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[Thunder Monkey]

Now that 6 gigs is all but confirmed I just want to say... even at 4.5gigs you're talking a much faster memory solution than that seen in One. That difference would still amount to more assets, with potentially higher res textures going through faster than MS implementation. Along with a more capable GPU.

In no way would a PS4 with 4.5gig and the 512MB flexmem solution be at a disadvantage to One. The disadvantage would still be on the side of One. Still wondering why MS didn't go for a more traditional eDram solution. SRAM tends to complicate memory architectures for little in the way of payoff, when just a standard eDram solution would be less costly, and potentially much larger.

Glad to see our resident awesome sources have helped to calm the crazy.

 

[jond76]

Can't wait till these consoles come out so the focus will (hopefully) shift to what really matters: the games.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

A bit more than 6 would be sweet!

7.99 GB free for games or Preorder Canceled amirite?

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

Now that 6 gigs is all but confirmed I just want to say... even at 4.5gigs you're talking a much faster memory solution than that seen in One. That difference would still amount to more assets, with potentially higher res textures going through faster than MS implementation. Along with a more capable GPU.

In no way would a PS4 with 4.5gig and the 512MB flexmem solution be at a disadvantage to One. The disadvantage would still be on the side of One. Still wondering why MS didn't go for a more traditional eDram solution. SRAM tends to complicate memory architectures for little in the way of payoff, when just a standard eDram solution would be less costly, and potentially much larger.

Glad to see our resident awesome sources have helped to calm the crazy.

Can they implement the eDRAM on the same APU die?

I believe that's why they ultimately went with eSRAM, but I could be wrong.

 

[Glorified G]

Hopefully the Retro City Rampage blog doesn't go ignored.

Just to save anyone time from clicking on the link.

Anyway, I’m not saying how much memory is used

 

[c0de]

A bit more than 6 would be sweet!

Why exactly? Is this a magical barrier nobody knows of?

 

[FairXchange]

Hopefully the Retro City Rampage blog doesn't go ignored.

We can’t go into specifics about stuff like that, but I’ll say that if you go by Eurogamer’s article “update”, it would show that PS4 provides at least as much RAM to the developer as the XB1. While Eurogamer updated theirs, Game Informer still has their sensationalist headline “PlayStation 4 Reserves Nearly Half Of RAM For OS” up, a headline which was poor even at the time of the initial rumor. While the article itself does say “slightly more than its competitor”, the headline is what the majority of people will ever see. This is a problem. This caused problems.

Now let’s look at it closely. The rumor stated that the PS4 reserved 3.5GB, while the Xbox reserved 3.0GB. Think about how this headline then spins the story. Even had it been true, this was a difference of 0.5GB, yet the headline would make it sound like the PS4 has a massive weakness.

The bolded was done by the author, which might infer how much RAM is actually available without compromising an NDA.

 

[nib95]

Also, as is usually the case, GAF > The internet, especially Digital Foundry. DF should really stop giving Leadbetter free reign.

 

[Thunder Monkey]

Can they implement the eDRAM on the same APU die?

I believe that's why they ultimately went with eSRAM, but I could be wrong.

I don't know.

Hmmm, now you've got me wanting to do my most hated practice... research.

 

[nordique]

Nice. 6GB is fantastic.

 

[Omerta]

People bitch and moan at playstation's various OS's... People bitch and moan about lack of multi tasking... People bitch and moan about he lack of cross game chat... People bitch and moan about MS's focus... People bitch and moan about MS's 3 tiered OS...

People want games to download in the background... People want a snappy, feature rich OS... People want a feature lean OS with a game focused spec list... People want to be able to record, upload and share...

SHUT UP!

People said "go to neogaf for an educated and balanced discussion". Many of you have lost your shit about something that you've no idea about - nothing is confirmed and you probably don't understand the minutiae of it anyway.

Sony and Microsoft have to create a balanced machine that's capable of evolving in the future to provide customers with the best experiences and protect their business.

What's the fucking problem?

 

[xaosslug]

Hopefully the Retro City Rampage blog doesn't go ignored.

welp. There you go. This should REALLY be in the OP, and the thread title should be edited to add 'a new challenger enters!' or something..

 

[CF22]

6GB + 2GB for the OS sounds like a nice compromise. I really don't care much about the OS but that's more than enough for both games and OS considering today we get games like The Last of Us with half a gig.

 

[S¡mon]

Why exactly? Is this a magical barrier nobody knows of?

Yes. If you go below 6, you're already at 5.9 or lower. People associate that, somehow, with "5". 5 is almost half of 8.

But if you say 6, than people see that as a close number to 8.

 

[Glorified G]

People bitch and moan at playstation's various OS's... People bitch and moan about lack of multiple tasking... People bitch and moan about the lack of cross game chat... People bitch and moan about MS's focus... People bitch and moan about MS's 3 tiered OS...

People want games to download in the background... People want a snappy, feature rich OS... People want a feature lean OS with a game focused spec list... People want to be able to record, upload and share...

SHUT UP!

People said "go to neogaf for an educated and balanced discussion". Many of you have lost your shit about something that you've no idea about - nothing is confirmed and you probably don't understand the minutiae of it anyway.

Sony and Microsoft have to create a balanced machine that's capable of evolving in the future to provide customers with the best experiences and protect their business.

What's the fucking problem?

Who are these people?

 

[Kyoufu]

Does Leadbetter actually dislike Sony? I know he was a huge Sega fanboy back in the Saturn/Dreamcast days and from what I remember, was not fond of Sony back then.

Is the consensus that he has an agenda or is it just a theory?

 

[BruiserBear]

The bolded was done by the author, which might infer how much RAM is actually available without compromising an NDA.

I think he bolded that to indicate it's more. He's making the point that even under the worst case scenario reporting we're hearing today, it would be equal to XB1.

 

[Deleted member 80556]

Hopefully the Retro City Rampage blog doesn't go ignored.

Great article. I'm glad an indie dev talked about this.

People said "go to neogaf for an educated and balanced discussion". Many of you have lost your shit about something that you've no idea about - nothing is confirmed and you probably don't understand the minutiae of it anyway.

It's the new generation, pal, it's bound to get the crazy out of people. 2 years ago this wasn't a problem. Mostly.

Yes. I'll back up their source on this one.

Awesome, great to know, Kagari. Thanks.

 

[i-Lo]

I was happy to accept the number 5 in my life but now with the assertion of 6 looming overhead, I am going to need to recalibrate all my senses again.

sub-hd and -30fps can carry anything long.

No offence, but your railing against 30fps is getting quite tiresome. Why not just stick to PC and leave the threads that concern console and console games since the majority this gen will be 30fps as well.

 

[DigitalDevilSummoner]

People have mentioned this in the thread already but basically they want a bit of overhead for the OS starting out so they don't end up in another PS3-like situation with little to no RAM to add important or popular features. That said, you can also expect the current OS footprint to shrink over time, much as it has with the PS3 as well.

That's making a lot of sense.

Sony probably don't want to make any drastic moves like lots of ram allocated for the gamers right away, chocking future OS applications, since they do have the upper hand tech wise right now.

 

[Winterfang]

People bitch and moan at playstation's various OS's... People bitch and moan about lack of multi tasking... People bitch and moan about he lack of cross game chat... People bitch and moan about MS's focus... People bitch and moan about MS's 3 tiered OS...

People want games to download in the background... People want a snappy, feature rich OS... People want a feature lean OS with a game focused spec list... People want to be able to record, upload and share...

SHUT UP!

People said "go to neogaf for an educated and balanced discussion". Many of you have lost your shit about something that you've no idea about - nothing is confirmed and you probably don't understand the minutiae of it anyway.

Sony and Microsoft have to create a balanced machine that's capable of evolving in the future to provide customers with the best experiences and protect their business.

What's the fucking problem?

Welcome to GAF. While we are not the holy grail of video game forums (as some might let you to believe) try to remember that this isn't year start of a new console war. So the fanboys are losing their shit at everything console related.

 

[LeeFowler.CU]

Isn't it still 5 gigs or 6 gigs? I thought Thuways post meant that it would be 5 gigs at launch.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

Does Leadbetter actually dislike Sony? I know he was a huge Sega fanboy back in the Saturn/Dreamcast days and from what I remember, was not fond of Sony back then.

Is the consensus that he has an agenda or is it just a theory?

Who knows, I think he definitely has his preference for Microsoft, but I don't think he hates Sony or anything like that.

Whenever there's an advantage in favor of Sony, he tends to downplay or make excuses for it, and is quick to believe any negative Sony news or positive Microsoft news. There's plenty of examples of him doing this years ago and also recently.

It is a little odd, but I do think his long-term preference comes across in how he presents his news for sure.

 

[cLOUDo]

now the rumor is from 5,5gb to 6gb?
LOL

what is wrong with you people?!

 

[eorl]

People bitch and moan at playstation's various OS's... People bitch and moan about lack of multi tasking... People bitch and moan about he lack of cross game chat... People bitch and moan about MS's focus... People bitch and moan about MS's 3 tiered OS...

People want games to download in the background... People want a snappy, feature rich OS... People want a feature lean OS with a game focused spec list... People want to be able to record, upload and share...

SHUT UP!

People said "go to neogaf for an educated and balanced discussion". Many of you have lost your shit about something that you've no idea about - nothing is confirmed and you probably don't understand the minutiae of it anyway.

Sony and Microsoft have to create a balanced machine that's capable of evolving in the future to provide customers with the best experiences and protect their business.

What's the fucking problem?

People go nuts for hyperbole. Also I'm sure a good many of the people in this thread and the previous threads weren't quite as serious as it seemed.

 

[SSM25]

What happened? I can't find any info on 6GB..

Some help please?

 

[Takuya]

That's still a 20% difference...but yeah, I'm pretty sure most multiplat developers will be too lazy to really utilize it.

IT's not all about the amount available it's also about the speeds available at any given time. On PS4 you have access to high speed RAM all the time.

 

[kasane]

What happened? I can't find any info on 6GB..

Some help please?

Gaf insiders.

Kagari, Bruce, thuway to be exact

 

[IncandescentPrecept]

I just woke up. So, the discussion is still going on?

 

[Omerta]

Glad i got that off my chest... Very cathartic.

Now, I'm going to sit here quietly until some real information is uncovered.

Whatever the outcome from RAMgate is, I'm sure we'll all be enjoying these new consoles for many years to come.

 

[SSM25]

Gaf insiders.

Kagari, Bruce, thuway to be exact

Oh, wow this thread is bananas.. Thx

 

[Thunder Monkey]

Welcome to GAF. While we are not the holy grail of video game forums (as some might let you to believe) try to remember that this isn't year start of a new console war. So the fanboys are losing their shit at everything console related.

I'd say the problem stems from a basic misunderstanding of tech in general.

Even when PS4 was 4gigs with 3 dedicated to gaming you weren't talking a huge insurmountable difference between the two platforms. Sony's choice of a much faster memory solution was always going to benefit them to a degree. Assets coming in faster. Devs might have had to be a little more creative than the One's (dump assets into main mem and use the eSram to make up the speed difference), but they were never at a disadvantage.

The GPU was always more capable, and they had a faster memory solution. Also turns out less costly mem solution than Ones as well.

 

[omonimo]

[B) Does Leadbetter actually dislike Sony? [/B)I know he was a huge Sega fanboy back in the Saturn/Dreamcast days and from what I remember, was not fond of Sony back then.

Is the consensus that he has an agenda or is it just a theory?

Well, it's really hard to think to coincidences after so many years.

 

[RedAssedApe]

Oh, wow this thread is bananas.. Thx

i wouldn't worry about it anyways. non-issue.

 

[Kyoufu]

Hopefully the Retro City Rampage blog doesn't go ignored.

Just read this.

Thread title change?

 

[Becky]

Gaf insiders.

Kagari, Bruce, thuway to be exact

I see those three together a lot. Are they friends outside of Gaf?

 

[MichaelMikado]

This actually makes sense as to why the games ran worse on PS4 now. So the question becomes how does this effect PS4s bandwidth as the same RAM is being used for its framebuffer? If a third of its available bandwidth was devoted to OS tasks then you are definitely going to have trouble hitting 1080P at 60fps. The xbox one shouldn't be affected due to using the eSRAM as a dedicated framebuffer. So while games wont look as "pretty" on the xBONE they should run faster at higher resolutions... The GPU in PS4 could actually technically become bandwidth starved.

The problem I see is that modern PC cards like Nvidia Titan use 6GB VRAM alone.. PS4 and XBone use 5~ GB for ALL RAM including system. Obviously the argument of a streamline gaming OS is invalid as Win 7 can use OS RAM footprint of 1GB. Technically you could theoretically use a 16GB system RAM and 2 6GB cards for a total of 12GB VRAM and 15GB system RAM today... It would be unreasonably expensive but possible from off the shelf parts today..

I really don't know Im just speculating.

 

[imtehman]

now the rumor is from 5,5gb to 6gb?
LOL

what is wrong with you people?!

man, everyone is pulling #'s out of their ass, even the insidersz

 

[Canis lupus]

Hopefully the Retro City Rampage blog doesn't go ignored.

Now let’s look at it closely. The rumor stated that the PS4 reserved 3.5GB, while the Xbox reserved 3.0GB. Think about how this headline then spins the story. Even had it been true, this was a difference of 0.5GB, yet the headline would make it sound like the PS4 has a massive weakness.

Another source debunking the ram ratio. Now I'm curious where Leadbetter got his info from.

Whats even more interesting and totally unrelated to this topic but mentionned in the article, he never saw his money from RCR Wii port, the pathetic sales numbers from the WiiWare version of RCR is less than 3k combined, ugh.

 

[Takuya]

This actually makes sense as to why the games ran worse on PS4 now. So the question becomes how does this effect PS4s bandwidth as the same RAM is being used for its framebuffer? If a third of its available bandwidth was devoted to OS tasks then you are definitely going to have trouble hitting 1080P at 60fps. The xbox one shouldn't be affected due to using the eSRAM as a dedicated framebuffer. So while games wont look as "pretty" on the xBONE they should run faster at higher resolutions... The GPU in PS4 could actually technically become bandwidth starved.

The problem I see is that modern PC cards like Nvidia Titan use 6GB VRAM alone.. PS4 and XBone use 5~ GB for ALL RAM including system. Obviously the argument of a streamline gaming OS is invalid as Win 7 can use OS RAM footprint of 1GB. Technically you could theoretically use a 16GB system RAM and 2 6GB cards for a total of 12GB VRAM and 15GB system RAM today... It would be unreasonably expensive but possible from off the shelf parts today..

I really don't know Im just speculating.

You need to read the thread man...

 

[Nachtmaer]

Can they implement the eDRAM on the same APU die?

I believe that's why they ultimately went with eSRAM, but I could be wrong.

From my understanding, they went with with SRAM because AMD doesn't have any (or much) experience with eDRAM. SRAM is the same type of memory being used for CPU caches. Out of the bigger players out there, only Intel and IBM fab CPUs with eDRAM. Also supposedly eDRAM is trickier to deal with when it comes to process nodes. I believe IBM's is still on 45nm.

I'm sure someone else would be better at explaining this, but that's more or less it in a nutshell.

 

[SSM25]

i wouldn't worry about it anyways. non-issue.

Yea, I agree. Honestly I do want Sony to be focused 100% on games and giving up so much RAM to non gaming tasks FEELS like a deviation from that even when at the end of tha day it doesn't really matter technically.

Just my point of view.

 

[imtehman]

Gaf insiders.

Kagari, Bruce, thuway to be exact

didn't these 3 all agree that ff 15 was exclusive to PS4?

 

[kasane]

Another source debunking the ram ratio. Now I'm curious where Leadbetter got his info from.

Whats even more interesting and totally unrelated to this topic but mentionned in the article, he never saw his money from RCR Wii port, the pathetic sales numbers from the WiiWare version of RCR is less than 3k combined, ugh.

I speculate from old SDKs

 

[cyberheater]

I wonder how many games for Xbox One and PS4 will end up using significantly less then 5Gb of game memory?

 

[Pound_lb003]

Great article. I'm glad an indie dev talked about this.



It's the new generation, pal, it's bound to get the crazy out of people. 2 years ago this wasn't a problem. Mostly.



Awesome, great to know, Kagari. Thanks.

Only as a lurker for upwards of 7 years, I'd agree.

Glad I had that time to grow up though, I'd have posted way to hastily when I was younger.

 

[Omerta]

WTF is RAM?

 

[Suikoguy]

6 games/2 os is fine.

It gives Sony plenty of room to let the OS do what it wants, while not being insane (like 3.5 os would be)

I suspect by the end of the generation, the amount will be down to 1GB or less for the OS.

 

[Kagari]

didn't these 3 all agree that ff 15 was exclusive to PS4?

There was a lot of behind the scenes chatter suggesting it was, even among known employees. It didn't pan out in the end but it doesn't mean that there wasn't talk of it out of multiple reliable sources.

 

[BadAss2961]

I wonder how many games for Xbox One and PS4 will end up using significantly less then 5Gb of game memory?

Most of them to say the least.