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[KAL2006]

You have no idea what you are talking about. It was never publicly announced what the RAM split was before the RAM upgrade. If you are bothered about the RAM amount when developers aren't, I don't know what to tell you :/. Ramadan Mubarak.

How'd you know I was muslim

 

[GANGSTERKILLER]

Oh I know, trying to have some fun here =p

 

[Mononoke]

People were projecting their 'assumptions/wishes' that 7GB would be reserved for games, and only 1GB for the OS.

Don't count your chickens before they're hatched.

Oh I understand why people are upset. I'm just looking forward and wondering what this actually means. But you are right in that this is a lesson to be learned to not assume anything until actual info is released.

 

[Crimson_Gold]

What have we seen?

I'm uninformed in that regard so I would like to really know. Right now, Xbone has a TV/HDMI in feature. PS4 has this, it's called my TV remote.

That was a half sarcastic statement since we know that Xbone will interface with some of that well enough. The only thing I'm saying is that from a media/app perspective, both consoles will get even better as they are already pretty on par with media services.

Don't tell me you're ignoring the media capabilities on PS3 as well as the bevvy of apps available for you to watch all sorts of video.

I just want an articulate explanation of what makes PS4 a worse multimedia device because both platforms aren't even out yet to even formulate such a statement.

We've seen nothing. He is just jumping to conclusions. Sony hasn't shown off the multimedia capabilities of the PS4 yet. The OS demo was game related.

 

[HaRyu]

I want someone on here to tell me what they want devs to use that memory for when a lot of them don't even know what to do with it right now. Shall they toss in high resolution nose hairs or ragdoll physics on pubes to use more to satisfy the ones here who are saying that the memory isn't enough? It has to come down to stupid sarcasms like that because this whole issue is not a problem. Far from it.

Devs will use it for even more realistic breast jiggle physics?

On a more serious note, until, oh I dunno, game journalists actually get a direct quote confirmation from Sony about how much RAM the OS uses, or Sony waits till an actual official event to talk numbers (like I dunno, maybe Gamescon?), we can speculate and guess all we want, but we're just wasting energy.

Or maybe we can get some devs (doesn't matter if indie or the AAA devs) to tell us how much bloody RAM they're using for their FINISHED game, we might be able to get a better idea, because right now, all we know is that its 4.5 GB for sure, and maybe an additional 1 GB (or 4 + 1, or whateverthefucknewnumbersthatpopup). This doesn't tell us jack how much the OS uses, it just tells us how much the devs are using.

 

[FantasticMrFoxdie]

Lmao over here. Eagerly anticipating the next title change.

 

[Mrbob]

Difference between Sony and MS part 2:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=560587

Such a different tone in that thread. 5 pages long lol. This thread already is 4 times larger in half a day. Someday we need to sit down and talk about why Sony news is always a circus act in comparison to other consoles.

This is only huge because it is the first "bad" PS4 news we have. I put it in quotes because it really isn't bad at all. At first I was a little mad too, but then I realize I don't make games. So if developers are fine with it, why should I complain?

 

[RoboPlato]

You are better than this. Developers are not complaining, the amount available for gameOS will go up, and increasing the amount available will not magically make games look ___% better.

Come on Robo :/.

Oh, I know. I'm only a little disappointed. I'm not raging or anything. Big OS footprints just bother me on a weird mental level. My impression is also probably colored by the fact that my computer has 2GB of DDR2 RAM :lol Honestly it's the CPU footprint that bothers me more. Trust me, I'm still probably one of the most excited for the PS4 on this board but that doesn't mean I'm going to not give them some grief for something I've been giving MS grief for as well.

I'm sure I'll be happy again once I see more games and get the console in my hands. I was just a little underwhelmed by the tech showing of the PS4 at E3 and this news is also underwhelming. I was just thinking in the long term of next gen possibilities this whole time, not the realities of day 1 launches. I know it'll shrink down the line. I was just hoping for fast load times and lots of dynamic stuff right out of the gate.

 

[DietRob]

Lmao over here. Eagerly anticipating the next title change.

Gonna be a treat when Bish wakes up.

 

[AyaisMUsikWhore]

What have we seen? or better yet, what have you seen?

This. We haven't seen shit and people are acting as if they did. We get a couple of launch games... Obviously going by the mentality of many here, that means

Launch = Rest of gen cycle (no upgrades, innovation, or graphical improvements.. Just stuck)

 

[Rebel Leader]

Gonna be a treat when Bish wakes up.

I already prepared the offerings. Just needs a drink to wash is all down.

 

[Respawn]

Jesus Christ at the OS for both Microsoft and Sony. 3GB for both. It's much more of a waste on Sony's part though.

I would agree looking from the outside in but I guess we will see what the hell they want all this space for come launch time.

Gonna be a treat when Bish wakes up.

All kinds of sacrifices will be made.

I wonder since he closed the other one was the OP allowed to create this?

 

[CoG]

cerny is suddenly the god of gaming isn't he.

great guy and all that buy plenty of other devs could do that. plenty of the game devs here could happily do that surely?

plenty of us non gaming devs would probably have a stab too. there does seem to be an assumption people know far less than they do, not everyone is clueless or lacking a cmp sci degree and years of experience. several have it.

Cerny has a talent for explaining things like system architecture to laypeople in an elegant, uncondescending manner.

All devs are under NDA so they cannot freely discuss specifics, so it always goes back to some suspect thread on B3D with a so-called dev feeding bloggers like Leadbetter info.

I have a CompSci degree and can explain many things but I'd rather just watch a Cerny vid.

 

[Man]

So the flex memory pool is what they may potentially increase with future OS optimizations?

 

[MagicWithEarvin]

Jesus Christ at the OS for both Microsoft and Sony. 3GB for both. It's much more of a waste on Sony's part though.

How so?

 

[LiquidMetal14]

With the Sony statement, I think the OS is just unoptimized to hell and back since they haven't had much time at all to work on it since going from 4GB to 8GB and they have no clue what they will actually get it down to. Looks like they are just being overly conservative right now and just want to be damn sure they don't hit that brick wall by not having enough for that one feature they really want, aka, they don't want to pull a PS3 again.

Still seems excessive but I do suppose it's better to be safe then sorry.

You do not even know how much the actual OS needs. Someone with understanding about those things will have to articulate more but right now we know little about how both platforms respective OS's will work.

One thing to not take away is that the OS is unoptimized and sloppy. These things are being nailed down now and you can believe there will be FW updates early on to address any issues.

Let me restate once more since no one cares to dispute it, how are devs ok with this but some Gaffers not? What would you like devs to use the space they don't quite know what to do with yet? Ragdoll physics on nose hairs? Real time fart particle simulation? That last bit is about as ridiculous as this issue being made into something.

 

[Hystzen]

The OS will use less RAM in the future, because it will be more optimized

Probably which will also free up more but even then PS4 has enough now heck most developers are happy thats what should matter not people crying on a forum over a drop

 

[prwxv3]

The hits keep rolling. Is it unfathomable to believe Sony will eventually shrink that number down to 6+ GB available to developers within the third year of development ?

Don't give that guy any attention. Look at his post history in the last day and you will know why

 

[Nightengale]

I just want an articulate explanation of what makes PS4 a worse multimedia device because both platforms aren't even out yet to even formulate such a statement.

It's actually kind of hard to dispute that XB1 will be better in multimedia.

TV is no-brainer, for the US market at least.
MS will naturally have more 'apps' for XB1, by virtue of the Windows partition and their own expertise/ownership of various softwares.

Those 2 alone means that XB1 will have a lead in terms of multimedia, because multimedia through consoles are pretty much an 'apps' game.

 

[dragonelite]

My man, we were led to believe that Sony would not be going the multi media route that MS is going. Therefore they wouldnt need as much memory for their OS.

Hell everybody believed it would be 512mb at first then 1gig maybe 1.5 gig if unlucky.
Not take 3gig.

Hell we all went from 30~50mb for OS to 3gig for OS...

 

[ReaperXL7]

Problem is: Sony didn't want to reply and clearify the official Ram amounts that are used for gaming or reserved by the OS.

If they had let's say 6GB for gaming and 2GB for the rest then they'd immidiately try to debunk this rumour because it created alot of heat in here.

Why should they openly admit something which got mainly recieved bad over the internt (or just gaf, dunno lol).



I say, and please don't hate me for it, that this statement is already a confirmation for this whole story (atleast when speaking of numbers).


Fact is: That 5GB are way enough to create awesome games. Can you imagine what future titles from Bethesda, Naughty Dog, Remedy, Crytek, CD Project, Bungie, Rockstar Games and so many more awesome game studios will look like?

Sony is not beholden to give those answers to NeoGAF, or DF, or IGN. They are Beholden to give those numbers to those making games for the consoles, thos people are happy, so all of this means Jack, and Shit (and Jack left town).

Continue with the carnival of stupid, and justifing every negative comment.that devs have ever laid at the feet of "Gamers".

 

[PlanetSmasher]

What bothers me is the story about Boyes who seen a dev and said if you go 4GB your system is dead on arrival. At that time PS4 had 3.5GB dedicated to games and 512MB to OS, what I don't understand is Sony upped the RAM due to feedback from devs but only gave an extra 1GB RAM, and spent the rest of the OS.

This is the part that makes no sense to me - making a huge deal about doubling the RAM and only using 1GB of it for the actual worthwhile part of the console. 3GB of GDDR5 for an operating system is just completely asinine. There's just absolutely nothing they can do with an OS that justifies that big of a footprint. Ah well.

Hopefully by the end of the gen they'll shrink the OS footprint to 1GB and give developers as much room as possible to work with.

 

[miDnIghtEr20C]

Which all sounds reasonable but I think you can understand why some folks are somewhat disappointed because Sony definitely pitched the PS4 as a more pure games machine relative to the multimedia machine of Xbox One so there was an implied narrative which posited that most of the memory on PS4 would be available for game developers from day one.

Wasn't all of E3 giving a standing ovation as they slipped in pay to play free MP in one of their announcements as well?

Sony been doing some good sneaky stuff so far!

 

[Mononoke]

This. We haven't seen shit and people are acting as if they did. We get a couple of launch games... Obviously going by the mentality of many here, that means

Launch = Rest of gen cycle (no upgrades, innovation, or graphical improvements.. Just stuck)

These people should just wait until either console releases games that they want or impress them. There is no rush to buy a console on Day 1. Early adopting is a disease.

 

[onQ123]

I'm a pretty big sony fan, but this sounds crazy to me. Why allocate more than a 3rd of your memory to the OS for a gaming machine. I really hope the numbers don't show 3GB.

You guys who were excited about the 8gb announcement, and then are taking this statement as "well 5gb is still a lot" sound like people who accept 2nd place and say "at least it's not 3rd."

CBOAT where are you.

not me I was one of the people who knew that even 4GB at 192GB/s was better for games than 8GB at 68GB/s .

 

[Satchel]

It's actually kind of hard to dispute that XB1 will be better in multimedia.

TV is no-brainer, for the US market at least.
MS will naturally have more 'apps' for XB1, by virtue of the Windows partition and their own expertise/ownership of various softwares.

Those 2 alone means that XB1 will have a lead in terms of multimedia, because multimedia through consoles are pretty much an 'apps' game.

For me personally, the media champion will be whichever box, if any, plays MKV files.

 

[MikeXXIeaf]

Problem is: Sony didn't want to reply and clearify the official Ram amounts that are used for gaming or reserved by the OS.

If they had let's say 6GB for gaming and 2GB for the rest then they'd immidiately try to debunk this rumour because it created alot of heat in here.

Why should they openly admit something which got mainly recieved bad over the internt (or just gaf, dunno lol).



I say, and please don't hate me for it, that this statement is already a confirmation for this whole story (atleast when speaking of numbers).


Fact is: That 5GB are way enough to create awesome games. Can you imagine what future titles from Bethesda, Naughty Dog, Remedy, Crytek, CD Project, Bungie, Rockstar Games and so many more awesome game studios will look like?

It's our choice to mindlessly speculate when there isn't much official info out on the matter.

Frankly I don't see why people do it. It's not like any of this is going to matter in the long run, both consoles will be about the same to me. It's just a matter of different exclusives.

 

[MagicWithEarvin]

I keep seeing 3GB for the OS or 1.5GB + 1.5GB reserved. Which is true?

 

[Loofy]

I just think its funny looking back at the stories. Sure sony didnt explicitly lie.. but keeping silent is just as bad.

Headline

PS4's 8GB RAM was kept secret from third-party devs until console reveal

Truth: thats cause developers werent gonna be allowed to work with more anyways.

 

[Angelus Errare]

How so?

Probably because of the cost of GDDR5 compared to DDR3.

 

[Meus Renaissance]

How so?

Cerny was quite clear in his interviews that the machine is primarily a video games console when he was asked what, if any, multimedia features planned for the machine influenced the hardware design. Microsoft, however, have approached it with a different philosophy by building both a games console and a multimedia device. The indications given to us were that the vast majority of resources would go to gaming

 

[dragonelite]

not me I was one of the people who knew that even 4GB at 192GB/s was better for games than 8GB at 68GB/s .

uuuh wasn't it more 176GB/s?

 

[TheCloser]

The hits keep rolling. Is it unfathomable to believe Sony will eventually shrink that number down to 6+ GB available to developers within the third year of development ?

Doesn't really matter since can't use more than 5.86 per frame at 30 fps. It's truly a none issue and those complaining about the use of the memory as a frame buffer should calm down. Devs have been using 512 for years so they know what they are found. Remain calm and move along. Nothing to see here. Might I add that this is a which has been contested by some "devs" on this forum. Either way, Sony never confirms OS numbers publicly.

 

[nib95]

awesome post btw, thank you for clarifying. so is that space swap there to alleviate bottlenecks in swapping memory out?

Possibly, hard to say without knowing more.

The optimum ram allocation for the console would be 5.86GB physical and then whatever is left for the OS.

So, 8192mb - 5.86GB = 2332mb left, - 512mb flex swap space (should they want it) = 1820mb. Which I guess would be a more optimal amount to be reserved for the OS. But at the least (minus the flex swap space) they only need to have the OS reserve 2.33GB of ram to allow the console to use up memory at full efficiency (based on 176GB/s), unless of course they plan to target running games at lower than 30fps lol, which I doubt they will.

That's not to say more ram (than 5.86GB) can't or won't help, but I'm just talking in terms of maximum efficiency.

Also, quoting for new page since it's important.

You are indeed correct, based on bandwidth figures, the amount of ram available to each console is as follows.

---

Xbox One | 8GB DDR3 at 68GB/s (5GB available to devs)

At 60fps the maximum memory available per frame is 1.133GB
At 30fps the maximum memory available per frame is 2.266GB


PS4 | 8GB GDDR5 at 176GB/s (5.5GB available to devs) 512mb of that swap space, paged to the HDD.

At 60fps the maximum memory available per frame is 2.933GB
At 30fps the maximum memory available per frame is 5.866GB

---

This is the actual maximum amount of memory available to each console irrespective of what amount the OS uses up.


If people are wondering why the figures at they are, the bandwidth amounts dictate the maximum amount of ram available per second. So 68GB/s means 68GB maximum memory access per second. If a game is 30fps it means there are 30 frames rendered per one second. So you just divide 68 (the amount of ram bandwidth and thus available ram per second) by 30 (in this example the number of frames being rendered in per second).

 

[Mung]

Hopefully by the end of the gen they'll shrink the OS footprint to 1GB and give developers as much room as possible to work with.

I think that they will shrink the footprint - who knows by how much. This move probable makes sense as at the moment no one is using that much RAM and this gives sony flexibility depending on what OS or other unforseen features are needed down the road. You don't want a similar situation to the cross game chat.

 

[Can Crusher]

The hits keep rolling. Is it unfathomable to believe Sony will eventually shrink that number down to 6+ GB available to developers within the third year of development ?

You dont know the future.

 

[thuway]

This is the part that makes no sense to me - making a huge deal about doubling the RAM and only using 1GB of it for the actual worthwhile part of the console. 3GB of GDDR5 for an operating system is just completely asinine. There's just absolutely nothing they can do with an OS that justifies that big of a footprint. Ah well.

Hopefully by the end of the gen they'll shrink the OS footprint to 1GB and give developers as much room as possible to work with.

IT WAS NEVER PUBLICLY REVEALED WHAT RAM FIGURES WERE BEFORE THE RAM UPGRADE.

WHY DO YOU KEEP ASSUMING FIGURES THAT YOU ARE PULLING OUT FROM A HAT?

This is either trolling or ignorance at the finest level. There are too many people in this thread trying to explain this logically, but you are somehow missing these posts and continue spreading a fable.

 

[Evolution_1ne]

Difference between Sony and MS part 2:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=560587

Such a different tone in that thread. 5 pages long lol. This thread already is 4 times larger in half a day. Someday we need to sit down and talk about why Sony news is always a circus act in comparison to other consoles.

step one.) learning the difference between 8gb of DDR3 and 8gb of GDDR5, this is step one in understanding what the fuck your talking about, it would help you understand why these two cases are completely different

 

[KAL2006]

Cerny was quite clear in his interviews that the machine is primarily a video games console when he was asked what, if any, multimedia features planned for the machine influenced the hardware design. Microsoft, however, have approached it with a different philosophy by building both a games console and a multimedia device. The indications given to us were that the vast majority of resources would go to gaming

I think this still doesn't go against what he said. He could argue, multitasking, video recording and sharing, sleep, quick resume, and etc are all part of a system dedicated to gamers.

 

[Nightengale]

The hits keep rolling. Is it unfathomable to believe Sony will eventually shrink that number down to 6+ GB available to developers within the third year of development ?

You know very well that they don't care because... no reason. =)

 

[IncandescentPrecept]

Legit question: What are people complaining about?

 

[JonathanPower]

on the graphics side of things

if the memory is 176GB/s & the game is 60FPS the most memory that the game will need at a giving time/frame is 2.93GB & if the game is 30FPS you wouldn't use any more than 5.86GB per frame.


in other words you can't move 8GB of data each frame with 176GB/s unless the game was 22FPS so why not put the other GB of ram to use with the OS?

Because you don't need to move 176GB/s of data every single frame and thus you could easily take advantage of the full 8GB of memory for caching data.

 

[MikeE21286]

Well that's an unpleasant surprise :/

wonder why....

 

[Beer Monkey]

Digital Foundry are known to be in the arses of Microsoft, aren't they?

Yup, it's been confirmed by PS3 fanboys who live in their mom's basement.

 

[Satchel]

IT WAS NEVER PUBLICLY REVEALED WHAT RAM FIGURES WERE BEFORE THE RAM UPGRADE.

WHY DO YOU KEEP ASSUMING FIGURES THAT YOU ARE PULLING OUT FROM A HAT?

This is either trolling or ignorance at the finest level. There are too many people in this thread trying to explain this logically, but you are somehow missing these posts and continue spreading a fable.

Dude, you're starting to sound really defensive now.

 

[Evolution_1ne]

Legit question: What are people complaining about?

they have no idea

@thuway your arguing with a fucking junior who clearly has no idea what he's talking about, every in this thread with a brain understand this guy doesn't know what he's talking about and most are laughing at him, do get banned for this guy, give up it's not worth it.

 

[jayu26]

Virtual memory is managed by the OS kernel. It's typically on disk and is therefore orders of magnitude slow than system RAM. I am not fully understanding the architecture here, but it seems like at least 512MB of that memory is guaranteed to be actual RAM but beyond that it hits the disk.

But then the question is why is this virtual (flexible) memory? If it is not being used by OS and it is 100% there for the games, then why not make it direct memory?

 

[Joeki11a]

I blame PC fanatics for this getting so much hype, who cares about ram? On consoles?

We seen incredible graphics with split 512mb on ps3
5 gigs of GDDR is wayyyyy more than enough and ages ahead of ps3

So whats the issue here?, this is all sillyness trying to bring some kind
Of bad vibe towards Ps4 which has been steady good since Feb

 

[LiquidMetal14]

I keep seeing 3GB for the OS or 1.5GB + 1.5GB reserved. Which is true?

It's not really going to matter once the platforms are out.

This kind of fud reminds me of political campaigns which make something little or meaningless into something that sounds bad.

That and I can't shake the stigmar that some have wanted some bad PS4 news. I get that but that doesn't excuse some of the more extreme posts bordering on idiocy. Not when you try to have concise and well thought discussion on how this is not bad. Not when devs are working just fine with the "paltry" 5GB+.

Sony or any other console manufacturer isn't obligated to tell you how their OS management works. It has never worked like that for any console manufacturer and it won't change now. How many times have you asked yourself - Sony/MSFT/Nintendo, what are you doing with memory for OS on PS1/2/3 or Xbox/360 or Wii/WiiU? It doesn't impact the gamer when the devs have to figure out what to do with the memory.

I've exhausted about all I had to say. If this thread is going to be a regurgitation of the last 2 then this thread doesn't need to exist. Not when all the info isn't valid and HW/SW is still coming together.

 

[iNvid02]

Gonna be a treat when Bish wakes up.

sacrificial ram is almost ready