News & Rumours: Playstation 4/ Orbis *spin*

Eurogamer Portugal released translated version of Richard Leadbetter's DF article [eng version is not up yet] that talks about PS4 memory. Apparently, SDK documentation says that game dev's can have guaranteed access to only 4.5GB of ram. Additional 1GB is described as "flexible".
http://www.eurogamer.pt/articles/digitalfoundry-ps3-system-software-memory_1

edit - main article is up
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-ps3-system-software-memory

 

So prior to the upgrade, the games had access to 512MB of ram, the same amount +~50MB thats in the current consoles.

Why don't I believe that?.

 

All that extra memory announced, all for OS use. Doesn't make the slightest sense, really.

Edit: 15 minutes video straight to ram confirmed Also we need PS4 to be able to hold 20 tabs in its browser without going to swap memory. That's going to be super awesome. Also, if a game is using the extra "flexible" memory, since it is not a guarantee, game performance would be very variable based on what is happening in the background. Awesome. We'd need performance tips for our consoles, just like the PC, really cool!

 

I think a few of us might feel somewhat vindicated by this news. That's not to say that the news is good.

Now I'm wondering what Sony and MS are going to use all of this RAM for. It seems a massive waste to use GDDR5 for the OS, especially when it's 3.5GB.

I honestly don't need to be able to switch between apps and games on the fly. I'd be much happier if they were to allow games to have a much larger game pool of memory and not be able to switch to apps quickly. It's not like I've ever used any on current gen.

Absolute waste of resource if you ask me (am willing to be proven wrong though).

 

GAF EXPLODES

 

Agreed. Surely it would've been better to have a split memory pool, one for games (GDDR5) and one for the operating system (DDR3). Devs wouldn't even need to access the system pool of ram, so they still have a 'unified' pool.

Bizarre state of affairs.

 

Unbelievable. So, what, apparently the PS4 is reserving more memory for its OS than the Xbox One's 3GB? This is insane.

What the hell was the point of doubling the memory for the unit if practically all of it, save 500MB, was going to be cast into the seemingly endless abyss that is the OS? PS4 doesn't even have the excuse of an always jacked in Kinect 2.0.

More than just a tiny bit aggravating they were bragging about 8GB of GDDR5 to gamers when the reality was we'd get barely half that for what we're using the damn thing for: gaming.

 

Wow not exactly PS4 specific but this gen tunrs into the most "wasteful" generation ever.
I feel really few intensive to pay 399$ or 499$ including RAM that I don't need not too mention peripherals.
Anyway my line thinking stating that 6GB was more than enough for Sony was not so out of place.
For me it is close to nonsensical for Sony to waste that much ram/

Gives me headache...

 

Bloatware!

 

Sony Defense Force hit from the flank yikes.

I gotta say I expected that there would be some extra RAM reserved and that reserve would diminish over time like the PS3 but almost 1/2 the RAM ?? That I was not expecting. Who knows when this SDK reveal was made and what the reserve is going to be at launch but that is a bit of a bombshell.

 

I think that would have been hard to do. You'd still need a 256bit bus for the GDDR5, but now you would have to add at least a 64bit bus for the DDR3. That would be costly and hard too shrink, imo.

 

Well, next gen is not about games anymore...

Exclusively i mean

 

Definitely surprised by this... thought it would be 2GB tops (thought 1GB-1.5GB was more likely). It does say 1GB of 'flexible' memory is available if need be. And the number is likely to decrease over time; whereas when EG asked MS, they said 3GB is pretty much set in stone and not likely to change. In the first year or two, is more than 4.5-5.5GB really needed?

 

Nope, since 4gb was still the target a few months ago. Hopefully the reserve gets reduced drastically by year 2.

 

8GB for games didnt make any sense in february and for machines of these specs. They are not powerful enough

Pretty obvious they are just trying to match the amount MS is giving to devs. Giving extra memory over Xbone for games is not going to do much of anything for PS4. But it is out of OS development

If PS4 only had 4GB RAM the OS would be just much worse. honestly they need MORE memory than MS to do an OS because they are not a software company

 

AFAICT:
- the PS4 has 4.5GB RAM reserved for a game.
- there is additionally a 1GB "system cache" that can be used by the game or the OS. (OS uses it for background downloads etc? I assume the game is supposed to use it for pre-caching or something).
- the OS uses 2.5GB for it's own purposes.

That system reservation/cache could use being 0.5-1GB smaller...

 

On the other hand if Sony is looking to create a UI with similar response times to XB1 and somewhat similar functionality then it isn't out of line I guess. MS does have lots of experience with those kinds of things and Sony, if it is targeting XB1 UI smoothiness, is going to take a while to optimize things.

 

guess they should have started with netBSD?