My 2 cents : PS5 will have at least 24GB of total system RAM, no way it can be 16GB, considering XBox One X has 12 ;)

My guess, PS5 will have 24~32 GB of total system RAM. The GPU will be amazing, many of you will be surprised.

I have a theory on a possible viable storage solution. Rather than any of what most think, they could just split the storage into system storage a general storage of sorts. 

Right now n 250GB nvme drive cost as little as $100 on amazon. At console volumes that could be costing as little as $35 for sony/MS. Now in 2020 I believe sony and MS can get a 500GB nvme SSD in volume at around $40/$50 per drive. But there is an even cheaper way to do this, they can literally build the "nvme SSD" right onto the PCB. So the console can ship with like 500GB of nvme based built in storage and an empty mechanical HDD bay for those that want to slap in a HDD for more storage. Or just launch with the external HDD support option right out the gate and not even borther with an internal mechanical HDD bay.

I think some of you guys as missing something on this whole split memory thing. There is a reason I mention LPDDR4 rm as opposed to just DDR4. 

Size. Or amount of modules needed so to speak.

DDR4 while offering much higher bandwith, would require quite a good amount of ram chips flanking the CPU.  I mean right now we literally need 8 ram modules to get 8GB of DDR4. So where are the GDDR6 going to go on a console sized PCB?

But using LPDDR4, they can get all 8GB of it in a module just slightly bigger than one GDDR6 module.

The only issue being that it has a peak bandwith of around 32GB/s. But that will be more than enough if all it does is run the OS of the consoles and OS application outside games. 

This also allows them splurge on GDDR6 and put in as much as they ca possibly put in (again my guess here is around 18GB-20GB, then throw in 8GB of LPDDR4 in there for the OS and maybe even to load off certain game code to further reduce how much of the GDDR6 is wasted.

I am not sure how much bandwith is needed for the CPU loop of game code, but if its something that 32GB/s of bandwith can cover, then we may even have a situation where the next gen consoles have as much as 16LPDDR4 ram and 16GB of dedicated vram and have game code use both pools of memory.

Or even more interesting, having two modules of LPDDR4 ram (which would be needed to get 16GB of LPDDR4) may also allow double the bandwith... though I am not sure this is possible with LPDDR4

Sadly true. Luckily it's quite likely that in 2020 the same money will buy more RAM and better than now, but the range of possible and viable solutions between best and worst case for memory price trend is so wide that engineers will have to settle for a total amount that won't become a bloodbath even in the worst case. If next gen will start in 2020, the definitive amount of RAM will have to be decided not later than next year, so price trend next year, and the special deals console makers will be able to strike for the supplies for the first years of production will decide this matter.
Obviously, if HW makers and SW devs will decide that 16GB total RAM will be enough, at least for entry level models, next gen, then the problem is already solved 16GB GDDR UMA is the solution that will provide the best performance for money without making costs skyrocket. Amongst possible solutions one step above 16GB, I don't know if a 20GB total RAM, possibly made of 8GB GDDR and 12GB DDR could bring savings worthy the higher complication in motherboard design and lower performances compared to sticking to a 20GB GDDR UMA, while going up to 24GB total or higher, a GDDR UMA could become less and less viable. So yes, unless RAM prices start dropping significantly again, any scenario with more than 16GB could make costs and complications, even in just chosing the right memory architecture, grow more than linearly with RAM size increase.
The only good news about this is that this prudent growth in HW specs could help keeping SW development costs under control, and power consumption of entry level and mid-range gaming machines too.

Don't set yourself up for disappointment.

Yes, 16 GB may seem little since the XBox One X has 12 GB and the PS4 itself had 8 GB. However, the Xbox One X is a premium product which is paying a huge extra for all those memory nodes, which simply isn't doable for a $399 console. There won't be enough improvements on memory nodes to warrant more than 16 GB at reasonable prices until 2020.

Besides, the PS5 would still proportionally be as good as the PS4 was back in 2013, compared to gaming PCs. The average gaming PC RAM  was 3 GB in 2010, 6 GB in 2014 and about 9 GB right now, according to Steam's stats. 16 GB is a huge plus over those numbers, and on all likehood will still be in 2020. More exotic numbers such as 18 or 20 GB would make little sense as well given the size of memory nodes and the number of ROPs of a GPU (with the possibility, of course, for separate nodes of cheaper memory for OS etc.).

It does not seem that you evaluate new consoles by the perspective of consoles, but of pc.
A console has to be popular, and for that, it has to be cheap to be sold on a large scale.
Ps5 / xtwo base, it has to cost up to 399 at launch, anything that comes above it, say 499 or 599 will get stranded miserably.
Think about what you can do with this price 399 then mount the hardware on top of that.
24/32 gb ram, 512 gb ssd are expensive pieces, unless the console costs 599 and still at a loss, it will not happen.
It would make a lot more sense to say let's say with a basic ps5 for mass 399 and a ps5 pro 599 for enthusiasts, but this in terms of launch production would be terrible.

Thats the thing though...... why MUST it be $399. I think sony and MS can get away with launching consoles at $499 in 2020.

They could sell 13M of them at that price on the first year in the market, then drop it to $399 sometime in 2021. 

And no, 512GB SSDs are nowhere as expensive anymore as you seem to think. I just mentioned in a previous post that you can get a 250GB nvme SSD for as little as $100. And a 500GB sata SSD for again, $100. And thats amazon pricing..... it would cost significantly less for sony/ms when looking at volume OEM pricing. In retrospect, back in 2013 a 500GB HDD retailed for around $80, but cost sony around $25 at volume OEM pricing.

I think a lot here are actually making a mistake here which is in truth the opposite of what you are alluring to. They are understating the amount of sway an OEM has on pricing for a product when they come and play an order for 40M of them spanning over 2 years allowing for renegotiation. Whatever something cost at retail, just imagine that it would cost sony/MS les than half or in some cases even as much as a quater of that price as an OEM making volume orders. For better or for worse.

No. You couldn't be more wrong on this point. I mean we are talking about consoles here, which regardless of how many off the shelf parts they use are all still very very custom architectures. 

You must it sound like tehre must be 8, 12 or 16.....etc memory modules flanking an APU for it to work properly. There doesn't, if using 2GB GDDR6 modules, 18GB will simply mean 9 ram modules (1 more than the 8 in the PS4 right now) on the PCB or 10 modules for a 20GB set up. I am sure if that is their intention getting the APU and memory to play nice would be the least of their problems.

Now I will reiterate, I am not saying we are going to see 20GB, 24GB or even 32GB of ram in these systems.... I could never know that. I am just saying that a loty of this is not as "impossible" as some of us here are making it sound. There are tons of ways around these things when you start looking at it form the perspective of an OEM and stop looking at it form that of a PC consumer. This is not saying that trends affects consumers in the markets now will not somehow filter up to OEMs too, but it will be nowhere as bad as it is hitting the consumers.

Only desktop mechanical drives can hit that speed and it's still too slow. But Sony will use an laptop drive anyway if they go for a mechanical disk and the disk xbox one x has is the fastest one (1tb seagate barracuda). I'm not sure why Sony/Microsoft won't go for a desktop disk, from what I read they just causes to much vibration for consideration, but not sure if it's the truth.

About SSDs, right now the cheapest one is 180$ at newegg for 1TB, and I'm assuming Sony buy their stuff for half the retail price. By the end of 2019 I'm sure 1TB SDD will cost under 100$ (retail price) making is a good choice for ps5.

My build for ps5 has 50$ for hard drive, 100$ for the APU, 100$ for RAM and 150$ the rest. So yes 1tb ssd is possible :)

https://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100011693%20600414920%208000&IsNodeId=1&bop=And&order=PRICE&page=1

Right now 5 1tb ssds under 200$.

Hehe I seen you previous posts, your specs are a bit out of whack :). I'm bracing myself for an 8 core zen+ cpu, 12 TF navi, 1tb SSD and between 12-24 GB ram of GDDR6 so we pretty close in our guesses.

But I think microsoft will deliver an 16TF navi gpu so pretty close to your dream of 18 TF! and a SSD is enough speed increase, no need for NVMe yet.

If PS5 will really have 24-32 GB of total system RAM, will you buy one at Launch for me ? :)   

Kidding aside, Sony was always very generous in terms of amount of RAM gen after gen, 3MB for PS1, 36MB for PS2, 512MB for PS3 and 8GB for PS4, which makes a

x12/x14/x16 respectively, going from PS1 to PS2, from PS2 to PS3 and from PS3 to PS4. Now, I'm not expecting the same jump, but 2X the amount of RAM looks a bit too much far away from Sony's habit, considering that most probably PS5 will come out at least 7 years after PS4.  

 We have to wait and see, but I'm confident the new hardware will be very interesting :)  my sixth sense.

Or go with a hybrid/cached approach.
With that in mind... A 250GB NVMe drive is still more expensive at $109 AUD verses $55 AUD for a 1TB mechanical.
Console games have monolithic install sizes+OS will gobble a massive chunk of that as well.

I just don't see a 250GB, heck even 500GB NVMe drive being viable.
Consoles go for cost sensitive parts, not the latest and greatest.

Have you confused GB and Gb? GigaByte and Gigabit.
There are 16Gb density DDR4 chips on the market, there are 8 bits in a byte, so that would be 2GB per chip... Meaning you only need 4x chips for 8GB, it's actually the same as Samsungs GDDR6 densities... And twice that of Microns GDDR6.

What? You can have 512GB/s of bandwidth with DDR1 Ram, it all depends how wide you wish to take things... And the wider you go the more expensive it becomes.

It is possible with any RAM technology.

False.

The Xbox One X does not have the fastest 2.5" mechanical disk. Because the fastest 2.5" mechanical disk is not a Seagate.
Fact is... The Xbox One X is using a crap 5400rpm drive... And that is what is really holding it back, especially in random reads and writes where latency skyrockets.

Size, heat, cost, power consumption are all considerations. - Notebook drives tend to employ various technologies to reduce vibrations and thus increase reliability as well.

You don't have to have a memory capacity that conforms to those numbers. But holy hell is it advised.
It does actually need to match the memory controller/ROP partitions in order to extract maximum bandwidth. - Memory transactions are actually a parallel task.
Once you start placing multiple memory chips on a crossbar/memory controller verses the other memory chips which might have exclusive use of a crossbar/memory controller, then when a memory transaction is performed on that partition, performance will tank.
We saw this with the Geforce 970 and to a lesser extent the Radeon 7970 and potentially the Xbox One X.

People forget that the PC has more than one memory pool.

In 2014 I had 32GB system memory, 12GB of GDDR5 memory in total.

Really depends.
Micron is talking about keeping prices high and focusing on profits, other manufacturers may follow suit.
DRAM manufacturers are likely to be hit with a stupidly massive fine and they may just pass that onto us.

Need to take a wait and see approach.

Will be interesting to see if the OS/Background stuff from the Xbox/Playstation OS will use more DRAM next gen.