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Forums - Sony Discussion - PlayStation 4 gives up to 5.5GB of RAM to game developers

colafitte on 27 July 2013

If sony knows 4'5 gb ram is more than enough right now for games in the first few years, that no game right now in developement use more than 4'5 gb ram, they must explain that, and say the rest of the 8gb ram is better to use in OS apps, and explain how it will use it, too. Maybe at Gamescom will explain all the OS functions in ps4??



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Nsanity on 27 July 2013

Never mind.



Adinnieken on 27 July 2013
Subie_Greg said:

I don't care. Just think it's funny that the Xbox people have come here and thrown some internet punches when Xbox One is still behind. Guess they are happy that the Xbox One isn't as far behind as they thought?

I haven't thrown a single punch.  My comments have been technically sound and reasonable.



Adinnieken on 27 July 2013
Nsanity said:

Eurogamer

UPDATE: A new source familiar with the matter has provided additional information to Digital Foundry that confirms only 4.5GB of the PS4's 8GB GDDR5 memory pool is guaranteed to game developers right now, while also clarifying how the PS4's "flexible memory" works in practice.

In real terms, an additional 512MB of physical RAM may be available in addition to the 4.5GB mentioned in the SDK. Flexible memory consists of physical and virtual spaces, and the latter introduces paging issues which impact performance. In our original story we combined them together.

For practical game applications, the correct figures for this story, as we understand it now, are a guaranteed 4.5GB for development and a further 512MB from the flexible pool. We have updated the headline accordingly.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-ps3-system-software-memory

This is not good.  The last thing you want to do is have to page data in a disk cache.  It's much less efficient.





thismeintiel on 27 July 2013
DirtyP2002 said:
I could not think of a more insecure reaction than blaming Xbox One fans for posting here. It really shows how mad some of the posters in this thread are.

The critical reaction after the Xbox One reveal was huge and a lot of gaming nerds on forums criticised that the XBox One is a multimedia machine and not a pure gaming machine. Now it turns out that the PS4 will do the exact same thing and suddenly you guys try to spin this like it is great news.

Wow, you're really going to try to compare the two? 

The Xbox One reaction was from gamers of ALL sides.  Sony fans, Nintendo fans, and ex-MS fans.  They rose up because they despised what MS was doing, and what it could mean for the industry if they were successful.  And pre-orders and MS's 180 illustrated this fact very well.

Now, what we have here is Xbox fanboys grabbing what little ammunition they have against the PS4/Sony, and trying to take aim.  What's so hilarious about this "negative", though?  That if it is true, than it puts the AMOUNT of RAM on par, or a little better than, the Xbox One.  I guess they are saying that console is a piece of shit, too, then.    Of course, this completely ignores the more important factor if the pools are the same size, the SPEED of the RAM, which the PS4 wins quite handedly.  It ignores an even more important factor, the PS4 still has MORE POWER in the GPU department, still giving the PS4 the advantage.  It, also, doesn't affect any developer, as they have known about this from the start.  In fact, they originally started with only 3GB.  But now, they have 5-5.5GB, if this is true.

I am going to laugh my ass off, though, if this only pertains to the current dev kits and the final ones will use 6-7GB for games.  OR if Sony trims the OS, which they will do, to use only 1GB (it only uses 1.5GB, now, and Sony are reserving 1GB for future improvements).  Nice spin you tried to put on this, though.



 

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walsufnir on 27 July 2013
thismeintiel said:

I am going to laugh my ass off, though, if this only pertains to the current dev kits and the final ones will use 6-7GB for games.


I am currently laughing my ass off when I read a retail console will offer more free ram than a dev-console. I have read a lot of "weird" comments on these forums while I am here but this is definitely one of my favourites.



DirtyP2002 on 27 July 2013
thismeintiel said:
DirtyP2002 said:
I could not think of a more insecure reaction than blaming Xbox One fans for posting here. It really shows how mad some of the posters in this thread are.

The critical reaction after the Xbox One reveal was huge and a lot of gaming nerds on forums criticised that the XBox One is a multimedia machine and not a pure gaming machine. Now it turns out that the PS4 will do the exact same thing and suddenly you guys try to spin this like it is great news.

Wow, you're really going to try to compare the two? 

The Xbox One reaction was from gamers of ALL sides.  Sony fans, Nintendo fans, and ex-MS fans.  They rose up because they despised what MS was doing, and what it could mean for the industry if they were successful.  And pre-orders and MS's 180 illustrated this fact very well.

Now, what we have here is Xbox fanboys grabbing what little ammunition they have against the PS4/Sony, and trying to take aim.  What's so hilarious about this "negative", though?  That if it is true, than it puts the AMOUNT of RAM on par, or a little better than, the Xbox One.  I guess they are saying that console is a piece of shit, too, then.    Of course, this completely ignores the more important factor if the pools are the same size, the SPEED of the RAM, which the PS4 wins quite handedly.  It ignores an even more important factor, the PS4 still has MORE POWER in the GPU department, still giving the PS4 the advantage.  It, also, doesn't affect any developer, as they have known about this from the start.  In fact, they originally started with only 3GB.  But now, they have 5-5.5GB, if this is true.

I am going to laugh my ass off, though, if this only pertains to the current dev kits and the final ones will use 6-7GB for games.  OR if Sony trims the OS, which they will do, to use only 1GB (it only uses 1.5GB, now, and Sony are reserving 1GB for future improvements).  Nice spin you tried to put on this, though.


I was talking about the RAM split between OS and gaming, not the DRM stuff. Try again with another wall of text.



Imagine not having GamePass on your console...

gooch_destroyer on 27 July 2013
walsufnir said:
thismeintiel said:

I am going to laugh my ass off, though, if this only pertains to the current dev kits and the final ones will use 6-7GB for games.


I am currently laughing my ass off when I read a retail console will offer more free ram than a dev-console. I have read a lot of "weird" comments on these forums while I am here but this is definitely one of my favourites.

You're welcome,walsufnir.



Soundwave on 27 July 2013
colafitte said:
If sony knows 4'5 gb ram is more than enough right now for games in the first few years, that no game right now in developement use more than 4'5 gb ram, they must explain that, and say the rest of the 8gb ram is better to use in OS apps, and explain how it will use it, too. Maybe at Gamescom will explain all the OS functions in ps4??


Sony: We're just going to sit around and wait for Microsoft to show everyone how to use that much RAM.



JoeTheBro on 27 July 2013
Adinnieken said:
thismeintiel said:

I have to say the last few hours have been very entertaining.

It seems all the Xbox fanboys were able to come out of hiding because there was the smallest shred of negative (not really) news for the PS4. Of course, they completely ignore the fact that even if the rumor is correct, PS4 devs still have 0.5GB more RAM to work with, or the same amount that's in the 360/PS3. And much faster RAM, at that. Also, quite funny how they still wish to ignore the MOST important factor, spec-wise, that the PS4 has a more powerful GPU.

Really, Xbox fans should be the last ones talking about specs, since the PS4 beats the One in every category in that department. If you're going to brag about anything about the One, it should be its features and/or exclusives. But, DEFINITELY not specs.

Yes and no. 

The PS4 for certain has 512MB less (4.5GB) than the Xbox One, and at best it has 512MB more.  At least with developers, if this information is correct, Sony needs to clarify what the deal is with the 1GB in between.  Because if that 1GB is for features that may or may not be used by the developer, than you'll see some games limited by memory (in the future) and some not.  If that 1GB is being reserved for any other reason then developers can only be certain that they have 4.5GB available to them and will develop accordingly.  They might go for broke and do 5GB and hedge bets, but unless developers get some guarantees from Sony that they won't lose that 1GB then they're not going to use it.

Why would they risk a game not being playable in the future?

I don't think Sony has to communicate with the public as importantly as they have to communicate with developers.  However, the speed of memory or the number of shaders doesn't matter.  Memory allows you to take a set amount of data on disc, and put it into a location that is fast and quickly accessable.  1GB of data on disc is 1GB of data in memory.  The less of it you have, the less data you can store in it.  And if you're looking at specs, the last spec you want to rely on is the transfer rate of the SATA 2 interface.

So, this is important.  It isn't important to gamers, but it is important to developers.

DF is doing a very bad job of explaining this, but it really sounds like how RAM works on vita and many mobile devices.

 

While playing the game has 5.0 GB, going by the update, and it always has 5.0 GB. Flex RAM comes into play the second the player presses the PS button. The game drops .5 GB of non important ram and frees up space for the OS. When the game is launched again this half a gig is quickly loaded back in. Effectivly to the user games have 5 GB and the OS has 3.5, adding up past 8.



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