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[lwilliams3]

Is there any rumor on how much memory Sony will reserve for the OS and background activities. Considering that the Wii U is starting with 1GB, and "Durango" is rumored to be reserving 2-3GB, will Sony also settle for reserving a nice chunk of memory?

 

[Chaos Theory]

Why don't Samsung and Apple join together?
Why don't Sharp or Panasonic join together?
Why don't Acer and Toshiba join together?
Why don't Honda and Ferrari join together?
Why don't Thermaltake and Corsair join together?

with all respect, i do not think i have seen any worse reply than this .

i only mentioned Apple because they are trying to go into the video game business with Apple TV and their ipod etc.
and i mentioned samsung because they already are doing it with their smart TV. since you can play some andriod games on it like angry birds etc. but i guess you just like to post random stuff for no reason.

and for the record, Panasonic did join force with goldstar and i forgot what was the third company in 3DO and it was a total fail.

so please do not post random crap.

i only asked a question because i was seeking an answer if there is a reason why they are not. its not like they are going to read what i typed and will cancel their systems tomorrow and make new one just for my eyes. duh

 

[RoboPlato]

Orbis with 4 GB of RAM will run circles around 8 GB of DDR3 + eSRAM.

That's a significant pool of insanely fast RAM. Agni's philosophy was only running on less than 2 GB of GDDR5. Now imagine having twice as much.

This, coupled with the GPU that's rumored to be significantly more powerful than Durango, and Sony has gone with a very proficient, powerful, and simple design that I don't think Microsoft is quite matching.

As I said before, I think third parties will just work with a lower baseline so both consoles have decent parity, but exclusives will show a pretty large difference IMHO if both specs are to be believed.

As long as Sony doesn't make the OS too big the 4Gb of GDDR5 will be very nice if it's all available to games. These specs are really interesting because when it comes to multiplats there will be areas where one differs from the other but it'll be really close. Exclusives will look pretty damn different though because of the different strengths of the systems. Both systems sound powerful but with different strengths. People from both camps should be happy.

 

[pieatorium]

Orbis with 4 GB of RAM will run circles around 8 GB of DDR3 + eSRAM.

That's a significant pool of insanely fast RAM. Agni's philosophy was only running on less than 2 GB of GDDR5. Now imagine having twice as much.

This, coupled with the GPU that's rumored to be significantly more powerful than Durango, and Sony has gone with a very proficient, powerful, and simple design that I don't think Microsoft is quite matching.

As I said before, I think third parties will just work with a lower baseline so both consoles have decent parity, but exclusives will show a pretty large difference IMHO if both specs are to be believed.

Agnis was probably running with 8gigs+ of ddr3 too

 

[RoboPlato]

Agnis was probably running with 8gigs+ of ddr3 too

It was also running at 60fps with 8x MSAA and FXAA. Targeting 30fps and less AA would allow them to do a lot more on consoles, particularly with towns and open areas.

 

[SniperHunter]

do you guys think MS can switch to GDDR5 ram at this point?

 

[RoboPlato]

do you guys think MS can switch to GDDR5 ram at this point?

Rumors are their silicon is finished and lots of DDR3 works really well for all of the OS functions that they have. More, slower RAM was a good decision on their part for their design goals.

 

[SniperHunter]

Rumors are their silicon is finished and lots of DDR3 works really well for all of the OS functions that they have. More, slower RAM was a good decision on their part for their design goals.

so their GPU will use ddr3 as vram? Isn't that really bad?

 

[endlessflood]

So what are the expected fabrication costs of the rumoured hardware? Would I be right in assuming that MS and Sony will be going for roughly equivalent launch prices (and hence roughly equivalent hardware costs)? I don't really follow current PC hardware prices, but it sounds like Sony will be spending more on the 4GB of GDDR5 than MS would be on the 8GB of DDR3, and if Sony are going with a higher clock on their APU then presumably that will be more expensive too.

What parts/processes that MS are using are likely to be more expensive than the Sony equivalents? Would just the custom GPU stuff ("special sauce" i.e. eDRAM and whatever the other custom modules might be) account for that differential, or are other differences expected if they're going to have equivalent fabrication costs?

 

[RoboPlato]

so their GPU will use ddr3 as vram? Isn't that really bad?

It'll probably use eDRAM or something similar for framebuffers.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

As long as Sony doesn't make the OS too big the 4Gb of GDDR5 will be very nice if it's all available to games. These specs are really interesting because when it comes to multiplats there will be areas where one differs from the other but it'll be really close. Exclusives will look pretty damn different though because of the different strengths of the systems. Both systems sound powerful but with different strengths. People from both camps should be happy.

I believe Sony will limit the OS to around 1 gig at most, and more likely 256-512 MB.

Vita I believe reserves about 256 MB and it pretty much has all the features Sony looks to be trying to hit -- cross game chat, psn store mid game, browser mid game, etc.

Sony's OS is going to be pretty simple with features most gamers will care about.

I think MS is going to go all out on OS features (where having 8 gb of ddr3 helps tremendously), with win 8 tie ins, perhaps some unique video recording abilities, and quite a bit more multi tasking during gaming sessions (perhaps stuff like pulling up cable tv mid game or split screen). Their hardware design seems to reflect that - great for accomplishing a lot of various tasks, but not completely devoted to gaming as the overwhelming priority.

Sony on the other hand looks to be positioning their console power priorities almost entirely on what will affect gaming performance.

 

[Hydrargyrus]

do you guys think MS can switch to GDDR5 ram at this point?

For what they want (or what it seems they want), I think 8GB pool of DDR3 is better solution.
But, as a gamer, I rather prefer the 4GB GDDR5 solution

 

[SniperHunter]

It'll probably use eDRAM or something similar for framebuffers.

How much eDRAM? I want to learn more about all these different rams and general tech. Any good books you can recommend?

For what they want (or what it seems they want), I think 8GB pool of DDR3 is better solution.
But, as a gamer, I rather prefer the 4GB GDDR5 solution

Yeah Robo already alluded to a similar sentiment. Thanks for posting though

 

[RoboPlato]

How much eDRAM? I want to learn more about all these different rams and general tech. Any good books you can recommend?

I don't know much about eDRAM at all except that it can do a lot in very small amounts. All that I know is mostly from following other, more educated posters.

 

[Ravage]

I haven't been catching up with the next-gen speculation but is Sony really going with 4GB of GDDR5? I remember some here were adamant that we won't be getting anything more than 2GB max.

Don't get me wrong, 4GB GDDR5 would be amazing if true but wouldn't it cost a lot?

i only asked a question because i was seeking an answer if there is a reason why they are not. its not like they are going to read what i typed and will cancel their systems tomorrow and make new one just for my eyes. duh

I think both Sony and MS have broader (and conflicting) strategies for the Orbis/Durango that extends beyond just gaming. Sony for example, has their own content ecosystem in SEN and has no interest in pushing W8 integration. They don't even make any W8 mobile devices AFAIK.

 

[SniperHunter]

I don't know much about eDRAM at all except that it can do a lot in very small amounts. All that I know is mostly from following other, more educated posters.

all righ thnx

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

I haven't been catching up with the next-gen speculation but is Sony really going with 4GB of GDDR5? I remember some here were adamant that we won't be getting anything more than 2GB max.

Don't get me wrong, 4GB GDDR5 would be amazing if true but wouldn't it cost a lot?

It has 4 GB of GDDR5 bandwidth, but we don't know if its using GDDR5 directly.

It's costly, but apparently should be feasible.

 

[Withnail]

I think the next Xbox will be a trojan horse for Win8 and it will be multitasking Win8 apps alongside gaming. There is just no way I can see MS not trying to exploit the Win8 app store on the Xbox.

This will mean things like in game Skype all done by Kinect voice control (e.g. half way through Halo 7, "xbox skype grandma").

In that scenario they need plenty of RAM. If these rumoured specs are true MS might have decided that they only way they can provide enough RAM for their OS objectives (and not have this thing cost $1000) is by sacrificing bandwidth.

Sony are in a different position because I think they will have a much leaner OS. They will certainly want a good chunk of reserved RAM after what they've learned on the PS3 but I think they will have a tighter focus on gaming and media rather than trying to provide a living room PC. For gaming 4GB of GDDR5 should give some pretty spectacular results.

Of course this is all just speculation. It looks like both consoles are going to be amazing machines anyway.

 

[stryke]

with all respect, i do not think i have seen any worse reply than this .

i only mentioned Apple because they are trying to go into the video game business with Apple TV and their ipod etc.
and i mentioned samsung because they already are doing it with their smart TV. since you can play some andriod games on it like angry birds etc. but i guess you just like to post random stuff for no reason.

and for the record, Panasonic did join force with goldstar and i forgot what was the third company in 3DO and it was a total fail.

so please do not post random crap.

i only asked a question because i was seeking an answer if there is a reason why they are not. its not like they are going to read what i typed and will cancel their systems tomorrow and make new one just for my eyes. duh

To explore the ramifications of a Sony-MS monopoly on the console space (Nintendo like to be in their own little bubble) requires an expertise far beyond my own and frankly is off-topic. I might be trying to dodge an argument, but I appreciate the competition these companies bring. Any sort of logistics behind agreement between these two would likely, just like your panasonic reference, fail. The attempted joint-venture between Sony and Nintendo is probably the closest example we will get for a long time.

Granted my response was poor in that their respective industries have many more major players but competition was a point I was hinting at.

 

[DieH@rd]

Technically not impressive. The power gap between Wii U to PS4 seems to be like PS2 to Gamecube.

And this is good! It is the only way Sony has a chance to survive in console business.

 

[Brad Grenz]

I believe Sony will limit the OS to around 1 gig at most, and more likely 256-512 MB.

Vita I believe reserves about 256 MB and it pretty much has all the features Sony looks to be trying to hit -- cross game chat, psn store mid game, browser mid game, etc.

Less than that. We've had evidence Golden Abyss uses 400+ MBs of main memory on Vita.

Sony's OS is going to be pretty simple with features most gamers will care about.

I think MS is going to go all out on OS features (where having 8 gb of ddr3 helps tremendously), with win 8 tie ins, perhaps some unique video recording abilities, and quite a bit more multi tasking during gaming sessions (perhaps stuff like pulling up cable tv mid game or split screen). Their hardware design seems to reflect that - great for accomplishing a lot of various tasks, but not completely devoted to gaming as the overwhelming priority.

Sony on the other hand looks to be positioning their console power priorities almost entirely on what will affect gaming performance.

Definitely. Not that PS Orbis won't multitask, but I bet it will use a pool of flash memory (as has been previously rumored) to do Vita/Android/iOS style multitasking where background applications have their memory states aggressively retired to flash storage. It allows pretty seamless multitasking without having to keep everything running in memory all the time. Should also allow for instant booting, sleeping and game resumes just like Vita, while maintaining features like system music, voice chat and even video streaming.

The Durango, on the other hand, is probably going to effectively be acting as a home server even while you're playing a game. There's lots of talk about whole home DVR, media streaming, always on Kinect capabilities, etc, in addition to voice/video chat, multitasking and other baseline game features. If they're selling this thing through Comcast as a 4 TV DVR/game console, they have to reserve enough resources to record broadcasts (possibly multiple tuners) and serve live or recorded television to as many as 3 clients at once while you are playing a game and potentially popping out o start a Skype session, load up the webbrowser or queue up some DLC in the Live Marketplace.

 

[coldfoot]

From someone I know who works in Sony, Sony was very close to releasing a nexus device but Sony pulled the plug on the project due to marketing/branding issues. They have too much pride to be seen as just a hardware manufacturer like the lowly (in their opinion) LG, HTC, Foxconn, etc. There's a reason they buy SOC's from Qualcomm and not Samsung.

This is why a Sony-MS console would never work from the Sony side. I'm sure MS also has their own reasons not to work with Sony as well.

 

[stryke]

We have identified the "friend".

 

[Perkel]

First thing i will do is to buy 512GB SSD for it.

HDD is fucking terrible to play games. Also SSD default for every console would mean that all those streaming engines will cry from happines.

 

[SniperHunter]

First thing i will do is to buy 512GB SSD for it.

HDD is fucking terrible to play games. Also SSD default for every console would mean that all those streaming engines will cry from happines.

terrible for planetside 2 as well

 

[DBT85]

First thing i will do is to buy 512GB SSD for it.

HDD is fucking terrible to play games. Also SSD default for every console would mean that all those streaming engines will cry from happines.

I was going to do similar, though possibly not 512GB.

The question is whether the PS4 will a) get a suitable speed boost from an SSD, the PS3 gets a bit in places but it's nowhere near as good as it could have been, and b) maintain the drive with a TRIM type feature.

It also depends I suppose on how many games allow you to do full installs and how well the BluRay drive will perform and also how big the games will be.

 

[Valnen]

First thing i will do is to buy 512GB SSD for it.

HDD is fucking terrible to play games. Also SSD default for every console would mean that all those streaming engines will cry from happines.

I'll buy an SSD when I can get a 2TB for $100.

 

[KAL2006]

Haven't been keeping up with the news, I've read the OP, but of course my main question is. Which rumoured spec is more powerful, Durango or Orbis.

 

[Router]

do you guys think MS can switch to GDDR5 ram at this point?

Anything is possible but the cost alone kills the idea.

 

[stryke]

Haven't been keeping up with the news, I've read the OP, but of course my main question is. Which rumoured spec is more powerful, Durango or Orbis.

Users more knowledgeable than I are adamant that they are roughly the same.

 

[Snubbers]

These specs are very 'loose' and I find it incredible anyone is really willing to make any real opinion on things.

The GDDR5 vs DDR3 and 8 vs 4 is are just numbers.. there is no way Sony will have underspecc'd the amount of RAM to the point it will be limiting, and there is no way the MS is just going to use DDR3 without having something to offset it (ESRAM or EDRAM, etc)..

My gut feeling (not even opinion at the moment) is that the "it's a wash" is probably the safest stance to take at the moment..

What is obvious is that they are different architectures and that means a different set of pro's and con's.. Which if true means we'll be seeing a lot of fanboy crap going on as we all know that there can only be 1 'winner' who shits on the 'loser' or else apparently the whole universe will cave in..

I am glad that MS and Sony react to each other and approximate system parity is attained, because if they where left to their own devices, they'd probably produce a system that isn't synergistic (looks at Wii-U)..

 

[Ardenyal]

Haven't been keeping up with the news, I've read the OP, but of course my main question is. Which rumoured spec is more powerful, Durango or Orbis.

Orbis has more grunt but supposedly Durango has some fairy dust magic that makes the numbers irrelevant altogether.

 

[Perkel]

I was going to do similar, though possibly not 512GB.

The question is whether the PS4 will a) get a suitable speed boost from an SSD, the PS3 gets a bit in places but it's nowhere near as good as it could have been, and b) maintain the drive with a TRIM type feature.

It also depends I suppose on how many games allow you to do full installs and how well the BluRay drive will perform and also how big the games will be.

That depend mainly on controllers which they use. PS3 had terrible controller.


First SATA was like 300/150 read/write. with way lower 4k write/read speed.
Now with SATA3 you have 6Gbit/s so SSD like 500/500 write/read MB/s is normal with terrific read of 4k files (aka small ones).
Now compare it with normal HDD which is 100/60 MB/s with absolutely terrible small file read write speed (less than 1MB/s) and diffrence is way above 6-7 times.

And now there are some PCE SSD with 1500/1000 Mb/s read/write. And that is crazy.

 

[thuway]

Haven't been keeping up with the news, I've read the OP, but of course my main question is. Which rumoured spec is more powerful, Durango or Orbis.

We don't have all the information. This is an unknown quantity.

 

[Reiko]

We don't have all the information. This is an unknown quantity.

This what makes the RAM count in Orbis and Durango hard to gauge. But it does sound good so far.

 

[Wynnebeck]

So with the current spec that we are guesstimating by this point, what kind of post-processing effects and tricks can we expect to see for the next generation? I need mah Bokeh.

 

[Reiko]

So with the current spec that we are guesstimating by this point, what kind of post-processing effects and tricks can we expect to see for the next generation? I need mah Bokeh.

There will be Bokeh.

 

[Pistolero]

Still not buying the idea that Microsoft went all DDR instead of a GDDR-DDR combination...Seems highly unlikely of Micrsosft if you ask me...

 

[Perkel]

So with the current spec that we are guesstimating by this point, what kind of post-processing effects and tricks can we expect to see for the next generation? I need mah Bokeh.

Fuck effects like dof, godrays, bloom and other useless effects and bump up scale of games. I don't want to be in future city with only few people on streets like in DE:HR.

 

[flipswitch]

I doubt it'll be that bad unless Sony tries to make the entire OS like the current PS Store. The Vita OS is really well done, fast, and doesn't get in the way of anything else even with 4+ tabs open. I have no reason to believe they can't build a similar OS for PS4.

Vita OS Is very smooth. Love it. 1 core is reserved for the OS btw.

 

[Wynnebeck]

There will be Bokeh.

 

[Shikoro]

The roomers on the specs have changed every month for 6 months now.

Jesus Christ, that username... :O

Also, 90% of people here are clueless about RAM. Please stop.

 

[DieH@rd]

Still not buying the idea that Microsoft went all DDR instead of a GDDR-DDR combination...Seems highly unlikely of Micrsosft if you ask me...

1 - they will have large ammount of fast ESRAM directly in the APU [accessible by both CPU and GPU].

2 - DDR3 on 256bit buss can reach almost 70 GB/sec. That's three times the memory speed of X360. And we dont know if they will use DDR3, maybe it will be stackable DDR4 [possible greater speed with very high clocked 3200mhz memory but burdened with higher latencies].

3 - DDR is low powered and dirt chip, especially DDR4 which will became very cheap down the line [good investment for future revisions of console].

4 - Exact memory configurations for both Durango and Orbis are UNKNOWN. A lot can change between now [rumored alfa/beta devkits] and arrival of final hardware.

 

[Radec]

:lol

 

[Shadow of the BEAST]

what would the benefits/cons of ssd be?

+faster search/load times?
+ lower cost in the long run?

-much much more expensive initially?

 

[iceatcs]

what would the benefits/cons of ssd be?

+faster search/load times?
+ lower cost in the long run?

-much much more expensive initially?

And likely block your own HDD upgrade if SSD standard. People could have mistake use classics tech HDD for upgrade and will cause many game data stream problem.

 

[Router]

I wonder if Microsoft or Sony will use the Superbowl to tease the next gen. It would be a great time to start a viral for the launch.

 

[Reiko]

I wonder if Microsoft or Sony will use the Superbowl to tease the next gen. It would be a great time to start a viral for the launch.

A subtle car commercial using Forza or GT next gen graphics.

 

[Shadow of the BEAST]

If its not standard its sorta pointless.

they could have an empty upgrade slot for sdd only?

 

[rdrr gnr]

A subtle car commercial using Forza or GT next gen graphics.

Why be indirect? I'd say tease it outright.