I think Sony's upgrade from 4GB to 8GB is the reason we didn't see a box yesterday.

Sony must have felt the need to match general storage and the relatively late change in size of RAM is forcing modifications to their design.

Now, MS may be doing the same thing. They may not want the 1/2 the speed RAM combined with eSRAM on the GPU. They may realize that this setup will be harder on devs as its less base PC-like. So they could scrap the eSRAM design and go with full GDDR5.

HOWEVER, there is one other point to think about. The cost. MS is including a Kinect in the box. So that may force them to stick with their current design as it reduces cost dramatically on memory which is then offset by the Kinect hardware.

I don't think MS will change.

How would it be a "silly mistake"? Having GDDR5 in the PS4 is great regardless what MS does. From what I understand if MS had to make a decision to switch RAM types now they would have to recreate their internals and delay to 2014. Unless they did a while ago they are stuck with GDDR3. They do have the ESRAM and the moved Engines, maybe those will make up for it but devs won't like it as much and it will show in the games. Think draw distance and Bethesda game problems at some point but much more subdued. Things will just run smoother, faster, and with better graphics on PS4 if the rumors are all true. If PS4 sells way above the Next Box, expect third party exclusives to pop up left and right like PS2 had. I think the industry is sick of MS, and I'm glad. Consumers have been letting them run rampant this whole Gen.

I was going for HAHAHA, but I thought it was rude...

Dude, the difference is on many levels and it's HUGExHUGE.

I'm seeing a misconception here that GDDR5 > DDR3. It's a tradeoff. GDDR5 has much higher latency in return for faster bandwidth. The choice was no doubt made to support the on-die GPU but this isn't necessarily good for the CPU.

Currently, If you want 8GB of GDDR5 RAM for a PC you will have to spend about $3,000.  Even now, 4GB GDDR5 RAM is extremely hard to find let alone buy so I am intensely curious as to how Sony managed to fit this much GDDR5 RAM into the PS4 without pushing the cost of the Console well above $1000.

This RAM situation kind of defies the current possibilities and logic of computer electronics, I just cannot wrap my head around how this is even remotely possible.

I would be able to understand if Sony said they have 4GB GDDR5 RAM overclocked to approach 8GB GDDR5, but they blatantly and straight up said, "We have 8GB GDDR5 RAM..." And the tech world went, "Whaaaaaaa??!"

I R Confused

Try having gaming and video applications run in standard DDR then. There's a reason PS3, X360, Wii-U, Wii, GC, PS2 etc. didn't do it.

It's not a tradeoff when one product is so much better than the other except for one characteristic, much like we can agree plasma and LCD is better than cathode ray displays. You are playing the overwhelming exception fallacy right there.

No they can't. Impossible. Written with authority.

You people should really learn something about hardware design before making such ridiculous statements like "let's just swap ddr for gddr and we are equal". Addressing memory requires memory controllers inside gpu and cpu. ddr requires memory controllers designed for ddr ram, gddr requires memory controllers designed for gddr memory. It is as simple as that. IF MS switched from ddr to gddr. they would have to redesign both front ends of their gpu and cpu. We are talking about $20mio upfront. And at least two months of delay. Not going to happen.

If they want to refetch bragging rights, they can add another dimm and go for 16G ddr memory. I doubt this would result in more than a marginal performance improvement.

I did state in the post you partially quoted that it comes with significant cost in console. It IS possible, just not likely as its too big of a change as you more thoroughly detailed.

...

that's not what the developers seem to be saying...