By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close

Forums - Gaming Discussion - How will the Wii U fit games on the PS4, if the PS4 will have 7GB RAM available?

Zero999 on 16 April 2013
richardhutnik said:
Zero999 said:
drkohler said:
Zero999 said:

Hello everyone, first post here. I felt the need to write here because of all the nonsense some posts have. Here are my full opinions on wii u situation.

If you want to be taken seriously, you should not start your first post with a second sentence, and then do just that for the rest of the post.

Look, it is very simple. performance comes with a price, and the price for computers is power input. You want twice the performance, it costs you twice the power. That's just the way it is. The WiiU uses rouhly 35Watts, entire system. Both NextBox and PS4 are probably around 150W (or even more), with more modern components. So any "WiU is similar to NextConsoles" is wishful thinking. The difference WILL be noticable with the very first NextGen console games. I'd go as far as predict a horrible death to the WiiU console beginning next year. Nintendo had the advantage of the Wii inpit device against PS360, they have nothing (except lowering price way down) now against NextGen consoles.

amazing, because the ps3 fat uses like 160 watts, so by your logic wii u has less than half the specs of a ps3.there's something called efficiency, wii u does much more than ps360 with less power usage because it's efficient modern tech enables it. do yourself a favor and don't waste others time with this s**t.

haters try everything to put wii u down.conveniently this watt thing started when wii u watt usage was revealed, we even made a joke in brazil foruns over here, saying things like "wii u will have nintendo games in hd and 70 watts" or "my electric shower consumes 300 watts, so it should play the agnil's philosofy demo.

i wonder what the next excuse will be. the console size? the console heat?

If you are taking posts like mine and branding them as "hater posts" you are a Nintendo console partisan who is doing wishful thinking above about everything else.  I am expressing serious concerns about the amout of available RAM and its impact on console games.  I have an impression you believe video games will remain as they have been, and there isn't a need for more RAM for anything but graphics at all.  And this thread is about next gen consoles, NOT saying that the Wii U can top this current generation by a decent sized margin.  The cold reality is that the Wii U is NOT getting third party to sign on.  It isn't getting the next Unreal Engine at all.  Unless you want to spin how Nintendo doesn't need any third party really, when a point of the way the Wii U is, was to be able to get third-party support, or that they are "lazy", then you need to say something as to why.  The 3DS is getting good third party support, of its own type actually.  It is because it sells and can match what the designs are.  What you aren't getting into is HOW the WII U with 1 GB RAM free will match a system, if it has 7 GB free.  All I see here is "well the graphics will be toned down".  In short, there will be NO development of the worlds being larger at all?  I am not sure you can answer that outside of saying, "Stop being a hater" and "Have faith".  Next up, I won't be surprised if you start saying "b_e_l_i_e_v_e".

I don't like to repeat myself, but in my very first post I explained the situation. it is of no relevance if ps4 has 7 ou 100 gb of RAM available for games because the games themselves shouldn't require even half of those 7 gb. also, if memory was a problem for wii u then it wouldn't be the most praised component by developers.



Around the Network
Pemalite on 16 April 2013
Zero999 said:

I don't like to repeat myself, but in my very first post I explained the situation. it is of no relevance if ps4 has 7 ou 100 gb of RAM available for games because the games themselves shouldn't require even half of those 7 gb. also, if memory was a problem for wii u then it wouldn't be the most praised component by developers.


Just like how we would never need more than 640k of ram? Look where we are today please.



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

Zero999 on 16 April 2013
hinch said:
Zero999 said:
drkohler said:
Zero999 said:


you mentioned a higher tech console would require more power consumption and then I proved you wrong.

I mentioned nothing of that sort: "You want twice the performance, it costs you twice the power." What part of that sentence don't you understand?


then why is wii u more powerful then ps360 while consuming less power? also "The WiiU uses rouhly 35Watts, entire system. Both NextBox and PS4 are probably around 150W (or even more), with more modern components. So any "WiU is similar to NextConsoles" is wishful thinking." that's what you said, you can't unsay now. guess what also consumed 150W? ps3.

seriously stop trying, you're out of arguments since the beggining. i'll stop wasting time with you now.

The Wii U chips are newer and are done by modern fabrication - so they are more efficient. The Wii U has a more powerful GPU than both the 360 and PS3 and has more RAM (2x more usable). But.. it's CPU is slightly worse and the RAM significantly slower. Those components bottleneck the system, so in the end, the three consoles perform pretty much comparably to each other. Wii U will be better at rendering graphics but is worse at handling more CPU intensive software.

Nextgen consoles will be using the latest AMD processors and will have considerably more ram (which is also a lot faster) than the Wii U. So you will see an even bigger jump from the Wii U to PS4/720.

Wii u must have 1,5gb of ram for use in games or at least will have that in the future, it's only logical since it has four 512mb memory chisps instead of two 1gb. The RAM speed should be more than sactisfatory considering the devs coments, probably the equivalent of 5 or 6x the ps360 Ram.

You say the cpu is worse based on nothing, the only information we know is that the cpu has a lower clock speed but it's obviously superior. the gpgpu is also known for being capable of doing some cpu stuff anyway.

Look, i don't have deep knowledge about this technical stuff, but you seem to have even less if you compare cpu's performance with clock speed alone.



hinch on 16 April 2013
Zero999 said:

Wii u must have 1,5gb of ram for use in games or at least will have that in the future, it's only logical since it has four 512mb memory chisps instead of two 1gb. The RAM speed should be more than sactisfatory considering the devs coments, probably the equivalent of 5 or 6x the ps360 Ram.

You say the cpu is worse based on nothing, the only information we know is that the cpu has a lower clock speed but it's obviously superior. the gpgpu is also known for being capable of doing some cpu stuff anyway.

Look, i don't have deep knowledge about this technical stuff, but you seem to have even less if you compare cpu's performance with clock speed alone.

The games pretty much speak for themselves. Look at all the digital foundry comparisons on games available on all 3 platforms. Still not convinced? look at the other sites like Lens of Truth.



Zero999 on 16 April 2013
Michael-5 said:
richardhutnik said:

In short, there will be NO development of the worlds being larger at all?  I am not sure you can answer that outside of saying, "Stop being a hater" and "Have faith".  Next up, I won't be surprised if you start saying "b_e_l_i_e_v_e".

This is a good point. Like I said RAM =/= graphics, but since it boosts load times, it will = larger landscapes and drawdistances. If games like Elder Scrolls push the PS4, they will look significantly crappier on the Wii U if downgraded, it's just not going to happen.

The only multiplatform games we will see between Wii U and PS4 are those which were designed to be multi-platform from the ground up. You can make character models which push the PS4 by accuratly modeling finer particles, like hair, and then remove that RAM based visual perk in the Wii U version. However, you still need a core engine which works on the Wii U, and how many people will buy the Wii U version over then PS4 version then?

I can see the Wii U getting more multi-platform games then the Wii did, the gap from Wii U to PS4 is smaller, then the Wii to PS3 gap, and it's crossable (You can make games that work on both systems without much alteration). However I only see some genres getting multiplatform titles, genres like Action Adventure and RPG. FPS are driven by graphics, and I don't think FPS fans are Nintendo fans either, so we won't see many FPS's on Wii U (e.g. Destiny and Battlefield 4 will release on PS3/360, but not Wii U).

So to put it simply, we will see some developers make multiplatform games, and other not. Ubisoft can make MP games since most of their games (Like Assassin's Creed and Rayman) are based on engines which do play PS3/360 games. Mass Effect might be available on Wii U since the Frostbyte engine is what the game is based on, and Mass Effect 3 used that game engine, and is available on Wii U.

The question is, will we continue to see MP games after the PS3/360 phase out? I think they will, I think we will see more Nintendo-other platform MP games then ever before, but Nintendo will heavily rely on exclusives, mostly first party, to keep it competetive.


remember a little trailer of a game called "x"? i don't think wii u will have any problem with large landscapes and draw distance.



Around the Network
Zero999 on 16 April 2013
hinch said:
Zero999 said:

Wii u must have 1,5gb of ram for use in games or at least will have that in the future, it's only logical since it has four 512mb memory chisps instead of two 1gb. The RAM speed should be more than sactisfatory considering the devs coments, probably the equivalent of 5 or 6x the ps360 Ram.

You say the cpu is worse based on nothing, the only information we know is that the cpu has a lower clock speed but it's obviously superior. the gpgpu is also known for being capable of doing some cpu stuff anyway.

Look, i don't have deep knowledge about this technical stuff, but you seem to have even less if you compare cpu's performance with clock speed alone.

The games pretty much speak for themselves. Look at all the digital foundry comparsions on games availible on all 3 platforms (Still not convinced.. look at the other sites like Lens of Truth).

like the xbox360 titles that looked worse than it's ps2 counterparts? I thought we had already moved from that, you can't espect a port to have huge improvements over the original console, especialy with lack of knowledge about programing on wii u.



Zero999 on 16 April 2013
zarx said:
Zero999 said:

Hello everyone, first post here. I felt the need to write here because of all the nonsense some posts have. Here are my full opinions on wii u situation.

Let's see, even the most specs and RAM consuming pc games don't require more than 3 gb of ram I think. take into consideration that the ps360 do what they do with less than 500 mb and i think it's safe to asume no game made for a console in the next several years will require even 3 gigs. maybe the superproductions will need some more.

Also, the wii u probably has 1,5 gb of ram for games, since it has four 512mb chips and the OS must hybernate during the game. anyway if it doesn't now it will in the future with OS updates (the ps3 OS needed 120mb at first but now only needs 50). the wii u memory also seems to be greatly optimized, so actual performance could be the equivalent of twice the RAM it has or even more.

Finaly, it doesn't matter how much haters want the wii u to be underpowered, it won't change the fact that it isn't. It has modern architeture and shaders and won't be much behind the ps4 and nextbox hardware. to compare, the wii had like 19 times less gigaflops than the 360 and 36 times than the ps3. now wii u should have around 700 or 900 gigaflops wich is barely more than 2 times less than ps4 and probably 1,5 less than nextbox.

Having all that said, any game made for ps4/nextbox can be easily ported to the wii u without much losses on technical quality, especially with the escalability the new engines  are made for. it will have most if not all the third party multiplatform games because those companies can't ignore a worthy install base. (the games couldn't be downscaled from ps360 to wii, diffrence in architeture didn't allow that so a game should be made from 0 to wii. So don't come saying wii's install base was ignored).

That is mostly due to the artificial limit of 32-bit addressing than anything tho. Thankfully Win XP and 32-Bit OS are finally dieing so we will see a big leap soon. Especially now that games will be designed around systems with lots of RAM rather than 512MB. Think about it games designed around sytems with 512MB of RAM with a few graphics and draw distance enhancements and some more agressive cacheing already burn through 3-4GB of RAM on PC, imagine how much true next gen games will use.

bolded part: speaks for itself about you. If PC's use 3-4 GB then video games would require less than that to do more, so no console game will really need those 3 or 4GB for a good while. and even then it's totaly portable to wii u.



hinch on 16 April 2013
Zero999 said:
hinch said:
Zero999 said:

Wii u must have 1,5gb of ram for use in games or at least will have that in the future, it's only logical since it has four 512mb memory chisps instead of two 1gb. The RAM speed should be more than sactisfatory considering the devs coments, probably the equivalent of 5 or 6x the ps360 Ram.

You say the cpu is worse based on nothing, the only information we know is that the cpu has a lower clock speed but it's obviously superior. the gpgpu is also known for being capable of doing some cpu stuff anyway.

Look, i don't have deep knowledge about this technical stuff, but you seem to have even less if you compare cpu's performance with clock speed alone.

The games pretty much speak for themselves. Look at all the digital foundry comparsions on games availible on all 3 platforms (Still not convinced.. look at the other sites like Lens of Truth).

like the xbox360 titles that looked worse than it's ps2 counterparts? I thought we had already moved from that, you can't espect a port to have huge improvements over the original console, especialy with lack of knowledge about programing on wii u.

Apples and oranges. A lot of devs were still learning how to develop on HD platforms. But that doesn't take away the weaknesses of of the system. The GPGPU is hard to program for and will (for the most part) be underutilised by third party devs. The only people who are going to use the system to its full extent are Nintendo.

Games like Lego City (which was built from the ground up for the Wii U) doesn't look much more impressive than what's available on 360/PS3. Whereas Kameo on the 360 looked a gen apart from previous one.



Viper1 on 16 April 2013
Miguel_Zorro said:
Viper1 said:
Miguel_Zorro said:


I'm legitimately interested in reading this.  I can't promise that I won't misunderstand it, but I pledge to not ignore it or quote an irrelevant portion.

When you say that the Wii U could run PS4 games, do you mean with similar performance?

Not likely with similar performance unless the PS4 game in question is a small scope title.   It's also going to vary depending on the game and game engine (how each utilizes the consoles).

However, I won't go into any details at this time, I can say that any title that is expressesly developed with the PS4 in mind first ported to the Wii U would require reduction to the displayed graphics and possibly other facets via means similar to how PC games are toned down to run accordingly on lower spec PC's.   It's still very much the same game just with reduced resolution, frame rate, on screen enemies, physics, shader operations, etc...

Is it fair to say that it might be something like this? (It's difficult to see much over Youtube).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOmpDxJVv9w

Or this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bHIERf5YLw

No, the Wii U to PS4 version would like much closer than the Wii to PS3 versions of games.

The Wii used a single core CPU (that ran at 1/5th the speed) and a fixed function graphics pipeline that could not do modern shaders.    That's on top of the huge difference in performance already.    The gulf in performance and other important facets will not be the same this time.

Games from PS3 down to Wii had to be completely redeveloped.    Games from PS4 to Wii U can be scaled.

goopy20 said:

It can't lol. Hell it can barely run current gen games, hence MGS5, GTA5 etc not coming out for the Wii-U. Forget scaling down... next gen 80% of the big profile games will run on the Unreal 4 engine, which Epic already said, wont even work on the Wii-u...

The percentage of wrong information to total number of words written is incredible.



The rEVOLution is not being televised

zarx on 16 April 2013
Zero999 said:

bolded part: speaks for itself about you. If PC's use 3-4 GB then video games would require less than that to do more, so no console game will really need those 3 or 4GB for a good while. and even then it's totaly portable to wii u.

Now I don't want to get into a argument over whether the Wii U is a "next gen console" or some other fanboy crap, so I will just say I do consider Wii U an 8th generation console on account of it's release date and being a successor to the Wii. So you can stow that crap. I just used next gen games as an easy descriptor for future games built around currently unreleased hardware as a baseline. Clearly considering the topic on hand is about whether games designed around 7GB of available RAM is going to fit on the Wii U a game designed around current hardware including the Wii U would be irrelevent as it would already be designed to fit on such a platform. Sorry about using such a fanboy charged phrase. 


Console games don't use less RAM to do more, they just load less stuff into RAM because there is less available. If a game is designed to function with a minimum of 512MB of RAM but you have access to more RAM then it's a simple matter to more aggressively cache assets and also use higher fedality effects and larger frambuffers which use more RAM. Because that is the point of RAM to temporarily store data for fast access by the CPU and GPU, it's easy to scale up. Now a game designed around having 7GB of RAM available will obviously utilize a lot more RAM than one that is designed around 512MB and scaled up. So looking at the RAM usage of PC versions of current console games is not a very good indicator of what RAM usage will be like in future generations of games (as in future games to be clear, nothing to do with hardware settle down)  because their fundamental design at an engine level will likely be very different.

Now many if not most games will likely not be designed in a way that requires more than 1-2GB of RAM for it's gameplay and level design. But it is very possible to create one that does require far more, and if the RAM is there devs would be foolish not to use the extra RAM to insure a smoother experiance by caching more data to avoid unneccessary loading. Streaming bassed engines will of course be more scalable as a rule and most modern engines use a lot of data streaming these days so that could potentially help the Wii U's case but even then if the game is designed around having GBs of data available at any one time even with streaming the experiance would likely be poor if the game is constantly loading from disc as seen in Skyrim PS3 at launch (and that was caused by saves getting a few MBs to big if a certain Obsidian programmer is to be believed).



@TheVoxelman on twitter

Check out my hype threads: Cyberpunk, and The Witcher 3!