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Forums - Gaming - Skyrim Dawnguard PS3: Punished for choosing wrong console

fillet on 17 October 2012
mantlepiecek said:
fillet said:
mantlepiecek said:
walsufnir said:
mantlepiecek said:

Skyrim is most definitely lacking in video memory, not system memory.


What is your opinion based off? To me it's absolutely clear that Skyrim has strong demand of *main memory* because of the complexity this game has - the growing save-file has already been mentioned by another poster.

Skyrim isn't really doing anything other than rendering huge open world environments - something which requires a lot of GPU memory.

CPU memory is still a requirement of course. But I can't see why specifically skyrim will need more system memory compared to other games that perform loads better than it.


Incorrect. "Huge open worlds" take massive amounts of system memory, NOT GPU memory. Tricks are employed so that only visible data is rendered and lower resolution textures are used in distance etc. I can assure you right now 256MB for a render of ANY game at 720p is plenty, if you bolt on anti-aliasing then that will increase the amount required but that is something that can be tweaked after release.

The prequels to Skyrim also took massive amounts of memory, I remember Morrowind on the PC, it needed 1GB to be completely smooth without long pauses when going between invisible cut off points. That was from 20012002 ish. Then Oblivion, also needed a relatively high amount of system memory to run smoothly.

This is obviously a system memory issue. As the poster before me has mentioned, Skyrim is EXACTLY the type of game that needs large amounts of system memory. If you read between the lines and think it through it's the only logical answer. The real proof in the pudding is that if it were video memory limitations that were causing the hitching and slowdown - they could be fixed easily enough by employing industry standard tricks, draw distancefogging, lower res textures for distant objects, even close ones if it was really neeeded.

When there is a system memory shortage and the game has already been finished, it's very hard to do anything about it. When DLC comes that only adds to that burden....what can you do? Answer - not much!

GTA 4, Red Dead redemption, Just Cause 2, Fallouts  all of them, etc. All have ran well, with the exception of Fallout on some PS3s.

And out of them, just cause 2, and red dead redemption look great as well, probably better than PS3 skyrim anyway.

So if GPU isn't the one to blame, then all these games should technically require a lot of system RAM and should have been as bad as skyrim on PS3, and yet all of these only have one thing in common, they look worse than their 360 counterparts with fallouts also performing a tad worse.

I don't see how skyrim specifically requires more RAM.

I don't know the answer to that, I'm not defending Bethesday here at all, they are to "blame" - as in they shouldn't have released the game on the PS3 if it wouldn't be made to work properly, but that's their perogative and it's a person's perogative to buy the game or not.

I know GTAIV does stream textures directly from the ODD, but the results are less than satisfactory.

But then Skyrim is doing a lot more "behind the scenes" than  GTAIV, in terms of keeping events in the game world in memory.

Also a thing to bare in mind is that Skyrim is using an off the shelf engine at it's core whereas Rockstar developed their own which would certainly limit Bethesda's ability to workaround issues.



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sergiodaly on 17 October 2012
fillet said:
sergiodaly said:
fillet said:
slowmo said:
fillet said:
sergiodaly said:
walsufnir said:
sergiodaly said:
many people are forgetting that PS3 can use the HDD to cache data the RAM claims are not possible to prove right unless bethesda "himself" say so... also, if the devs didn't think the PS3 was able to manage the game, or if they think they aren't talent enough to master the platform, they should not release it. the PS3 is the way it is long before the start of this game development, so is their fault to launch a broken piece of SW.


caching to hdd? swapping is magnitudes slower than ram... so where is the benefit? especially with slow 2.5"-hdds attached to a sata 1.5g-interface.

 

and why shouldn't they release it? it sold very well and shoveled a lot of money, even on ps3. games with issues have always been released.

you can try to make it as insignificant as you want... the fact is that the feat. is there and some developers use it, so some kind of benefit must come from it.

 

if you buy broken stuff, the seller will obviously make money from you... that does not make it right. i will not support any dev team or publisher that make this kind of business cause my money is not to waste.

Bull shit.

You don't know what you're talking about, caching to HDD is whe whole reason for the stuttering like that on the PC.

Caching to HDD when memory is exhausted is a last ditch attempt to stop a game CRASHING.

It results in server stuttering.

Seriously. Research before making comments that are based in fantasy land


Caching is also used to stream data from optical drives and does produce performance benefits. 

1. Caching to disk from media that has slow transfer rate or access times - Good.

Obviously this kind of system is used in a beneficial way for retrying a level more quickly, caching audio for example so it doesn't have to be streamed, caching executable code and so on.

2. Caching to disk because main system RAM is insufficient - Disasterous.

This is an emergency measure to stop a game or application crashing and results in complete bottle necking, games and applications hanging for seconds at a time on occassions, very noticeable and ugly.

 

Totally different scenarios, as I'm sure you're aware. Just clarifying I'm not a fool :)

you are twisting my words... some guys were using a bogus comparison for RAM between PS3 and Xbox with 4th grade maths (the term they use)
in that maths they were not taking a lot of things into account. like the fact that PS3 can cache info in HDD or that GDDR 3 on PS3 is a lot faster than xbox RAM. edit: my point is that not only the size of ram matters... didn't want to sound like HDD could replace RAM... but none understand that!

i use the term cache instead of virtual RAM and that was on purpose. cache is data the RAM need and is often loaded in the second best place besides RAM... and HDD is that place... Uncharted and killzone (like others) uses HDD to cache... didn't never say that makes it for the fact that PS3 has only 256mb of RAM... it makes it for a faster way to access data (like your point 1 mentioned in your post) against the DVD drive on Xbox and the bluray on the PS3... and in a big open game, the stream data must flow fast. besides the HDD game install,cache is often used.

Your understanding is thoroughly wrong of the whole concept and ares that benefit from a cache on the hard drive. For example, a full install of data that is uncompressed negates the benefits of using the hard drive as a cache - completely. Those large mandatory installs on the PS3 are effectively the game caching data.

The bolded highlights my point, that is an invalid statement, a full install of uncompressed data to the hard drive makes the use of the cache entirely redundant.

you are right, full install voids the need for cache... but in PS3 no game have a full install, as far as i know... and for the examples i give... Uncharted and Killzone, neither have a install option and both use the HDD to cache data...

but this is way besides the point... the topic is about bethesda and i keep my position about it, the 4th grade math stuff was what made derail this discussion over a technicality and misunderstanding.

Proudest Platinums - BF: Bad Company, Killzone 2 , Battlefield 3 and GTA4

lilbroex on 17 October 2012
mantlepiecek said:

GTA 4, Red Dead redemption, Just Cause 2, Fallouts  all of them, etc. All have ran well, with the exception of Fallout on some PS3s.

And out of them, just cause 2, and red dead redemption look great as well, probably better than PS3 skyrim anyway.

 


http://www.computerandvideogames.com/247104/red-dead-redemption-sub-hd-on-ps3/

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/247305/red-dead-redemptions-sub-hd-ps3-display-analysis/

http://www.thesixthaxis.com/2010/05/20/read-red-redemption-ps3-vs-360/

 



ethomaz on 17 October 2012

walsufnir said:

What is your opinion based off? To me it's absolutely clear that Skyrim has strong demand of *main memory* because of the complexity this game has - the growing save-file has already been mentioned by another poster.

The growing save-file is already fixed in Skyrim for PS3... Bethesda already confimed it's another problem.

The fix 1.4 fixed the save issue.



ethomaz on 17 October 2012

fillet said:

Incorrect. "Huge open worlds" take massive amounts of system memory, NOT GPU memory. Tricks are employed so that only visible data is rendered and lower resolution textures are used in distance etc. I can assure you right now 256MB for a render of ANY game at 720p is plenty, if you bolt on anti-aliasing then that will increase the amount required but that is something that can be tweaked after release.

The prequels to Skyrim also took massive amounts of memory, I remember Morrowind on the PC, it needed 1GB to be completely smooth without long pauses when going between invisible cut off points. That was from 20012002 ish. Then Oblivion, also needed a relatively high amount of system memory to run smoothly.

This is obviously a system memory issue. As the poster before me has mentioned, Skyrim is EXACTLY the type of game that needs large amounts of system memory. If you read between the lines and think it through it's the only logical answer. The real proof in the pudding is that if it were video memory limitations that were causing the hitching and slowdown - they could be fixed easily enough by employing industry standard tricks, draw distancefogging, lower res textures for distant objects, even close ones if it was really neeeded.

When there is a system memory shortage and the game has already been finished, it's very hard to do anything about it. When DLC comes that only adds to that burden....what can you do? Answer - not much!

Wrong... Skyrim uses more video memory than main memory... in fact it uses near 2GB video memory in medium quality and near 3GB video memory in max setthings.

The main mesmory usage is not even the half of it.



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lilbroex on 17 October 2012
ethomaz said:

fillet said:

Incorrect. "Huge open worlds" take massive amounts of system memory, NOT GPU memory. Tricks are employed so that only visible data is rendered and lower resolution textures are used in distance etc. I can assure you right now 256MB for a render of ANY game at 720p is plenty, if you bolt on anti-aliasing then that will increase the amount required but that is something that can be tweaked after release.

The prequels to Skyrim also took massive amounts of memory, I remember Morrowind on the PC, it needed 1GB to be completely smooth without long pauses when going between invisible cut off points. That was from 20012002 ish. Then Oblivion, also needed a relatively high amount of system memory to run smoothly.

This is obviously a system memory issue. As the poster before me has mentioned, Skyrim is EXACTLY the type of game that needs large amounts of system memory. If you read between the lines and think it through it's the only logical answer. The real proof in the pudding is that if it were video memory limitations that were causing the hitching and slowdown - they could be fixed easily enough by employing industry standard tricks, draw distancefogging, lower res textures for distant objects, even close ones if it was really neeeded.

When there is a system memory shortage and the game has already been finished, it's very hard to do anything about it. When DLC comes that only adds to that burden....what can you do? Answer - not much!

Wrong... Skyrim uses more video memory than main memory... in fact it uses near 2GB video memory in medium quality and near 3GB video memory in max setthings.

The main mesmory usage is not even the half of it.

No. He is not wrong.


You are reading the variables incorrectly on top of comparing a PC game to a console game in which data is used in entirely different ways for different reasons.



ethomaz on 17 October 2012

lilbroex said:

No. He is not wrong.


You are reading the variables incorrectly on top of comparing a PC game to a console game in which data is used in entirely different ways for different reasons.

I'm not reading anything incorrectly... in fact Skyrim uses more GPU memory than CPU memory... and 256MB of RAM is not enough to render a game at 720p without tweaks or sacrificing the quality.

PS3, 360, Wii and any other console did tweaks or sacrifice quality because the low GPU memory.

360 suffers less from this but even so I doubt you have a game that has used more than 350MB of VRAM on 360 (~100MB for CPU).

The GPU not uses the memory just to output the image... it uses the memory for work with them... so it use a lot more than need to just output.



Adinnieken on 17 October 2012
mantlepiecek said:
Adinnieken said:
mantlepiecek said:
Haha, so now a lack of 5% RAM is very limiting to a release of a DLC?

Kind of hilarious actually. In fact skyrim had a problem at the release itself on PS3, and it was memory leak I believe. Something that didn't exist on 360, and it had nothing to do with RAM and how much of it you have.

You failed maths, didn't you?

218 / 480 = .45416666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666666

That's 45% not 5%.

The PS3 has up to 218MB available for the game.  The Xbox 360 has up to 480MB for the game.

Nope.

If PS3 has only 218 MB RAM for games none of the multiplats would have even worked properly on it. GT 5 1280x1080 wouldn't even be possible on it.

PS3 can use both memories for the games, it has been stated by devs themselves.

Did you fail in language btw?

edit : I just noticed. You said PS3 has 218 MB RAM for games and then go on to say that it is 45%. Nope, according to you it is 55% less RAM than the 360, further proving you are both sh!t at maths and language. It is 45% of the total 360 RAM, but 55% less

Further showing how absurd your point is.

No, the PS3 can't.

The system has only access to 256MB of RAM.  The video has access to its 256MB of RAM, plus it has access to the 256MB of RAM of the system.  The problem is, the latter is a time consuming, resource intensive process.  This isn't my opinion.  This is fact, as proven through this link:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/1719/9

Specifically this quote:

"The biggest change is that RSX supports rendering to both local and system memory, similar to NVIDIA’s Turbo Cache enabled GPUs. Obviously rendering to/from local memory is going to be a lot lower latency than sending a request to the Cell’s memory controller, so much of the architecture of the GPU has to be changed in order to accommodate this higher latency access to memory."

Or this here:

http://wiki.ps2dev.org/doku.php?id=ps3:rsx

"The RSX is the graphics and audio rendering chip of the PS3. It has access to 256MB of dedicated local DDR3 memory. It also has access system memory through the high-speed FlexIO bus of the Cell using DMA operations."

Or you can read this:

http://www.ps3news.com/PlayStation-3/playstation-3s-ram-and-rsx-explained/#ixzz29ZwJq03y

"Just so you know, the PS3 has 512MB of RAM (256 for video and 256 for system). The Cell chip has 256MB of completely sharable RAM, the GPU has 256MB of dedicated RAM. Now the key here is what type of RAM it is."

The fact that I incorrectly stated that the PS3 has 45% less memory than the Xbox 360 rather than 55% doesn't make your argument stronger.  It just reinforces mine.  The Xbox 360 has more memory available for the system at any given point, than the PS3.  Arguing a fact which you cannot disprove through fact but you can only attempt to shoot down via opinion doesn't make you right. 

That ability for the Xbox 360 to provide the game up to 480MB of RAM, give or take 500K for a load screen, is an advantage to the Xbox 360.  It means if the game temporarily demands it, it is possible for the console to provide it.  The PS3 does not have that option.  The graphics sides of things does have a greater amount of memory available to render graphics with if necessary.  However access to the other half of that memory. the system memory, comes at a price.

The fact that no game up until Skyrim has hit that ceiling just means developers have either not pushed the capabilities of the system that hard, or they've written their code efficiently enough so they haven't hit that glass ceiling, or they've gimped their games in some aspect.

The fact that you can have GT5 in whatever resolution means nothing.  The debate isn't about whether or not the PS3 has enough video memory or whether it can access additional memory, the debate is over the fact that the Cell processor is limited to what is available out of the 256MB.



lilbroex on 17 October 2012
ethomaz said:

lilbroex said:

 No. He is not wrong.


You are reading the variables incorrectly on top of comparing a PC game to a console game in which data is used in entirely different ways for different reasons.

I'm not reading anything incorrectly... in fact Skyrim uses more GPU memory than CPU memory... and 256MB of RAM is not enough to render a game at 720p without tweaks or sacrificing the quality.

PS3, 360, Wii and any other console did tweaks or sacrifice quality because the low GPU memory.

360 suffers less from this but even so I doubt you have a game that has used more than 350MB of VRAM on 360 (~100MB for CPU).

The GPU not uses the memory just to output the image... it uses the memory for work with them... so it use a lot more than need to just output.

As the other poster said, if it was an issue with video memory then they could just reduce the graphics with a patch or cut down the drawing distance, but its not. If it was a GPU issue the problems would exist from the moment you turned the game on. Graphics aren't the primary problem.

 

The problem gets progressively worse as you play game meaning that it an issue with holding data. The coordinates and structural data for all of the objects you displace and pick up builds as you play the game stack. The quests you pick up/complete are held and tracked at all times. Those things are held in system memory. In

 

Also, in case you are unware(which looks likely) the 3 GB of memory that you are talking about Skyrim using on the PC "IS" system memory, not video memory. Your video memory for PCs is on the GPU. Few GPUs have more than 1 GB of RAM as its not really needed and more expensive due to it being higher quality. I played Skyrim on my PC at max settings with gaphical enhanment mods using a GPU that has less than 1GB of RAM. The elder scrolls games use "redundant textures" which are similar to the tiles used in old 8bit console games. You don't need a lot of video memory for that.

The problem with the PS3 is that is lack avaiable system memory compared to the 360.

It has 256 reserved for system memor minus 40-50 for the OS. The PC version used 2 GB while the PS3 has around 216 MB available to hold all of the data. The 360 512MB RAM that you can do anything you want with. All of the textures that are seen at any given time on the console version likely doesn't exceed 100 MBs. That would leave 350~ for holding all of the rest of the data. I'm not even going to get into the difference brought by using a true 3 core processor vs a 1 core processor with only 6/8 available SPUs.



walsufnir on 17 October 2012
mantlepiecek said:
fillet said:
mantlepiecek said:
walsufnir said:
mantlepiecek said:

Skyrim is most definitely lacking in video memory, not system memory.


What is your opinion based off? To me it's absolutely clear that Skyrim has strong demand of *main memory* because of the complexity this game has - the growing save-file has already been mentioned by another poster.

Skyrim isn't really doing anything other than rendering huge open world environments - something which requires a lot of GPU memory.

CPU memory is still a requirement of course. But I can't see why specifically skyrim will need more system memory compared to other games that perform loads better than it.


Incorrect. "Huge open worlds" take massive amounts of system memory, NOT GPU memory. Tricks are employed so that only visible data is rendered and lower resolution textures are used in distance etc. I can assure you right now 256MB for a render of ANY game at 720p is plenty, if you bolt on anti-aliasing then that will increase the amount required but that is something that can be tweaked after release.

The prequels to Skyrim also took massive amounts of memory, I remember Morrowind on the PC, it needed 1GB to be completely smooth without long pauses when going between invisible cut off points. That was from 20012002 ish. Then Oblivion, also needed a relatively high amount of system memory to run smoothly.

This is obviously a system memory issue. As the poster before me has mentioned, Skyrim is EXACTLY the type of game that needs large amounts of system memory. If you read between the lines and think it through it's the only logical answer. The real proof in the pudding is that if it were video memory limitations that were causing the hitching and slowdown - they could be fixed easily enough by employing industry standard tricks, draw distancefogging, lower res textures for distant objects, even close ones if it was really neeeded.

When there is a system memory shortage and the game has already been finished, it's very hard to do anything about it. When DLC comes that only adds to that burden....what can you do? Answer - not much!

GTA 4, Red Dead redemption, Just Cause 2, Fallouts  all of them, etc. All have ran well, with the exception of Fallout on some PS3s.

And out of them, just cause 2, and red dead redemption look great as well, probably better than PS3 skyrim anyway.

So if GPU isn't the one to blame, then all these games should technically require a lot of system RAM and should have been as bad as skyrim on PS3, and yet all of these only have one thing in common, they look worse than their 360 counterparts with fallouts also performing a tad worse.

I don't see how skyrim specifically requires more RAM.

you compare gta4 and rdr with skyrim? both gta4 and rdr render large worlds, sure. also skyrim. it's the complexity with interaction in this world that makes it hard for main memory. when looking at this one should easily realize that skyrim is much more complex than the other two. in skyrim you have so much items which have to be tracked, npcs you have interacted with, tons of side-missions have to be tracked, spells and so on - all has to reside in memory because at every time things can be important. i just can't see how you can't see this.