people mentioned this?

lol



Also to avoid leaks so that Microsoft couldn't easily adapt to the announcement.

Yep, I'm going with that: wanting to trip Microsoft up.

 

[Azull]

Yo we making a game thats capable of 160 terraflops, and then they reveal that we have more flops to flop, and man I don't even know how we can cope with that many flops.

For some reason I laughed uncontrollably when I read this. Probably because I pictured Xzibit saying it.

 

[Feature]

They wanted to catch Microsoft by surprise and they did. Microsoft is probably now scrambling around to make their system more powerful, hence them being very quiet. I bet they wanted to announce a long time ago but the PS4 announcement made them hold back.

 

[angular graphics]

Why do people have to pick up on the slightest typo, when it's perfectly obvious what he means, just in order to make some smart alec remark.

Seriously.

The dude doesn't know what AF is, you really can't be certain he knows the difference between DDR5 and GDDR5:

Anyway, and again I stick my hand up and say "WTF?" I know what MSAA, but what's "af" ? I'm the business guy now, NOT an actual developer so that term is lost on me.

 

[KojiKnight]

So Deep Down was running on at most half the RAM that the final kit has. Thats pretty crazy.

Spoiler

If it was actually running on a dev kit and not a pc of course

Didn't they only show a couple scenes? They probably didn't even come close to filling the 4GB of memory available to them up.

 

[staticneuron]

I want to know why you would keep a secret like that. Aren't you hindering development speed in the short term?

Prevent leaks. Normally graphics and optimization are the last thing to be worked in in most game dev productions so they keep it secret announce the specs months before the console release to give devs time to work out kinks.

Kinda smart especially if they didn't know where the leaks were coming from.

Edge leaked the info anyway

iirc they were the odd ones out right? I thought other sources rumored 4 gigs.

 

[SmokedMeat]

I wonder if they held back the specs from devs to avoid potential leaks?

That would be my guess. What's to stop them from blabbing to Microsoft that it's only 4GB? Perhaps that's part of the reason we haven't seen Durango revealed.

 

[SniperHunter]

Sony probably wanted to avoid another :

case of over-promising and under delivering. This time they started out with weak specs and gradually built their way up.

 

[thuway]

Hey Thuway is a liar!

 

[freezamite]

Wait. Where exactly are they swapping memory instantly in and out of? Surely not the blu-ray disc or the HDD.

The memory is SO FAST that makes the Blu-ray disc go faster. Unless Nintendo, that uses 2004-era RAM technology and can't of course impregnate it's blu ray with the speed of the RAM, Sony does what everyone's PC can also do.

 

[gbovo]

Wait. Where exactly are they swapping memory instantly in and out of? Surely not the blu-ray disc or the HDD.

Swapping assets in and out of memory, not swapping memory chips.

An "added bonus" of PS4's memory is that Sony has "already ring-fenced the system memory away from the game memory," Gilray adds, "so there's none of this business that we had with PS3 of having to share memories.

This is the most interesting part. Is he confirming that PS4's OS does not use any part of the 8GB GDDR5 RAM, and uses it's own dedicated (flash?) memory?

If so, that means devs have access to all of the 8gigs of ram, and don't have to share it with the OS (rumoured to be 512mb).
That's unreleased information that nobody has made mention of.

 

[Pitmonkey]

I wouldn't doubt the delay in confirmation was due to the internal struggle to get the 8gb approved. Down to the wire, is my assumption.

 

[Lagspike_exe]

Remember when some claimed that there's no way Sony could get even 4GB of RAM in PS4? Because of 'motherboard complexity'? Yeah...

 

[staticneuron]

Hey Thuway is a liar!

Hey if thuway is liar, but states he is liar, wouldn't that mean the statement is a lie and he is normally tell the truth? Or is the statement a truthful statement in which in immediately cast the doubt on the veracity of the claim he is a liar? Ahhhhhhhh!!!

 

[plagiarize]

Swapping assets in and out of memory, not swapping memory chips.

yes, but what's the other thing involved in the swapping? that's what we're getting at. it's not going to be practically instant unless for some crazy reason you're swapping something from RAM to RAM. you're either swapping from SSD, HD or BD-Rom, and either way, it's not going to be the RAM that's the bottleneck.

 

[Shining Sunshine]

So one company represents all of third party.

 

[stryke]

Why do people have to pick up on the slightest typo, when it's perfectly obvious what he means, just in order to make some smart alec remark.

Seriously.

Because those who don't know better will perpetuate the mistake.

 

[Naked Snake]

Swapping assets in and out of memory, not swapping memory chips.

yes, but what's the other thing involved in the swapping? that's what we're getting at. it's not going to be practically instant unless for some crazy reason you're swapping something from RAM to RAM. you're either swapping from SSD, HD or BD-Rom, and either way, it's not going to be the RAM that's the bottleneck.

What he said.

RAM <--> CPU/GPU = "effectively instant", sure. But you don't call that "swapping assets in and out"

RAM <--> HDD/SSD/BD = GDDR5 ain't gonna help you there.

 

[VVV Mars VG]

No surprise, the 360 ending up more powerful than previously expected. The Saturn had an extra SH2 chip whacked in last minute.

Everyone likes to keep a little bit back

 

[alexandros]

which could go some way to explaining the suspected 30fps cap on the Unreal Engine 3-powered Thief.

Oh God, there goes my migraine again.

 

[Busty]

So Microsoft wouldn't find out is the likely reason. Sony were probably thinking that it would be too late for them to combat it if they found out that late.

Pretty much. I imagine it's far too late for MS to directly 'answer' Sony's move.

Not that they'd bother anyway.

 

[Raven77]

so incomplete games/demos on incomplete hardware, makes sense

You realize that they don't supply devs with ONLY one version of a dev kit right? They have at least 2-3 versions each with hardware variances to some degree.

This is not uncommon practice at all. Very few devs get early access to "final" hardware in their dev kits till much closer or even after release of the home console.

 

[LiquidMetal14]

Oh God, there goes my migraine again.

Play it on PC

 

[BradleyLove]

Oh God, there goes my migraine again.

For a PC guy, you sure spend a lot of your time in PS4 threads... I'm not sure what it could mean though.

 

[acm2000]

sony didnt know it was gonna have 8GB till the reveal either lol

 

[Metalmurphy]

sony didnt know it was gonna have 8GB till the reveal either lol

Only the guy making the powerpoint presentation did.

 

[Durante]

This is the most interesting part. Is he confirming that PS4's OS does not use any part of the 8GB GDDR5 RAM, and uses it's own dedicated (flash?) memory?

If so, that means devs have access to all of the 8gigs of ram, and don't have to share it with the OS (rumoured to be 512mb).
That's unreleased information that nobody has made mention of.

I really don't believe that's what he's saying. He is probably saying that Sony has already fixed some amount of memory that will be used for the OS, and developers will not need to worry about it shrinking, or using more memory when specific OS features are used (I believe this was the case on PS3).

 

[Radec]

Only Mark Cerny did.

He even made the powerpoint presentation.

 

[Angelcurio]

An "added bonus" of PS4's memory is that Sony has "already ring-fenced the system memory away from the game memory," Gilray adds, "so there's none of this business that we had with PS3 of having to share memories.

This is the interesting part, does that mean that system memory is being kept separate from game memory? meaning that the full 8gigs of memory is available for games only?

 

[Omeyocan]

Swapping assets in and out of memory, not swapping memory chips.


This is the most interesting part. Is he confirming that PS4's OS does not use any part of the 8GB GDDR5 RAM, and uses it's own dedicated (flash?) memory?

If so, that means devs have access to all of the 8gigs of ram, and don't have to share it with the OS (rumoured to be 512mb).
That's unreleased information that nobody has made mention of.

I think that the OS footprint is part of the whole system memory.

 

[IonicSnake]

Only Mark Cerny did.

He even made the powerpoint presentation.

Kaz sitting there in the audience and as soon as he hears Mark Cerny say 8gb he thinks "wtf?!" Then when he hears Cerny say GDDR5 Kaz shouts "WTF?! You're a dead man!" while being held back by Tretton and Yoshida.

Now you know why Cerny had that evil smile.

 

[Omeyocan]

If the whole 8 Gigs is reserved only for gaming purpose, then it's very good news !

 

[driver116]

This is the interesting part, does that mean that system memory is being kept separate from game memory? meaning that the full 8gigs of memory is available for games only?

That sounds beautiful.

 

[RoadHazard]

If the whole 8 Gigs is reserved only for gaming purpose, then it's very good news !

That's not what they're saying. They're saying that a certain amount of the 8 GB will always be reserved for the OS. The full OS will always reside in that memory, so taking advantage of certain features (custom soundtracks, video streaming, etc) won't affect the amount of memory available to the game (which it did on the PS3, if my understanding is correct). I would guess it's logically divided into two separate memory partitions, with devs not having to pay any attention at all to the OS memory part.

Anyway, devs will still have access to something like 7 GB, and that's still a pretty amazing amount of GDDR5. That "missing" 1 GB isn't gonna make or break anything.

 

[BradleyLove]

This is the interesting part, does that mean that system memory is being kept separate from game memory? meaning that the full 8gigs of memory is available for games only?

If you read some of JeffRigby's theories he proposes that GDDR5 is not suitable for use with the ARM processor that will be used for the PS4's OS. He thinks that in order to have a secure OS, you also need a secure UI (makes sense) and as such the only way to have both is for the ARM processor to also contain a GPU (ARM Mali). In order to maintain a low-power mode (Cerny has talked about background downloads even when PS4 is "off") then at the least the ARM processor needs RAM but GDDR5 draws too much wattage to conform to low-power mode standards.

TLDR Rigby speculates the ARM processor will have its own RAM for OS usage.

It makes sense to me and sounds great, but whether it happens no one is 100% yet.

 

[RoboPlato]

This is the interesting part, does that mean that system memory is being kept separate from game memory? meaning that the full 8gigs of memory is available for games only?

That's how I read it but I'm not sure if that's right or not. Would be amazing if true.

It was also pretty obvious that third parties didn't know about the change. I just hope they found out early enough to take advantage of it a bit by launch.

 

[SenjutsuSage]

They were wise for doing so, and what's this crap about the extra 8GB suddenly making 60fps more possible. It's already possible enough on the current PS4 specs if it only had 4GB.