[RedVi]

Originally Posted by SKYSONY

Thus I ask if for gaming would be better 8 Gb of DDR4 or 2/4Gb of GDDR5.

It has been debated here before how 8GB of memory at x bandwidth would compare to 4GB at 2x bandwidth. I think it is fairly unlikely that DDR3/4 would quite reach half the bandwidth of a GDDR5 solution, but in the best case scenario it could be close. Worst case it could be a bit under 25% of the GDDR5 solution, so there's not much point arguing which is the better solution until we know clock speeds and bus widths, as well as final capacities of course.

[Sonic]

MS going for 8 GB of slower memory means they will need a smaller pool of very fast RAM (Esram or edram) especially if only 5 - 6 GB of the main pool is usable by games. We know from a certain patent floating around (if this is indeed the route MS is going to take with its new machine) that some of that memory will be guaranteed usable for non gaming applications and for these apps to be in use while gaming. So if only 6 GB is available at half the bandwidth of the 4 GB going into Orbis then that's a problem if MS has no faster pool of small memory.

[bgassassin]

Originally Posted by Acert93

Sorry, sleep deprivation. I would venture a guess that there are some neat Compute scenarios that having a "large" very fast local memory could be an advantage. I remember a very interesting sparse sample GI solution from 2005 which was mostly slowed by memory.

I had been looking up an trying to learn more about cache layouts in current GPUs and while doing so I had saw that the memory (size and I believe bandwidth) seemed to be the primary limiter in GPGPU capability. I began wondering if consoles would take possible steps in addressing that limit in some fashion. Your posts seem to give me at least one possible answer for that.

Originally Posted by Sonic

MS going for 8 GB of slower memory means they will need a smaller pool of very fast RAM (Esram or edram) especially if only 5 - 6 GB of the main pool is usable by games. We know from a certain patent floating around (if this is indeed the route MS is going to take with its new machine) that some of that memory will be guaranteed usable for non gaming applications and for these apps to be in use while gaming. So if only 6 GB is available at half the bandwidth of the 4 GB going into Orbis then that's a problem if MS has no faster pool of small memory.

Don't forget PS4 games won't have free reign on that 4GB either.

[Shifty Geezer]

Originally Posted by bgassassin

I had been looking up an trying to learn more about cache layouts in current GPUs and while doing so I had saw that the memory (size and I believe bandwidth) seemed to be the primary limiter in GPGPU capability. I began wondering if consoles would take possible steps in addressing that limit in some fashion. Your posts seem to give me at least one possible answer for that.

Keeping so many computation units fed is going to be extremely difficult. That's what SPEs were trying to address with 256 KB in just keeping its vector unit+scalar unit busy. A GPU capable of 1,000 single precision flops a clock is consuming ~2000 bytes per clock. At 500 MHz that'd be 1 terabyte per second BW it could eat through. Each 2 megs of local store would last 10 clock cycles, so 10 MBs eDRAM would net you 50 cycles of work at which point you'd need new data. I don't know if that'd really be beneficial or not. It wouldn't be like Cell with enough data stored locally for the SPE to work full tilt while more data is fetched unlses you had an enormous amount of local store.

GPUs are so wide that the memory issues will always be limited to main BW. It does make one wonder though if more could be achieved with less computation units and fast local store to feed them?

[N2O]

Originally Posted by Sonic

MS going for 8 GB of slower memory means they will need a smaller pool of very fast RAM (Esram or edram) especially if only 5 - 6 GB of the main pool is usable by games. We know from a certain patent floating around (if this is indeed the route MS is going to take with its new machine) that some of that memory will be guaranteed usable for non gaming applications and for these apps to be in use while gaming. So if only 6 GB is available at half the bandwidth of the 4 GB going into Orbis then that's a problem if MS has no faster pool of small memory.

What,there is someone really believe nextbox will use 3GB RAM for non-gaming?and PS4 gonna use 0kb for non-gaming?or let's say,someone still believe PS4 will be a game console?

[SKYSONY]

Originally Posted by N2O

What,there is someone really believe nextbox will use 3GB RAM for non-gaming?and PS4 gonna use 0kb for non-gaming?or let's say,someone still believe PS4 will be a game console?

I think people believe the Xbox 3 is gonna use a bigger amount of RAM for non-gaming, and Orbis will use less RAM for them. If the final PS4 specs have 2 GB of GDDR5, I think no more than 0.5 GB of RAM for the system and apps.

[Rangers]

Originally Posted by N2O

What,there is someone really believe nextbox will use 3GB RAM for non-gaming?and PS4 gonna use 0kb for non-gaming?or let's say,someone still believe PS4 will be a game console?

It's a rumor, and some one on this board semi-hinted at it as well.

I put credibility in it.

Edit: meaning 3GB 360.

I'd expect PS4 to use at least .5GB if it has 4GB RAM.

[Prophecy2k]

Originally Posted by N2O

What,there is someone really believe nextbox will use 3GB RAM for non-gaming?and PS4 gonna use 0kb for non-gaming?or let's say,someone still believe PS4 will be a game console?

The 3GB reserved for non-gaming use does sound rediculously excessive, however this comes from rumours (un-verifiable ones of course). So its not like people are just randomly choosing to believe that the Nextbox OS will sup so much memory.

Personally I can't see either console's memory footprint being less than 250-500MB. I mean how much else do you want a low-power console to be doing outside of running your game?

[Prophecy2k]

Originally Posted by Sonic

MS going for 8 GB of slower memory means they will need a smaller pool of very fast RAM (Esram or edram) especially if only 5 - 6 GB of the main pool is usable by games. We know from a certain patent floating around (if this is indeed the route MS is going to take with its new machine) that some of that memory will be guaranteed usable for non gaming applications and for these apps to be in use while gaming. So if only 6 GB is available at half the bandwidth of the 4 GB going into Orbis then that's a problem if MS has no faster pool of small memory.

I've wondered alot about this rumour of the Nextbox having 6-8GB of DDR3/4. My biggest concern would be load times. I mean to load 6-8GB worth of data from an optical drive into a relatively slow pool of main ram, whether bluray or DVD, would take forever.

How would you get around that?

[Shifty Geezer]

Originally Posted by Rangers

I'd expect PS4 to use at least .5GB if it has 4GB RAM.

Why? PS3 can render all sorts of functions and uses up <100 MB. Efficient apps needn't consumer masses of RAM to run, and there isn't a real need for massive multitasking in a conventional box. So unless these consoles are to become app servers to the home, running everyone's web browsing and video playback and multiple games across TV and phones and tablet, the need for OS RAM consumption isn't high.

I can see a larger footprint for enabling background webpages and immediate switching to a browser in game, but if that's not enabled (and with the ubiquity of handhelds that can browse simultaneously while gaming, one ahs to question the value of mutlitasking web browsing with game playing) then the OS needn't consume huge amounts.

[Blazkowicz]

I don't think background tasks would consume much memory bandwith, it should be crap like downloads, gamer account updates etc. and the OS scheduler will keep it all at low priority.
reserving a whopping 2GB is interesting, it's a generous amount to run windows 8 with a full internet explorer and apps. at any time you can pause the game and switch to the apps and vice versa, always seemlessly.
1GB would work already, in line with current tablets, 2GB makes it a better computer. dunno if you would edit your photos or something.

this would make the xbox competition for Windows PC, which is weird.
there is a question of what are allowed as Metro apps, and whether there would be additional restrictions on the xbox. if you can get DosBox, console emulators etc. you can now play thousands of pirated games.
a torrent client? there's quite some "video on demand" available there.

[N2O]

Originally Posted by SKYSONY

I think people believe the Xbox 3 is gonna use a bigger amount of RAM for non-gaming, and Orbis will use less RAM for them. If the final PS4 specs have 2 GB of GDDR5, I think no more than 0.5 GB of RAM for the system and apps.

Well look at win7->8,8 use less ram than 7,they won't going back,and even running game with full of apps,it's pretty hard to use more than 1GB RAM(same with PS4)

[Prophecy2k]

There's no way MS would allow users to run a full Windows install on Xbox.

They may have a console OS which is a stripped down version of windows 8, but it would be fully locked down to allow only the install and running of software that is sold through their specialised MS windows store.

Allowing windows on Xbox would be akin to MS declaring war on all their PC desktop and laptop manufacturing partners. It would piss far too many people off. Probably publishers and developers alike

[McHuj]

Originally Posted by N2O

Well look at win7->8,8 use less ram than 7,they won't going back,and even running game with full of apps,it's pretty hard to use more than 1GB RAM(same with PS4)

That may be true for today's apps. But they have visions of a device that will last 5-10 years. Who knows what apps and their requirements will be in 3,5,8 years. They can't decided 5 years in that now the OS/Apps will take a gig more.

If the next xbox is truly going to be the media hub of the living room, I can easily see it eating up lots of ram for non gaming tasks: Main display running a game, tasks like IE running in the background, perhaps audio video streams to multiple devices, background downloading/dvr'ing of TV/Movies, etc.

I think there's a possibility that this device may have multiple concurrent users for the various apps/tasks.

[Blazkowicz]

Originally Posted by Prophecy2k

I've wondered alot about this rumour of the Nextbox having 6-8GB of DDR3/4. My biggest concern would be load times. I mean to load 6-8GB worth of data from an optical drive into a relatively slow pool of main ram, whether bluray or DVD, would take forever.

How would you get around that?

there was a lengthy thread about console storage. debate about the presence of a standard HDD : it's big enough to have all or most of your games and does about 100MB/s ;
and a lot of support for the idea of a generous flash cache. not unlikely when you look at how ssd prices have dropped (if global flash supply is not a problem)

but there can be some techniques, I'm mainly thinking about textures packed and with advanced compression (wavelet or other), recompressed to dxtc or whatever the GPU uses. I believe Rage does that. (it's also constrained by storage speed but it's a particular game made to load textures everytime you look at something)

[Grall]

Originally Posted by Shifty Geezer

A GPU capable of 1,000 single precision flops a clock is consuming ~2000 bytes per clock. At 500 MHz that'd be 1 terabyte per second BW it could eat through.

As frightening as that example is (since no commercially feasible solution exists to provide 1TB per second off-chip data transfer rate in a consumer product), it's also a very unrealistic situation. This rate of data consumption would only occur if the SPs only ran one single instruction on each chunk of data, and I think shader programs have evolved quite a bit beyond that by now...!

I don't know how long shaders commonly are these days (and undoubtedly these shaders also reference additional data such as textures and so on), but I don't think they hit 1TB/s theoretical data rates either.

[Shifty Geezer]

Originally Posted by McHuj

If the next xbox is truly going to be the media hub of the living room, I can easily see it eating up lots of ram for non gaming tasks: Main display running a game, tasks like IE running in the background, perhaps audio video streams to multiple devices, background downloading/dvr'ing of TV/Movies, etc.

This is possible, but it's also a rather crazy way to go IMO. Why have the Xbox streaming background movies to handhelds instead of them streaming from the internet and the cloud services? Plus any streaming or downloading task needs only a minimal amount of RAM as a buffer. The impact on HDD use during a game should be far more significant.

Well, there's a whole other thread on this. Suffice to say that the OS requirements could be anything from 100MBs to 100GBs dedpending on what direction the console companies want to go. As such, we can't really guess how a 4GB or 8GB or 2GB console would perform or compare to another, especailly without info on the other storage like SSD. You may find a browser could be run task-swapped rather than multitasked, but with an SSD it might be a difference of 0.2 seconds to restore rather than 0.1 seconds when it's resident in RAM.

[Blazkowicz]

Originally Posted by McHuj

If the next xbox is truly going to be the media hub of the living room, I can easily see it eating up lots of ram for non gaming tasks: Main display running a game, tasks like IE running in the background, perhaps audio video streams to multiple devices, background downloading/dvr'ing of TV/Movies, etc.

I think there's a possibility that this device may have multiple concurrent users for the various apps/tasks.

one could say streaming, dvr, download etc. hardly eats memory. but still, web browsing can be heavy quick. if you end up with a wireless keyb/mouse and a 1920x1080 screen you'll forget about not being on a PC and won't do limited single page browsing.

if you try browsing the modern web on a 256MB computer (with XP or a light linux desktop, and the latest firefox or chromium) it gets hairy.

concurrent users? I don't think it's possible, because it's Windows Server territory. even though consumer windows has all the guts already (remote desktop and fast user switching are a prove of this) you can only do it with expensive software licensing.

it's why I run linux, because I can log to another machine whenever I need it. vs 1000 euros of licenses including special ones just for one windows computer.
windows "terminal server" licenses (for each remote user) don't even have their price listed pubicly.

[onQ]

Originally Posted by Shifty Geezer

Why? PS3 can render all sorts of functions and uses up <100 MB. Efficient apps needn't consumer masses of RAM to run, and there isn't a real need for massive multitasking in a conventional box. So unless these consoles are to become app servers to the home, running everyone's web browsing and video playback and multiple games across TV and phones and tablet, the need for OS RAM consumption isn't high.

I can see a larger footprint for enabling background webpages and immediate switching to a browser in game, but if that's not enabled (and with the ubiquity of handhelds that can browse simultaneously while gaming, one ahs to question the value of mutlitasking web browsing with game playing) then the OS needn't consume huge amounts.

I believe that will be the case.

[Blazkowicz]

Originally Posted by Shifty Geezer

This is possible, but it's also a rather crazy way to go IMO. Why have the Xbox streaming background movies to handhelds instead of them streaming from the internet and the cloud services?

that wastes your slowest bandwith. (or, costs more to the cloud provider)

of course, you would do that streaming from xbox if you had downloaded the movies to the xbox, rather than stream them in the first place.
it depends on your internet connection, further network or server congestion, personal preference.

I like that a downloaded movie is instantly accessible, skips instantly between parts of it, is of higher quality than what you can afford with streaming. you would likely be able to schedule the download from the tablet, have a quick look at it or the option of watching it on the console or another device.

[Shifty Geezer]

Originally Posted by onQ

I believe that will be the case.

So people are going to give up on smart handhelds and buy instgead dumb handsets that just stream content from a home server? Is there any, even lsight, suggestion of moves by someone towards this? MS have unveiled Windows 8 mobile and a high-spec tablet with the power to run apps natively. Who's suggesting we instead run apps remotely on a computer somewhere else in the house?

Originally Posted by Blazkowicz

that wastes your slowest bandwith. (or, costs more to the cloud provider)...you would likely be able to schedule the download from the tablet, have a quick look at it or the option of watching it on the console or another device.

The specifics of movies are one use. Taken in isolation, that'd place the XB3 against standalone media servers. I can see something of a market for that, but then the RAM requirements are minimal. Streaming media from the XB3 won't need lots of RAM. Streaming audio or anything else won't take much. The only reason to stream apps from a remote computer is if the local target device hasn't the capability to run the app itself. eg. Game streaming would enable a small, low-performance device to play big-boy games. For everything else, if the target devices have enough performance then why not use that and run native content? Why have a web browser in XB3 and stream the pages to a handset or tablet? Why have a map application steaming maps? MS themselves have cross-device apps in their gameplan, where you buy the app and install it on multiple devices.

For most everyday tasks, the performance requirements are light such that a mobile chipset can perform them. Without a need to run high-performance tasks (HD video editing etc.), there's no need to defer to an external box.

I'm just not seeing a scenario where MS's view of the next-gen xbox is a home mainframe doing all the work of each user. That model is the domain of cloud computing. Processing power is cheap enough that people will have devices capable of everyday computing.

[bgassassin]

Originally Posted by tunafish

T-Ram should be cheaper. That is, if it actually works. Which is not a given.

Forgot to respond. The reason I said cost was because of this.

http://translate.google.com/translat...ed=0CFAQ7gEwAw

Improved SRAM single transistor technology is the world's largest capacity SRAM Ramtron subsidiary Enhanced Memory Systems improved SRAM, the modified SRAM capacity is four times the market memory capacity but low price, low power consumption; Four times larger than the traditional six-transistor SRAM capacity, the price is 4 times cheaper than traditional SRAM; The ESRAM speed with the interface with the conventional SRAM, is the low price of the large capacity SRAM improved SRAM capacity is four times the current market memory capacity, can be used in the system design a ESRAM can replace the four traditional expensive SRAM.

I don't know if there's anything to back that up though.

Originally Posted by Shifty Geezer

Keeping so many computation units fed is going to be extremely difficult. That's what SPEs were trying to address with 256 KB in just keeping its vector unit+scalar unit busy. A GPU capable of 1,000 single precision flops a clock is consuming ~2000 bytes per clock. At 500 MHz that'd be 1 terabyte per second BW it could eat through. Each 2 megs of local store would last 10 clock cycles, so 10 MBs eDRAM would net you 50 cycles of work at which point you'd need new data. I don't know if that'd really be beneficial or not. It wouldn't be like Cell with enough data stored locally for the SPE to work full tilt while more data is fetched unlses you had an enormous amount of local store.

GPUs are so wide that the memory issues will always be limited to main BW. It does make one wonder though if more could be achieved with less computation units and fast local store to feed them?

Wow.

I don't know if this would even be worthwhile, but could it be feasible for a console version of a GPU to modify the L2 cache in the GPU with a memory tech that would better perform? Assuming the usage of a more "traditional GPU design. I say feasible in that while I saw your comments on IHVs, could it be that they feel it's not necessary because of the "run of the mill" usage by the consumer? And that in a console setting there would be more of a benefit due to the dedicated gaming aspect? Or would that be a waste of time and money? Though I'm assuming the mass production would at least help some for the latter.

[McHuj]

Originally Posted by Shifty Geezer

I'm just not seeing a scenario where MS's view of the next-gen xbox is a home mainframe doing all the work of each user. That model is the domain of cloud computing. Processing power is cheap enough that people will have devices capable of everyday computing.

I'm thinking MS (similar to what Pachter said) might try to get in with a cable company(ies) at least in the US and sell the 720 as the cable box replacement.

Currently, I use Uverse at home. We have two boxes, the main one with a 500GB (I think) hard drive that can record 4 HD streams and a dumb wireless stub on another TV that can watch TV and recorded programs from the main box. I can control them with my IPAD as well.

I could easily see MS wanting to do this with the 720 as the main box and the current 360 (or a smaller revision) as the extender. Mark Rein speculated on something like this. I would love it, if I had just one box under my TV and no crappy cable box.

Now how does this go back to 3 GB of ram for the OS. I'm not sure, but if you give them the room they'll fill it.

[onQ]

Originally Posted by Shifty Geezer

So people are going to give up on smart handhelds and buy instgead dumb handsets that just stream content from a home server? Is there any, even lsight, suggestion of moves by someone towards this? MS have unveiled Windows 8 mobile and a high-spec tablet with the power to run apps natively. Who's suggesting we instead run apps remotely on a computer somewhere else in the house?

The specifics of movies are one use. Taken in isolation, that'd place the XB3 against standalone media servers. I can see something of a market for that, but then the RAM requirements are minimal. Streaming media from the XB3 won't need lots of RAM. Streaming audio or anything else won't take much. The only reason to stream apps from a remote computer is if the local target device hasn't the capability to run the app itself. eg. Game streaming would enable a small, low-performance device to play big-boy games. For everything else, if the target devices have enough performance then why not use that and run native content? Why have a web browser in XB3 and stream the pages to a handset or tablet? Why have a map application steaming maps? MS themselves have cross-device apps in their gameplan, where you buy the app and install it on multiple devices.

For most everyday tasks, the performance requirements are light such that a mobile chipset can perform them. Without a need to run high-performance tasks (HD video editing etc.), there's no need to defer to an external box.

I'm just not seeing a scenario where MS's view of the next-gen xbox is a home mainframe doing all the work of each user. That model is the domain of cloud computing. Processing power is cheap enough that people will have devices capable of everyday computing.

When you add in things like Smart Glasses & Watches where they would want to have less hardware in the product yet give you nice visuals.

[Sonic]

It's not just a dedicated chunk of memory, but also a dedicated APU to go along with whatever programs the secondary user is using while the primary user games. Pretty neat if you ask me. And this is just what's floating around in the patent we linked to a while back.