PS4's 8GB RAM was kept secret from third-party devs until console revea

[Elessar]

Assuming the OS has it's own dedicated RAM (512MB/1GB), I honestly don't see the point in 8GB of GDDR5. If the PS4 had a better GPU, I could possibly understand the need for 8GB< but sadly it's middle-of-the-road. 4GB would have been more than enough AND it would have made the system cheaper.

[TheLegendOfMart]

4GB wouldn't have been enough, 512MB reserved for OS left 3.5Gb, take 1.5-2GB for VRAM for 1080p games and you are left with nothing

[Elessar]

4GB wouldn't have been enough, 512MB reserved for OS left 3.5Gb, take 1.5-2GB for VRAM for 1080p games and you are left with nothing

Bioshock Infinite's recommended system requirements called for 4GB system memory and 1GB of video memory. As EVERYONE has been pointing out, the PS4 would be a custom OS, and thus wouldn't have as high of an overhead. Even if Sony allocated 1GB out of the 4GB total, that would still have left 3GB of GDDR5 memory for games. More than enough to run at game at 1080p.

Source for system requirements

[Blackhearted]

4GB wouldn't have been enough, 512MB reserved for OS left 3.5Gb, take 1.5-2GB for VRAM for 1080p games and you are left with nothing

1GB of video ram is generally enough for games at 1080p. Especially with how neither console will be more powerful than gpu's from 2-3 years ago.

[TheLegendOfMart]

PS4 GPU is more or less 7850 level of performance, its certainly not a slouch and you need at least 2GB of VRAM these days for whacking all the settings to max and for futureproofing, 1GB of VRAM is the bare minimum, theres no point putting the bare minimum in the console and then 4-5 years down the line being where the PS3 is now which is severely limited by RAM.

[Elessar]

PS4 GPU is more or less 7850 level of performance, its certainly not a slouch and you need at least 2GB of VRAM these days for whacking all the settings to max and for futureproofing, 1GB of VRAM is the bare minimum, theres no point putting the bare minimum in the console and then 4-5 years down the line being where the PS3 is now which is severely limited by RAM.

Youre going from 1GB of "bare minimum" to 8GB for futureproofing? I've never seen that large of a leap needed for futureproofing. Honestly, being logical for a second, 3GB of video ram is more than enough for futureproofing at 1080p.

[Lamp0]

Ken Kutaragi almost put the PS brand 6 feet under with his stupid aspirations, the first public appearance of the PS3 @ E3 2005 had 6 USB ports, 2 HDMI ports and 3 Ethernet ports. I don't miss him at all and I'm sure Sony is not going to sell the PS4 at a loss like they did the PS3 in 2006, simply cause they can't afford to.

I am not an expert, but I am pretty sure consoles are always sold at a loss for the first few years to encourage sales of accessories & software that has much higher profits margins.

Certainly the 360 did this.

[TheLegendOfMart]

Youre going from 1GB of "bare minimum" to 8GB for futureproofing? I've never seen that large of a leap needed for futureproofing. Honestly, being logical for a second, 3GB of video ram is more than enough for futureproofing at 1080p.

They are using GDDR5 in place of DDR3 as system memory as well it's not just for VRAM, it's a unified lump of 8GB so it can dynamically allocate as much or as little RAM/VRAM as it needs like how the Xbox 360 RAM works at the moment.

The OS reserves 512MB of that and it gives devs 7.5GB of ram to play with.

[ingramator]

Assuming the OS has it's own dedicated RAM (512MB/1GB), I honestly don't see the point in 8GB of GDDR5. If the PS4 had a better GPU, I could possibly understand the need for 8GB< but sadly it's middle-of-the-road. 4GB would have been more than enough AND it would have made the system cheaper.

There is literally no point of having GDDR5 memory anyway, I would rather save a lot of cash then get nothing from RAM which has a higher bandwidth and is going to translate to practically no real world value. Sony need a better GPU and better SOFTWARE rendering. It would be better to have 8GB regular DDR3 memory @1600MHz .

[Blackhearted]

There is literally no point of having GDDR5 memory anyway, I would rather save a lot of cash then get nothing from RAM which has a higher bandwidth and is going to translate to practically no real world value. Sony need a better GPU and better SOFTWARE rendering. It would be better to have 8GB regular DDR3 memory @1600MHz .

GDDR5 will translate to no real world value? You don't realize how important memory bandwidth is for graphics, especially when it's at high resolutions like 1080p, do you?

[majortom1981]

GDDR5 will translate to no real world value? You don't realize how important memory bandwidth is for graphics, especially when it's at high resolutions like 1080p, do you?

They will have the graphics memory but lose out on latency. So they are sacrificing cpu intensive stuff for graphics.

[TheLegendOfMart]

How are they sacrificing CPU intensive stuff, they have beefed up all the ALUs on all of the 18CU of the GPU and they have an extra APU that has 4CUs which is purely for ALU crunching not to mention they can run graphics and GPGPU stuff concurrently, with PC GPUs they have to pause one thread to do the other.

[TruckWEB]

PS4 GPU is more or less 7850 level of performance, its certainly not a slouch and you need at least 2GB of VRAM these days for whacking all the settings to max and for futureproofing, 1GB of VRAM is the bare minimum, theres no point putting the bare minimum in the console and then 4-5 years down the line being where the PS3 is now which is severely limited by RAM.

Remember, we are talking about 1 TV @ 1080p. It's not a PC setup with multi-monitors and higher resolution. Unless they are planning for 4K....

[TheLegendOfMart]

Crysis 3 in 1080p DX11 set to very high with 4x MSAA uses 1.5GB of VRAM, and that is a current generation game, this console has to last 6-8 years at the very least, they need all the VRAM they can get.

[ingramator]

GDDR5 will translate to no real world value? You don't realize how important memory bandwidth is for graphics, especially when it's at high resolutions like 1080p, do you?

No I don't think YOU understand. I'm not going to lecture you on computer system designs, particularly not that of console, but you need to understand that the RAM bandwidth doesn't actually translate to raw graphics output at higher resolutions. The RAM is not maxing out that bandwidth when sending out frames to the GPU for decoding and acceleration, its the bandwidth WITHIN the GPU that matters and the allocations of write access the hardwares respective bridges and or caches is allowed to see. Seeing as we don't know that much about either console (even more concerning is the rumours couldn't even establish the right amount of memory full stop... this stuff is pretty locked down this time round) I can't comment on which will translate to better frame@highres.

Anyway, graphics is going to come down to software with next gen devices. You can have access to as much bandwidth and write rate as you want but still push out crap. Microsoft already has the upper hand, being a software company that has been a key player in engineering graphics cards, CPUs and of course native graphics APIs. Lets just wait and see!

[spudtrooper]

This is 8GB RAM shared by the CPU and GPU. On any gaming-oriented PC you'd need 4GB to 6GB of RAM to load Windows and the game at the same time, plus your GPU would have a fair amount of RAM too, usually 1GB or 2GB. Add those two together and round it up to a safe amount and you've got 8GB of RAM.

Windows 8 doesn't use nearly that much ram...

[moloko]

So the developers are complaining about having more RAM to work with. ???

[JJ_]

I would pay 600 if they would stick an SDD in there and let you use an external HDD as well.

SSD - Solid State Drive, not SDD.

[Alladaskill17]

So the developers are complaining about having more RAM to work with. ???

No, I doubt any of them are complaining, but probably that they didn't know while working on their projects to take full advantage.

How I read into this: Sony caught wind of MS's next console rumored @ 8GB of RAM and made a last minute change, as others here have pointed out. This also could be why Sony did not show the console itself, the increase in RAM size likely affected the chassis dimensions, because we all know they are simply going to just upgrade the RAM stick sizes and increase costs further.

[ahhell]

No, I doubt any of them are complaining, but probably that they didn't know while working on their projects to take full advantage.

How I read into this: Sony caught wind of MS's next console rumored @ 8GB of RAM and made a last minute change, as others here have pointed out. This also could be why Sony did not show the console itself, the increase in RAM size likely affected the chassis dimensions, because we all know they are simply going to just upgrade the RAM stick sizes and increase costs further.

BINGO.

[ingramator]

This also could be why Sony did not show the console itself, the increase in RAM size likely affected the chassis dimensions, because we all know they are simply going to just upgrade the RAM stick sizes and increase costs further.

Doubt it but not dismissing it. RAM size would not affect the chassis and if it did then they have quite a large engineering problem on there hands because the dimensions also impact on stuff like ventilation and cumulative conductive heat dissipation.

[Elessar]

Doubt it but not dismissing it. RAM size would not affect the chassis and if it did then they have quite a large engineering problem on there hands because the dimensions also impact on stuff like ventilation and cumulative conductive heat dissipation.

I was just going to point that out. Adding more RAM will require some changes to the motherboard/layout, but the overall size and design of the console shouldn't change at all. We're talking very small pieces/components being added, not a disk driver or HDD or something.

My statement still stands that 4GB of GDDR5 memory would have been enough, especially if Sony gave the OS it's own 1GB of memory (+4GB for video). Regardless, 8GB seems like overkill, but it's better to have that now and not need it, than to possibly need it down the road and not have it.

All I hope is that the OS is buttery-smooth and doesn't lag like the 360 and PS3 do.

[HawkMan]

Doubt it but not dismissing it. RAM size would not affect the chassis and if it did then they have quite a large engineering problem on there hands because the dimensions also impact on stuff like ventilation and cumulative conductive heat dissipation.

Actually it would significantly affect the chassi. Most likely the ram on the PS4 as on any such device is soldered directly on the "motherboard". that means a significant redesign of the motherboard, and possibly a beefing up of the cooling system, I'm not sure how much cooling standard clock GDDR5 ram needs, but in a fully enclosed system made as small as possible, they probably need to at least be connected to some sort of cooling, either basic heat sinks in the direction of the internal airflow or though the system cooler through heat pipes.

[Alladaskill17]

I was just going to point that out. Adding more RAM will require some changes to the motherboard/layout, but the overall size and design of the console shouldn't change at all. We're talking very small pieces/components being added, not a disk driver or HDD or something.

My statement still stands that 4GB of GDDR5 memory would have been enough, especially if Sony gave the OS it's own 1GB of memory (+4GB for video). Regardless, 8GB seems like overkill, but it's better to have that now and not need it, than to possibly need it down the road and not have it.

All I hope is that the OS is buttery-smooth and doesn't lag like the 360 and PS3 do.

I very well could be incorrect, I'm no hardware expert, btw guys, glad to see a civil forum discussion (they seem to be rare on the topic of consoles lately). Also, 8GB might be overkill for now, but I for one will not complain and welcome at least some level of "future-proofing" for whatever the reason might be. I too also hope for a smoother OS, I've not had much experience with the PS3 but I know the Xbox 360 could certainly use a boost in OS performance regarding menus and transitions.

[TheLegendOfMart]

My statement still stands that 4GB of GDDR5 memory would have been enough, especially if Sony gave the OS it's own 1GB of memory (+4GB for video). Regardless, 8GB seems like overkill, but it's better to have that now and not need it, than to possibly need it down the road and not have it.

I don't think you understand, the 8GB of GDDR5 isn't just graphics memory, it is system memory as well.

With 4GB you take 512MB off straight away for the OS that's just for the OS not the memory the game is stored in, then that leaves you with 3.5GB, take 2GB away for System memory and that leaves you 1.5GB for video ram, current gen games like Crysis 3 on PC can use up to 1.5GB of graphic memory, that doesn't leave any spare for NEXT GENERATION graphics.