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Forums - Gaming - Understanding why Xbox One doesn't need GDDR5 RAM

greenmedic88 on 26 June 2013
ethomaz said:

Pemalite said:

Actually there is a latency advantage with DDR3, however it's only about 20% I.E. 10ns for DDR3, 12ns for GDDR5. - Pretty tiny.

The Irony is though, Microsoft went with DDR3 because it's cheaper to manufacture, however the price is going to be increasing here-on-out as the PC transitions over to DDR4.
That's in stark contrast to GDDR5, which isn't used in low-end cards which actually sell in high-volumes, once that happens scale of economies should kick in and prices should drop farther, that is untill the PC transitions over to GDDR6.

I think MS went with DDR3 because they need 8GB RAM and use 32 chips of GDDR5 was out of question one or two years ago... Sony wanted 4GB RAM so 16 chips of GDDR5 was fine.

Both created their project/design with these poins in mind.

PS4: 4GB RAM
Xbone: 8GB RAM

What happened? The industry released dense GDDR5 chips (512MB each) and Sony turned the tables without change one point of the original project/design.

And MS? After one or more year creating a alternative to avoid the low bandwidth of DDR3 (eSRAM on chip, DataMoves, etc) can't spend one more year to change the project to GDDR5 and delay the Xbone for a at least half year... so they maintain the original project/design and all the issues/trouble with it.

Sony had lucky but lucky is in the side o champions too.

Probably closer to reality than not.

Early specs on the PS4 were rumored to be 4GB which raised a few eyebrows. Much easier to up the memory if market prices are favorable than it is to change memory specs mid-design. 



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greenmedic88 on 26 June 2013
disolitude said:
greenmedic88 said:
Maybe a better thread than this is the XB1 doesn't need to use 3GB of memory for the UI/OS, regardless of whether it's GDDR3 or GDDR5.

Why doesn't it need to use 3GB for UI and OS? I like multitasking, preloaded games, insta resume, fast switching, pinning apps...

Because that's memory that could be used for higher res textures, larger drawing distances, game data, game engine, etc. etc. You know this. 



radha on 26 June 2013
sales2099 said:

DDR5 is the new CELL

same shit, different gen


Nah, the new cell is the infinite power of the cloud



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JoeFlex on 26 June 2013

Meh who cares. Sounds good on paper to me and the games look impressive already. That Forza 5!!!!



Alby_da_Wolf on 26 June 2013
radha said:
sales2099 said:

DDR5 is the new CELL

same shit, different gen


Nah, the new cell is the infinite power of the cloud

This is cruel, you made sales2099 a sad panda!    



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disolitude on 26 June 2013
ethomaz said:

disolitude said:

I am not sure what you think my OP is stating.  I'm just saying that Xbox One would not be much more powerful with GDDR5 RAM due to specific APU design and lower GPU power compared to PS4.

I am not sure why everyone thinks I'm saying DDR3 > GDDR5 or X1 > PS4... I'm clearly not saying that.

I really wasn't expecting such a shitstorm, just wanted to end the posts saying..."If Xbox One used GDDR5 RAM it would be much more powerful". It really wouldn't. 2133 MHz DDR3 + sRAM is plenty for the 33% lower spec'd GPU in the X1.

The APU design used by MS can be debatable but even a low-end GPU using GDDR5 to increase the bandwidth almost double the GPU performance... AMD words... not mine.

That is because those "lower powered" GPUs that come in both DDR3 and GDDR5 (like HD 6670) use 128 bit bus and 1600 mhz DDR3 RAM.

X1 uses 2133 Mhz RAM and 256 bus. So more than double the speed (and then some) of those cards AMD is referencing... + SRAM embed and other tweaks to the infrastructure.

 



disolitude on 26 June 2013
greenmedic88 said:
disolitude said:
greenmedic88 said:
Maybe a better thread than this is the XB1 doesn't need to use 3GB of memory for the UI/OS, regardless of whether it's GDDR3 or GDDR5.

Why doesn't it need to use 3GB for UI and OS? I like multitasking, preloaded games, insta resume, fast switching, pinning apps...

Because that's memory that could be used for higher res textures, larger drawing distances, game data, game engine, etc. etc. You know this. 

I am not sure what you expect from the Xbox 1 GPU/CPU, that is between 7770 and 7790, to do with more than 5 GB of ram in a single game.

I suggest running high end PC games on GPUs 2X more powerful than the one in Xbox 1 at 1080p and seeing how much total RAM is used for gaming once you subrtract Windows, antivirus and all that stuff... 

99% of the time less than 5 GB total RAM usage and GPU is always less than 2 GB...even with ubber high res textures.



think-man on 26 June 2013

Not talking about 3rd parties.....but the PS fans using the Cell as a bragging point. And im sure devs praised the cell in 2006.

Who wouldbrag about the Cell, that thing did Sony no good. They should have gone with the aproach MS went with instead of making their console so hard to develop for. 

And im a Sony fan.



 

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disolitude on 26 June 2013
CGI-Quality said:
disolitude said:
greenmedic88 said:
disolitude said:
greenmedic88 said:
Maybe a better thread than this is the XB1 doesn't need to use 3GB of memory for the UI/OS, regardless of whether it's GDDR3 or GDDR5.

Why doesn't it need to use 3GB for UI and OS? I like multitasking, preloaded games, insta resume, fast switching, pinning apps...

Because that's memory that could be used for higher res textures, larger drawing distances, game data, game engine, etc. etc. You know this. 

I am not sure what you expect from the Xbox 1 GPU/CPU, that is between 7770 and 7790, to do with more than 5 GB of ram in a single game.

I suggest running high end PC games on GPUs 2X more powerful than the one in Xbox 1 at 1080p and seeing how much total RAM is used for gaming once you subrtract Windows, antivirus and all that stuff... 

99% of the time less than 5 GB total RAM usage and GPU is always less than 2 GB...even with ubber high res textures.

I must agree here, especially when I just did a test like this. I ran my most intensive game (no need to talk about my specs) and, at most, I used 3.46GB of my total RAM, and up to the 2GB of VRAM on the card.

Yeah if Xbox 1 came with a GTX  690, I'd be a little worried about unleasing the true potential with a total 5GB of RAM. But with a HD 7790 jr under the hood, the X1 GPU will rarely need more than 1 GB to render a single frame before it starts to choke...



ethomaz on 26 June 2013

CGI-Quality said:

I must agree here, especially when I just did a test like this. I ran my most intensive game (no need to talk about my specs) and, at most, I used 3.46GB of my total RAM, and up to the 2GB of VRAM on the card.

You will start to see games for PC using more RAM now... the low-end videoscards will have 2GB minimum... the high-end 4/6/8GB.