PlayStation 4 (codename Orbis) technical hardware investigation (news and rumours)

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Depends on what you do with it.

I have friends with 4GB MacBook Air and they are happy. I have a fully loaded one just because I sometimes develop on it. I don't think people will use Photoshop or Xcode on PS4 though. If Sony have interesting nextgen use cases, I would like to see it firsthand before discussing whether 3GB is worth it. ^_^

OT, I have a 15" MacBook Retina with 8 GB and since i have like 30 tabs open in Safari it's sometimes lags in switching between tabs, but when I look at memory usage in iStats there's always 3GB+ in free or inactive memory, so maybe it's not a memory issue?
 
Safari can be a memory hog, at least in Snow Leopard. Look in Activity Monitor > System Memory. IIRC, if Page Outs and the Swap File are more than a few MBs, that means you're hitting the HD (iStats may give you the same info). OS X doesn't always release inactive memory as quickly as you'd think and Safari and Firefox (don't use Chrome and Opera enough to notice) tend to bloat their memory use over the course of a day and a bunch of sleep cycles, IME.

Web browsers (JavaScript-heavy sites especially, it seems) consume RAM. I can see Facebook / Twitter / etc. integration leading to more sys-allocated RAM than we'd think. I don't get what all the fuss is about having "only" 5GB available for games at the beginning of this console cycle. That's 10x the previous gen, and probably more than most current PC games.
 
Android and Linux (and BSD, and most good OS I suppose) don't free the cache bucket until the memory is almost full. That gives a false impression that memory usage goes up a certain time after boot and doesn't seem to go down.
I'm using 400 MB of real ram (memory that isn't cache) with KDE (which is notorious for being bloated), six tabs/windows open in firefox, including a youtube 1080p playing, mplayer is open in the background, a PDF reader, and a music player.
 
I don't get what all the fuss is about having "only" 5GB available for games at the beginning of this console cycle. That's 10x the previous gen, and probably more than most current PC games.
It's because there's zero good reason to reserve that much RAM for non-gaming purposes for a games console. 3 gigs, that's a hell of a lot, guaranteed, vast majority of buyers of these machines will never use them for anything that would require that much reserved RAM. It's so nuts I don't even know where to begin.
 
Right, but that's not set in stone/hardware. It's probably the easiest thing to change after launch. Sorry if I didn't make it clear, but I expect them to dial it (way) down. I'm not excusing it or saying it's fixed and we should deal with it because it's good enough.
 
3 gigs is a lot, but i kind of think something like 512mb isn't enough in a modern environment.

would you want a pc with 512mb ram?

i can see 1-2 gigs, even though here all we really care about is "more more power for games, must be more powerful than the other guy". maybe thats shortsighted and maybe ms and gasp, even sony dont care.

the 2 gigs inter says is locked up on durango (1 gig in limbo) actually doesnt seem crazy extreme to me.

and lets not forget time. the x360's 32mb for os probably didn't seem near as pathetic in 2005, but it grew to be pathetic. in the future we could see 32-64 gb the norm on pc, 8 gb tablets and phones, that sort of thing.
 
3 gigs is a lot, but i kind of think something like 512mb isn't enough in a modern environment.

would you want a pc with 512mb ram?

i can see 1-2 gigs, even though here all we really care about is "more more power for games, must be more powerful than the other guy". maybe thats shortsighted and maybe ms and gasp, even sony dont care.

the 2 gigs inter says is locked up on durango (1 gig in limbo) actually doesnt seem crazy extreme to me.

I agree with this post, though I think 512mB is more than enough for all of the functions spelled in this thread, except maybe seamless browsing and possibly (voice/video/skeletal) recognition.
In general my experience is that vms, jits, garbage collectors are the main sources of memory consumption, which happen to also include web browsing.

Regardless, it makes sense to have at least 2GB reserved for OS, just to be safe. There is only one direction acceptable to go after initial settings.

For PS4 specifically, if I were Sony I would let an android environment setup to flourish. Sony phones bring a lot of know-how to the table, expanding the number of apps to consumer.
 
Safari can be a memory hog, at least in Snow Leopard. Look in Activity Monitor > System Memory. IIRC, if Page Outs and the Swap File are more than a few MBs, that means you're hitting the HD (iStats may give you the same info). OS X doesn't always release inactive memory as quickly as you'd think and Safari and Firefox (don't use Chrome and Opera enough to notice) tend to bloat their memory use over the course of a day and a bunch of sleep cycles, IME.

Ah that makes sense, I'll try and look at that when I get home.
Doesn't help that I never shut my machine down.
 
Seems like nobody believe that 2 or 3 gb are worth reserved to system, but instead to try in guessing what services would be worth as much ram, you all agree that 1 gb is enough;

I will wait tomorrow to make some real speculation in possible services, in this moment I have confidence, if the main manufacturers choose to reserve as much ram, there's reasons, no doubts about
 
^^^
And no doubt there's a reason if they DON'T reserve 3GB.
Also the Xbox reveal will give you no clue about Sony strategy for the OS because, as I said already, Sony has its own strategy.

I will never understand why Sony mimicking MS/Nintendo, or vice versa, is more plausible than Sony having ideas of its own or a different strategy/solution.
 
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I will never understand why Sony mimicking MS/Nintendo, or vice versa, is more plausible than Sony having a different strategy or ideas of its own.

just because sony have done this in the past, from the rumble pads to online services to move controllers, it's all taken from others, customized a bit then put on the market :rolleyes:

original ideas are bananas controller for ps3 (do you remember?), "HOME" online and so on

you know how it worked;
I think that they will continue with the same pattern
 
I don't get what all the fuss is about having "only" 5GB available for games at the beginning of this console cycle.
Trying to understand the justification, which I hope is better than, "heck, 5GBs is enough compared to last gen. Let's just put the rest aside and see what happens in a few years." ;)

There's something like 2 GBs 'spare' RAM in the 8 GB configuration. It's RAM that's likely not going to be being accessed constantly whether it has game assets stores away there or background tasks or user applicaitons. Would it be better for games to allow precaching for 2 GBs games assets, like more megatexture tiles in complex city environments? Or better to keep resident 50 different utilities and social apps that the user can flip to the front in an instant? Different folk will have different preferences, but the justification for needing that much for apps somewhat confuses me. Even looking forwards I can't see where the change is going to come. We talked about this at length in the next gen tech thread, about Durango reserving 3 GBs, and it seemed a gig or more could be used for Kinect and stuff, rather than 'apps'. What future requires a console to do more than a current iPad? Is the web going to become less and less efficient and just become retina-quality images taking up a gig a page or something equally ridiculous?
 
just because sony have done this in the past, from the rumble pads to online services to move controllers, it's all taken from others, customized a bit then put on the market :rolleyes:

original ideas are bananas controller for ps3 (do you remember?), "HOME" online and so on

you know how it worked;
I think that they will continue with the same pattern

Dual analog sticks is a Sony idea...but this is not the point because "nothing new under the sun".
The point is that Sony or MS have their strategies and that they wont' change them at every turn of events as fanboys say.
They are not going to change specs/features/strategy just because the other did change them or because the other has diffident strategy/specs/features.

It's not like the universe was balanced when PS4 had 4GB but now that it has 8GB it's unbalanced and MS must re-balance it by adding as well 4GB to the Xbox otherwise the world will end.
Sony doesn't have to mimic MS and reserve the same amount of memory they reserved for the OS otherwise the universe will be unbalanced.

PS4 and Xbox can be different in therms of specs, content and service and the world will not end.
They can be competitive offering different solutions, different specs, different software or different memory reservation.

Sony and MS are competing, not depending one on the other.
 
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Dual analog sticks is a Sony idea...but this is not the point because "nothing new under the sun".
The point is that Sony or MS have their strategies and that they wont' change them at every turn of events as fanboys say.
They are not going to change specs/features/strategy just because the other did change them or because the other has diffident strategy/specs/features.

It's not like the universe was balanced when PS4 had 4GB but now that it has 8GB it's unbalanced and MS must re-balance it by adding as well 4GB to the Xbox otherwise the world will end.
Sony doesn't have to mimic MS and reserve the same amount of memory they reserved for the OS otherwise the universe will be unbalanced.

PS4 and Xbox can be different in therms of specs, content and service and the world will not end.
They can be competitive offering different solutions, different specs, different software or different memory reservation.

Sony and MS are competing, not depending one on the other.

end world? what are you talking about?

the market have some rules, a different strategy is allowed, but being owned in services can be a huge defference in competitiveness. Few can spot differences between two machines when one is 30% faster in one component, ALL can spot differences when a machine have a lot of services that the other don't.
So what's the problem believing that one will try to catch the stronger?
It's so normal and trivial that I don't see your "world ending" point at all...
 
So what's the problem believing that one will try to catch the stronger?
It's so normal and trivial that I don't see your "world ending" point at all...

Sure nothing more normal and trivial than trying to catch the stronger one. :rolleyes:
 
Sure nothing more normal and trivial than trying to catch the stronger one. :rolleyes:

are you aware to what sony did trying to catch xbox live service? without success but that's another story
they switched from HOME online to so similar service, with achievements etc, without being able to give a good vocal chat while gaming and other things too, but they switched the whole online strategy

what sounds wrong for you, that microsoft it's better in software/services? deal with it, it's microsoft the larger and (controversial opinion) one of the best if not the best, software company in the world, not only a console/tv manufacturer

did you really want other examples of sony mimic?

what's about motion controllers?


playstationmove_wii.jpg


http://mynintendonews.com/2012/03/11/sony-admits-playstation-move-has-been-a-failure/

this is so normal for not emotional-bounded people. they see something that maybe can work on its products, they try to study the thing to replicate it on its envirorment
 
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are you aware to what sony did trying to catch xbox live service? without success but that's another story
they switched from HOME online to so similar service, with achievements etc, without being able to give a good vocal chat while gaming and other things too, but they switched the whole online strategy

what sounds wrong for you, that microsoft it's better in software/services? deal with it, it's microsoft the larger and (controversial opinion) one of the best if not the best, software company in the world, not only a console/tv manufacturer

So you say that catching the stronger one is "normal and trivial" but you say that Sony tried and didn't do it basically suggesting that it's not something trivial at all.
Wow you jut contradicted yourself and proved my point, thanks.

Oh and I have no interest whatsoever in deciding who's better at all, especially before the consoles are released or in Xbox case even revealed.
And I repeat: nothing new under the sun.

P.S.

BTW PlayStation Move prototypes appeared back in 2004.
 
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