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FRIDAYTON MK II: 5.5 million bears and salmon create unholy allliance to sack SONY HQ

Anpanman

Banned
Pre-order cancelled. How about you?

lXLrfzr.png

What are you going to buy now, since the Xbox One is essentially the same specs?
 

pixlexic

Banned
I think you guys are making more out of this than there is. the 8 gigs are still there. overtime time more and more ram will be opened up for games as the os gets optimized.
 
Microsoft showed what they were doing with their OS to justify the memory allocation. Sony need to show why they've decided to allocate more for their system - what are they doing that needs this much RAM?
 

op_ivy

Fallen Xbot (cannot continue gaining levels in this class)
Now you're just being dumb. The Vita's memory allows it to do multitasking functions. As for the rest of your post, you need to stop.

yes. it will do only gaming related multitasking, like vita. with 3.5 gigs of ram.
 
WTF @ all the pre-order cancellation stuff.


They can reduce the OS footprint/memory reservation over time, just like they did on PS3. This goes for Xbox One too. People be overreacting.
 

Angelcurio

Member
That´s more ram than what i have for my Laptop and Tablet together. 3.5 GB is an insane amount of Ram for an OS, what kind funtions or apps require that much memory? i hope we get some kind of official clarification about it because it certainly reduces the ram available for games by almost a 50%.
 

nasos_333

Member
Why would OS take up 3.5 GB ???

That is huge when PS3 OS took up only 64MB or something and 360 one was 32MB if i remember right

I think these numbers will lower later
 
343 is a multiple of 7. 7 is the initially rumored amount of RAM available for developers. Halo lore is filled with references to 7. Halo is a well known First Person Shooter IP. You know what's also a well known FPS IP?

HALF LIFE 3 COMING TO PS4.

Hmm I think you're on to something. Lets explore further
 

Guymelef

Member
Weren't they waiting for an official statement before running this article based on what that Eurogamer Spain guy said yesterday? I'm confused.

Maybe this is the response :
However, sources close to Sony suggest that the PS4 approach is perhaps more flexible - the current allocation in terms of both CPU cores and memory could be reduced once the operating system is complete and then streamlined. In short, while there is no guarantee of change in the future, Sony is at least leaving the door open to the opportunity and the R&D team has experience in reducing the OS footprint - just as it did on PlayStation 3.
 
I would not be surprised if a few years into the PS4's cycle the OS size will be reduced by 1 gig thanks to optimization.

I mean; that is doable. Right?
 

Orca

Member
Weren't they waiting for an official statement before running this article based on what that Eurogamer Spain guy said yesterday? I'm confused.

I think they were waiting for comment. The comment they got was probably 'no comment'
 
Well, here's the kicker: A few weeks back there was a comment from a developer saying that they were scratching their heads trying to figure out what to do with the extra ram --> http://www.nextpowerup.com/news/192...on-what-to-do-with-all-the-available-ram.html

My guess is that Sony thought that if developers weren't going to be using all of the 8GB then they might as well put it to some use. So now the OS resembles Home and as the world loads about you, you're able to go into a virtual game store and pick the games with your Home avatar. Want to launch the game? You walk from the store to your virtual gameroom in Home and then put the game into the virtual PS4 and then look for your virtual controller in your gameroom and then boot the virtual console and then select the game and then play it!

Do you want to chat with a friend? You go out into the streets in Home and then yell for your friend until he shows up and then you invite him to your gameroom and then go through the same process. Now, in the virtual Home world, it seems like you guys are sitting in the same virtual couch and playing split screen, but in reality each one of you guys are at home, playing over PSN. It's genius, really!
OK you've convinced me, this may actually be pretty awesome and smart of Sony.
 
So 4.5GB is the guaranteed amount?

I'm not sure we can count "flexible" RAM. I mean, if we're doing a bunch of things at any given time...would a game disable something suddenly?

I guess those saying 7GB available were WAY OFF.

4.5GB is still more than enough. It falls right in with what I expect if the PS4 is going to multi-task like the X1. Not to mention, real-time video encoding/recording takes a lot of memory.

But 3.5 GB's worth? Really? What the hell are Sony and MS thinking? MS in particular; I'm sure they could've optimized their OS to take up less of a footprint than 3GB. But I'm particularly stunned by Sony here; if their PS4 OS is based on FreeBSD, why in the hell do they need 3.5 GB of GDDR5 RAM for multitasking features, present or future? FreeBSD is much less bloated than the Windows kernel.

For comparisons sake, look at what the PS3 and 360 were able to do this gen while reserving only 1/8 or 1/10th of their platform's RAM for multitasking (and not up to 50% of it, like these new systems are pushing). Sure in most cases it isn't "run web browser and Skype and game and blahblahblah at once", but I would not think you'd need 3-3.5 GB to suddenly implement that functionality.

The video encoding/decoding stuff....I'm not sure of Xbone's setup there, but doesn't PS4 have dedicated hardware for that? If they're taking away that much GDDR5 for a feature like that, why not just make the dedicated hardware....better? At this point why is it even there (I'm not being sarcastic; would actually like to know the purpose).

I really get the feeling Sony is being reactionary here regarding the RAM reserves for multitasking, and it's a bit of a crying shame. Never did I buy into the fact they were completely against the multitasking angle and only going games, not for a second. But I did think they would've done more to ensure high-end game development than lock away almost half of their GDDR5 memory for multitasking apps.

Sigh, I'm a bit upset over this. But in the end I guess it's all about the games. I'll still try getting a PS4 this fall or early next year and an Xbone and WiiU later on, but I am seriously NOT digging the media social app angle these systems are shoving around. I have a computer for that stuff. I buy a game console to play games, not watch films or listen to music. And for people who buy them for that, they could just as easily get a cheap computer in the same price-point more than capable of that and true multitasking (or a tablet even).

Hell the only way I'll ever really embrace the media angle of these systems is if the games themselves take full advantage of what's there, and most devs aren't creative enough to figure that one out.
Good luck, Kojima.

ADDENDUM:
Considering this Eurogamer stuff is even true, of course. I hope it's just a nightmare I'm having right now.
 
Of course not. The postmortem said clearly "Our aim for announcement event was to run on PS4 hardware, 1080p, solid 30FPS, no cheats", and the demo used up 1536MB system memory, 128MB system memory, and 3072MB video memory. So if that's true, they apparently were developing on a system with more than 4GB ram.

And yet no developer knew that the final box was going to have 8GB. The guerilla representative even said that on an interview at E3. They were aiming for more than 4gb, because the devkit had more than 4gb. And some optimization would bring the usage down to 4GB
 
It's better to cap off OS space from the start and give it back incrementally rather than lose functionality for future services because of some invisible spec war.
 
Hey projectjustice, why did you stop posting? We're still looking for that 1gb os confirmation from sony, we can't find it. Maybe you can help us?

It was my mistake, it was a rumor.

http://ps4daily.com/2013/04/playstation-4-developers-7-gb-ram/

First reported here and then discussed here.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=538575

I swear I thought I read an interview where someone confirmed it.

Anyways, most were under the impression that the OS footprint was only 1GB.
 

Spongebob

Banned
However, sources close to Sony suggest that the PS4 approach is perhaps more flexible - the current allocation in terms of both CPU cores and memory could be reduced once the operating system is complete and then streamlined. In short, while there is no guarantee of change in the future, Sony is at least leaving the door open to the opportunity and the R&D team has experience in reducing the OS footprint - just as it did on PlayStation 3.
Whatever reduction occurs better be significant.
 

Bricky

Member
I'm not really following this, it's all a bit vague, but even IF almost half the RAM is being used for the OS... who cares?

Like really, stop acting like the amount of RAM is some kind of special sauce that will make all games look and play better, it isn't. Not having enough RAM is a problem (see current-gen consoles and games struggling with them), but once you reach a certain amount adding to it doesn't matter anymore in most cases. 4GB of RAM reserved for games is perfectly fine already, everything on top of that is a nice bonus and very likely (for 95% of next-gen games) not to be used anyway. Having 8GB is great, but not having 8GB (or even 7GB or 6GB) purely for games is completely fine and acceptable.

Fact remains that the PS4-RAM is GDDR5, which is really, really fast, now that's what is important. But even then RAM isn't gonna help Sony sell PS4's, nor is it gonna help the PS4 beat the Xbox One, nor is it gonna give the PS4 better graphics in a significant way for most games. It was never the killer-feature. THIS SHOULD NOT BE A BIG DEAL AT ALL NOR SHOULD IT EVER HAVE BEEN (well, except for tech lovers like me maybe. Let's just say it shouldn't be a big deal to the everyday gamer, that includes most of GAF. :p) Though I agree it is a bit dissapointing if what I read in this thread is true, it should only be because Sony broke a 'promise' they made and not the implications this has for games in the years to come.

That said, 3.5GB seems a bit overkill for OS. I can see how streaming, video-recording and all that will bring up the amount of RAM needed to keep everything running smooth, but even then they must be capable of optimizing their OS a bit better. On top of that it's also kinda strange that they were able to run their OS at all before they upgraded to 8GB (instead of 4GB) last-minute, of course that might be the reason they upgraded, but I doubt it.

Allright, that's all. Now continue the march with torches and pitchforks to the Sony HQ.
 

Zornack

Member
So if Ps4 shipped with 4GB as originally planned, it would have got 512MB Ram for games, right? PlayStation3.01?

Well, there's some text in the OP you could read.

especially bearing in mind that previously leaked Sony docs have only spoken of a 512MB allocation for the system software - though this information hails from the era where the new PlayStation was slated to ship with only 4GB of memory.
 
That's....I just....

You do realize that very high-end gaming PC's playing the most visually demanding stuff only get up over 3 gigs of RAM usage if they're running multiple displays at high resolutions, right? And the PS4 won't be pushing multiple displays.

Having 5.5 gigs of GDDR5 available is still a huge coup for any gaming console. The mid-field gpu in the PS4 is going to show its age long before the video memory becomes an issue.

there is no high end pc gaming anymore..

anyway ps4 is not very powerful. Its a cheap budget console. The only thing that actually set it apart. was the ram.

now that is gone.
 
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