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

[Averagejoe]

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.

No is not when GDDR5 is way faster..

And Crytec asking for 8GB means nothing,when 3GB is reserve for system,5GB DDR3 will not have a big impact on the PS4,i just don't see it even less with sony they are use to work always ram starved,since the PS1 days.

The 720 will have more features for sure,but i don't think sony will go for those,specially when the PS4 is say to have just 512MB for system,i think the PS4 will more gaming oriented and less app oriented,that doesn't mean you will not see,facebook,twitter,cross game party chat and invites,but MS will surely have more features probably video chat while online playing and things like that.

There is not doubt in my mind that MS will have a much feature rich console than Sony,but probably sony will have one with much better looking games.

 

[tinfoilhatman]

And Crytec asking for 8GB means nothing,when 3GB is reserve for system,5GB DDR3 will not have a big impact on the PS4,i just don't see it even less with sony they are use to work always ram starved,since the PS1 days.

360 uses 32 MB of ram for the OS today and provides a ton of functionality...........does anyone seriously believe that XB720 will jump from 32MB to 3GB?!?!?!?!

That just makes no sense to me what so ever , even the highest end stand alone DVR units use like 512 MB of RAM.

 

[Xenio]

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.

why a windows rt should allocate 1 GB while you're playing, please answer beacouse I don't see a reason to this crazyness

do you forgot that os+kinect+live+downloading takes 32 MB las time?
you believe that this can grow beyond a 100x factor, a 100x factor!

and even assuming that Win RT will run for some strange reasons photoshop in multitask while you are playing, how can you jump from 1 GB to 1,5-2-3 GB for "some applications", so photoshop isn't enough? while you're playing halo5 you have in multitask, photoshop, illustrator and premiere?

 

[Scott_Arm]

360 uses 32 MB of ram for the OS today and provides a ton of functionality...........does anyone seriously believe that XB720 will jump from 32MB to 3GB?!?!?!?!

That just makes no sense to me what so ever , even the highest end stand alone DVR units use like 512 MB of RAM.

If they've reserved 3 GB for the OS, you should be thinking a lot bigger than DVRs. I'm not saying the 3 GB is true, because I'm not sure any of the rumours are totally accurate, but you have smartphones and tablets with 1 - 2 GB of RAM, so what's so crazy about a media-center computer with 3 GB with a multitasking OS?

 

[Jubei]

360 uses 32 MB of ram for the OS today and provides a ton of functionality...........does anyone seriously believe that XB720 will jump from 32MB to 3GB?!?!?!?!

That just makes no sense to me what so ever , even the highest end stand alone DVR units use like 512 MB of RAM.

Does 360 have Windows 8 OS on it?

 

[patsu]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/df-hardware-next-gen-xbox-specs-leak

Eurogamer confirmed some of the rumors with their source and appear legit to them.

However, there's a fair amount of "secret sauce" in Orbis and we can disclose details on one of the more interesting additions. Paired up with the eight AMD cores, we find a bespoke GPU-like "Compute" module, designed to ease the burden on certain operations - physics calculations are a good example of traditional CPU work that are often hived off to GPU cores. We're assured that this is bespoke hardware that is not a part of the main graphics pipeline but we remain rather mystified by its standalone inclusion, bearing in mind Compute functions could be run off the main graphics cores and that devs could have the option to utilise that power for additional graphical grunt, if they so chose.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/df-hardware-orbis-unmasked-what-to-expect-from-next-gen-console

...

Since March 2012 (even further back from the alpha dev kit), people have been circulating PS4 rumors:
http://semiaccurate.com/2012/03/02/...l-be-an-x86-cpu-with-an-amd-gpu/#.UP6-xiiEklJ

One of the things that we had heard about the PS4 chip, or should we say PS4 SoC, is that Sony is really keen on the idea of TSVs. The other bit is that they are going to have lots of extras, we have heard about sensors, but that could just be part of the other odd bit, FPGAs. Yeah, there is a lot of weird talk coming out of Sony engineers, and programmable logic, aka an FPGA, is just one of the things. Additional media processing blocks, DSPs, and similar blocks are all part of the concept.

To do all of this, and I do realize how odd it sounds, you would need some monumental memory bandwidth for it not so starve. Sony is known for screwy memory architectures, if you have ever seen PS3 programming documents, you know how much pain a dev has to go through to get bits in the right place at the right time. The PS4 looks to be better in that regard, but far from perfect. Expect stacked memory, and lots of it, all over the aforementioned interposer. I know this sounds crazy, but we have been hearing it for a year plus now, and, well discounted most of it until Paul Demsey got the same story from a Sony CTO.

...

I suppose that Compute Unit Eurogamer spoke about is the DSP. The SPUs were called DSPs before. So I guess any vector engine with a local store is referred to as a DSP by these people.

EDIT: It would explain why none of the alpha devkit leaks mention an extra Compute Unit. They wrote abut extra hardware for processing video, audio, etc. I am very curious what exactly Eurogamer saw. Probably just a tech doc ?

 

[Prophecy2k]

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.

It isn't 4GB difference for games. It's 1.5GB and a huge difference in bandwidth that doesn't favour Durango (of course I'm over simplifying due to the ESRAM, but again that's only 32MB). Devs don't need to target PS4 as the lead platform to be smart enough to only produce 3.5GB worth of assets for use in both consoles. Otherwise how on earth would you use 5GB of assets on a system with only 3.5GB memory? Of course you can't, so its a moot point. Devs won't produce assets of different quality for the different consoles, as that would be a waste of man-hours. 3.5GB is sufficient to produce games with significantly higher graphical fidelity than this gen. So devs will limit their assets to 3.5GB and that's it.

Crytek are out of their minds asking for 8GB memory. It's not necessary, as you cannot get 8GB RAM fast enough to feed high end GPU & CPU, and so you're then forced to use slow RAM which limits how much you can even access in a given processing time period anyway.

Let's not get confused. MS has chosen 8GB DDR3 RAM so that they can dedicate 3GB to their OS, Kinect and applications (all of which will take processing resources away, as well as fight for memory bandwidth with the game app). Whilst PS4 will have a very lean OS using only a 512MB memory footprint (likely less later on), which indicates all the other non-game appications and services not putting as much strain on the system resources as those on Durango would.

In short you're over simplifying, and there's no reason to fear for either system yet as we know not enough about all these things. I personally certainly wouldn't fear for the PS4 in terms of third party software development. Imho I'd be more concerned for the other guy's ability to keep up with 33% less GPU and 89% of the total system bandwidth (35% if you exclude ESRAM).

 

[Prophecy2k]

Since March 2012 (even further back from the alpha dev kit), people have been circulating PS4 rumors:
http://semiaccurate.com/2012/03/02/...l-be-an-x86-cpu-with-an-amd-gpu/#.UP6-xiiEklJ



I suppose that Compute Unit Eurogamer spoke about is the DSP. The SPUs were called DSPs before. So I guess any vector engine with a local store is referred to as a DSP by these people.

EDIT: It would explain why none of the alpha devkit leaks mention an extra Compute Unit. They wrote abut extra hardware for processing video, audio, etc. I am very curious what exactly Eurogamer saw. Probably just a tech doc ?

Wouldn't it just be something like an AVX2 extension? Extra CPU compute units might be more realistic though, and they would have to be modified from what exists within their GPU, so hence why they'd call them a "dedicated compute unit" rather than "CPU CUs" or "addtional CUs".

 

[upnorthsox]

Otherwise how on earth would you use 5GB of assets on a system with only 3.5GB memory?

For that matter, how would you use 50GB of assets for a system with only 5GB............

 

[Bagel seed]

From what I understand even if you have an excess of bandwidth you can always use it up in "extra" stuff like particles, alpha effects, AA, etc. Imagine MGS2 tanker rain scene.

Also from a typical streaming scenario, it might actually be possible to use 3.5gb of assets at a time (more likely ~3). In any one situation where you character is standing there could be 3gb of assets loaded up in the vicinity. Now start moving and that's where the speed of your ability to stream affects what assets get swapped in and out of that 3gb.

If we assume the max streaming capabilities of both consoles are the same then in the same scenario one console can only hold 1gb of assets in the character's vicinity while the other can do 3gb at the same FPS. Also I'm sure the magic blocks and ESRAM makes this less worse. Don't kill me if I'm wrong

 

[joesiv]

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).

Often game studios produce high resolution assets, and then the pipeline handle's the export to different target platforms. What this means, especially for key NPC's/characters, there is a really high resolution model, then they export out the lower poly models for various LOD's and textures that have backed in bump/normals at various different resolutions.

If memory really ends up being a big problem for PS4, it would be easy enough to user a lower quality LOD as the base, or export out a special version for that target platform. So no, I don't think developers will target the lowest common denominator like you suggest. Game development has changed a lot since the start of the current generation. Developers have much more scaleable engines and pipelines.

 

[LightHeaven]

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.

It shouldn't be as much as Windows RT, since it's a full port of windows 8 to arm. Including the desktop, and system applications that have no place in a console.

Also it doesn't make sense to reserve that much memory for background applications, because metro apps are managed like ios apps. And require a lot less than that.

If they are indeed going with 3GB reserved it will be definitely for something more than just having apps with fast switching.

 

[LightHeaven]

It isn't 4GB difference for games. It's 1.5GB and a huge difference in bandwidth that doesn't favour Durango (of course I'm over simplifying due to the ESRAM, but again that's only 32MB). Devs don't need to target PS4 as the lead platform to be smart enough to only produce 3.5GB worth of assets for use in both consoles. Otherwise how on earth would you use 5GB of assets on a system with only 3.5GB memory? Of course you can't, so its a moot point. Devs won't produce assets of different quality for the different consoles, as that would be a waste of man-hours. 3.5GB is sufficient to produce games with significantly higher graphical fidelity than this gen. So devs will limit their assets to 3.5GB and that's it.

Crytek are out of their minds asking for 8GB memory. It's not necessary, as you cannot get 8GB RAM fast enough to feed high end GPU & CPU, and so you're then forced to use slow RAM which limits how much you can even access in a given processing time period anyway.

Let's not get confused. MS has chosen 8GB DDR3 RAM so that they can dedicate 3GB to their OS, Kinect and applications (all of which will take processing resources away, as well as fight for memory bandwidth with the game app). Whilst PS4 will have a very lean OS using only a 512MB memory footprint (likely less later on), which indicates all the other non-game appications and services not putting as much strain on the system resources as those on Durango would.

In short you're over simplifying, and there's no reason to fear for either system yet as we know not enough about all these things. I personally certainly wouldn't fear for the PS4 in terms of third party software development. Imho I'd be more concerned for the other guy's ability to keep up with 33% less GPU and 89% of the total system bandwidth (35% if you exclude ESRAM).

Similarly they could just target the slower ram and not take advantage at all of the higher data per frame Ps4 could access... But there's no point arguing over that now because no one here can say how will this generation turn out to be. Until we have a clearer picture of where development will go at least.

 

[SedentaryJourney]

Yes, it's really something to think about ... completely changing the product you've been designing over the course of the past 5-8 years to just magically change it within 6 months of your competitor making the first move. Yes, totally believable. Yes, totally doable. Yes, it's the Sony way.

IE: Give me a break. More PR bullshit.

It might make sense to wait and see what your competitor's timeline is before committing to a launch date, especially if GDDR5 was only meant to be a stop-gap intended for devkits and Sony need more time to get stacked DDR4 ready and mass produced. I have no clue as to how far in advance Sony would have to commit to final production, so the decision to launch with GDDR5 may have already been made.

 

[Rangers]

Since March 2012 (even further back from the alpha dev kit), people have been circulating PS4 rumors:
http://semiaccurate.com/2012/03/02/...l-be-an-x86-cpu-with-an-amd-gpu/#.UP6-xiiEklJ



I suppose that Compute Unit Eurogamer spoke about is the DSP. The SPUs were called DSPs before. So I guess any vector engine with a local store is referred to as a DSP by these people.

EDIT: It would explain why none of the alpha devkit leaks mention an extra Compute Unit. They wrote abut extra hardware for processing video, audio, etc. I am very curious what exactly Eurogamer saw. Probably just a tech doc ?

The "extra compute unit" in Orbis is apparently nothing much according to proelite on GAF. He said it's just an extra scalar unit on some of the shaders (Eurogamer was wrong in a sense) and already included in the 1.84 teraflops.

So it looks like you can eliminate Orbis special sauce basically.

 

[tinfoilhatman]

It shouldn't be as much as Windows RT, since it's a full port of windows 8 to arm. Including the desktop, and system applications that have no place in a console.

Also it doesn't make sense to reserve that much memory for background applications, because metro apps are managed like ios apps. And require a lot less than that.

If they are indeed going with 3GB reserved it will be definitely for something more than just having apps with fast switching.

Why would that much memory(or even a FRACTION of it) be reserved while your playing a game......again this makes no sense........people assumed the same thing about the 360 and it ended up using FAR FAR FAR less.

Software is Microsoft's bread and butter and overall they've done a good job with the console operating systems and development tools, I don't think we should all just assume all of sudden their going to do a 180' and screw it all up as much as some people would like to see that happen.

And YES last I checked the XB360 was running some form of a windows kernel at the core operating system, right?

 

[Rangers]

It isn't 4GB difference for games. It's 1.5GB and a huge difference in bandwidth that doesn't favour Durango (of course I'm over simplifying due to the ESRAM, but again that's only 32MB). Devs don't need to target PS4 as the lead platform to be smart enough to only produce 3.5GB worth of assets for use in both consoles. Otherwise how on earth would you use 5GB of assets on a system with only 3.5GB memory? Of course you can't, so its a moot point. Devs won't produce assets of different quality for the different consoles, as that would be a waste of man-hours. 3.5GB is sufficient to produce games with significantly higher graphical fidelity than this gen. So devs will limit their assets to 3.5GB and that's it.

Crytek are out of their minds asking for 8GB memory. It's not necessary, as you cannot get 8GB RAM fast enough to feed high end GPU & CPU, and so you're then forced to use slow RAM which limits how much you can even access in a given processing time period anyway.

Let's not get confused. MS has chosen 8GB DDR3 RAM so that they can dedicate 3GB to their OS, Kinect and applications (all of which will take processing resources away, as well as fight for memory bandwidth with the game app). Whilst PS4 will have a very lean OS using only a 512MB memory footprint (likely less later on), which indicates all the other non-game appications and services not putting as much strain on the system resources as those on Durango would.

In short you're over simplifying, and there's no reason to fear for either system yet as we know not enough about all these things. I personally certainly wouldn't fear for the PS4 in terms of third party software development. Imho I'd be more concerned for the other guy's ability to keep up with 33% less GPU and 89% of the total system bandwidth (35% if you exclude ESRAM).

It's hilarious how devs are going to target the PS4's lower RAM, but somehow NOT the Durango's lower flops. If anything they'll do both. Go look at Xbox vs PS2 where Xbox had a massively massively better GPU, but 90% of multiplatforms basically looked like the PS2 game.

The fact is the RAM advantage for Durango (5:3.5) is 43%. Thats essentially as large as the flops advantage that everybody is rushing to bury Durango and crown Orbis king over. That and the possibility MS could reduce OS footprint over time and make it even bigger, say 6GB would seem to be a obvious target. I find the spin hilarious, I even see armchair gaffers declaring "whatever MS sets for the OS reserves cant ever be changed" wishful thinking. To which I point out how much the PS3 OS allotment was reduced over time. I dont think MS has plans to reduce os footprint currently, but I bet their plans may change if they realize they need extra visual punch vs Orbis. And say a 6GB/2GB split still leaves way more for OS than anybody seems to think reasonable.

That's not even knowing the rest of the systems. Apparently the audio DSP's in Durango are super powerful. In order to keep up with them is PS4 either going to have to downgrade audio, or suck up precious CPU cores? There are lots of caveats we dont even know about here.

I'd guess a 50% deficit in one narrow component might lead to 20% better looking games if that was the only difference. But now account Durango's more RAM, the fact most games are multiplatform, and maybe the difference will be 5%? With Durango possibly $100 cheaper if the 299 PPT is to be believed, and with Kinect packed in drawing casuals? And the fact Xbox is now the defacto brand in at least the USA and UK?

 

[patsu]

The "extra compute unit" in Orbis is apparently nothing much according to proelite on GAF. He said it's just an extra scalar unit on some of the shaders (Eurogamer was wrong in a sense) and already included in the 1.84 teraflops.

So it looks like you can eliminate Orbis special sauce basically.

Do you have a link to his post ? Eurogamer was talking about a unit outside the GPU. They wondered why it's not inside . And yes, they are the only one who published info of an extra GPU-like Compute Unit. Other loose rumors I found simply talk about compression and media processing blocks (FPGA and/or DSP).

 

[Xenio]

It's hilarious how devs are going to target the PS4's lower RAM, but somehow NOT the Durango's lower flops. If anything they'll do both. Go look at Xbox vs PS2 where Xbox had a massively massively better GPU, but 90% of multiplatforms basically looked like the PS2 game.

The fact is the RAM advantage for Durango (5:3.5) is 43%. Thats essentially as large as the flops advantage that everybody is rushing to bury Durango and crown Orbis king over. That and the possibility MS could reduce OS footprint over time and make it even bigger, say 6GB would seem to be a obvious target. I find the spin hilarious, I even see armchair gaffers declaring "whatever MS sets for the OS reserves cant ever be changed" wishful thinking. To which I point out how much the PS3 OS allotment was reduced over time.

That's not even knowing the rest of the systems. Apparently the audio DSP's in Durango are super powerful. In order to keep up with them is PS4 either going to have to downgrade audio, or suck up precious CPU cores? There are lots of caveats we dont even know about here.

I'd guess a 50% deficit in one narrow component might lead to 20% better looking games if that was the only difference. But now account Durango's more RAM, the fact most games are multiplatform, and maybe the difference will be 5%? With Durango possibly $100 cheaper if the 299 PPT is to be believed, and with Kinect packed in drawing casuals?

funny, I agree with you (and with proelite) all the time, at this time we cannot jump on other conclusions, we have to wait for some new details

 

[thisGuy]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/df-hardware-next-gen-xbox-specs-leak

Thank you for the link, what I contend is we don't know what the DME does, eurogamer says in the Orbis leak....

At this time we cannot confirm the make-up of the Durango graphics hardware - rumours have circulated for quite some time that it is some way behind Orbis, but equally there has been the suggestion that the GPU itself is supplemented by additional task-specific hardware. We could not confirm this, but an ex-Microsoft staffer with a prior relationship with the Xbox team says that two of these modules are graphics-related.

You call it fairy dust but you're ignoring that the DME could have simple graphic related functions similar to how the daughter die on the X360 handles frame buffer operations like MSAA and transparencies, who is to say that more roles couldn't be imposed on the DME related to deferred rendering?