PlayStation 4 will only allow 4.5 GB (guaranteed memory) of it's 8GB RAM, for developers to use - Polidicks

[QUOTE=Awesomecaek;41603743]It's a lot disappointing for both because I can already see that in three years we will be back to devs going "CAN'T MAKE BIGGER ENVIRONMENTS OR HIGHER RES TEXTURES THEY WOULDN'T FIT ON THE CONSHULS LOL"[/QUOTE] Its standard practice to work with 2x the shipping texture size so no lol

[QUOTE=CakeMaster7;41603801]5GB usable for devs, that is the subject of the thread, isn't it? Edit: ninja'd, but still, how could you misunderstand me[/QUOTE] Sorry for a simple misunderstanding? It's not that hard to misunderstand someone in a topic like this, with the way you formatted that post It's just a case of me losing my attention for a second. Kill me for that.

What is the standard for the amount of RAM that typical gaming PC have? My work computer has 32GB, and my home 16GB. But I use like 3 adobe programs at once.

[QUOTE=FlubberNugget;41603808]Sorry for a simple misunderstanding? It's not that hard to misunderstand someone in a topic like this, with the way you formatted that post It's just a case of me losing my attention for a second. Kill me for that.[/QUOTE] Sorry, about that, I edited my post to reflect that I understand it read a bit dickish [editline]26th July 2013[/editline] [QUOTE=Glitchman;41603820]What is the standard for the amount of RAM that typical gaming PC have? My work computer has 32GB, and my home 16GB. But I use like 3 adobe programs at once.[/QUOTE] Lots of people still only have 4GB, but 8GB has fast become rather standard for newer, higher end games, especially since RAM is relatively cheap. I have 16 GB myself.

[QUOTE=Glitchman;41603820]What is the standard for the amount of RAM that typical gaming PC have? My work computer has 32GB, and my home 16GB. But I use like 3 adobe programs at once.[/QUOTE] I like to think the standard 'gaming' amount would be roughly 8-16GB. Typically, you won't ever need that much for gaming. The only cases where you would need that much are cases like a Ramdisk, Virtualisation or if you do 3D work.

[QUOTE=FlubberNugget;41603764]That isn't a problem with this generation, consoles have always wrought this problem among platforms.[/QUOTE] I am not saying it is a new thing, it's just "consoles disappoint yet again". Not to mention we are not discussing the fact the console has only 8GB of ram, we are discussing the problem that a minimum of 2,5GB will stay shat in by something nobody can explain and thus probably can't really justify it's existence. Fully functional Linux can happily run in 4MB of space, if you want graphical environment, you need like blazing 64M. A single GB of space you can practically build a universe within. If Sony needs 2,5GB for something that practically didn't exist in PS2 and somehow got entirely lost in the space on PS3, they are the one who has issues with shitty optimization of things.

[QUOTE=Awesomecaek;41603850]I am not saying it is a new thing, it's just "consoles disappoint yet again". Not to mention we are not discussing the fact the console has only 8GB of ram, we are discussing the problem that a minimum of 2,5GB will stay shat in by something nobody can explain and thus probably can't really justify it's existence. Fully functional Linux can happily run in 4MB of space, if you want graphical environment, you need like blazing 64M. A single GB of space you can practically build a universe within. If Sony needs 2,5GB for something that practically didn't exist in PS2 and somehow got entirely lost in the space on PS3, they are the one who has issues with shitty optimization of things.[/QUOTE] Any lightweight DE will not run usably in 64MB. Modern consoles are focusing more on the user experience rather than focusing on just being able to play games, and that ramps up the amount of ram you need for individual services.

[QUOTE=Awesomecaek;41603850]I am not saying it is a new thing, it's just "consoles disappoint yet again". Not to mention we are not discussing the fact the console has only 8GB of ram, we are discussing the problem that a minimum of 2,5GB will stay shat in by something nobody can explain and thus probably can't really justify it's existence. Fully functional Linux can happily run in 4MB of space, if you want graphical environment, you need like blazing 64M. A single GB of space you can practically build a universe within. If Sony needs 2,5GB for something that practically didn't exist in PS2 and somehow got entirely lost in the space on PS3, they are the one who has issues with shitty optimization of things.[/QUOTE] I imagine the the real-time video compression and streaming as well as the pause and resume anytime has something to do with it

[QUOTE=FlubberNugget;41603875]Any lightweight DE will not run usably in 64MB. Modern consoles are focusing more on the user experience rather than focusing on just being able to play games, and that ramps up the amount of ram you need for individual services.[/QUOTE] I find it a bit odd though that it uses significantly more RAM than even Windows Vista. [editline]26th July 2013[/editline] [QUOTE=Juniez;41603889]I imagine the the real-time video compression and streaming has as well as the pause and resume anytime something to do with it[/QUOTE] I suspect that as well, since it'll most likely be HD video.

[QUOTE=FlubberNugget;41603875]Any lightweight DE will not run usably in 64MB. Modern consoles are focusing more on the user experience rather than focusing on just being able to play games, and that ramps up the amount of ram you need for individual services.[/QUOTE] Keep in mind I am speaking 64MB for the DE itself, we are not talking ANY applications since that's the game memory territory.

If the ps4 devkits only have 8GB of ram then a few GB will be used for debugging software. Therefore devs can't use as much as they should be able to.

[QUOTE=Awesomecaek;41603912]Keep in mind I am speaking 64MB for the DE itself, we are not talking ANY applications since that's the game memory territory.[/QUOTE] A desktop environment may encompass many, many services. From an FTP Server right down to a sound server for simple things like volume control. A window manager might run in that, but not a DE like GNOME or even LXDE will even run stably in 64MB. [editline]26th July 2013[/editline] [QUOTE=alien_guy;41603935]If the ps4 devkits only have 8GB of ram then a few GB will be used for debugging software. Therefore devs can't use as much as they should be able to.[/QUOTE] There is a good chance the Dev. kits have more ram to make up for this.

[QUOTE=Juniez;41603889]I imagine the the real-time video compression and streaming as well as the pause and resume anytime has something to do with it[/QUOTE] Yeah, that sounds likely. They probably reserve space for dumping the state of whatever and keep it there while you play or something, the streaming will be probably quite a thing if you want good response times and everything, I concede to all that. I just feel like this will once again shit over stuff I would like to see and it makes me grumpy, sorry for that.

[QUOTE=FlubberNugget;41603939] There is a good chance the Dev. kits have more ram to make up for this.[/QUOTE] The old devkits were 4GB, so don't be that sure.

[QUOTE=Awesomecaek;41603950]Yeah, that sounds likely. They probably reserve space for dumping the state of whatever and keep it there while you play or something, the streaming will be probably quite a thing if you want good response times and everything, I concede to all that. I just feel like this will once again shit over stuff I would like to see and it makes me grumpy, sorry for that.[/QUOTE] Keep in mind that's still multiple times bigger than the current Gen (im not going to say that the current gen is good but it can still give serviceable results if you're smart with what you use)

At least it's enough so that hopefully we don't have FPS games with horrid FOV.

[QUOTE=Reshy;41604016]At least it's enough so that hopefully we don't have FPS games with horrid FOV.[/QUOTE] The difference in performance is minimal and even then that's in drawing times and not memory Its mostly a conscious design choice regarding how close/far people sit from their screens

[QUOTE=lanhacker1488;41603517]uh yeah, thats because gddr5 is the future(pc is still stuck in the past) 3<5 ddr3<gddr5 easy maths[/QUOTE] GDDR5 (which itself is from 2008 or something) is based on DDR3, though - PCs aren't "stuck in the past", they'll simply be upgrading to DDR4. There's a reason why there's a G in GDDR5 - it's meant mainly for GPUs, as they benefit a lot more from higher bandwidth. In general tasks, RAM access is generally not what slows stuff down (and even then it's afaik more of a latency thing), it's everything else, but when you need textures and such all the time at a very fast rate, you definitely benefit from higher bandwidth. There's not reason to get more expensive memory for the general computer if there's no real benefit to it. It's also gonna be interesting to see how the Xbox One and PS4 will compare, and how much of an impact RAM will have.

Well we need 3 to 4gb to run those lame ports to PC, so if they use 4gb we'll need.... Hopefully only 8Gb, since they're closer to PCs architecture to begin with

[QUOTE=GoDong-DK;41604098]GDDR5 (which itself is from 2008 or something) is based on DDR3, though - PCs aren't "stuck in the past", they'll simply be upgrading to DDR4. There's a reason why there's a G in GDDR5 - it's meant mainly for GPUs, as they benefit a lot more from higher bandwidth. In general tasks, RAM access is generally not what slows stuff down (and even then it's afaik more of a latency thing), it's everything else, but when you need textures and such all the time at a very fast rate, you definitely benefit from higher bandwidth. There's not reason to get more expensive memory for the general computer if there's no real benefit to it. It's also gonna be interesting to see how the Xbox One and PS4 will compare, and how much of an impact RAM will have.[/QUOTE] I'm almost absolutely sure that that's a joke post

From working with a friend who develops games for a major company (he doesn't want me to tell where) on consoles, He told me they were only letting them use the 4.5 gigs of ram as basically the baseline, If they need to, the OS ram usage can shrink down to 1-1.5 GB.

[QUOTE=TheDestroyerOfall;41604362]From working with a friend who develops games for a major company (he doesn't want me to tell where) on consoles, He told me they were only letting them use the 4.5 gigs of ram as basically the baseline, If they need to, the OS ram usage can shrink down to 1-1.5 GB.[/QUOTE]I'd like that to be the case. Considering the fact that the PS3's OS is somewhere below 100 MB usage iirc and the WiiU's is only 1 GB, 3.5 GB just seems a bit crazy

Sony could be hoarding some ram so they have space to add features later on.

[QUOTE=tirpider;41602967]What kind of bastard Windows is it running?[/QUOTE] not even Windows uses that much, the only reason why you even see 1.5GB of ram usage on a PC with 4GB or more ram is because of the various fetch services which try to preserve ram for things you commonly launch (it will then stop using this extra ram if a program starts using lots of ram, so it never matters if fetch is on or not) I wonder what Sony did to the OS to be that ram consuming

So 3.5GB for OS stuff? Seems odd. I mean, 4.5GB is pretty okay for a game, perhaps not very future-proof, but my computer is using 2.25GB right now with Steam, Skype, Teamspeak and Firefox open...

[QUOTE=The Baconator;41604481]not even Windows uses that much, the only reason why you even see 1.5GB of ram usage on a PC with 4GB or more ram is because of the various fetch services which try to preserve ram for things you commonly launch (it will then stop using this extra ram if a program starts using lots of ram, so it never matters if fetch is on or not) I wonder what Sony did to the OS to be that ram consuming[/QUOTE] Sony aren't making these limits because the OS is always running that intensively, it's a safety feature so the OS actually has that ram in case it needs to something intensive.

[QUOTE=lanhacker1488;41603517]uh yeah, thats because gddr5 is the future(pc is still stuck in the past) 3<5 ddr3<gddr5 easy maths[/QUOTE] That's because pcs tend to have GDR5 on GPUs where it's really needed and a larger RAM since a lot of stuff on it doesn't need same kind of access speeds. Obviously faster is better. But if I recall correctly to date PCs processors tend to have a bigger and faster cache as well so that does a lot. But with the price of ram these days, the consoles will generally be forced to use massive optimisation again, starting with very aggressive lodding or a huge reuse of textures. Essentially with consoles currently you have two ways to go - larger broader scopes but bad detail up close, or fairly cordoned off and making sure that the player only sees some things.

[QUOTE=FlubberNugget;41604531]Sony aren't making these limits because the OS is always running that intensively, it's a safety feature so the OS actually has that ram in case it needs to something intensive.[/QUOTE] I'm curious as to what Sony could have in store that they'd think they need that much though.

Crikey, 8 gigabytes but the system(?) uses 3.5 of all of those? Golly gee, they should get to optimizing that shit.

[QUOTE=CakeMaster7;41604312]I'm almost absolutely sure that that's a joke post[/QUOTE] You're probably right, I'm an idiot. Still, I wouldn't put it past people (especially with the rust influx), and considering GDDR5 [I]is[/I] faster assuming "higher number -> better" isn't incredibly stupid. After all it's named like that; DDR1,2,3,4.