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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Xbox One vs PS4: ESRAM slower than GDDR5, It's Bottleneck"

freedquaker on 01 February 2014
mutantsushi said:

freedquaker said:
ESRAM is actually the bottleneck itself BECAUSE,

without Esram, and all that space it takes, they could have put GDDR5 there instead, and even put extra Compute Units.

So yes, Esram is there to alleviate the bottleneck created by DDR3 but because it's in a tiny capacity, so huge, not fast enough, and cripples the GPU, IT IS THE BOTTLENECK.

To go further, MS also has "Move Engines" on the APU which are dedicated to moving this memory data around thru the ESRAM. 

That also takes room, if not as much as the ESRAM itself.

You can characterize the ESRAM as a bottleneck vs. Sony's solution, because the real world thruut is still lower AND the 32MB window is choking potential workflows that you would like to do with it (and that Sony's GDDR imposes no barrier to), the 32MB window is restricting potential efficiencies.  That can also be characterized as a "development bottleneck", but if the best result a developer can come up with using ESRAM is still lower performance than GDDR, the ESRAM is also imposing a performance bottleneck.  If you want you can say that bottleneck is derived from the DDR, and ESRAM didn't fully compensate DDR's weaknesses, but same result: MS' DDR+ESRAM is a bottleneck.

Well said. Overall, MS doesn't know how to design an efficient console hardware, and they never knew. But with XB1, they really messed it up totally.

-Underpowered, costs more to produce even without Kinect, - more difficult to program for... All in 1 package! I could have gone and designed a better console myself, no joking! Even a $100 Graphics Card now EASILY tronounce XB1, and I wouldn't be surprised if the next incarnation of Kaveri also runs hoops around it! PS4, on the other hand, will not be matched by PC at this price range for a few more years.



Playstation 5 vs XBox Series Market Share Estimates

Regional Analysis  (only MS and Sony Consoles)
Europe     => XB1 : 23-24 % vs PS4 : 76-77%
N. America => XB1 :  49-52% vs PS4 : 48-51%
Global     => XB1 :  32-34% vs PS4 : 66-68%

Sales Estimations for 8th Generation Consoles

Next Gen Consoles Impressions and Estimates

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Krill on 01 February 2014
freedquaker said:
mutantsushi said:

freedquaker said:
ESRAM is actually the bottleneck itself BECAUSE,

without Esram, and all that space it takes, they could have put GDDR5 there instead, and even put extra Compute Units.

So yes, Esram is there to alleviate the bottleneck created by DDR3 but because it's in a tiny capacity, so huge, not fast enough, and cripples the GPU, IT IS THE BOTTLENECK.

To go further, MS also has "Move Engines" on the APU which are dedicated to moving this memory data around thru the ESRAM. 

That also takes room, if not as much as the ESRAM itself.

You can characterize the ESRAM as a bottleneck vs. Sony's solution, because the real world thruut is still lower AND the 32MB window is choking potential workflows that you would like to do with it (and that Sony's GDDR imposes no barrier to), the 32MB window is restricting potential efficiencies.  That can also be characterized as a "development bottleneck", but if the best result a developer can come up with using ESRAM is still lower performance than GDDR, the ESRAM is also imposing a performance bottleneck.  If you want you can say that bottleneck is derived from the DDR, and ESRAM didn't fully compensate DDR's weaknesses, but same result: MS' DDR+ESRAM is a bottleneck.

Well said. Overall, MS doesn't know how to design an efficient console hardware, and they never knew. But with XB1, they really messed it up totally.

-Underpowered, costs more to produce even without Kinect, - more difficult to program for... All in 1 package! I could have gone and designed a better console myself, no joking! Even a $100 Graphics Card now EASILY tronounce XB1, and I wouldn't be surprised if the next incarnation of Kaveri also runs hoops around it! PS4, on the other hand, will not be matched by PC at this price range for a few more years.


SMH. 



Pemalite on 01 February 2014
freedquaker said:

Well said. Overall, MS doesn't know how to design an efficient console hardware, and they never knew. But with XB1, they really messed it up totally.

-Underpowered, costs more to produce even without Kinect, - more difficult to program for... All in 1 package! I could have gone and designed a better console myself, no joking! Even a $100 Graphics Card now EASILY tronounce XB1, and I wouldn't be surprised if the next incarnation of Kaveri also runs hoops around it! PS4, on the other hand, will not be matched by PC at this price range for a few more years.


The PS4 can be beaten by the PC easily.
Grab a second hand Core 2 Quad for $100 and overclock it to 3.6ghz+
Then get a Radeon 7850/7870, overclock it to 1.2ghz for $200.

It's not only faster, it's cheaper with free online, cheaper games, so it's even cheaper over a long term, throw in mantle to make up for the CPU deficiency...

However... To state Microsoft doesn't know how to design an efficient console is laughable, is it less powerfull than the Playstation 4? You bet. The Playstation 4 is also significantly less powerfull than my PC as I have almost "20 teraflops" of compute performance. (Not that it means much for gaming, I also run at higher-than 4k resolution.)

The Wii U is also less powerfull than all the next gen platforms.

That doesn't mean none of the platforms that are weaker than the PC are suddenly not going to have any good looking games, on the contrary in-fact, reserve your judgement for a few years into the future when everyone will have a good idea on how the market is going to look and how the games are going to pan out.



--::{PC Gaming Master Race}::--

freedquaker on 01 February 2014
Pemalite said:
freedquaker said:
ESRAM is actually the bottleneck itself BECAUSE,

without Esram, and all that space it takes, they could have put GDDR5 there instead, and even put extra Compute Units. 4 GB DDR3 + 4 GB GDDR5 + additional CUs would definitely be a much better choice. But the very existence of a Esram creates a bottleneck.

So yes, Esram is there to alleviate the bottleneck created by DDR3 but because it's in a tiny capacity, so huge, not fast enough, and cripples the GPU, IT IS THE BOTTLENECK.


The eSRAM has nothing to do with the GDDR5 memory. At all.
...
With that in mind, the eSRAM isn't a bottleneck, it's a small "band-aid" solution...

It's funny because I agree with everything technical you said above but obviously you misunderstood some of the points I have made, and have a different perspective than I do.

I never said Esram had anything to do with GDDR5; I said, MS went with 8 GB DDR3 + ESRAM, instead of 4 GB DDR3 + 4 GB GDDR5. The first one takes A LOT MORE space on the die than the second one. It's not like ESRAM is incompatible with GDDR5 but if you'd choose GDDR5, then it becomes pointless to use ESRAM at all. So MS had two options (given that they didn't know about the GDDR5 yields)...

a) Employ 8 GB DDR3 + 32 MB ESRAM, which takes a lot of space, so you also sacrifice Compute Units and bandwidth

b) Employ 4 GB DDR3 + 4 GB GDDR5, which takes much less space, so you don't sacrifice Compute Units or bandwidth

- Option a does not cost less than option b, possibly costs even more!

- Option a has less bandwidth, less compute units, has less power overall

Why is "a" less powerful than "b" overall? Because it has ESRAM in it! You may argue otherwise but let's try different configurations

c) Employ 4 GB DDR3 + 4 GB GDDR5 + 32 MB ESRAM, what's the point of having ESRAM with GDDR5 on board? Useless and only wastes precious GPU space.

d) Employ 4 GB DDR3 + 32 MB ESRAM, Not enough RAM etc...

 

Regardless of how you look at it, employing ESRAM creates a bottleneck because it is prohibitive of using a better RAM solution like GDDR5. You'd never use ESRAM with GDDR5, not because they are incompatible, but because the use of GDDR5 negates (unnecessiates) ESRAM. Either way, MS never considered GDDR5 to begin with. That's the evil beneath.



Playstation 5 vs XBox Series Market Share Estimates

Regional Analysis  (only MS and Sony Consoles)
Europe     => XB1 : 23-24 % vs PS4 : 76-77%
N. America => XB1 :  49-52% vs PS4 : 48-51%
Global     => XB1 :  32-34% vs PS4 : 66-68%

Sales Estimations for 8th Generation Consoles

Next Gen Consoles Impressions and Estimates

Captain_Tom on 01 February 2014
OdinHades said:
It's useless. Everyone who still lives in denial will never accept facts at this point.



Honestly I just think they should have scrapped the ESRAM, gone with a little faster DDR3 and then saved that extra money and space.  It's just a waste of time to put that on there.  They would need at least 64MB anyways to make a difference...



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Pemalite on 01 February 2014
freedquaker said:
Pemalite said:
freedquaker said:
ESRAM is actually the bottleneck itself BECAUSE,

without Esram, and all that space it takes, they could have put GDDR5 there instead, and even put extra Compute Units. 4 GB DDR3 + 4 GB GDDR5 + additional CUs would definitely be a much better choice. But the very existence of a Esram creates a bottleneck.

So yes, Esram is there to alleviate the bottleneck created by DDR3 but because it's in a tiny capacity, so huge, not fast enough, and cripples the GPU, IT IS THE BOTTLENECK.


The eSRAM has nothing to do with the GDDR5 memory. At all.
...
With that in mind, the eSRAM isn't a bottleneck, it's a small "band-aid" solution...

It's funny because I agree with everything technical you said above but obviously you misunderstood some of the points I have made, and have a different perspective than I do.

I never said Esram had anything to do with GDDR5; I said, MS went with 8 GB DDR3 + ESRAM, instead of 4 GB DDR3 + 4 GB GDDR5. The first one takes A LOT MORE space on the die than the second one. It's not like ESRAM is incompatible with GDDR5 but if you'd choose to GDDR5, then it becomes pointless to use ESRAM at all. So MS had two options (given that they didn't know about the GDDR5 yields)...

a) Employ 8 GB DDR3 + 32 MB ESRAM, which takes a lot of space, so you also sacrifice Compute Units and bandwidth

b) Employ 4 GB DDR3 + 4 GB GDDR5, which takes much less space, so you don't sacrifice Compute Units or bandwidth

- Option a does not cost less than option b, possibly costs even more!

- Option a has less bandwidth, less compute units, has less power overall

Why is "a" less powerful than "b" overall? Because it has ESRAM in it! You may argue otherwise but let's try different configurations

c) Employ 4 GB DDR3 + 4 GB GDDR5 + 32 MB ESRAM, what's the point of having ESRAM with GDDR5 on board? Useless and only wastes precious GPU.

d) Employ 4 GB DDR3 + 32 MB ESRAM, Not enough RAM etc...

 

Regardless of how you look at it, employing ESRAM creates a bottleneck because it is prohibitive of using a better RAM solution like GDDR5. You'd never use ESRAM with GDDR5, not because they are incompatible, but because the use of GDDR5 negates (unnecessiates) ESRAM. Either way, MS never considered GDDR5 to begin with. That's the evil beneath.


Nah, they couldn't do DDR3+DDR5, I don't think AMD has ever made a memory controller that handles different types of DRAM in conjunction with each other, it's always been either/or pretty much.

If they wen't in your theoretical direction... Microsoft would need to retain the same high density memory chips, but because there will be half of each type, the memory bus would also have to be cut in half from 256bit to 128bit.
If they decide to retain the 256bit bus, they would then need to cut the memory density and throw twice as many memory chips onto the PCB, which will drive up PCB complexity, so costs would have increased.

Plus, keeping things simple is more ideal from a manufacturing point of view, if there was a shortage of DDR3 or GDDR5, then it would impact every console, that's twice as likely to occur with two different memory technologies.

It would have been more ideal, I agree, but cost is one of the primary factors in a cost sensitive device.

Besides... 256bit DDR3 can be faster than 128bit GDDR5 memory anyway. :)

Sony took a gamble, it paid off, Microsoft just tried to play it safe and it didn't pay off, they were more focused on the software side anyway, which also fell short on launch, for everything that was done well in the UI, there is another that brings it down.



--::{PC Gaming Master Race}::--

Cyborg13B on 01 February 2014

You're all wrong. The problem is the way the 32 MB of ESRAM is implemented. The amateur technologicians at ATi and Microsoft, instead of including it as a 200 GB/s Frame/Z-Buffer, included it as a 32 MB L2 cache for the GPU - thus giving the Xbox 3 basically 100 GB/s of memory bandwidth.



drkohler on 01 February 2014

Ok, people, calm down for a while.
Pretty much everything that was written in the past three or so posts is dead wrong. The situation is a lot more complex than what your posts seem to imply but it would take a very lengthy and technical post to clear up the mess we are currently steering into. (And the same errors would pop up again in one or two weeks in another thread...)



walsufnir on 01 February 2014
freedquaker said:
mutantsushi said:

freedquaker said:
ESRAM is actually the bottleneck itself BECAUSE,

without Esram, and all that space it takes, they could have put GDDR5 there instead, and even put extra Compute Units.

So yes, Esram is there to alleviate the bottleneck created by DDR3 but because it's in a tiny capacity, so huge, not fast enough, and cripples the GPU, IT IS THE BOTTLENECK.

To go further, MS also has "Move Engines" on the APU which are dedicated to moving this memory data around thru the ESRAM.

That also takes room, if not as much as the ESRAM itself.

You can characterize the ESRAM as a bottleneck vs. Sony's solution, because the real world thruut is still lower AND the 32MB window is choking potential workflows that you would like to do with it (and that Sony's GDDR imposes no barrier to), the 32MB window is restricting potential efficiencies.  That can also be characterized as a "development bottleneck", but if the best result a developer can come up with using ESRAM is still lower performance than GDDR, the ESRAM is also imposing a performance bottleneck.  If you want you can say that bottleneck is derived from the DDR, and ESRAM didn't fully compensate DDR's weaknesses, but same result: MS' DDR+ESRAM is a bottleneck.

Well said. Overall, MS doesn't know how to design an efficient console hardware, and they never knew. But with XB1, they really messed it up totally.


What? Especially efficient 360 was.



kirby007 on 01 February 2014
drkohler said:

Ok, people, calm down for a while.
Pretty much everything that was written in the past three or so posts is dead wrong. The situation is a lot more complex than what your posts seem to imply but it would take a very lengthy and technical post to clear up the mess we are currently steering into. (And the same errors would pop up again in one or two weeks in another thread...)

It would be ideal if we could stuff all the correct stuff in just one big post and sticky it



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