And thats why samsung and co pending investigations may be paying out billions in fines due to alleged memory price fixing.

Those prices will come down.

Ok. Anyways, as I have pointed out what I am expecting is actually to see anywhere between 16GB-20GB of GDDR6 ram. Coupled with 4GB-6GB of LPDDR4 ram which will handle the OS leaving the GDDR6 ram exclusively for games/apps. 6GB of LPDDR4 ram has basically the same footprint of one module of GDDR6 ram and should be relatively easy to incoporate without also adding too much costs.

When Xbox 360 released with 512Mb of GDDR3, best PC cards from both AMD and nVidia had 512MB as well.
When PS4 released with 8GB of GDDR5, best PC cards had 4 and 6GB, respectively.

Somehow, I don't think anyone will be skimping on RAM in next gen as well.

True, though many people, including Mark Rein from Epic (it was Geoff Keighley aftershow, IIRC), were quite surprised when they announced full specs with 8GB.

HBM is an entirely different ballgame... They actually have to fabricate a separate silicon interposer in conjunction with the DRAM itself, it's a costly exercise.
It's an absolutely fantastic technology if you wish to have tight integration in small form factors and reduce power consumption... But you can bet your ass that doesn't come cheap.

Well. Either way, the DRAM budget can't blow out, consoles have pretty tight budgets... So it is in Microsoft/Sony's best interest to keep everything as simple and cost effective as possible.
Later down the line when higher density GDDR6 becomes available, then they can reduce the amount of chips they have on the motherboard by half, which even at a slightly higher price for each chip would still result in cost savings.

Well. It's no different from other DRAM technologies in that regard.

Samsung and 'Co may just retain higher prices in order to recoup their fine, it will also take awhile for competitive pricing pressures to come into play anyway, the other great thing about new DRAM technology like DDR5 and GDDR6 is that it is often seen a "Premium" commodity, so manufacturers keep prices high initially anyway in order to profit from early adoption.

In short, unless we actually start to see a downward pricing trend, don't bet on a lower price any time soon.

I don't see the point in LPDDR4 DRAM, not for fixed home consoles anyway. Besides... AMD's memory controllers are really good at handling regular DDR4.

I think Microsoft will avoid the expense of the secondary DRAM/CPU chips as it just adds complexity and costs... Plus they tend to have a really optimized software stack anyway that is light on the resources, Sony might go that way as well. It will be interesting to see either way.

Whilst true... Commodity DRAM prices were an entirely different ballgame.
Sony also took full advantage of the jump in GDDR5 densities early as well... Whilst on the PC side, the DRAM speed/capacities were already locked in as GPU's typically take years to design.. And a ton of effort is spent on their extremely complex (And power hungry!) memory controllers and are thus pretty frigid on that front.
You can bet nVidia and AMD knew that the higher density chips were available as soon as everyone else knew, they just couldn't leverage it straight away.

It wasn't until 12 months later after the Playstation 4 launched that AMD would actually release variants of the R9 290X with 8GB GDDR5 as they leveraged the higher density chips...
Plus the PC at that time was pushing Multi-GPU solutions hard for those that needed it, so sure.... A GPU might only have 4GB of GDDR5, but you could have 16GB GDDR5 in total like I did.

But you also need to take into account that the PC also has System Ram as well which GPU's can also leverage if need be.

Same though. - I would be extremely happy, I just don't expect it.

I think 16GB of GDDR6 on a 256-bit bus is probably the sweet spot looking at how things are currently.


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For those that are Interested... Micron has started mass production of GDDR6. Currently only 8Gb capacities are offered (1GB) but 16Gb capacities are ramping up (2Gb) and 32Gb is the limit for the GDDR6 spec. (4Gb)
Note: They don't mention oddball capacities like 1.5GB or 3GB.

See here: https://www.anandtech.com/show/13012/micron-begins-mass-production-of-gddr6

I hope Sony goes with either 16 (2GB) Modules on a 256bit Bus, or 24 (2GB) Modules on a 384bit bus. The day one PS5 needs to utilize whatever bus they go with to the fullest, and then simplify once higher density modules are available, just like they did with PS4. If they half ass it, then I have zero doubt MS will do it right, and completely wipe the floor with them. They can not have a situation where PS5 has 16GB of RAM and XB4 has 32GB at the same price, and that is exactly the situaion I see happening if they botch it.

Gamersnexus did an article for GDDR prices recently (he's a trustworthy guy), if anyone interested. This is based on his insider sources.

https://www.gamersnexus.net/industry/3298-memory-industry-expose-exclusive-gn-report

Short version:

8Gb ram of gddr5 costed 50$ in 2017 but now about 80$

16GB ram of Gddr6 costs 176$.

Assuming Sony will spend about 100$ on ram for it's ps5, 12GB of ram is the max we getting if prices don't come down.

Also I have developed my own model predicting gddr6 prices for my ps5 predictions and have 16GB ram of gddr6 currently at 150$. So let's see what happens.

I agree with you.

It'll have 32GB GDDR6. You can bookmark me.

Next gen games are going to need lots of memory: Motion matching, open world games, dynamic and using reconstruction resolutions etc.

so ps5 w/ threadripper will have 32 cores 64 threads custom with extra overclock?  128 gb ram ? otherwise why even call it next gen if it’s going to have outdated specs right at launch?

This article is looking at (1GB) GDDR5 vs (1GB) GDDR6 Modules. PS5 will be using (2GB) GDDR6 Modules, which will offer a nice savings per GB. Sony likely already pays even less than the $9 a chip stated here due to volume. With (2GB) Modules, Sony will be looking at 16GB for under $100 or 32GB for maybe $160. Like I said above, if Sony half asses PS5, and only goes with 16GB, Microsoft will without a doubt slap 32GB in XB4, price match PS5, and make Sony look weak.

The other Option, where it would be too expensive for Microsoft to double up would be 24GB on a 384 bit bus, using 12 (2GB) Modules. This would probably cost them ~$130. It just comes down to whether more RAM or More speed is going to be optimal to create balance with the rest of the system they are designing.

If they go with option 1, then you would be looking at a PS5 Slim using 8 (4GB) Modules, and cutting the cost nearly in half. If they go the route of 12 (2GB) modules, they are pretty much stuck with that for the rest of the generation, however, you could be looking at a Pro model that ends up with 12 (4GB) chips, making it a much more enticing upgrade than the current Pro. It will be interesting to see what they decide. I have no doubt they have mapped out every option, and how it could/will play out over the course of the decade.