36 replies to this topic 1 votes

[TheLegendOfMart]

Audioboxer, on 24 January 2013 - 19:06, said:

With how good the Sony engineers have been at shrinking the PS3 OS but continuing to add more to it, I'd be much happier with faster memory (and CPU/GPU ) over more. 4GB is much more than the PS3 with it's strangely split 512mb.

Or I will put it this way, we're not seeing more than 4GB of DDR5 as it'll give near another £500 PS3, which I hardly see Sony wanting this time around. I think it'll launch at £349/399 across two SKUs.

PS3 OS currently uses just 50Mb, I think theres a bit of breathing room with 512Mb

The RAM itself isn't split, Sony learnt their lesson with PS3, it will have one big 4Gb Unified chunk but 512Mb will be reserved for OS function.

There are unsubstantiated rumblings that Sony could free up RAM like a desktop PC does, it could unload everything unnecessary and just run whatever functions of the OS you would need while running a game, which could bring the OS limit down to 256Mb or possibly less.

Anaron, on 24 January 2013 - 19:09, said:

That's very troubling. I really hope Microsoft doesn't drop the ball with Durango. I assumed the GPU would be similar to the PS4's GPU (based on AMD's GCN architecture). It just doesn't make any sense for them to use something older like AMD's VLIW4 architecture (e.g. Radeon HD 6000 series).

I hate saying it, but the current rumours are that both consoles will be using GCN, Orbis will have 18GCN Compute Units, and Durango will have 12GCN Compute Units. 1.8TF compared to 1.2.

[Anaron]

TheLegendOfMart, on 24 January 2013 - 19:17, said:

PS3 OS currently uses just 50Mb, I think theres a bit of breathing room with 512Mb

The RAM itself isn't split, Sony learnt their lesson with PS3, it will have one big 4Gb Unified chunk but 512Mb will be reserved for OS function.

There are unsubstantiated rumblings that Sony could free up RAM like a desktop PC does, it could unload everything unnecessary and just run whatever functions of the OS you would need while running a game, which could bring the OS limit down to 256Mb or possibly less.

It would be stupid for Sony to use non-unified memory. They couldn't add support for cross-game chat to the PS3 for that reason. Most of the RAM was already pre-allocated to games and couldn't be re-allocated to the OS.

TheLegendOfMart, on 24 January 2013 - 19:17, said:

I hate saying it, but the current rumours are that both consoles will be using GCN, Orbis will have 18GCN Compute Units, and Durango will have 12GCN Compute Units. 1.8TF compared to 1.2.

Okay, that's good. I was afraid Durango would use a non-GCN GPU. A difference of 600 GFLOPS coupled with slower RAM means Durango is clearly inferior. In terms of raw processing power, Durango's GPU is close to the Radeon HD 7770 (1.28 TFLOPS). And Orbis' GPU is a little faster than the Radeon HD 7850 (1.76 TFLOPS).

Sony looks like they're going to have an edge over Microsoft with exclusives. Cross-platform games will obviously cater to the lowest common denominator (Durango).

[TheLegendOfMart]

Yeah, the Orbis is meant to have 7970M 'based' GPU, which is a desktop 7870 at 7850 clocks.

[Audioboxer]

TheLegendOfMart, on 24 January 2013 - 19:17, said:

PS3 OS currently uses just 50Mb, I think theres a bit of breathing room with 512Mb

The RAM itself isn't split, Sony learnt their lesson with PS3, it will have one big 4Gb Unified chunk but 512Mb will be reserved for OS function.

There are unsubstantiated rumblings that Sony could free up RAM like a desktop PC does, it could unload everything unnecessary and just run whatever functions of the OS you would need while running a game, which could bring the OS limit down to 256Mb or possibly less.

Yeah I know what I was trying to convey was I think 4GB of RAM will be fine for Sony to fit the PS4 OS into with how well they've done on the PS3 considering most of it's actual OS features were backported in, and the OS shrunk a lot in size. That would be a good way to work, but when it comes to in-game menus/soundtracks and other stuff, Sony need it to be mandatory out of the door for each developer. The PS3 ended up a mess with a lot of games as things weren't ready from the get go.

Maybe MS need more RAM to put 1080p adverts on the next Xbox dashboard

[Anaron]

TheLegendOfMart, on 24 January 2013 - 19:52, said:

Yeah, the Orbis is meant to have 7970M 'based' GPU, which is a desktop 7870 at 7850 clocks.

It should be a little faster than the Radeon HD 7850.

Radeon HD 7870 (1000 MHz) = 20 compute units = 1280 shader processors
Radeon HD 7970M (850 MHz) = 20 compute units = 1280 shader processors
Radeon HD 7850 (850 MHz) = 16 compute units = 1024 shader processors
Radeon HD 7770 (1000 Mhz) = 10 compute units = 640 shader processors
Orbis (800 MHz) = 18 compute units = 1152 shader processors (based on this)
Durango (? Mhz) = 12 compute units = 768 shader processors (see above link)

They lowered the GPU's clock speed to 800 Mhz (from 850 MHz) and removed 2 compute units. Regardless, it's still much better than the Durango's measly 768 shader processors. A difference of 384 shader processors is a lot to developers.

[Blackhearted]

And who knows how many texture units(and maybe even ROPs) also got chopped off durango compared to the ps4.

[Azies]

Five Hundred Ninety Nine US Dollars~!