| fillet said: The PS4 will be topped out at a maximum of 2GB of the 8GB used for graphics. That is to say that no more than 2GB will be used for video/graphics duties. It is based on same GPU as AMD 7850 which does not have a 3GB variant for a reason, because it isn't a card suited to situations where the extra RAM would be of any practical purpose. |
I thought the 2GB limitation had more to do with Windows 32bits than anything else. The PS4 OS/kernel will be a 64 bits one. As well as only the most recent AMD GPUs (and there aren't many) passed the barrier of 2GB. Not to mention that the biggest limitation is the video RAM cost, something that Sony could overcome only God knows how.
Also the PS4 GPU is more like the 7970M (M as mobile) than the 7850. For the simple reason that it is energy saving. Not that this simple fact would change much about the RAM management, true. But it is also true that we have no frigging clue of what's really inside that chip. We just know that the memory bandwidth is higher than both 7850's and 7970M's. There could be, and most likely there is, the typical "secret sauce" we find in consoles.
Still, after the debacle of the PS3 splitted RAM architecture to have 8GB of unified video RAM is a huge step forward. Even Skyrim at the 6th or 7th patch fixing the memory leaks could run just fine in the PS3 (I played it personally. Not even a freeze and the frame drops disappeared) , issues like that will never happen again. And more video RAM can be useful to pre-render and store some parts of the environment, while the GPU is not very busy. Sure, it must be optimized. That's why Naughty Dog games will look greater than ever while the multiplatform one, especially the ones ported from PC, will most likely run at a lower fps.
This is only academic anyway. The truth is that there are plenty of (PC) games that do not need to fully use the top GPUs. I can see big issue only with games like Crysis 4, unless they improve their stupid engine. After that, having for example Lara Croft with or without dynamic hair won't change my life nor may gaming leisure at all.
