Offical ps3 thread part 2

[notAFanB]

All I can say is that Sony, IBM, Toshiba, Elpida aren't dumb people and I'm sure that they aren't going to make the same mistake twice as they did with PS2 and have a incredibly powerfull system with limited resources. Atleast.. I hope

not saying that they are. but line has to drawn somewhere and I yet to see a system where it's resources haven;t been crippled in some way or other.

 

[Paul]

It wasn't directed to you in a bad way, or any way at all Limited resources as in the system cannot reach it's full potential because of this, such as with PS2.

Of course there will always be a need for more memory, or requests for more memory, but you gotta admit ps2 needed more, it wasn't a "oh more would be nice" it was a "we are having trouble making our game" sort of thing.

 

[Nexiss]

Perhaps they can do something similar to what Nintendo did with GC. Have 256 MB of really fast main ram, and then another 256 MB (or more) of slower, but much cheaper, RAM. Hopefully, of course, it wouldn't be "crippled" to the extent that it was on the GC and it would be a decent fraction of the speed of the main RAM.

 

[notAFanB]

Of course there will always be a need for more memory, or requests for more memory, but you gotta admit ps2 needed more, it wasn't a "oh more would be nice" it was a "we are having trouble making our game" sort of thing.

in agreement with you here. by primay concern is that these next gen systems waste processing power due to lack of storage (or at least a sound buffering procedure). a crying shame if that were the case with PS3.
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[Panajev2001a]

All I can say is that Sony, IBM, Toshiba, Elpida aren't dumb people and I'm sure that they aren't going to make the same mistake twice as they did with PS2 and have a incredibly powerfull system with limited resources. Atleast.. I hope

4 MB + 2 MB + 256 MB + 32 MB + 32-64 MB ( last two are e-DRAM based and the first two are SRAM based)... add to that procedurally generated textures and geometry, more use of subdivision surfaces and NURBS ( less memory intensive than just storing trianlge strips ) and Texture Compression and things make more sense...

 

[chaphack]

I dont know but doesnt games like MMORPGs or huge game world with lots of players, need really big amount of ram? Havent we heard of enough cutting of game levels, more loading, capped number of online players etc?

 

[zurich]

I dont know but doesnt games like MMORPGs or huge game world with lots of players, need really big amount of ram? Havent we heard of enough cutting of game levels, more loading, capped number of online players etc?

Which is exactly why I think we all had a good laugh when SoE announced Star Wars Galaxies for PS2

 

[notAFanB]

I dont know but doesnt games like MMORPGs or huge game world with lots of players, need really big amount of ram? Havent we heard of enough cutting of game levels, more loading, capped number of online players etc?

I'm sure Scratch pad space (HDD or blueray) will be able to handle that aspect.

I'm just a little concerned that even with (the proposed) 1TFLOP rating alot is gonna go toward NURBS and what not which may or maynot pay off.

 

[Phil]

All I can say is that Sony, IBM, Toshiba, Elpida aren't dumb people and I'm sure that they aren't going to make the same mistake twice as they did with PS2 and have a incredibly powerfull system with limited resources. Atleast.. I hope

Same mistake? Last time I checked, Sony with PS2 was still the #1 leader in this industry while making a huge profit in that division. Look at it from 'your' angle, and you'll be able to spot 'mistakes' in every console - when in fact, it was just a good decision by the top people on defining what do we sell and for how much so that we end up being the #1 'x' years down the road while making money on our product.

 

[notAFanB]

Same mistake? Last time I checked, Sony with PS2 was still the #1 leader in this industry while making a huge profit in that division. Look at it from 'your' angle, and you'll be able to spot 'mistakes' in every console - when in fact, it was just a good decision by the top people on defining what do we sell and for how much so that we end up being the #1 'x' years down the road while making money on our product.

okay now you got me worried. still it's not like the competition is a pushover this time round so the less 'deficiencies' the better.

 

[Panajev2001a]

Same mistake? Last time I checked, Sony with PS2 was still the #1 leader in this industry while making a huge profit in that division. Look at it from 'your' angle, and you'll be able to spot 'mistakes' in every console - when in fact, it was just a good decision by the top people on defining what do we sell and for how much so that we end up being the #1 'x' years down the road while making money on our product.

okay now you got me worried. still it's not like the competition is a pushover this time round so the less 'deficiencies' the better.

I think SCE knows that, they have been working pretty hard on PlayStation 3...

 

[Paul]

Same mistake? Last time I checked, Sony with PS2 was still the #1 leader in this industry while making a huge profit in that division.

I'm one of the biggest Sony fans you will see, however noone is going to doubt that 4mb of Vram just was not enough.

Sure they are in the lead sales wise, however I wasn't talking about sales I was talking from a pure graphics view.

 

[Panajev2001a]

In the opinion of most developers add 128 KB of L2 to the R59K core and then we are talking

The big problem is the cache of the RISC core and the impact on memory accesses and integer heavvy code... it appears that more cache and then more main RAM would have come before more VRAM in the list of developers...

Overall for a 1999 design, I think they did a great job

 

[London Geezer]

I think SCE knows that, they have been working pretty hard on PlayStation 3...

WELL u cant blame people from thinking that at the end of the day, whether PS3 will be GOOD or GREAT, it will sell gazillions of units anyway. that is why some people (i'm one of them) wouldnt be surprised to see PS3 launch with some deficiencies, because in the eyes of 90% of Sony's customers, "having 32Mb of embebbed Ram in Cell and push 1Tflop" is equivalent to egyptian hieroglyphs. so therefore Sony would be justified to launch PS3 WITHOUT the maximum specs ever.
JUST A THOUGHT...

 

[Panajev2001a]

Software will sell the consoles and the have to appease developers as well as customers... developers will care about bad deficiences and minor ones...

 

[Grall]

I've said this before, but seems it bears repeating: PS3 will have at least half a gig of main RAM for no other reason than to make sure M$ will not easily outdo sony yet again on this point. Going with 512MB versus 256MB will be a minor cost increase in 2005; Sony would not earn much money on a move to go with 256, they would just lose big in PR instead.

1GB is a much larger step up from 256 (4x larger actually), so it's much much less likely M$ would stick a gig of mem in their next box. They'd probably just thankfully nod at Sony and take the easy way and go with 512MB as well and save themselves another financial kick in the nuts.

You can be sure some devs will whine and bitch very loudly and very publically about PS3 lacking memory if it ships with just 256, especiallyESPECIALLY if XB2 will have 512 (in fact, I can already hear chap yapping away about it), and Panajev, I don't CARE how much procedurally generated stuff you think will appear on PS3, it won't happen in our lifetime - or at least not until the end of that console's lifetime - because devs are NOT USED to work in such a fashion and there are no devtools to make procedurally generated games. They'll model their worlds and objects and they'll create their textures JUST AS THEY ALWAYS HAVE in 3d studio and photoshop and what have you and throw in some procedurally generated stuff where it makes some feckin SENSE, and these models and these textures will take up bigass amounts of RAM, and they're gonna need a feckin half gigabyte to store it in, OKAY?!

*G*

 

[Panajev2001a]

Ok... they will refuse to use NURBS and subdivision surfaces and texture compression ( better than CLUT as I suspect many PlayStation games are not storing many MPEG2 compressed textures in system RAM ) that would help save main RAM...

 

[Panajev2001a]

Xbox 2 = 512 MB of system RAM in UMA configuration... 25.6 GB/s ? Uhm... remember that Xbox 2 will come out very close to PlayStation 3's launch, they do not have an extra year...

I am not sure if the Xbox shipped in 2000 that we would have had 64 MB + the 8 GB HDD

PlayStation 3 = 256 MB of XDR + 4 MB of SRAM + 2 MB of SRAM + 32 MB of e-DRAM + 32-64 MB of e-DRAM = 326-358 MB

 

[Grall]

Ok... they will refuse to use NURBS and subdivision surfaces and texture compression ( better than CLUT as I suspect many PlayStation games are not storing many MPEG2 compressed textures in system RAM ) that would help save main RAM...

They will "refuse" to use nurbs and subdivision surfaces and procedurally generated geometry to the extent you expect to see such things, because these approaches have various drawbacks in one way or another, and like I said, devtools are lacking and people skills are even more lacking. Sure there will be some use of it, but Sony can't expect to rely on this exclusively, that plain does not work.

Xbox 2 = 512 MB of system RAM in UMA configuration... 25.6 GB/s ?

25, are you out of your MIND? With the P4 itself able to consume half of that on its own assuming they'll go with 400MHz bus like I expect they will, 25 will not be sufficient. Either GPU or CPU will put a choke-hold on the other; ungood.

PlayStation 3 = 256 MB of XDR + 4 MB of SRAM + 2 MB of SRAM + 32 MB of e-DRAM + 32-64 MB of e-DRAM = 326-358 MB

You can't count like that, while these memories aren't caches (or at least not ALL of them), they will still function as a virtual cache hirearchy to a large extent. Data will be duplicated in multiple levels, and the lowest level needs the most space. Hence, 512MB RAM.

It's a 2005 machine we're talking about here, all you 256MB nay-sayers sound like Bill Gates back in the 80s.


*G*

 

[Paul]

I'm going to have to agree with Grall, I think it will be 512mb also.

PSone featured 2MB of main ram.

PS2 featured 32mb which is a 16X leap.

I really doubt they will make the main memory leap from ps2 to ps3 which is going to be a huge leap in generations only 8X in external memory, I think it will be the 16X which is 512mb.

512mb external memory, 32mb eDRAM on Cell, 64mb on GS3.

Seems good to me.