Support NeoGAF

[Dural]

These responses on bandwidth vs memory amount are pretty funny. I talked to a dev years ago about the same thing and they preferred more memory. Their argument being there are a lot of ways to save on bandwidth but there really isn't anything you can do when you don't have enough memory. Heck, look at this gen for proof. The ps3 technically has more bandwidth but the 360 has a tiny bit more memory and that shows up in games more often with better textures.

 

[nib95]

The point being that he has his reasons, you have yours. Difference being, although he's getting paid he's actually having a pretty conservative view on the power balance between these consoles. And although you don't get paid, your opinion is always one sided.

You could say, well at least he gets paid to have his biased opinion, while you do it for free. In order to escape it, you need to be unbiased. Wishing for a strong product is one thing, wishing for a worse product from the competition? Well I hope you are getting paid man.

My opinion has nothing to do with any bias at all. Just my (albeit not especially strong) understanding and knowledge of the technology involved.

Do you think there's a chance you might be projecting here with this particular opinion of yours?

 

[Proxy]

These responses on bandwidth vs memory amount are pretty funny. I talked to a dev years ago about the same thing and they preferred more memory. Their argument being there are a lot of ways to save on bandwidth but there really isn't anything you can do when you don't have enough memory. Heck, look at this gen for proof. The ps3 technically has more bandwidth but the 360 has a tiny bit more memory and that shows up in games more often with better textures.

No they both have the same amount of memory. The PS3 was hurt by it's split RAM pool for some games. The Xbox 360 benefited from having a unified memory pool and EDRAM although iirc it also has some disadvantages.

 

[GarthVaderUK]

No they both have the same amount of memory. The PS3 was hurt by it's split RAM pool for some games. The Xbox 360 benefited from having a unified memory pool and EDRAM although iirc it also has some disadvantages.

Wasn't more RAM reserved for the PS3 OS than the 360 OS?

 

[thehypocrite]

Where is Karaks post?

Being reviewed/approved by the MSFT Ninjas.

 

[Can Crusher]

My opinion has nothing to do with any bias at all. Just my (albeit not especially strong) understanding and knowledge of the technology involved.

Do you think there's a chance you might be projecting here with this particular opinion of yours?

To answer your question: No. But I don't even mind that you feel that way, it's ok.

 

[THE:MILKMAN]

If more memory is preferable and Durango has say a 3GB advantage, does that mean games will require a lot more assets to take advantage of it?

Sorry if its a dumb question.

 

[thehypocrite]

These responses on bandwidth vs memory amount are pretty funny. I talked to a dev years ago about the same thing and they preferred more memory. Their argument being there are a lot of ways to save on bandwidth but there really isn't anything you can do when you don't have enough memory. Heck, look at this gen for proof. The ps3 technically has more bandwidth but the 360 has a tiny bit more memory and that shows up in games more often with better textures.

This makes sense to me.

 

[Proxy]

Wasn't more RAM reserved for the PS3 OS than the 360 OS?

At the begging most definitely. Not sure what it is now.

 

[oldergamer]

Also why do people think or where did the rumor come from regarding unreal 4 removing the lighting tech?

I don't see that happening with the next xbox at least, as EPIC are a close partners of MS, and MS were involved in the Samaritan & Unreal 4 tech demos when shown behind closed doors.

 

[oversitting]

If more memory is preferable and Durango has say a 3GB advantage, does that mean games will require a lot more assets to take advantage of it?

Sorry if its a dumb question.

Its really easy to fill memory. Games will probably not need all of it at the start of the generation since there are some ways to get around the most wasteful ways of using memory but as the generation continues and especially if Devs build on the same game engines, its likely these assets will naturally come as they try to improve graphics.

 

[thehypocrite]

Also why do people think or where did the rumor come from regarding unreal 4 removing the lighting tech?

I don't see that happening with the next xbox at least, as EPIC are a close partners of MS, and MS were involved in the Samaritan & Unreal 4 tech demos when shown behind closed doors.

Cause the engine it's out in the open and the functionality/support isn't there? It seems simple to me.

 

[THE:MILKMAN]

At the begging most definitely. Not sure what it is now.

I think it is 43MB XDR and 7MB GDDR3 now. 360 has remained at 32MB from the beginning AFAIK.

 

[pixlexic]

Are you guys devs?

Seriously, if you guys are, my ears are open.

I've been waiting for devs to chip in on the advantages of one platform over the other.

I am a developer, not for games but for graphical applications dealing in science and medicine.

And the only thing I can tell you is that memory speed is not a big performance enhancement in itself. Like I said before more DDR3 ram holding data is a lot faster than DDR5 that has to page it to a hdd. Also gpus are fast now days but no where near fast enough to process 4 gigs of textures at one time. Then you have to still load data from the optical drive to ram. Have ever pulled hundreds of files off a 8 gig dvd to your hdd? not too fast is it?

 

[oldergamer]

At the begging most definitely. Not sure what it is now.

It's still the same now from what i understand. The 360 still has more memory available to developers with a smaller OS foot print. If i recall correctly, MS actually reduced how much space they were using over the years.

Just because MS is going to user the windows 8 kernel doesn't mean it's a bloated kernel. Sure windows has a ton of crap around it that makes it bloated, specifically things needed for legacy.

 

[oldergamer]

Cause the engine it's out in the open and the functionality/support isn't there? It seems simple to me.

You can get unreal 4 now? Also, has epic said anything about this? I wouldn't take this as gospel unless Epic has stated they removed something for specific reasons. Perhaps they removed it until a specific version of direct x is made available due to performance problems on current hardware?

it's all speculation.

 

[thehypocrite]

It's still the same now from what i understand. The 360 still has more memory available to developers with a smaller OS foot print. If i recall correctly, MS actually reduced how much space they were using over the years.

Just because MS is going to user the windows 8 kernel doesn't mean it's a bloated kernel. Sure windows has a ton of crap around it that makes it bloated, specifically things needed for legacy.

What about Windows 9? Do you think the Xbox will support it? Because if the machine it's supposed to last 6+ years in the future and MSFT releases new operating systems every 3 years it means that to sustain the ecosystem that MSFT it's pushing, it needs to support the new versions of Windows that will release while the console is still on the market.

 

[oversitting]

What about Windows 9? Do you think the Xbox will support it? Because if the machine it's supposed to last 6+ years in the future and MSFT releases new operating systems every 3 years it means that to sustain the ecosystem that MSFT it's pushing, it needs to support the new versions of Windows that will release while the console is still on the market.

All they would basically do is change the UI like they been doing if they want to promote it that way.

The core of the Xbox os probably won't be full windows.

 

[oldergamer]

What about Windows 9? Do you think the Xbox will support it? Because if the machine it's supposed to last 6+ years in the future and MSFT releases new operating systems every 3 years it means that to sustain the ecosystem that MSFT it's pushing, it needs to support the new versions of Windows that will release while the console is still on the market.

It's a console. They update the OS on 360 once or twice a year with changes/fixes/additions. There's no reason this won't continue to happen on the next console. Xbox is going to support a stripped down version of whatever they have on the PC (or possibly the other way around).

 

[thehypocrite]

You can get unreal 4 now? Also, has epic said anything about this? I wouldn't take this as gospel unless Epic has stated they removed something for specific reasons. Perhaps they removed it until a specific version of direct x is made available due to performance problems on current hardware?

it's all speculation.

Sure you can get the engine now:

http://www.unrealengine.com/en/news/zombie_studios_licenses_unreal_engine_4/
http://www.unrealengine.com/en/news/square_enix_signs_long_term_unreal_engine_licensing_agreement/

 

[i-Lo]

These responses on bandwidth vs memory amount are pretty funny. I talked to a dev years ago about the same thing and they preferred more memory. Their argument being there are a lot of ways to save on bandwidth but there really isn't anything you can do when you don't have enough memory. Heck, look at this gen for proof. The ps3 technically has more bandwidth but the 360 has a tiny bit more memory and that shows up in games more often with better textures.

Yea, something tells me that we'll be seeing superior ports on MS's system. FML for not wanting to shell out for Live.

 

[CLEEK]

What about Windows 9? Do you think the Xbox will support it? Because if the machine it's supposed to last 6+ years in the future and MSFT releases new operating systems every 3 years it means that to sustain the ecosystem that MSFT it's pushing, it needs to support the new versions of Windows that will release while the console is still on the market.

When Windows 9 arrives in the few years, it shouldn't be an issue, as the new OS will almost certainly run all the Win8 (Metro) apps. I'd imagine the end goal for MS is to copy the success of iOS. Where the underlying OS gets regular updates, but for the most part, the apps work on later versions without issue.

If the next Xbox does run a version of Windows 8, there is the possibility that Windows 8 Metro apps would natively work on it. The next Xbox will be x64, which is the main issue.

I don't know about Win8 app development, but there is the chance that you have to use specific APIs, which would mean that changes to the OS would not cause any issue as the underlying OS would be invisible to the apps. So the apps will work on Windows 9, 10, 11 etc as long as the new OSes have full support of the APIs. This would be true for Windows Mobile too, not just Windows on PC or the Xbox.

Does that make sense?

 

[thehypocrite]

All they would basically do is change the UI like they been doing if they want to promote it that way.

The core of the Xbox os probably won't be full windows.

It's a console. They update the OS on 360 once or twice a year with changes/fixes/additions. There's no reason this won't continue to happen on the next console. Xbox is going to support a stripped down version of whatever they have on the PC (or possibly the other way around).

Lees promised more info on the best of the PC and tablet at the BUILD conference. “Our strategy is not just limited to that. We are aiming to provide coherence and consistency across the PC, the phone and the TV, particularly with Xbox. That’s through providing new types of scenarios, things like the way in which you make the user experience more common.”

http://www.winrumors.com/microsoft-outlines-vision-for-combining-windows-and-windows-phone/

I don't know if it will be only visual upgrades. They appear to want a consistent OS tied to the MSFT ecosystem in all their devices.

 

[Proelite]

http://beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1696426&postcount=262

latching onto individual figures is not a useful way to understand performance differences.
OK lets say that everything else in the hardware is identical for a second, so you have a 50% performance difference, but only in ALU limited situations.
When I render shadows, I'm ROP (or rathe Z-Fill) limited, if my shaders are texture heavy, the ALU's sit idle and wait on memory, on current PC GPU's if the vertex workload is dominant, for the most part they grossly underutilize the ALU's.
So what percentage of the time do the extra ALU's actually help?
If it's 40% it's a 20% performance difference, if it's 80% it's a 40% difference I would guess it will end up being closer to the first than the second.
If 720 has more ROPs (and enough associated bandwidth) or a larger register pool and can hide more latency, then it gets more of that difference back, because it runs other portions of the frame faster.

Now I'm not suggesting it's "faster" or for that matter "slower", I'm saying it's just one aspect of a design.

Another great post on why it's too early to call anything.

 

[thehypocrite]

When Windows 9 arrives in the few years, it shouldn't be an issue, as the new OS will almost certainly run all the Win8 (Metro) apps. I'd imagine the end goal for MS is to copy the success of iOS. Where the underlying OS gets regular updates, but for the most part, the apps work on later versions without issue.

If the next Xbox does run a version of Windows 8, there is the possibility that Windows 8 Metro apps would natively work on it. The next Xbox will be x64, which is the main issue.

I don't know about Win8 app development, but there is the chance that you have to use specific APIs, which would mean that changes to the OS would not cause any issue as the underlying OS would be invisible to the apps. So the apps will work on Windows 9, 10, 11 etc as long as the new OSes have full support of the APIs. This would be true for Windows Mobile too, not just Windows on PC or the Xbox.

Does that make sense?

It does, however I was thinking more about the RAM requirements for the operating system and if we are missing the point when we look only at Windows 8 to determine how much it would need. It could be that MSFT is looking ahead on their roadmap for Windows and setting the requirements based on that. Just speculation on my part.

 

[Tallshortman]

So what you believe is that there's no way the design of Durango can allow for it to have enough bandwidth to compete with Orbis, but Orbis design manages to beat it in speed and can nullify the amount advantage.

It's a matter of diminishing returns. You can put 12GB of RAM in a console and it would still be inferior to 4GB of much faster RAM. These aren't even final specs, I don't know why you're getting so defensive about it.

 

[Can Crusher]

It does, however I was thinking more about the RAM requirements for the operating system and if we are missing the point when we look only at Windows 8 to determine how much it would need. It could be that MSFT is looking ahead on their roadmap for Windows and setting the requirements based on that. Just speculation on my part.

Windows 8 doesn't use more memory than Windows 7 I think.

It's a matter of diminishing returns. You can put 12GB of RAM in a console and it would still be inferior to 4GB of much faster RAM. These aren't even final specs, I don't know why you're getting so defensive about it.

Noted. It's like graphics, diminished returns and all. We should probably stick with the Wii U, because going bigger doesn't seem to affect anything

 

[thehypocrite]

http://beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1696426&postcount=262



Another great post on why it's too early to call anything.

Before anyone brings out the torches, he works for SCEA:

https://twitter.com/polygonhell

Games programmer, now working for SCEA Tools and Tech
Redmond, WA

 

[Proelite]

Before anyone brings out the torches, he works for SCEA:

https://twitter.com/polygonhell

Games programmer, now working for SCEA Tools and Tech
Redmond, WA

He also worked for Microsoft I believe.

 

[oversitting]

It's a matter of diminishing returns. You can put 12GB of RAM in a console and it would still be inferior to 4GB of much faster RAM. These aren't even final specs, I don't know why you're getting so defensive about it.

This is simply NOT true. If you have sufficient bandwidth, lets say 70MB/s is pretty good for 1080p, you don't see a extremely large performance increase in performance even by quadrupling it. This is especially true if you want to optimize around that.

The amount of RAM in the end would be extremely helpful in any closed system.

 

[thehypocrite]

Windows 8 doesn't use more memory than Windows 7 I think.



Noted. It's like graphics, diminished returns and all. We should probably stick with the Wii U, because going bigger doesn't seem to affect anything

You're right, it has the same minimum requirements.

 

[Man-is-Obsolete]

Where is Karaks post?

I moved my chair and popcorn over here for this as well.

 

[THE:MILKMAN]

This is simply NOT true. If you have sufficient bandwidth, lets say 70MB/s is pretty good for 1080p, you don't see a extremely large performance increase in performance even by quadrupling it. This is especially true if you want to optimize around that.

The amount of RAM in the end would be extremely helpful in any closed system.

So it begs the question why would Sony go for expensive, high wattage GDDR5 when stacked DDR4 would be cheaper in the long run? And possibly allowed them to have more of it.

I think the choices they have both made will become clearer when we find out what secret sauces they have and/or see the games.

 

[nib95]

This is simply NOT true. If you have sufficient bandwidth, lets say 70MB/s is pretty good for 1080p, you don't see a extremely large performance increase in performance even by quadrupling it. This is especially true if you want to optimize around that.

The amount of RAM in the end would be extremely helpful in any closed system.

Wouldn't that be completely dependant on what you're trying to do at that 1080p resolution? Not all graphical features are equally demanding. I'd imagine as the generation ventures on, such features will get more demanding and bandwidth hungry.

 

[Proelite]

FWIW I don't think it comes down to FLOPS at all in anything but a "you need more than you have now" way.
The design of the memory sub system is much more important IMO, coupled with number of ROPS.
On PC Cards to day the ALU's are grossly underutilized for a lot of the work, particularly processing vertices.
Any single number people latch onto is always going to be a gross over simplification.

Go through his post history. They're easy to understand and tells you a lot about how to (not) judge next generation consoles.

His main points are:

Flops count are grossly overrated. ROPs and texture caches are just as important.
Memory design is the single most important indicator of system performance.
CPU additions / customization can contribute significantly to final performance.

Like I said, the battle between Orbis and Durango would be down to
3.5 GDDR5 vs 5-6GB DDR3 + 32mb Edram

 

[thehypocrite]

He also worked for Microsoft I believe.

He also said that the RAM amount dedicated to the OS is less than 3GB but not very much less.

http://beyond3d.com/showthread.php?p=1696384#post1696384

 

[LukasTaves]

Yep, MS's memory setup was design to allow for a large amount of RAM for OS funtions/ads/Kinect/bloatware. Sony's setup is designed for pushing graphics.

There's no way to make that claim until we know more details on durango's ram setup.

For all we know so far the setup is a extension of the 360, which allowed it to have a unified pool of memory, shared between the cpu and gpu, slower than the xdr on Ps3, and still go up against it fairly well, despite having less than half of the bandwidth Ps3's gpu could access for data.

For example, in a 60fps Rsx could in theory access all of it's 256mb of ram and all of the 256mbs of system ram, while 360 would be able to access about 330ish... But the gap was nullified, because since ps3 had to share that bandwidth for both data and framebuffer it turned out to be a disadvantage in most cases. Granted, the gap now is more than 3 times, where this gen it was only 2, plus not only the proportion has increased, the amount too.

But to say each of them is better we need to know whether durango's main memory's bandwidth will be enough and whether Ps4's memory amount will be enough. Right now we don't have the answer to neither of that. It would help if we had any estimate of how much memory high end pc games use for streaming buffers, immediate rendering, other graphical features, etc...

But I gotta say, if durango can actually access 2.2GB per frame at 30fps, i don't see orbis having much more memory than that to actually show it's bandwidth advantage... At least not at 30fps, for 60fps durango would be much more limited with just 1GB of ram...

 

[StevieP]

So it begs the question why would Sony go for expensive, high wattage GDDR5 when stacked DDR4 would be cheaper in the long run?

Granted this is without taking ED/ES-Ram into the equation, but try and find some benchmarks for the Geforce 650m (DDR3 version) vs Geforce 650m (GDDR5 version). It's not a trivial difference.

Remember how I posted earlier that this reminded me of the Wii U speculation threads, where outside people (some populating this very thread) were being accusatory and calling it an "echo chamber" of sorts, and waiting endlessly on the next morsel of information on whoever each poster deemed to be an industry insider or those with second & third hand information, and jizzing every time?

That jizz ended up in the this thread

Spoiler

(and in the consoles too, apparently)

, which is oddly identical but with different folks populating the extraordinarily similar type of hysterical discussion.

 

[ghst]

This is simply NOT true. If you have sufficient bandwidth, lets say 70MB/s is pretty good for 1080p, you don't see a extremely large performance increase in performance even by quadrupling it. This is especially true if you want to optimize around that.

The amount of RAM in the end would be extremely helpful in any closed system.

70MB/s at 1080p would be pong HD.

the interesting thing about bandwidth is it tips the designer's hand a little. if the rumour regarding embedded ram and its 100GB/s capability is legit, you can expect a pretty conservative effort from microsoft. modern high end GPUs make room for up to 280GB/s, with 150+ GB/s being the mid-high standard since late 2010 and a rumoured 192 GB/s on the PS4. i very much doubt sony would pay out for a bus that hefty if they weren't planning to use it.

for 100 GB/s to not prove a bottleneck, your expectations for the capabilities of the 720's GPU should be scaled down accordingly.

of course, all this is just the hardware release equivalent of extended universe arguments, but we might as well play the cards we're shown. put on your pachter hat and embrace the futility of partially informed speculation.

 

[oversitting]

So it begs the question why would Sony go for expensive, high wattage GDDR5 when stacked DDR4 would be cheaper in the long run? And possibly allowed them to have more of it.

I think the choices they have both made will become clearer when we find out what secret sauces they have and/or see the games.

Sony might know something about it we don't but its likely they expect 4gb to be enough or they had tell the 720 will have 4gb. GDDR5 is cheap enough for 4GB but its not really feasible for 8GB as of right now for consoles so who knows.

Stacked ram and DDR4 is still a couple years aways from my understanding. Unless they want to launch in 2016, its unlikely they can use it as an option. DDR4 is also extremely expensive right now since nobody can make it at high volumes right now and the specs aren't even final.

 

[Can Crusher]

I moved my chair and popcorn over here for this as well.

At this point I don't think it's happening.

 

[Man-is-Obsolete]

At this point I don't think it's happening.

*throws popcorn and folds chair*

 

[thehypocrite]

*throws popcorn and folds chair*

Somebody already responded that to us:

Posted By ERP.

FWIW the number I've heard for memory reserved by the Durango OS is less than 3GB, but not very much less.

http://beyond3d.com/showthread.php?p=1696384#post1696384

I think Karak is awaiting approval from his/her over(MSFT Ninjas)lords.

 

[Spongebob]

This post by Jedi2016 of B3D summarizes perfectly what I think of Durango right now:

Depends on what kind of functionality they're thinking about. If they're reserving RAM and CPU cycles so that the system can automatically update my Facebook page in real time when I get an achievement, they can go **** themselves.

 

[oversitting]

Wouldn't that be completely dependant on what you're trying to do at that 1080p resolution? Not all graphical features are equally demanding. I'd imagine as the generation ventures on, such features will get more demanding and bandwidth hungry.

Well the GPU can only calculate so much and the ROPs are limited eventually even if the shaders are free. I would say more bandwidth is good but not going to win you anything just by it. It does depend on what you do but its in a general case, the speed the data comes at is less useful than how much you can process at a time.

70MB/s at 1080p would be pong HD.

the interesting thing about bandwidth is it tips the designer's hand a little. if the embedded ram and its 100GB/s capability is true, you can expect a pretty conservative effort from microsoft. modern high end GPUs make room for up to 280GB/s, with 150+ GB/s being the mid-high standard since late 2010 and a rumoured 192 GB/s on the PS4. i very much doubt sony would pay out for a bus that hefty if they weren't planning to use it.

for 100 GB/s to not prove a bottleneck, your expectations for the capabilities of the 720's GPU should be scaled down accordingly.

70MB/s would be more than enough for 1080p gaming with current level graphics. Considering that is how much you get out of a card like the 7770 and the 650ti.

Compare the GTX680 with the 7970GE, 192GB/s vs 280GB/s, the performance difference is tiny at 1080p even with things like AA turned way up, this is with top of the line GPUs.

Im not sure whats inside the 720 but to drive 1080p gaming, you don't need 192GB/s. Also the 192GB/s is most definitely wrong. The GPU is based on the 7870, it will have a max of 160GB/s, likely lower since it will cut power and won't really give you much less performance. We shall see.

Edit: Also note, the GTX680M comes with 115GB/s and that is nvidia's top Mobile GPU with GDDR5.

 

[Psychotext]

This post by Jedi2016 of B3D summarizes perfectly what I think of Durango right now:

I could perform that functionality with a calculator CPU. It's not the sort of thing you need to reserve gigabytes of RAM and processor cores for. Browsers and various ads don't need it either.

As I've said before, there's something that we're not seeing here yet.

 

[i-Lo]

Somebody already responded that to us:




http://beyond3d.com/showthread.php?p=1696384#post1696384

I think Karak is awaiting approval from his/her over(MSFT Ninjas)lords.

Is the 3.5GB for PS4 been pretty much confirmed by ERP as well?

 

[Proelite]

70MB/s would be more than enough for 1080p gaming with current level graphics. Considering that is how much you get out of a card like the 7770 and the 650ti.

Surely you mean 70GB/s?

 

[THE:MILKMAN]

Sony might know something about it we don't but its likely they expect 4gb to be enough or they had tell the 720 will have 4gb. GDDR5 is cheap enough for 4GB but its not really feasible for 8GB as of right now for consoles so who knows.

Stacked ram and DDR4 is still a couple years aways from my understanding. Unless they want to launch in 2016, its unlikely they can use it as an option. DDR4 is also extremely expensive right now since nobody can make it at high volumes right now and the specs aren't even final.

Why is it likely they think it enough? I'd hope that they would know it would be enough! And 8GB wouldn't go in a console if it was pennies I'd imagine.

I have no idea on DDR4 availability, but for cost I didn't think it was that expensive even at the beginning. Over the course of a generation though it would end being $1-$3 a GB like DDR3 is now.

 

[MikeE21286]

I moved my chair and popcorn over here for this as well.