Could the PS3 use a "page file" in a future firmware upgrade?

[Metalmurphy]

Everyone is saying the PS3 has less memory then the 360, although i don't really understand why since its 256+256 and the RSX can read from the main memory, but still since all consoles come with an HD could it be possible that the PS3 would use a small portion of the HD to work as a file page for some more memory? It might have a slow access but it might be reasonable for some stuff, like XMB OS could use it and free the main memory for games.

What do you guys think?

 

[liolio]

some people say that the 360 has more ram than the ps3 because the 512Mb of memory are unified and dev chose to split this pool inram/vram depending on theirs needs.
More the ps3 take 64MB from the main ram and 32 from the v-ram.
32Mb for the 360.
after I don't if this is really revelant. Or will change.

 

[infinity4]

i thought RSX can access XDR Ram through FlexIO???

 

[cloudscapes]

While RSX can access from the main RAM, I'm pretty sure it isn't as fast as pulling textures from shared memory on the 360. If a dev needs more than 50% of available memory for textures and screen buffers (more often than not) the 360 has an obvious advantage. It's up to the devs to compensate for this certain weakness. The PS3 has advantages over the 360 as well, but they aren't in the memory department as far as I can see. The OS (apparently) taking three times the total memory over the 360 also doesn't help.

What I *think* we'll see, are PS3 games that are overall blurrier than their 360 ports (unless the devs don't bother with the upgrading process) but will contain more particles and other special effects that don't rely as much on memory. As for render resolutions, this has an impact too. The PS3 is capable of rendering at a higher resolution than the 360, but that means devs will need to use more memory for the framebuffer, further reducing the quality of the textures.

Obviously this doesn't mean PS3 games will be ugly. Heavenly Sword and a few others I've seen videos and screenshots of are mindblowing and (from a general composition standpoint) are just as beautiful as games on other platforms, if not more! It just means devs will need to use the resources in different ways. Wow gamers less with textures but more with physics/effects.

note, this is based only on what I've heard. I haven't personally worked on the PS3.

 

[liolio]

i thought RSX can access XDR Ram through FlexIO???

it can and at a fast rate but this induce more latencies to work with.
framebuffer operation eat most of the gddr3 bandwith that why devs think about donig tecturing from the xdram even if there is room for data on the gddr pool if I understand properly.

 

[Graham]

Problem with a page file is you would need to set aside a load of memory for it, so developers always know what they are dealing with. Also, it's more unpredictable, which memory will get paged. Letting developers have XXXmb of hard disk space (which is the case on the PS3 and 360) for their own caching needs is a better solution.

As for memory usage, afaik, you also need to store the backbuffers in ram with the rsx, where this is temporary in edram on the 360. So 1280x720 with 4xaa is another 29mb. Video memory gets eaten up very very quickly these days... Then again the downside for the 360 is tiling, but by god that debate has been thrashed before... So lets leave that one alone

 

[Rainbow Man]

Considering there's an entire PS2 on the circuit board - from what I understand anyway. Couldn't that memory be used as a "pagefile" of sorts?

Kind of like the gamecube's A-ram.
I know I'm not the most technical person, but it's an interesting thought anyway.


Peace.

 

[Graham]

well it's really not much ram

and it also implies that future revisions of the system will still have the ES/GS/Ram on the MB, where sony clearly wants to emulate via software. It would hurt their ability to cost reduce the system quite significantly.

 

[Rainbow Man]

32 MB sure is better than nothing...

Anyways, the PS3 seems too different to me to be able to emulate PS2 in software. I'm old enough to have been around for C64 era gaming, it takes quite a lot of horsepower to emulate even that old 1MHz breadbox accurately, comparatively speaking. I'm sure today's PCs handle it just fine. I shudder at a 300MHz PS2 though... I don't think it can be done, not on PS3 anyway.


Peace.

 

[Andy]

^The biggest problem with that is, is when PS2 and PS1 games are properly emulated in software, rather than using EE+GS IC, there will be none of that hardware inside later model PS3s, therefor it would be rather silly for a developer to use it, as they can't bank on it always be there.

 

[Rainbow Man]

What makes you think PS2 can ever be properly emulated on PS3 in software?

From what I know, PS2 has PS1 hardware guts inside it, they don't emulate its main CPU on the PS2 CPU even though they're of the same family unless I'm mistaken, and PS2 runs nearly 10x faster to boot.

PS3 has an IBM chip inside it while PS2 uses some SGI thing I think, so they're different families..

I don't think you can run a SGI CPU on an IBM CPU that is only 10x faster. You sure can't run a C64 on a PC that is 10x faster, it needs more like 400x faster to run fullspeed.

Plus PS2 isn't just the CPU. It's everything else too, including the PS1 CPU and the sound stuff and so on. And the graphics chip is pretty weird too isn't it, compared to what's in PS3. The built-in memory is much faster than PS3's video memory right?

I think PS2 guts are there to stay, but that's just me of courae.


Peace.

 

[rounin]

Has it been already confirmed that theres actually a full PS2 inside the PS3? If not, then that argument seems quite pointless. I for one has always thought that it was only the GS+EDRAM that was included.

 

[Rainbow Man]

You can see the chips on various pictures where they took PS3s apart. They're all there from what I can tell...


Peace.

 

[Cheezdoodles]

As for render resolutions, this has an impact too. The PS3 is capable of rendering at a higher resolution than the 360, but that means devs will need to use more memory for the framebuffer, further reducing the quality of the textures.

The X360 is capable of exactly the same resolutions as the PS3. Both in terms of outputting it and in terms of rendering it.

X360 supports 1080p native, so does the ps3

 

[rounin]

You can see the chips on various pictures where they took PS3s apart. They're all there from what I can tell...


Peace.

I've seen the pictures, but I haven't actually gone and tried to look for all the PS2's ram chips and such. I believe I will have to take your word for it for now

 

[pakotlar]

What makes you think PS2 can ever be properly emulated on PS3 in software?

From what I know, PS2 has PS1 hardware guts inside it, they don't emulate its main CPU on the PS2 CPU even though they're of the same family unless I'm mistaken, and PS2 runs nearly 10x faster to boot.

PS3 has an IBM chip inside it while PS2 uses some SGI thing I think, so they're different families..

I don't think you can run a SGI CPU on an IBM CPU that is only 10x faster. You sure can't run a C64 on a PC that is 10x faster, it needs more like 400x faster to run fullspeed.

Plus PS2 isn't just the CPU. It's everything else too, including the PS1 CPU and the sound stuff and so on. And the graphics chip is pretty weird too isn't it, compared to what's in PS3. The built-in memory is much faster than PS3's video memory right?


I think PS2 guts are there to stay, but that's just me of courae.


Peace.

No the PS2 ram is not faster than PS3's. I believe it was ~20GB/s (which was insane for the time) for the 4MB VRAM (EDRAM). The only thing better about the PS2 is the really small latencies associated with reading/writing VRAM.

 

[Cheezdoodles]

No the PS2 ram is not faster than PS3's. I believe it was ~20GB/s (which was insane for the time) for the 4MB VRAM (EDRAM). The only thing better about the PS2 is the really small latencies associated with reading/writing VRAM.

DRAM Bus bandwidth: 47.0GB per second

 

[bkilian]

32 MB sure is better than nothing...

Anyways, the PS3 seems too different to me to be able to emulate PS2 in software. I'm old enough to have been around for C64 era gaming, it takes quite a lot of horsepower to emulate even that old 1MHz breadbox accurately, comparatively speaking. I'm sure today's PCs handle it just fine. I shudder at a 300MHz PS2 though... I don't think it can be done, not on PS3 anyway.


Peace.

It's completely possible. The XBox had a 733MHz intel processor, and the 360 emulates it in software in a powerPC architecture. If you're implying the Cell cannot do this, you're saying it's vastly less powerful than the 360 CPU.

Believe it or not, the backcompat in the 360 is done by a hugely modified version of "Virtual PC for Mac" (With all the unneeded bits ripped out, and hand optimising the important sections)

 

[Rainbow Man]

It's completely possible. The XBox had a 733MHz intel processor, and the 360 emulates it in software in a powerPC architecture. If you're implying the Cell cannot do this, you're saying it's vastly less powerful than the 360 CPU.

I thought xbox emulation was done by recompiling game exes. Emulating 700+ CPUs isn't trivial even on modern PC processors, and as I understand, the 360 chip is very slimmed-down to reach that high speed for a reasonable price. Dosbox on a 3GHz PC runs like a slug, much slower than a 733MHz PC would run the same program (I tried duke nukem 3D; it was pretty much unplayable on my PC from 2005; my PC from 1997 ran the game way faster).

In any case Iam still not convinced.. For starters, PS2 is more like a double, or triple processor, with those extra maths processors right? Also, xbox games are done a lot in high-level languages and uses direct3D to draw graphics, while I think the much slower PS2 needs more assembler handtuning and has no graphics library that can be high-level emulated. This will need more accurate emulation, which is much slower. If a PS2 game needs cycle-accurate emulation there's no way it could work in software on a PS3.

I'm not a programmer, but I know ypu can't do miracles with only 10 PS3 cycles per PS2 cycle..


Peace.

 

[Skrying]

Odd then that Sony would believe they could do it this entire time.