News & Rumours: Playstation 4/ Orbis *spin*

[MfA]

I think it's just a game of chicken, in the end both Microsoft and Sony don't want to make cross platform games worse than they need to be on their platform ... they'll both end up with the same number.

PS. still, that's an unfortunate amount of memory down the drain just to keep a bloated web browser memory resident.

 

[RobertR1]

I think it's obvious that they're being conservative. They dropped the PS3's OS from 120MB to 50MB, I imagine that they'll free up at least another 1GB when it's really needed.

It's not like we were far off. Speaking for myself, I was expecting 1GB, but 2GB to be conservative. If this is indeed true, it's 1.5GB for the OS with 1GB reserved.

Dropping the PS to 50mb was stupid as they were unable to add cross game chat later.

They don't want to get caught out with missing features for a platform that is expected to evolve over it's lifecycle through software and services.

I'm very impressed that less than a handful can grasp this simple concept on B3D of all places.

 

[grndzro]

Maybe Sony is being conservative? Maybe Sony's implementation of trust zone is not as light as one would expect? That little A5 maybe the heart of the system but other components may lay under a second secured OS where some portion of the gDDR5 is partitioned away from the normal OS.

Aren't we looking at a device with a forward thinking design suited for parallel computing? Why pick AMD otherwise? Just to be cheap? You don't need Sea Island or Onion+ for a cheap apu. How much experience does Sony have with designing an x86 OS based on the current paradigm, nevermind a OS suited to take full advantage of parallel computing.

Things like transactional memory requires a larger memory footprint, you duplicating data to provide a roll back mechanism.

I imagine Sony is being cautious because it stepping into a space that relatively unexplored. Most of what's being implemented is straight out the academic and commercial research field.

I think you just hit the nail on the head.

 

[djskribbles]

Dropping the PS to 50mb was stupid as they were unable to add cross game chat later.

They don't want to get caught out with missing features for a platform that is expected to evolve over it's lifecycle through software and services.

I'm very impressed that less than a handful can grasp this simple concept on B3D of all places.

I don't think dropping the PS3's OS footprint to 50MB was a stupid move... it was probably a higher priority to give devs as much RAM as possible, so they sacrificed non-essential features. Not only was there less available, devs had to deal with the split pool... having a split pool was probably a dumber move if anything.

Sony seems to be far less arrogant now and are taking their competition far more seriously. Plus they designed the PS4 to be far more developer friendly. They obviously reserved more RAM in case, but I'm confident more will be made available, again, when it's actually needed.

I see a few people seriously cancelling their pre-orders over this at GAF... what a joke.

edit: here's a post at GAF with some supposed 'insiders' commenting on this with info they've heard:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=73026651&postcount=2991

Pretty much sums up my thoughts.

 

[zupallinere]

I think it's just a game of chicken, in the end both Microsoft and Sony don't want to make cross platform games worse than they need to be on their platform ... they'll both end up with the same number.

PS. still, that's an unfortunate amount of memory down the drain just to keep a bloated web browser memory resident.

Well memory being the LCD isn't the worst thing in the world.

As for the amount of memory "down the drain" we have to be a bit rational here. 7 GB was going to be about as much as could be expected based on what we knew. So we have ~ 2.5 to cry over and 1 of that is going to be usable at least for some devs. leaving 1.5 to pine for.

As for that 1.5 GB that should "rightfully" be used for games I would think that we should allow the system software engineers and apps devs for Sony a bit of slack when it comes to optimizing things. They might not be doing as much as MS is but MS has a lot of programming talent. I see some of those reserved resources as an investment to balance out Microsoft's programming resources. If I were CEO of Sony I would rather make sure the user has a good experience right off the bat rather than hoping that the engineers get everything right out of the gate. Don't forget there are other systems that need to work well day one including PSN which does have some catching up to do. Think holistically here ;-)

Hey if there are some apps or features that catch on with the public but aren't specifically games that isn't a bad thing since it will be selling PS4s. If not then game devs will be pushing to whittle down that 1.5 to a more respectable 0.75 or less :smile:

This my most optimistic take on the situation. This is a marathon not a sprint and things need to evolve and sometimes can't be forced even if you have a bunch of money to throw at the problem.

 

[eastmen]

I don't think dropping the PS3's OS footprint to 50MB was a stupid move... it was probably a higher priority to give devs as much RAM as possible, so they sacrificed non-essential features. Not only was there less available, devs had to deal with the split pool... having a split pool was probably a dumber move if anything.

Sony seems to be far less arrogant now and are taking their competition far more seriously. Plus they designed the PS4 to be far more developer friendly. They obviously reserved more RAM in case, but I'm confident more will be made available, again, when it's actually needed.

I see a few people seriously cancelling their pre-orders over this at GAF... what a joke.

edit: here's a post at GAF with some supposed 'insiders' commenting on this with info they've heard:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=73026651&postcount=2991

Pretty much sums up my thoughts.

What magical clock increases and Ram increases ? That's what you link too ?

Remember all the sony fans making fun of the ms fans hoping for more ram and clock increases. Its interesting that when the shoe is on the other foot its okay to want those magical things

 

[zupallinere]

What magical clock increases and Ram increases ? That's what you link too ?

Remember all the sony fans making fun of the ms fans hoping for more ram and clock increases. Its interesting that when the shoe is on the other foot its okay to want those magical things

Was there a bump to 12 GB for the PS4 suggested in that link ??

 

[djskribbles]

What magical clock increases and Ram increases ? That's what you link too ?

Remember all the sony fans making fun of the ms fans hoping for more ram and clock increases. Its interesting that when the shoe is on the other foot its okay to want those magical things

What are you talking about?

 

[eastmen]

Was there a bump to 12 GB for the PS4 suggested in that link ??

12 gigs ? no but increase ram yes

Sony is playing it very safe for launch units. Things like clock rates, OS size, and memory allotments are conservative for a reason. Sony does not want to be in a position where they will lose out on a killer feature or find themselves in a position where there is zero room to grow. I wouldn't be surprised if year 3 or 4 of the PS4's life cycle you see a patch to upclock the GPU.

Upclocking the PS4's GPU 200 mhz more would yield a 2.3 TF machine.

As of this moment, not a single developer has complained about "too little RAM". Most developers are very happy by not only the quantity, but the speed of RAM. As we enter the third year of the machine, the OS size will shrink and things will become less bloated

That implies more ram. I never said the physical size of the ram.

I'm just pointing out the double standard.

The speed of the console wont increase after launch. If they could get 200mhz and still hit their yields then it would happen at launch day not some point in the future.

IF they want to reach feature parity with the xbox one then they will be using a similar amount of ram vs the xbox one.

Its not rocket science

 

[djskribbles]

12 gigs ? no but increase ram yes



That implies more ram. I never said the physical size of the ram.

I'm just pointing out the double standard.

Oh, so you're doubting the footprint will shrink? I seriously couldn't tell...

Even EG agrees and has heard the same thing:

As it stands, both next-gen consoles will launch with 8GB of unified memory, but with a significantly diminished amount actually available to games developers. However, a big area of difference between Sony and Microsoft's approaches to OS allocation could come in their future plans for the reserved RAM. A Microsoft insider tells us that the engineers behind the Xbox One specifically chose 3GB in order to allow the background platform to evolve over a ten-year life-cycle - it's very hard to add features if the pool of available RAM is reduced from its initial level. The reserved RAM allocation there is set in stone, and is unlikely to change.

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.

That sounds to me that MS reserved 3GB for future plans, while Sony reserved more than needed and will likely reduce the footprint as the generation goes on. That's exactly what the other 'insiders' have heard.

 

[Tap In]

I think it's obvious that they're being conservative. They dropped the PS3's OS from 120MB to 50MB, I imagine that they'll free up at least another 1GB when it's really needed.

It's not like we were far off. Speaking for myself, I was expecting 1GB, but 2GB to be conservative. If this is indeed true, it's 1.5GB for the OS with 1GB reserved.

yes and I clearly said "reserve" never said "the OS". the reserve is 3.5GB quite ways from the 1GB being thrown around for the last couple months (not all were saying 1GB but implying by saying "having 7 available for games").

to assume the reserve for this next gen system would be near 1GB was silly all along IMO. Especially considering what these machines will need to do to compete in the real world of technology today (besides just game) , I was just waiting for reality to come up and tap everyone on the shoulder.

Both systems should have been expected to have reasonable Os's with future proofed reserves and a future of leaner possibilities depending on what the future of features becomes.

 

[warb]

The idea of a post release 25% GPU upclock patch is the silliest thing in that post.

 

[djskribbles]

Maybe. But that was not the reason I linked to that post. There's one small comment about clocks (and it was just a personal thought by the poster) and you guys pick that out? We're talking about the RAM here.

 

[warb]

Maybe. But that was not the reason I linked to that post. There's one small comment about clocks (and it was just a personal thought by the poster) and you guys pick that out? We're talking about the RAM here.

In 3 or 4 years too, as our extended warranties are running out.

 

[eastmen]

Maybe. But that was not the reason I linked to that post. There's one small comment about clocks (and it was just a personal thought by the poster) and you guys pick that out? We're talking about the RAM here.

It doesn't matter.


Look at it this way. Both companies reserved ram for their features. If both consoles implement feature A then how would one company use less ram than the other company for the same feature ?



Look at the ps3. It started off over 100mb for its OS while the xbox 360 had 32megs. From day one the xbox 360 supported cross game chat. The ps3 never did dispite having 3 to 4 times more ram reserved for that feature.


So either Sony is going to use the reserve amount and reach feature parity with MS or they are going to have less features.

Do you know what features will be popular in 4 years? I sure don't but if one of the features MS supports is popular 4 years from now and 2 years from now Sony reduced their OS foot print and droped or choose not to support it then that would hurt sony because they can't then free up ram without causing a bunch of games not to work.

 

[djskribbles]

Judging by what EG has heard from Sony, they intend to reduce the OS footprint, so maybe they don't plan on matching MS feature for feature... only the ones that the majority of gamers care about. Reducing the footprint is something they have done on the PS3, so I don't see how it's unreasonable to think that they will do it again.

 

[messyman]

So the PS4 now has instant game switching now?

 

[zupallinere]

In 3 or 4 years too, as our extended warranties are running out.

As Baldrick would say ... I've a cunning plan Mr. Blackadder Sir !!

Since the PS4 has a thin blue led as the only indicator they can call the failing PS4 the Blue Adder of Death !!

 

[Cjail]

I'm not sure what you guys were thinking. Sony said they would have instant game switching to apps just like ms . Assuming 512 megs for the OS and no system reserve how does a sub 100mb/s hardrive instantly restore a 7.5 gig game to ram ? Its not going to happen.

My idea/theory is that they suspend the game the game in RAM.
Sony said the feature exist so I think maybe it could work that way.

 

[Tap In]

So the PS4 now has instant game switching now?

not announced but that would be an obvious place to start