PlayStation 4 will only allow 4.5 GB (guaranteed memory) of it's 8GB RAM, for developers to use
129 replies, posted
[QUOTE=GoDong-DK;41604851]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.[/QUOTE]
His was pretty obvious, but I have seen a frighteningly large amount of people who think that GDDR5 is the same as DDR5, when we're still on DDR3.
Worth noting that the main system RAM is DDR3 in PC. GPUs use GDDR5 regularly, these days.
[editline]26th July 2013[/editline]
Some Nvidia Titans apparently have 6GB worth of GDDR5 on their own but you have to pay more than two whole PS4s worth for that :v:
There's also a thing called resource streaming :v:
Don't forget this is combined ram. For both textures and code. Can't wait to see what comes out of this.
[QUOTE=The Baconator;41604481]
I wonder what Sony did to the OS to be that ram consuming[/QUOTE]
I'd hope it's so shit doesn't take anywhere near as long to load as on the PS3. Right now a lot of the PS3's OS menus are about as slow as the original Xbox 360 blades.
Eh 4.5GB is pretty good. People have done great things with 512MB and less on consoles.
[QUOTE=itisjuly;41605817]Don't forget this is combined ram. For both textures and code. Can't wait to see what comes out of this.[/QUOTE]
Eh, I'd wish for more considering it's combined RAM. And I'm curious as to how using GDDR5 affects working with the CPU.
you guys may not know, but that's a LOT of memory space for a single program. like, a LOT. it's a whole bunch of pages that are in main memory and are readily accessible. you can easily fit a whole game in main memory with that much allocation, and that's absolutely crazy even by today's standards (true, gaming PCs nowadays have like 16GB of RAM, but they rarely use that much since Windows limits the address space to about 3 to 4GB per program, plus, it takes 1GB for the OS itself, you're always using virtual memory no matter how much main memory space you got available)
if an application needs more memory, due to the fact the PS4 comes with a pretty sizeable HDD virtual memory can be employed which effectively extends allocatable main memory to around 32GB just for the game itself (with the obvious overhead of page swapping and so on). i highly doubt games will require any more space than almost 5GB in main memory alone any time soon.
[QUOTE=itisjuly;41605817]Don't forget this is combined ram. For both textures and code. Can't wait to see what comes out of this.[/QUOTE]
that's actually the way it is with every computer, when the GPU doesn't have enough RAM for textures it's usually streamed from main memory (which is fast...er than the HDD), or any physical drives (A CD or HDD, which is [I]slow[/I], and is often the cause for the common glitch where textures appear blurry when you are entering a new area in a videogame)
[QUOTE=CakeMaster7;41606007]Eh, I'd wish for more considering it's combined RAM. [B]And I'm curious as to how using GDDR5 affects working with the CPU.[/B][/QUOTE]
It should be negligable compared to DDR3.
-snip- dumb
A guy on the [url=http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/07/report-os-overhead-takes-up-3-5gb-of-ps4s-8gb-of-ram/]Ars Technica article[/url] had a good point:
[quote]This isnt really relevant without knowing exactly what role the OS plays in running a game, thing have changed since days of gaming past. Previously when running a game, the game was the only thing running, there wasnt really an OS to speak of beyond something really basic so the game had full access to everything.
Now adays that isnt really the case as the OS's on these new machines are always running in the background. Now where that comes in to play is how much interaction the games have with the OS while they are running.
Working with an embedded system (stb) that deals with HD video all day, I can tell you we have 2GB of ram, but at least half of that is reserved for the system drivers in kernel space (which could be considered having half of the memory reserved by the OS). This is because they have all the buffers needed to handle the HD video as well as shuffling other things around through DMA transactions and such.
So if these new consoles are making OS calls to handle more video, or the OS is the one that owns the video buffers, then having that much ram reserved by the OS makes complete sense and doesnt actually hinder the games at all[/quote]
While GDDR5 has a higher throughput, it also has a much higher latency than DDR3.
The PS4 probably has an on die cache to deal with latency issues.
[QUOTE=OutLawed Blade;41602817]Is there any game out there that uses more than 3 gigs anyway? I run Crysis 3 with Firefox in the background with 5 or more tabs and I barely hit 3.[/QUOTE]
Most games are 32 bit applications which flat out cannot address more than 3.75 gigs or so. They don't have enough address space for it. Most PC games are haphazard ports from 32-bit consoles so none of them are capable of using more than that. A few PC-specific and very well ported games do use 64-bit executables, however, which can address more than 3.75 gigs. But they're not the standard right now.
[QUOTE=spinpoint F3;41606974]While GDDR5 has a higher throughput, it also has a much higher latency than DDR3.
The PS4 probably has an on die cache to deal with latency issues.[/QUOTE]
This is what I'm interested in. From what I've read memory latency can be a serious issue.
The allocated ram is obviously for multitasking, so you can have multiple games/apps running and it will be in the ram without having to load up again.
The PS4 probably isn't powerful enough to use 7gb of ram anyways, except to avoid having to stream from disk.
[quote=the fucking article]"Sony's internal docs say that 4.5GB is the baseline amount of guaranteed memory available for game-makers"[/quote]
This means worst case a game has 4.5GB of ram at all time, the OS is guaranteed 1Gb, meaning at best case it has 7GB. The OP completely missed the articles point.
[QUOTE=Tucan Sam;41607175]This means worst case a game has 4.5GB of ram at all time, the OS is guaranteed 1Gb, meaning at best case it has 7GB. The OP completely missed the articles point.[/QUOTE]
Yeah that does sound perfectly reasonable.
The OP title is also shit compared to the [URL="http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-ps3-system-software-memory"]source[/URL].
Good very good, my current pc setup should last longer thanks to the x86 or whatever architecture.
The OS allows you to record at anytime which allocates a lot of memory.
even if it isn't the entire 8 gigabytes, 4.5gb is a billion times better than 512 mb.
[QUOTE=milkandcooki;41608562]even if it isn't the entire 8 gigabytes, 4.5gb is a billion times better than 512 mb.[/QUOTE]
its actually only 11 times better but close enough
I dont like that Sony kept this quiet while the xboxes ram was confirmed a long time ago
I have 16GB RAM. I feel like I'm a bit overkill in the game department.
[QUOTE=spinpoint F3;41606974]While GDDR5 has a higher throughput, it also has a much higher latency than DDR3.
The PS4 probably has an on die cache to deal with latency issues.[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=CakeMaster7;41607012]This is what I'm interested in. From what I've read memory latency can be a serious issue.[/QUOTE]
Depends on the memory controller iirc.
[QUOTE=wraithcat;41603137]3gb ram
HDD cache
VRAM
The ps4 just has the ram which is used for everything, what that means is that we're going to be looking at shit textures once more again. Most average PCs these days get 4gb ram + roughly 2gb of vram. Ou of that about half a gig goes into the system. Most gaming PCs tend to have at least eight and need that for full texture support.[/QUOTE]
I would not call 2 GB of VRAM ''average''. there are still plenty of 1 GB GPUs that are considered high end gaming GPUs.
[QUOTE=Starpluck;41607359]The OP title is also shit compared to the [URL="http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-ps3-system-software-memory"]source[/URL].[/QUOTE]
I don't get it.
Also, UPDATE!
[quote]UPDATE #2: Sony has issued a statement:
We would like to clear up a misunderstanding regarding our "direct" and "flexible" memory systems. The article states that "flexible" memory is borrowed from the OS, and must be returned when requested - that's not actually the case.
The actual true distinction is that:
"Direct Memory" is memory allocated under the traditional video game model, so the game controls all aspects of its allocation
"Flexible Memory" is memory managed by the PS4 OS on the game's behalf, and allows games to use some very nice FreeBSD virtual memory functionality. However this memory is 100 per cent the game's memory, and is never used by the OS, and as it is the game's memory it should be easy for every developer to use it.
We have no comment to make on the amount of memory reserved by the system or what it is used for.
Based on this information, plus the new source coming forward to explain the properties of flexible memory, our take on this right now is that there is 4.5GB of conventional RAM available to developers, along with the OS-controlled flexible memory Sony describes, in addition to that.
We understand that this is a 1GB virtual address space, split into two areas - 512MB of on-chip RAM is used (the physical area) and another 512MB is "paged", perhaps like a Windows swap file. But to be clear, of the 8GB of GDDR5 on PS4, our contention is that 5GB of it is available to developers.
The good news is that the amount is static and not dictated by OS functions as we stated in our original post, making it a lot easier for developers to work with.[/quote]
Well that's good, a friend and I were debating for a while what the hell the "flexible" memory could possibly be for. At the very least it's good that the PS4 and Xbone have the same amount.
[QUOTE=Big Bang;41606118]you guys may not know, but that's a LOT of memory space for a single program. like, a LOT. it's a whole bunch of pages that are in main memory and are readily accessible. you can easily fit a whole game in main memory with that much allocation, and that's absolutely crazy even by today's standards (true, gaming PCs nowadays have like 16GB of RAM, but they rarely use that much since Windows limits the address space to about 3 to 4GB per program, plus, it takes 1GB for the OS itself, you're always using virtual memory no matter how much main memory space you got available)
[/QUOTE]
no it doesn't - I'm running W8 with 8GB of RAM and virtual memory turned off and it works fine
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