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

[Brad Grenz]

crosspost from the predict thread

True but from Sebbi's posts, I mean you dont exactly NEED all your RAM every frame.

And most games will be 30 FPS next gen again, so you can access 2GB per frame with durango.

I can argue the Orbis is over engineered. It can access over 6GB per frame at 30 FPS, yet it's total RAM is only 3.5GB. Now what? Only thing you can do is go back and hit the hard disk or worse, blu ray disk and load more in. Good luck with that.

Some of that bandwidth is going to be used up doing the reads and writes that will occur on the Durango's embedded DRAM.

What you'll probably see is the PS4 coders worrying about making sure data streams into memory when it's needed using hard disc or flash memory caching, while the 720 coders work creatively to avoid reading and writing from main memory where ever possible.

 

[MasaC]

SSD?

Earlier rumors said Orbis would have a SSD. What's going on about that and would it help with only 3.5 GB Ram available?

 

[Proelite]

But on another topic, I wonder if MS starts getting skunked a little bit in graphics, they dont start dialing back the OS RAM reserves.

It was always said you start with a high reserve, since it can never be enlarged later, but you can always pare it down later.

I would think it's a weapon in their toolbox, anyway. If they can free up another gig that makes 6GB to 3.5, and so on from there. They may not be planning on it now, but conditions may change imo.

How do you know it's not already 6GB?

Afterall, AndyH said he heard this figure from last year, in fact, I think all Durango numbers are from Spring of 2012 or earlier.

 

[Rangers]

Possible I guess. 3GB has been the most common rumor.

 

[Rangers]

Also, I'm still seeing possible major price discrepancies

-18 CU's of silicon vs 12

-expensive GDDR5 vs cheap DDR3

-PS4=more cooling, beefier PSU, etc, all those things we were always told were so expensive and why next gen cant be powerful

-Durango=32MB ESRAM but should be cheap.

It seems like Durango could be priced something like 50 dollars less and that will effect sales.

I have a GPU BOM component price list and if it's anything near accurate, a GB of DDR3 might go for ~$4. Whilst a GB of GDDR5=~$15.

8GBX$4=$32, 4GBX$15=$60. Significant BOM difference.

 

[Alexct]

Possible I guess. 3GB has been the most common rumor.

More than anything else is the rumor Neogaf users want to be true
3 GB for the OS seems ridiculous to me,Window8 with skype, Matalb, etc. ... in use at the same time does not exploit all the resources on pc.

 

[Brad Grenz]

Also, I'm still seeing possible major price discrepancies

-18 CU's of silicon vs 12

-expensive GDDR5 vs cheap DDR3

-PS4=more cooling, beefier PSU, etc, all those things we were always told were so expensive and why next gen cant be powerful

-Durango=32MB ESRAM but should be cheap.

It seems like Durango could be priced something like 50 dollars less and that will effect sales.

I have a GPU BOM component price list and if it's anything near accurate, a GB of DDR3 might go for ~$4. Whilst a GB of GDDR5=~$15.

8GBX$4=$32, 4GBX$15=$60. Significant BOM difference.

Until we know what's packed in with both consoles, we can't really say which will cost more to put together. A Kinect, touch screen controller, HDD or SSD could all radically shift the cost analysis.

 

[Arwin]

Earlier rumors said Orbis would have a SSD. What's going on about that and would it help with only 3.5 GB Ram available?

Yeah, it's pretty early days still. We really know quite little so far, as long as we don't have the memory bus specs, layout, media speeds, peripherals, etc. etc.

 

[AlNom]

-Durango=32MB ESRAM but should be cheap.

wat

 

[AlNom]

Maybe they have something like an ARM chip to handle OS tasks?

 

[Bagel seed]

I remember sweetvar said Durango would have 'ARM security' and that Orbis didn't have it. Doesn't Jaguar have that built in? Or is it another chip.

 

[Rangers]

wat

you disagree? elaborate?

i just think it should cost way relatively less than the 360's edram. it seems to make a lot more cost sense this time around. i had my issues at times with a large chunk of silicon going to edram on 360, but it just seems to make a lot more sense now with process nodes scaling a lot faster than resolution in the interim.

if it's on 28nm, you could fit 80mb of edram in the same silicon budget as the 360's 10mb at 90nm. but yet theyre only using 32mb. i would think it's pretty inexpensive.

 

[AlNom]

Well, we don't really know what it is exactly. 1T-SRAM or actual SRAM (6T) or perhaps eDRAM. We have heard of shit yields for Oban so...

Creating a separate eDRAM die vs integrating with a much larger chip is a different situation.

 

[patsu]

crosspost from the predict thread

True but from Sebbi's posts, I mean you dont exactly NEED all your RAM every frame.

And most games will be 30 FPS next gen again, so you can access 2GB per frame with durango.

I can argue the Orbis is over engineered. It can access over 6GB per frame at 30 FPS, yet it's total RAM is only 3.5GB. Now what? Only thing you can do is go back and hit the hard disk or worse, blu ray disk and load more in. Good luck with that.

192 gb/s might be good on pc, where my game might need to go up to anywhere to 200 fps and my resolution up to 4k, but is it good for a console?

In other words over say 3 frames, Durango might be able to do more. It can use 2GB/2GB/1GB of unique data. Orbis will be like 3.5GB/uh-oh/uh-oh

RAM speed is not a substitute for quantity. Both are important.

It actually sounds to me like the PS4 might be really good at 60 FPS games. I mean literally the majority of games might be 60 on it cause it's got so damn much bandwidth. But, they probably wont look much better than 30 FPS Durango counterparts.

For the article, the main thing to come out of it is Orbis using 8 Jag cores supposedly. It was generally thought it would switch to Jag cores by me, but that it's 8 of them and all..

It just removes one more point of differentiation to Durango. However, vs 4 Steamroller cores, it's likely a downgrade realistically.

Also interesting DF says its an SOC and even has a code name. In that case I guess it's true both should be doing SOC's for cost reasons. I was skeptical of SOC's in either, especially PS4, but it's looking more and more likely.

At the end of the day anyway, you may get most multiplatform games optimized for 1.2 teraflops and 3.5GB RAM. Lowest common denominator.

Nah... Bandwidth is very important. Memory gets hit multiple times all the time. Otherwise you won't need caching and fast(er) RAM in PS2, 360, PS3 (LocalStore) and Durango.

Naturally, how you use the data efficiently is also crucial.

 

[nightshade]

I believe having a super fast RAM like GDDR5 would mean you don't need to have as much data onto the RAM at any given time as you would otherwise if it was a slower RAM like DDR3, since you can load and unload stuff extremely quickly, shouldn't this technically counterbalance the lower overall memory ? That plus the added benefits of GDDR5's speed go beyond just loading and storing assets.

 

[BRiT]

I believe having a super fast RAM like GDDR5 would mean you don't need to have as much data onto the RAM at any given time as you would otherwise if it was a slower RAM like DDR3, since you can load and unload stuff extremely quickly, shouldn't this technically counterbalance the lower overall memory ? That plus the added benefits of GDDR5's speed go beyond just loading and storing assets.

Loading data from where, hard drive or optical drive? That's the only place that data would be that isn't inside the link cited space of the GDDR. Having less ram does not make up for it by being faster when both are going to be reading from the same sources.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Methinks it's just the moderators moderating (ie: putting the discussions where they should have been in the first place).

This moderator gave up moderating the Predict thread - unstoppable barrage of noise and nonsense. Major kudos Rangers for posting in the right place.

 

[Ruskie]

Well, we don't really know what it is exactly. 1T-SRAM or actual SRAM (6T) or perhaps eDRAM. We have heard of shit yields for Oban so...

Creating a separate eDRAM die vs integrating with a much larger chip is a different situation.

So...where you got "Oban" part from?

 

[upnorthsox]

Also, I'm still seeing possible major price discrepancies

-18 CU's of silicon vs 12

-expensive GDDR5 vs cheap DDR3

-PS4=more cooling, beefier PSU, etc, all those things we were always told were so expensive and why next gen cant be powerful

-Durango=32MB ESRAM but should be cheap.

It seems like Durango could be priced something like 50 dollars less and that will effect sales.

I have a GPU BOM component price list and if it's anything near accurate, a GB of DDR3 might go for ~$4. Whilst a GB of GDDR5=~$15.

8GBX$4=$32, 4GBX$15=$60. Significant BOM difference.

If we were looking at $15 a GB for ggdr5 I can safely say that Sony will be going with stacked memory on interposer as memory cubes are being quoted at half that price along with much lower power req's.

On the opposite end, $4 for 2133mhz ddr3 seems a little optimistic. Could happen but it'd be as a good deal.

Overall, I see MS in a better position to reduce price if needed but I believe they'll launch at the same price.

 

[Acert93]

crosspost from the predict thread

True but from Sebbi's posts, I mean you dont exactly NEED all your RAM every frame.

And most games will be 30 FPS next gen again, so you can access 2GB per frame with durango.

I can argue the Orbis is over engineered. It can access over 6GB per frame at 30 FPS, yet it's total RAM is only 3.5GB. Now what? Only thing you can do is go back and hit the hard disk or worse, blu ray disk and load more in. Good luck with that.

192 gb/s might be good on pc, where my game might need to go up to anywhere to 200 fps and my resolution up to 4k, but is it good for a console?

In other words over say 3 frames, Durango might be able to do more. It can use 2GB/2GB/1GB of unique data. Orbis will be like 3.5GB/uh-oh/uh-oh

RAM speed is not a substitute for quantity. Both are important.

It actually sounds to me like the PS4 might be really good at 60 FPS games. I mean literally the majority of games might be 60 on it cause it's got so damn much bandwidth. But, they probably wont look much better than 30 FPS Durango counterparts.

For the article, the main thing to come out of it is Orbis using 8 Jag cores supposedly. It was generally thought it would switch to Jag cores by me, but that it's 8 of them and all..

It just removes one more point of differentiation to Durango. However, vs 4 Steamroller cores, it's likely a downgrade realistically.

Also interesting DF says its an SOC and even has a code name. In that case I guess it's true both should be doing SOC's for cost reasons. I was skeptical of SOC's in either, especially PS4, but it's looking more and more likely.

At the end of the day anyway, you may get most multiplatform games optimized for 1.2 teraflops and 3.5GB RAM. Lowest common denominator.

What?

RAM isn't just for reading.

Just look at Xenos Daughter die which has 256GB/s. What for you ask? The peak bandwidth supports the 8 ROPs @ 500MHz uncompressed with 4xMSAA at FP8. Common sense tells you 12 (or 16 or 24 or 32) ROPs at 800MHz is going to require more bandwidth that the 256GB/s Xenos had for Fillrate. Modern GPUs have good compression (hence why we don't need 1TB/s VRAMs) but the point is Fillrate alone can suck up a ton of bandwidth if you want your ROPs to be unfettered by bandwidth stalling your GPU.

As for your PC comment... no, you don't need 192GB/s "just for 200fps". If that were the case PC GPUs could have stopped at 100GB/s (100Hz) and called it a day! No, the problem is FILLRATE can suck up VRAM bandwidth; likewise larger textures, more texture readers, more detailed geometry, etc all take up more VRAM footprint and require more bandwidth to shuffle in and out of the GPU.

Don't believe me? Take a higher end game, throw it on a 7970 or 680 and max out the settings. See it struggle to get close to 60Hz? Now use a GPU app to downclock the GPU memory. Ta da! Watch the framerate drop.

I know you are presenting yourself as a self fashioned "Durango fanboy defender" but this is starting to sound a LOT like the FUD MS/Sony/ATI/NV reps channeled via PM in these forums in 2005/2006. I mean we have Proelite, getting quoted all over the place, and his punchline is the defense of a shrunk die investment is a closed box system bests the PC so "just wait for the games!" (which is a total PR side step of the point: roll back of silicon budgets).

Oh, and for giggles:

Those people saying the mainstream rumors are still wrong have a hard time reconciling with lherre.

But I have to roll my eyes because the big specs a couple of you keep PMing me about Iherre specifically left as open:

- GPU: ~ ? in power

But then again, coming from a source that thinks mid-level GPUs like Pitcairn are over-engineered with 192GB/s of bandwidth And I must chuckle also that if Orbis has 8 CPU cores that is 2x what most of you were ranting about just months ago. I have not seen any humble pie eaten over getting the CPU count wrong by such a *huge* margin. That would be like ignoring saying "Orbis has 18 CUs" and then it comes out with 36CUs! But I have not seen any blinking about the integrity of rumors or leaks.

Sorry, it must be nice to have MS leakers giving you information but the Durango Defense Force is already out in full strength. It is probably time to have the leaks vetted before they are posted before we end up circa 2005 all over again.