Post-PS4 announcement and 8GB "surprise": Is Microsoft in time to change something?

I am unable to continue the discussion about whether a memory part is standard or custom under this premise. You're insane.
You claim there are speed grades in full production for DDR3 above 2133, please show me.

 

Very true. Like many others here have said. Spec alone will never make or break a system. Why the 8GB on the PS4 excites me is not because of games. It's what it can ultimately do. With more memory, it can do more things that aren't directly relates to gaming.

When I play games on my 360, I chat with my friends in our private chat channel. It's the social aspect of the system that aren't games related, but takes on the role of other devices I might be using...that's exciting. I like it on the 360, but felt Sony didn't really make an hard enough effort to compete with MS. And because of this, MS never really put effort to improve what it already had. Now, that Sony is putting more effort in this...it's really exciting, because competition is good. We win (as in the consumers).

My laptop at home that I used to use for bedtime reading lay broken (keyboard doesn't work). I have a replacement part for it, but never got around to fix it. Why? Because my iPad does everything I really need. One day I would like say that my xbox or playstation does everything I need .

 

FP16 is the only real option though.
FP10 doesn't have the range / precision for true HDR, and logluv is not natively supported by the GPU so all kinds of fixed-function processing goes out the window (blending, texture filtering, msaa resolves etc).

 

I don't think I'm underestimating the importance of the core market at all. The core market was the foundation of the 360's success. Everything else (like Kinect) just prolonged it. If the 360 didn't launch before the PS3/Wii, I don't think it would've been as successful either. The 1-year head-start built momentum for them, and from that, they were able to build relationships with third-party developers (Epic for example with Gears of War). Having most multiplatform games looking better on 360 probably helped, too.

With that said, my point wasn't to say that it's critical to take an early lead in sales and that it will ultimately decide who will end up on top. My point was that early adopters (the core market) do care about which system is capable of better visuals, and that winning the core market will only help in the long run.

Sure it seems like Durango is targeting a broader market, but again, outside of the core audience, not many casuals will be buying on launch because it will probably be priced too high. It's the core audience that they should be targeting first IMO.

 

My experience with consoles is that the early adopter/core people buy them and their friends jump on the bandwagon when they like what they see. So there's some significant multiplicator effect involved.
If Sony has the advantage with the 3rd party games as it looks like now we might even see the Nintendo effect where you only get the loosing console for their exclusive 1st party (AAA) titles. In my case I got the GC when it went to 99$ back then and only got a handful AAA title I didn't wanna miss. Surely not the kind of pity sale customer any console producer looks for while the real game sales go to their competition.

 

LOL wut!

It matters to microsoft, or indeed any other major hardware manufacturer, because if you build tens of millions of units with memory chips driven out-of-spec and your boxes suddenly start failing one after the other due to RAM chips dying, you're not going to get any recourse with the RAM manufacturer - since you ran their product out of spec.

And before you go pointing at your favorite boutique PC DIMM sticks again, those are especially binned, sometimes hand-picked chips; cream skimmed off the top of regular production runs and aimed at a ludicrously tiny, tiny market. That's why those sticks are frankly crazy expensive compared to stock DIMMs. You're not going to be able to find enough of those chips to satisfy microsoft, who needs to sell upwards of 10 million boxes a year and preferably more.

The only way to find ~80 million DDR3 chips/year at above-2133 speeds WOULD be to overvolt and overclock.

 

Pst grall there is something called a contract. If ms and say micron enter a cobtract for ram at x speed at y quanity and micron were to break the contract there would be financial penaltys for doing so. Ram is like anything else and as yields improve and micron processes drop. Speed/yields will go up. Loke I said the last time jedec updated dd3 specs were in 2009. They dully expected ddr4 to replace ddr3 at this point in the high end but it hasnt and doesnt apear to even get supported by intel till 2014.

If micron toshiba hynix or whoever felt they can supply faster ram to ms it would be no diffrent than a custom cpu or gpu. After all what will sony do if they cant get the soc made in enough quanitys per year ? Go talk to jedec ?

 

According to the CVG, MS was indeed caught surprised with sudden PS4 unveiling.
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/392950/industry-expects-microsofts-response-to-ps4-in-april/

 

XDR couldn't be a jedec standard since rambus is a proprietary memory supplier.

They are the exact opposite of jedec. One company designing high end memory vs an industry standard worked on and provided by many companies.

Whilst i fully understand who jedec is and why they exist this doesn't means a tweaked higher clocked version of DDR3 memory couldn't be used. The tech is so mature now higher clocks would be easy but for economic/reliability reasons i very much doubt they will.

 

Some people over at Gaf are speculating that MS is intentionally putting out fake tech specs to throw Sony off into thinking the PS4 will have a big advantage from a graphical standpoint.Maybe it's true or could be all BS.No one really knows until MS reveals Durango at their own event, which I think is scheduled in April.

 

I disagree because the PS3 came out a year later, $200 bucks more expensive and still managed to sell neck and neck with the xbox 360.MS this gen, stole plenty of marketshare from the PS brand which allows them the ability and leeway to launch in 2014 with a console that at least matches or surpasses PS4's overall capabilities.Think about it, launch a year later, which concidentially, is the 10 year anniversary of Halo 2 by releasing a remake of it as as a launch title along with Alan Wake 2, Perfect Dark 2, Project Gotham Racing and that would make it a pretty damn good launch release..

 

It's not nonsense considering the fact that when some people proposed that PS4/Durango could have 8 gigs of RAM.They were labeled crazy and delusional yet Sony surprised everyone with the inclusion of you guessed it, 8 gigs of very fast GDDR5 RAM.Don't easily dismiss something just because of assuming it is impossible.

 

Agree on everything . Half a year or longer won't hurt them in the long run , releasing outdated hardware will hurt them forever . Oh , and for someone saying specs don't matter , yeah tell that to WiiU that's tanking everywhere.

My opinion is (if rumors are true) this thing is unreleasable , period .

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Seems that Sony can change the specs for PS4 whenever they want - even Sony said that h/w isn't finalized yet - only Microsoft got stuck with specs from a century back and CANNOT CHANGE THEM. AT ALL.
That's what i learned from forums , even here too.

 

There are some things which are unchangeable this late in the game, if you want to release this year. People are not suggesting that changes will not be made, people are merely suggesting that major changes will not be made, because the majority of them would cause you to not be able to ship this year, being a major setback.

 

Ummm...those reservations about Sony going with 8 GBs GDDR5 were well founded in reason and known quantities. It's still unknown how Sony are implementing it, whether they've managed to side-step concerns somehow or are just brute-forcing it with considerable costs. That's a world away from the notion that MS is staging the Durango leaks to mislead everyone, going so far to create a fictional SuperDAE character and have them fictionally arrested in Australia. Because that's what'll have to have happened if the idea that MS are bluffing is true.

 

No one knew what RSX was back then , not even after ps3 was released ... it took some time to see that it wasn't all that . So they couldn't ask for a G80.
Now it's different , these gpus and their capabilities are well known .

 

And the fact still is that it isn't a simple job to change them this close to launch. Clock speed changes sure, but actually changing which GPU you use is very very unlikely.