Orbis Unmasked: What to expect from next-gen

[ToneKnee]

People need to take these specs with a pinch of salt. As for the memory thing, the memory in the Orbis is said to be 4GB of GDDR5 memory which is a graphics chip memory and not actual normal memory?

[TheLegendOfMart]

GDDR5 is used as Graphics Memory, its too expensive to use as general RAM, its based on DDR3, there is no reason why you can't use it as system memory as well.

[HawkMan]

People need to take these specs with a pinch of salt. As for the memory thing, the memory in the Orbis is said to be 4GB of GDDR5 memory which is a graphics chip memory and not actual normal memory?

As I recall, the 360 used Graphics memory for all it's memroy as well, since it used unified memory for everything, so games could scale the memory to what they needed, not what the system said.

[remixedcat]

I thought Sony would go with Nvidia again???

[Crisp]

Here's to hoping the new Xbox has a Blu-ray drive.

I thought Sony would go with Nvidia again???

Go away Intel fangirl!! /s /jk

[WelshBluebird]

If the amount of RAM needed for the OS is accurate, does anyone else have a feeling that the new Xbox's OS will be based off Windows 8?

[TheLegendOfMart]

Its almost certainly going to run off Windows 8 Kernel, with the rumours saying that 2 cores of 8 are going to be reserved for concurrent OS functions I don't think its a stretch that it may run Windows RT or RT style apps in the background or at the same time as games.

Another thing I wondered, Sony purchased Gaikai last year, what if they offloaded some of the streaming, cloud stuff like cross game voice chat and the like so it doesn't use up as much RAM, CPU time?

[Snake89]

I know i won't be getting another xbox, my current one is sitting inside it's box from when i moved to another place 6 months ago. Long live the playstation. :)

[spaceelf]

yeah, and with that low memory they had huge issues getting in game functions of the xmb to work smoothly, and some never got implemented.

Xbox 360s OS only uses 32MB of RAM. I don't think they'll have any problems slimming down whatever they've got in the works.

[ahhell]

I know i won't be getting another xbox, my current one is sitting inside it's box from when i moved to another place 6 months ago. Long live the playstation. :)

Why not use both?

I'll never understand this mentality. Both systems have decent exclusive games.

This Pro-xbox/Pro-PS3 garbage is just pathetic and childish.

[TheLegendOfMart]

Not everyone can afford both

[HawkMan]

Xbox has always run the windows kernel though.

The kernel has very little effect as to what else is supported and runs on top of it, heck with minwin being a modular kernel, even saying it runs the Win8 kernel doesn't mean it "runs the win8 kernel"....

heck WP8 runs the win8 kernel so, runnign the windows 8 kernel doesn't mean it need a ton of ram. heck the Modern UI apps themselves are some of the most efficient designs out there for apps, and even active they barely use resources, in background/idle mode, they use no CPU an just a few kb of memory.

So, I doubt the ifnal version will have over 1 or 1.5 GB of reserved memory. though it might for PiP or something fancy like that. Or for another important reason, On screen graphics in HD(Especially) require a lot of memory, so having 1.5 GB reserved means a full res Guide with full functionality(something they "almost" managed with the latest updates o the 360) can be brought up and you can be able to fully search and use all parts of the guide, including viewing preview vids and full res screenshots. and all that.

Personally the idea of app support alone has me supporting it. just because Spotify/Wimp/Xbox Music streaming in the background would be way awesome.

[Snake89]

Why not use both?

I'll never understand this mentality. Both systems have decent exclusive games.

This Pro-xbox/Pro-PS3 garbage is just pathetic and childish.

The only really exclusive games for the xbox are halo and gears of war. I'm only a fan of fps games on the PC.

[HawkMan]

Why not use both?

I'll never understand this mentality. Both systems have decent exclusive games.

This Pro-xbox/Pro-PS3 garbage is just pathetic and childish.

Personally I have no need for both, it's expensive to buy games for two systems. Whatever exclusives there are there is an equally good alternative on the other console, so meh.

so the other way, I see no reason to have both systems... :/

[spaceelf]

The only really exclusive games for the xbox are halo and gears of war. I'm only a fan of fps games on the PC.

GoW was a damn good series though. I'd have finished 3 if my 360s hard drive hadn't bombed

but then that happened and I lost interest in console gaming

[Arceles]

I want linux in one of those machines.

[George P Global Moderator]

_{The only reason I see the new Xbox as maybe using more ram in reserve for the OS is so that it can specifically run multiple apps and let you jump between them like you can on the pc. Being able to pause my game and jump to the dash or a app I have open which is doing something in the background then jump back to the game I'll take it.}

[Blackhearted]

Hm, if there's any truth to those specs then this just may end up the first time sony has ever had the more powerful console.

[TheLegendOfMart]

I wouldn't say they are set in stone but there are a lot of similar rumours from all different sources so they aren't going to be too far from the mark.

[compl3x]

Why not use both?

I'll never understand this mentality. Both systems have decent exclusive games.

This Pro-xbox/Pro-PS3 garbage is just pathetic and childish.

Sony still seems to have the better exclusives from where I sit.

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

The Radeon HD 7970M-equivalent GPU is great. It's much more powerful than the rumoured Radeon HD 6670/7670-equivalent GPU. Performance-wise, it's somewhat close to the GeForce GTX 580. Developers will be able to get more out of it in a dedicated hardware platform than a gaming laptop.

[Lamp0]

How has anyone "sealed the deal" on anything?

Talk about jumping the gun.

[TheLegendOfMart]

Sorry didn't realise I wasn't allowed to use personal reasons to want the PS4.

I thought the PS4 was going to be quad core at best, with 2Gb of ram and a low end PC GPU.

The fact that its 8 core, 4Gb, 7970M like GPU, GPU like Compute Unit, means there's no reason for ME PERSONALLY not to get one now.

I paid ?500 for PS3 on launch day with a couple of games, this thing cant be any more than ?350-400.

[Biohead]

I paid ?500 for PS3 on launch day with a couple of games, this thing cant be any more than ?350-400.

You're setting yourself up for a very big let down if you hang onto that idea. Remember just how much more it cost in the UK compared to the rest of the world?

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

You're setting yourself up for a very big let down if you hang onto that idea. Remember just how much more it cost in the UK compared to the rest of the world?

The Blu Ray drive massacred the PS3 price. If they stick to mechanical hard drives instead of solid state the new consoles won't be that much to manufacture. Also when it comes to memory, isn't faster RAM better regardless of amount, due to the bandwidth? (unless you compare like 1GB to 8GB) Kind of like comparing a 3ghz celeron to a 1.8ghz dual/quad-core CPU?

edit: Trying to dig up what others say, the intricacies of memory isn't my strong point.

Developer sources, speaking after meetings at CES, have told VG247 that the next PlayStation, codenamed Orbis, will have a run-capability of 1.84 teraflops. Conversely, the next Xbox, codenamed Durango, will be able to achieve 1.23 teraflops.

GDDR ram is more suitable for Graphics Processing (In PS4), and DDR3 is more suitable for OS Tasks (720). It is expected that the 720 may need some sort of ES/ED Ram to compensate. Basically, don't get caught up in the RAM size but the RAM type.

Just as a side note, the memory setup would be in keeping with the philosophy a Sony VP outlined in a presentation a little while back.

He explained that their opinion was that high bandwidth was a key to rendering performance.

He outlined the PS2 approach - relatively high bandwidth to a relatively small amount of memory.

The PS3 approach - relatively 'medium' bandwidth to a larger amount of memory.

And then said for the future they want the best of both: relatively high bandwidth to a relatively large amount of memory.

I think 4GB-200GB/s would be in keeping with that philosophy.

Microsoft's philosophy, if rumours are true, is obviously different. Relatively small bandwidth to a LARGE amount of memory + high bandwidth to a relatively small amount of memory.

Either could opt for what the other is doing so I think they're both sincerely looking at their own requirements and what developers are asking of them. They've probably come across a lot of various opinions...satisfying all of them would be impossible. Sony was probably told very resoundingly, though, that 2GB was too little, hence the change.

What I'm curious about in Microsoft's case is the talk of Windows 8 and the suggestion that their box might almost present a games machine and a custom W8 'PC' type experience in parallel, each with dedicated resources, perhaps substantial resources for the latter relative to a normal console OS. It would make sense to opt for larger memory over faster memory if that goal is a core one.

What do you mean by the OS? Any game will have a lot of OS calls, whether it be to the networking stack during any online game, the drives, the controller, probably even the GPU. Putting those parts of the OS in a different and much slower part of memory will cause games to grind to a screeching halt every time there's an OS call. Going lower-level on OS functions like threading and memory management makes it even more critical that it's in higher speed RAM.

If you mean background media apps (like Music Unlimited for your custom soundtracks, like on Vita), then the rumored special media processing chip(s) (I'm tempted to just refer to it as the Cell) will likely handle most of the grunt work while the memory-hogging app front-end could be swapped to local storage while it's in the background.

The main thing that's going to be tough is having a browser loaded all the time.