I haven't commented much on this next gen console RAM subject, either for XBO or PS4.

I think people are really grasping at straws here, when trying to belittle one console or the other. As far as I know, GDDR5 is faster than DDR3 and may give the PS4 the edge in the long run, but will it really be noticeable? Only time will tell.

But as far as the RAM reserved for OS subject is concerned, what's the big deal? I game on PC all the time, and hardly any games I've played take more than 2GB of VRAM to run. In fact, most current games only need one or so GB of VRAM to run at max settings. You add system RAM in the mix and you may get close to 4GB used, but that's counting both system and VRAM. PC games aren't as optimised as console games because of the nature of PCs. Barely any gaming PCs on earth share the same hardware configuration. So developers can't maximise their code the same as they can for any given console.

In any case, 5GB of RAM dedicated to 1080p games running locked at either 30 or 60fps is more than enough. If the OSs for both consoles are butter smooth, it will make the whole experience all the more enjoyable. Going instantly from game to any given app, without any lag or loading and having all those multimedia functions on at any given time (voice chat, video recording in the background, streaming, etc...)... I can see why an OS could need so much RAM, but I think that both MS and Sony have allocated more than is needed just to make sure that if they have whatever need for more in the future, they're not screwed like the PS3 was.

And once everything have finally cemented itself and they have a better idea of the features they want to push and what works and what doesn't, they can work on gradually reducing the footprint. Unlocking more of that RAM for developers to use in the future.

But for now, 5GB is more than enough.

And besides, this is basically a rumor written by Leadbetter... Not the most trustworthy of sources.

PRE ORDER CANCELED !!!1!11!ONE!! XBONER, HERE I COME !!!

are people really getting mad because of 0,5 gb ? This doesn´t change anything for me, the PS4 could come with 2gb and I still would buy it over the box...

...but some Sony fans should learn a thing from this "drama"...some...

I really hope it isn't true though, i wouldn't know what they would need that amount of memory for besides a washload off useless sharing features.

It does explain why development kits reportetly only hade 4gb though.

I imagine this extra ram for the OS is for the streaming or something. That shit needs ram too

Here is a great post that was on Neogaf that basically imho explains why they are doing it:

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I told myself I wasn't going to post in this thread because people are foaming at the mouth and not thinking.... but here I am, which makes me an idiot.

First off, I know all you guys want are hard numbers and I don't have them. But I do know the philosophies in place currently. If you would like to use your brain and think critically about things... keep reading. If you want to get into a 5>4.5 OMG IM CANCELLING MY PREORDER conversation - this thread won't help you, in either direction.

I was told by a couple of Devs in the lead up to E3 that the OS footprint was "bigger than expected" but not a single one of them complained about it. No one is in danger of running out of ram. As some people have mentioned in this thread - games like the The Last of Us are happening with 512mb of ram. Launch titles, of all things, are not going to be pushing the hardware in any sort of way... and that includes ram.

So why is the ram footprint bigger than expected? It's fairly simple - Sony is hedging their bets. They were absolutely caught with their pants down with their OS this gen. Not having the memory overhead to do things like Party Chat gave Microsoft a huge advantage when it came to online gaming, which is obviously a growing sector. So much like $399 as a target price was a reaction to $599 being a disaster... "big OS footprint" is a reaction to "small OS footprint" being a disaster.

But the thing that I'm hearing and I believe there was even a line dedicated to this in the eurogamer article is that these numbers aren't set in stone. The fact of the matter is that high end PC games use around 3gb of ram and use higher res textures (art tends to take up the largest chunks of ram) than the ps4/x1 do. The idea that launch games need 7gb of ram is absolutely ludicrous. 4gbs is fine. Anything more, at this point, is overkill. It won't be overkill forever... but it's overkill for now.

So Sony gets to sit on this chunk of ram, be in 1gb or 3gb - again, I don't know the numbers. I don't know if eurogamer is right (I do know at E3 that some thought more ram would be freed up when the final dev kits shipped... but I don't know anyone working with a final dev kit). But Sony is coming at this from a position of power. They don't need the ram currently so they get to take a wait and see approach before saying "ok, devs, you guys get this." The systems will launch and they will look at what people are doing with their own OS, they will see what features people are asking for, they will see if microsoft or Nintendo (or even steam) come out with some surprise feature that catches fire - and if it does they will have the memory there to be able to do it also. If it doesn't that chunk of ram gets freed up for developers.

This thread is looking at this entire thing like the endgame is the day it launches. That's day one, guys. This is a long term strategic move and, imo, a smart one. They are putting themselves in a position to be able to adapt... something they couldn't do with the ps3. I know as gamers all we want to hear is higher numbers. But find me one developer that thinks the ram available to them on either system isn't enough (and this goes for the x1 as well guys... all this 5gb hurr hurrr stuff is fanboyish nonsense that you can go through my post history and see I never took part in once).

I feel like this post is far to philosophical for this thread of LARGE NUMBER > SMALL NUMBER, but hopefully this info is useful to some of you. Sony have created a nimble system and this is part of that philosophy.

Alby_da_Wolf said: Drama indeed. We know XBOne uses all that space for TV TV TV TV TV, but PS4?

and they still use less for that then Sony

The first dev kits have 4GB becuase the PS4 has planned to have 4GB but Feedback from developers made them change it up to 8. Thats what adam Boys said at E3.

Btw. Killzone Shadowfall is made with the 4GB devkit

The video recording function that continually records like the last 15 minutes (or whatever) of your gameplay was kind of a tip off.

AndrewWK said: Alby_da_Wolf said: Drama indeed. We know XBOne uses all that space for TV TV TV TV TV, but PS4? and they still use less for that then Sony

There can be only one explanation for this: XBOne delivers UPSCALED SD TV!

This doesn't solve PS4 OS size mystery, though...

Can you explain? Because the video recording feature uses a dedicated processor and stacked RAM... not the main GDDR5, CPU or GPU.