NGGP: NextGen Garbage Pile (aka: No one reads the topics or stays on topic) *spawn*

[brasnial]

First, the RAM (68GB/s bandwidth) is not slow. It's design to work with embedded SRAM. This time around the embedded SRAM is more functional all around compare to 360 eDRAM. Nintendo been using this sort of technique since Gamecube. I believe Wii U uses the same technique to be able to overcome its 13GB/s main memory bandwidth.

Certain Dev like Crytek asked for 8GB minimum. The only affordable solution for 8GB of RAM is DDR3. More memory is a good thing. You can have bigger assets, you can pre calculate more stuff and put in that space. Maybe 1.2TF and 8GB RAM + 32MB eSRAM is a nice optimised ratio for given graphic fidelity for MS.

At this point I'm more worried with Orbis only having 4GB, even if that RAM chips are GDDR5. It's like PS3 RSX with eDRAM and not having GDDR3 but relied solely on the 256MB XDR. PS3 Multiplatform titles usually comes out worse in terms of assets, it would look much worse if PS3 only have 256MB XDR, even if it has more bandwidth.

Multiplat Devs will most likely uses the extra performance of Orbis to squeeze in the assets into its smaller memory, you know higher compression, calculate some stuff in real time instead, etc, etc, just to have parity with Durango version.

This is similar to 360 and PS3, but at much worse scale. Sony need to put another 2GB minimum, 4GB would be good. If not they'll just build another expensive console that are perceived as having inferior ports.

Thank you for answering my question ........so we are looking at to completely different disign choices here .
So its logical to think that at the end of the day both machines will perform to there strengths at I right .

 

[novcze]

........Maybe 1.2TF and 8GB RAM + 32MB eSRAM is a nice optimised ratio for given graphic fidelity for MS.

At this point I'm more worried with Orbis only having 4GB, even if that RAM chips are GDDR5.....

Isn't huge chunk of that 8GB reserved for OS?
We heard 3.5GB in some rumour, so it's more like 4.5GB slow RAM + 32 MB eSram vs. 3.5GB of fast RAM (512MB reserved for OS).

 

[Averagejoe]

Hi me again
I just want to add to my earlier question ....so if we believe Microsoft is using a 1.2 Tf gpu like the leaks state why would you pair it with 8 gigs of ram ........?
I have never heard of any PC gpu of the same spec being paired with this much memory ........have any of you .
So my question still stands let's forget about the power of the gpu and think about why Microsoft a software company would to pair a 1.2TF gpu with 8 gigs of memory .
It just seems such a unusual set up unlike any think I've read about or heard of before on PC .

Maybe you may think you have not heard about any PC doing something like that but i am sure you probably have and just did not got it,all is based on how consoles differ from PC.

On PC you will see a GPU with 2GB of ram,but you are forgetting about the system ram,most people this day have 4GB or more,many have 8GB of system ram or more.

So 8GB of system ram + 2GB of ram on the GPU and you have a systems with 10GB of memory,now many card ship with 3GB of ram and even 4GB,imagine a systems with 4GB of video memory for the card and 8GB on systems memory,we are talking about 12GB of total memory sure is not shared,but is total there are many users on PC with this already,and that is 4GB more already than Durango and even further away from Orbis.

 

[V3]

Eurogamer also say something about the PS4,i did not make mi mind i just use common sense since there is not fairy dust that boost performance magically if AMD had such a thing Nvidia and Intel would be screwed by now,i do believe on things to help the GPU reach it max potential that is something that happen with the PS3.

In fact if i have to believe one rumor over another i take the PS4,not because i made my mind or are extremely biased in favor of it,but because sony already did this,Cell was a great help for the RSX in more ways than just 1.

In fact all this helper module thing look like a page pull from Cell if you ask me,maybe MS add something seeing how good sony was able to do with a weak GPU like the RSX,it would not be the first time,we know the 360 had 10MB Edram,something like it was on the Emotion engine on the PS2 which had 4MB..

Are we sure that Sony's 8 cores isn't an APU like all the rumours been saying. Basically APU (8 Jaguar cores + some CUs), and GPU with 18 CUs ? I mean you don't go to AMD and asked for some strange design involving Cell SPEs. AMD is currently known for their APU, so it is most likely some APU based design.

Maybe Sony asked AMD to see if their CUs can be customised to emulate Cell SPEs for PS3 BC. So the CUs in the APU is alter compare to the GPU section (like extra instructions, registers, SRAM ?). I'm sure Sony want to have BC if they can.

 

[Johnny_Physics]

It's all bullplop.

But they're not that keen on allowing someone to just port a previously released console game to their console without throwing in some exclusive content. That's the only way one version will be forced to be "better" than another version.

 

[Aeoniss]

Isn't huge chunk of that 8GB reserved for OS?
We heard 3.5GB in some rumour, so it's more like 4.5GB slow RAM + 32 MB eSram vs. 3.5GB of fast RAM (512MB reserved for OS).

Yes. Present rumors (if at all believable) peg the Durango OS at roughly 3GB with the Orbis OS at 512MB.

 

[V3]

Isn't huge chunk of that 8GB reserved for OS?
We heard 3.5GB in some rumour, so it's more like 4.5GB slow RAM + 32 MB eSram vs. 3.5GB of fast RAM (512MB reserved for OS).

That's still 1GB difference. That's huge in console term. That's more memory than what current gen consoles have. 1GB can fit alot of assets. And like I said before 68GB/s is not that slow. And when you can read and write to the embedded SRAM, it's actually quite fast main memory bandwdith. It's really non issue here.

 

[brasnial]

Maybe you may think you have not heard about any PC doing something like that but i am sure you probably have and just did not got it,all is based on how consoles differ from PC.

On PC you will see a GPU with 2GB of ram,but you are forgetting about the system ram,most people this day have 4GB or more,many have 8GB of system ram or more.

So 8GB of system ram + 2GB of ram on the GPU and you have a systems with 10GB of memory,now many card ship with 3GB of ram and even 4GB,imagine a systems with 4GB of video memory for the card and 8GB on systems memory,we are talking about 12GB of total memory sure is not shared,but is total there are many users on PC with this already,and that is 4GB more already than Durango and even further away from Orbis.

Thank you averagejoe ......I'm just thinking not about power but design choices and what that means for us as gamers and developers who have to make the games .
Do these design choice mean that developers are looking at a large rise in costs again as at the begining of the last generation .....?
Why I ask this is this if a developer goes under what ever way you look at it some creative minds are lost to the industry which means gamers like us suffer .
As much as I like graphic I don't want it to cost the hobby I love its most creative minds .

 

[Averagejoe]

Are we sure that Sony's 8 cores isn't an APU like all the rumours been saying. Basically APU (8 Jaguar cores + some CUs), and GPU with 18 CUs ? I mean you don't go to AMD and asked for some strange design involving Cell SPEs. AMD is currently known for their APU, so it is most likely some APU based design.

Maybe Sony asked AMD to see if their CUs can be customised to emulate Cell SPEs for PS3 BC. So the CUs in the APU is alter compare to the GPU section (like extra instructions, registers, SRAM ?). I'm sure Sony want to have BC if they can.

That could also be the case..

I am just going by what Eurogamer say,but it could be like you say since the info is not confirmed.

 

[Prophecy2k]

First, the RAM (68GB/s bandwidth) is not slow. It's design to work with embedded SRAM. This time around the embedded SRAM is more functional all around compare to 360 eDRAM. Nintendo been using this sort of technique since Gamecube. I believe Wii U uses the same technique to be able to overcome its 13GB/s main memory bandwidth.

Certain Dev like Crytek asked for 8GB minimum. The only affordable solution for 8GB of RAM is DDR3. More memory is a good thing. You can have bigger assets, you can pre calculate more stuff and put in that space. Maybe 1.2TF and 8GB RAM + 32MB eSRAM is a nice optimised ratio for given graphic fidelity for MS.

At this point I'm more worried with Orbis only having 4GB, even if that RAM chips are GDDR5. It's like PS3 RSX with eDRAM and not having GDDR3 but relied solely on the 256MB XDR. PS3 Multiplatform titles usually comes out worse in terms of assets, it would look much worse if PS3 only have 256MB XDR, even if it has more bandwidth.

Multiplat Devs will most likely uses the extra performance of Orbis to squeeze in the assets into its smaller memory, you know higher compression, calculate some stuff in real time instead, etc, etc, just to have parity with Durango version.

This is similar to 360 and PS3, but at much worse scale. Sony need to put another 2GB minimum, 4GB would be good. If not they'll just build another expensive console that are perceived as having inferior ports.

Why? Durango only has 5GB available to games if this is true, so 3.5 vs 5GB is much less of an issue. Again we're talking 3.5GB of 192GB/s GDDR5 vs 5GB 68GB/s DDR3 (avec bandwidth saving scratchpad).

Additionally, game assets are not going to balloon in size. Costs of asset production in the first place will prohibit this. Devs will simply create assets for the 3.5GB available memory on the PS4 (lowest common denominator), and then make use of the extra memory on Durango where they can (e.g. streaming in more data into main ram so as to reduce load times etc).

Comparing PS3 and Xbox 360 RAM capacities is disingenuous as the size and memory footprint of game assets and data are not going to scale with the RAM increase from last gen. You won't see 8-16 x data used for game assets, just because you now have that many times more RAM. Texture resolutions and model polygon counts aren't going to increase in the same fashion, as because of diminishing returns they simply don't need to. It's much more prudent for devs to make better use of the resources, rather than wasting them on 4.8million poly models where they had only 300k models last gen for example.

 

[Averagejoe]

Thank you averagejoe ......I'm just thinking not about power but design choices and what that means for us as gamers and developers who have to make the games .
Do these design choice mean that developers are looking at a large rise in costs again as at the begining of the last generation .....?
Why I ask this is this if a developer goes under what ever way you look at it some creative minds are lost to the industry which means gamers like us suffer .
As much as I like graphic I don't want it to cost the hobby I love its most creative minds .

I my self don't see the logic on using DDR3 unless they are cheapen out,DDR3 is very cheap so adding allot of it and using something to help bandwidth wise may be a design that work perfectly for them while saving money.

The spec of Durango suggest a modest console,a complete turn away from MS pass movements,i just don't know i am speculating here,but i think it has allot to do with MS intentions of going after the casual market more,people may think this is out of the question but is not MS goal is to win not to be second for eternity,and if a gimmick will help them win and ear profits at the same time is not out of the question that they will try it,some people just find it hard to swallow because MS pass movements..

The xbox 360 generation was nothing like the first xbox one,people should see how MS has transform and see that just because they could not be chasing power now (total assumption by me) it doesn't mean they can deliver a features rich console full of new thing,that huge amount of ram alone show me that the 720 will be probably way over the PS4 features and function wise..

 

[Strange]

That's still 1GB difference. That's huge in console term. That's more memory than what current gen consoles have. 1GB can fit alot of assets. And like I said before 68GB/s is not that slow. And when you can read and write to the embedded SRAM, it's actually quite fast main memory bandwdith. It's really non issue here.

What's the bandwidth of GDDR5?

All relative

 

[Xenio]

Sorry but I don't buy the rumor that OS will allocate 3 GB on a console, this is ridicolous, we are still talking about microsoft? who here that is a developer believe that?

anyway, a difference of 50% only in gpu, assuming that DME isn't here, will translate in around 15-20% of general performances advantage, very tiny, almost the same story.. ix durango runs 1080P@30Hz with 2x MSAA, then orbis will be 1080P@30Hz 4x MSAA at best, 20% don't change the game

and there we have to put a lot og things missing:
memory
system architecture
DME accelerators units

for what I think, they will be on pair, and if some differences will happen for durango or for orbis, those will be barely visible to our eye

 

[Jubei]

That's still 1GB difference. That's huge in console term. That's more memory than what current gen consoles have. 1GB can fit alot of assets. And like I said before 68GB/s is not that slow. And when you can read and write to the embedded SRAM, it's actually quite fast main memory bandwdith. It's really non issue here.

Its a moot point in my opinion, multiplatform developers will target the lowest common denominator. Having 1 GB extra is an advantage for sure but that doesnt mean 3,5 GB DDR5 wont be enough.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Sorry but I don't buy the rumor that OS will allocate 3 GB on a console, this is ridicolous, we are still talking about microsoft? who here that is a developer believe that?
...

It isn't 3 GB for the OS. How much RAM does the OS use on Surface RT? I'd ballpark it to be the same. The leftover RAM of the 3 GB would be for running applications. The reason for the split is so you can play a game with a dedicated 5 GB and then the other 3 GB cover the OS + Kinect (maybe) + applications. That's the interpretation if the rumours are true, of course. Like I said, Surface RT has 2 GB of RAM and Surface Pro has 4 GB, so from that you can maybe guess at what the OS is going to look like.

 

[V3]

Why? Durango only has 5GB available to games if this is true, so 3.5 vs 5GB is much less of an issue. Again we're talking 3.5GB of 192GB/s GDDR5 vs 5GB 68GB/s DDR3 (avec bandwidth saving scratchpad).

Additionally, game assets are not going to balloon in size. Costs of asset production in the first place will prohibit this. Devs will simply create assets for the 3.5GB available memory on the PS4 (lowest common denominator), and then make use of the extra memory on Durango where they can (e.g. streaming in more data into main ram so as to reduce load times etc).

Comparing PS3 and Xbox 360 RAM capacities is disingenuous as the size and memory footprint of game assets and data are not going to scale with the RAM increase from last gen. You won't see 8-16 x data used for game assets, just because you now have that many times more RAM. Texture resolutions and model polygon counts aren't going to increase in the same fashion, as because of diminishing returns they simply don't need to. It's much more prudent for devs to make better use of the resources, rather than wasting them on 4.8million poly models where they had only 300k models last gen for example.

We're still quite a way from renderfarm CG and 1GB is a big difference. Devs will fill up RAM given, heck devs like Crytek asked publicly for 8GB of RAM as minimum because they want to put in better assets in games.

There is no guarantee multiplat devs will use PS4 as lead. They didn't use PS3 for much of this gen multiplat titles. I'm just not sure you can stream in 1GB deficit worth of data.

And obviously MS is reserving 3GB for a good reasons. Maybe there are more build in features, that are useful once gamers get the taste of it. And these features, if are implemented on PS4 requires some RAM, you know like much of PS3 in game features, thus reducing more of PS4 RAM pool. 4GB is a huge deficit anyway you look at it.

 

[Averagejoe]

Sorry but I don't buy the rumor that OS will allocate 3 GB on a console, this is ridicolous, we are still talking about microsoft? who here that is a developer believe that?

anyway, a difference of 50% only in gpu, assuming that DME isn't here, will translate in around 15-20% of general performances advantage, very tiny, almost the same story.. ix durango runs 1080P@30Hz with 2x MSAA, then orbis will be 1080P@30Hz 4x MSAA at best, 20% don't change the game

and there we have to put a lot og things missing:
memory
system architecture
DME accelerators units

for what I think, they will be on pair, and if some differences will happen for durango or for orbis, those will be barely visible to our eye

Wait but doesn't the PS4 also have help for the GPU.?

 

[Xenio]

It isn't 3 GB for the OS. How much RAM does the OS use on Surface RT? I'd ballpark it to be the same. The leftover RAM of the 3 GB would be for running applications. The reason for the split is so you can play a game with a dedicated 5 GB and then the other 3 GB cover the OS + Kinect (maybe) + applications. That's the interpretation if the rumours are true, of course. Like I said, Surface RT has 2 GB of RAM and Surface Pro has 4 GB, so from that you can maybe guess at what the OS is going to look like.

ok it can be reasonable if the console is acting only as general surface computer, but while you are playing a game, for which reason the OS keep allocate 3 GB, to run photoshop in multitask?
came on what it the reason why the os+kinect+whatsoever grow in a factor of more than 102x (from 32 to 3072 MB) from 360 to durango? came on, this is far beyond the reality..

 

[Scott_Arm]

ok it can be reasonable if the console is acting only as general surface computer, but while you are playing a game, for which reason the OS keep allocate 3 GB, to run photoshop in multitask?
came on what it the reason why the os+kinect+whatsoever grow in a factor of more than 102x (from 32 to 3072 MB) from 360 to durango? came on, this is far beyond the reality..

I haven't looked, but I'd guess Windows 8 RT runs using up something near 1 GB of RAM on it's own. Factor in Kinect + other LIVE services and you have somewhere between 1.5 - 2GB free to run some applications in the background. One of those could be a full blown Windows Media Center app, so you can stream content to other devices in the house in the background. It's all guessing, but if the rumours are true they chose 3 GB for a reason, and it has to be more than simple LIVE services like voice chat.

 

[milk]

I think they could be reserving 3GB for launch so they have spare space to develop all functionality they want with good performance quickly enough to be all ready for launch. After the lauch, they migh go into optmising the system's OS and reducing its footprint with later patches. By the end of the gen the os will probably have twice the functionality of its lauch version while using no more than 1GB. Later games will also benefit from those upgrades of avaliable memory alowing some impressive new graphic tricks further into the gen.