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Forums - Sony - GDDR5 8GB RAM

flagstaad on 21 February 2013
bananaking21 said:
JWeinCom said:
Did Sony at any point say how much RAM the OS will use? As a Nintendo fan I'm a bit worried this will be a problem for multiplats :/


they didnt, but i dont think it would be over 2 GBs. that would leave 6GB for games, not only is that 6 times more than what the WiiU has, but its also much faster. 

It could be over 2GB easily, depending on how they are using it for the share options, it is storing the last 15 minutes of game (could be less in the end), whenever you are playing so you can share those videos, I don't think it will send them to the hard drive on real time so a good part of the RAM will handle that feature.

But I think 2GBs reserved for OS is a good stimate, which will leave 6GB for games



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Tachikoma on 21 February 2013
bananaking21 said:
JWeinCom said:
Did Sony at any point say how much RAM the OS will use? As a Nintendo fan I'm a bit worried this will be a problem for multiplats :/


they didnt, but i dont think it would be over 2 GBs. that would leave 6GB for games, not only is that 6 times more than what the WiiU has, but its also much faster. 


Actually, less than 1gb is reserved for OS and over 7gb is available to developers.



bananaking21 on 21 February 2013
flagstaad said:
bananaking21 said:
JWeinCom said:
Did Sony at any point say how much RAM the OS will use? As a Nintendo fan I'm a bit worried this will be a problem for multiplats :/


they didnt, but i dont think it would be over 2 GBs. that would leave 6GB for games, not only is that 6 times more than what the WiiU has, but its also much faster. 

It could be over 2GB easily, depending on how they are using it for the share options, it is storing the last 15 minutes of game (could be less in the end), whenever you are playing so you can share those videos, I don't think it will send them to the hard drive on real time so a good part of the RAM will handle that feature.

But I think 2GBs reserved for OS is a good stimate, which will leave 6GB for games


its just an estimate, plus the RAM is fast, so it would handle storing the gameplay well. i guess we will have to wait and see



bananaking21 on 21 February 2013
Tachikoma said:
bananaking21 said:
JWeinCom said:
Did Sony at any point say how much RAM the OS will use? As a Nintendo fan I'm a bit worried this will be a problem for multiplats :/


they didnt, but i dont think it would be over 2 GBs. that would leave 6GB for games, not only is that 6 times more than what the WiiU has, but its also much faster. 


Actually, less than 1gb is reserved for OS and over 7gb is available to developers.

did they confirm that?



Tachikoma on 21 February 2013
bananaking21 said:
Tachikoma said:
bananaking21 said:
JWeinCom said:
Did Sony at any point say how much RAM the OS will use? As a Nintendo fan I'm a bit worried this will be a problem for multiplats :/


they didnt, but i dont think it would be over 2 GBs. that would leave 6GB for games, not only is that 6 times more than what the WiiU has, but its also much faster. 


Actually, less than 1gb is reserved for OS and over 7gb is available to developers.

did they confirm that?

No, i'm just giving vauge information from my experience developing on the system.

Also, regarding video recording it's sent to ram and reamed from ram to hdd to prevent dropped frames but also to keep ram usage for the functionality to a minimum, and allow for extremely long recordings.



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Osc89 on 21 February 2013
Tachikoma said:
bananaking21 said:
Tachikoma said:
bananaking21 said:
JWeinCom said:
Did Sony at any point say how much RAM the OS will use? As a Nintendo fan I'm a bit worried this will be a problem for multiplats :/


they didnt, but i dont think it would be over 2 GBs. that would leave 6GB for games, not only is that 6 times more than what the WiiU has, but its also much faster. 


Actually, less than 1gb is reserved for OS and over 7gb is available to developers.

did they confirm that?

No, i'm just giving vauge information from my experience developing on the system.

Also, regarding video recording it's sent to ram and reamed from ram to hdd to prevent dropped frames but also to keep ram usage for the functionality to a minimum, and allow for extremely long recordings.

The announcement said unified. Does that not mean nothing is reserved?



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NNID: Oscar89

nightsurge on 21 February 2013
Tachikoma said:
Consider the following.
Assume the rumors of the final retail units for the next xbox are true and it uses 8GB DDR3, to 1-up Sony they switch it to 12GB, or 16GB, it's still a problem, because:

- DDR3 < GDDR5 in speed, by a huge margin
- Enjoy your $500+ console for 12gb, $550-$599 for 16gb
- Increase in memory from 8GB to anything higher won't actually make much of a difference at all for 1080p because the amount of resources you can cram in to a single scene is limited, hence why modern day graphics cards use a hell of a lot more ram the higher you bump your resolution, but the general normal is that about 2gb is enough for 1080p - on top of that though you have the issue of the bandwidth limiting the next xbox's performance.

I'll give you an idea of what Microsoft are probably thinking right now:
"Damn, our industry spies were right, it has a crazy amount of ram, we can't afford to bump up ours without taking a significant loss on each console, lets just stick with the plan and hope our broader approach to putting a game playing windows 8 media center in every home has wings for both our gaming sector and our OS sector.

The one thing you can take away from this is basically that there is virtually no possibility in hell now, if leaked durango specs are to be believed (given the closeness of the ps4 specs we can assume the durango ones are more or less accurate too), that the durango will be able to outperform the orbis in any area.

8GB of GDDR5 ram probably costs about 4-5x as much as 8GB of DDR3 ram. In fact, I can buy 8GB of standard DDR3 desktop ram for about $30-40. So adding an extra 4-8GB wouldn't affect the price much in DDR3 terms.

Doubling the GDDR5 amount from 4GB to 8GB, though... I imagine that was likely a $100 or more cost change for the console.

Btw, did Sony specifically announce GDDR5 Ram in the conference, or just say 8GB of Ram? I just want to be sure that Sony themselves specified which type of RAM they were using as that makes a huge difference here.



Jereel Hunter on 21 February 2013
Tachikoma said:
Consider the following.
Assume the rumors of the final retail units for the next xbox are true and it uses 8GB DDR3, to 1-up Sony they switch it to 12GB, or 16GB, it's still a problem, because:

- DDR3 < GDDR5 in speed, by a huge margin
- Enjoy your $500+ console for 12gb, $550-$599 for 16gb
- Increase in memory from 8GB to anything higher won't actually make much of a difference at all for 1080p because the amount of resources you can cram in to a single scene is limited, hence why modern day graphics cards use a hell of a lot more ram the higher you bump your resolution, but the general normal is that about 2gb is enough for 1080p - on top of that though you have the issue of the bandwidth limiting the next xbox's performance.

I'll give you an idea of what Microsoft are probably thinking right now:
"Damn, our industry spies were right, it has a crazy amount of ram, we can't afford to bump up ours without taking a significant loss on each console, lets just stick with the plan and hope our broader approach to putting a game playing windows 8 media center in every home has wings for both our gaming sector and our OS sector.

The one thing you can take away from this is basically that there is virtually no possibility in hell now, if leaked durango specs are to be believed (given the closeness of the ps4 specs we can assume the durango ones are more or less accurate too), that the durango will be able to outperform the orbis in any area.

I'm not sure where you're getting your pricing from - DDR3 ram is very cheap, they could easily bump it up to those numbers and still have their costs significantly lower than the PS3... though it seems more likely they'll choose to upgrade to the faster DDR5 to match the PS3.

The real question is how Sony is affording this? the PS3 is still quite a bit in the red for it's lifespan, and it seems like they once again are releasing a system that will be very expensive for them to produce...



Tachikoma on 21 February 2013
Jereel Hunter said:
Tachikoma said:
Consider the following.
Assume the rumors of the final retail units for the next xbox are true and it uses 8GB DDR3, to 1-up Sony they switch it to 12GB, or 16GB, it's still a problem, because:

- DDR3 < GDDR5 in speed, by a huge margin
- Enjoy your $500+ console for 12gb, $550-$599 for 16gb
- Increase in memory from 8GB to anything higher won't actually make much of a difference at all for 1080p because the amount of resources you can cram in to a single scene is limited, hence why modern day graphics cards use a hell of a lot more ram the higher you bump your resolution, but the general normal is that about 2gb is enough for 1080p - on top of that though you have the issue of the bandwidth limiting the next xbox's performance.

I'll give you an idea of what Microsoft are probably thinking right now:
"Damn, our industry spies were right, it has a crazy amount of ram, we can't afford to bump up ours without taking a significant loss on each console, lets just stick with the plan and hope our broader approach to putting a game playing windows 8 media center in every home has wings for both our gaming sector and our OS sector.

The one thing you can take away from this is basically that there is virtually no possibility in hell now, if leaked durango specs are to be believed (given the closeness of the ps4 specs we can assume the durango ones are more or less accurate too), that the durango will be able to outperform the orbis in any area.

I'm not sure where you're getting your pricing from - DDR3 ram is very cheap, they could easily bump it up to those numbers and still have their costs significantly lower than the PS3... though it seems more likely they'll choose to upgrade to the faster DDR5 to match the PS3.

The real question is how Sony is affording this? the PS3 is still quite a bit in the red for it's lifespan, and it seems like they once again are releasing a system that will be very expensive for them to produce...

Embedded system manufacturers can purchase GDDR5 ram units in bulk, works out at around $27 per 2gb as of Jan 2013.

Yes DDR3 is much cheaper, but it's much slower too.

Neither the PS4 or the 720 will *EVER* be profitable in their lifetime on the market due to the technologies used, this generations money will be made from services, microtransactions and premium content.



ethomaz on 21 February 2013

nightsurge said:

Btw, did Sony specifically announce GDDR5 Ram in the conference, or just say 8GB of Ram? I just want to be sure that Sony themselves specified which type of RAM they were using as that makes a huge difference here.

The official specs and the guy in the conference said GDDR5.

I read in the gaf the today price of a single GDDR5 512MB module is ~$8... so 16 x  $8 = ~$128 a increase of ~$64 form the old 4GB design... and that the price for a single chip buy... not mass production or any lifetime deal contract made by Sony with the manufacuturer.

In the others words... the cost for Sony can be less than $8 per chip... or $128 per console.

DDR3 is alot cheaper.