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FRIDAYTON MK II: 5.5 million bears and salmon create unholy allliance to sack SONY HQ

velociraptor

Junior Member
So here is a theory that I have heard. Note, this is not insider information. A friend who is a developer, not on consoles or PlayStation mind, thinks that the new devkits probably ship with 8GB GDDR5 but the developer tools probably take up 2-3GB on there, leaving addressable RAM at just 5GB. He said the problem is that the APU bus is 256bit which won't allow for more than 8GB RAM until 8Gbit chips are available.

He thinks that the current SDK probably does have 3.5GB reserved for for the OS functions and development tools, but when the next set of kits ship they will have 12GB of RAM and the full 7GB will be addressable.
I really hope this is true. This does make more sense than the PS4 OS magically using 3.5GB though.
 
2013_%2525207_26_13_30.png


Looks like someone got confirmation (maybe) out of a dev...though the dev insists it's no big deal.

Honestly if this turns out to be true and Sony can show us why it is worth allocating that much RAM to the OS, I'm okay with it. It's not really the same as having to allocate an entire GB to Kinect, as it's all focused on one system.
 

daveo42

Banned
There has been test HW around for a bit. I had this conversation with a friend about 2 weeks ago. He said it was final HW chasis test units. Not that the dev kits are final.

For those who've never experienced a HW launch, these things are always improving and coming together as time goes by.

This is the first console launch I've even tracked outside of the normal consumer experience, so while I know there are tons of revisions, I wasn't aware there could be a RAM limitation in their kits this close to launch. Revisions make sense though since not only the system, but the tools get better and closer to final spec in the months leading up to release.

If this is true about the dev kits, then we might see a bigger leap in 2-3 years than I was even expecting we'd see.
 
4.5GB plus an additional 1GB flexible buffer. So 5.5GB as the OP and thread title suggests. One developer has already confirmed his game is using over 5GB, so it can't be 4.5GB lol.

"flexible buffer" my ass, this makes NO fucking sense, either the devs could use it safely or can't, if its not safe its not flexible and not worth the hassle.
If its true that this is just for the old/current devkits, then that flexible buffer neatly describes a debug scratchpad to output values to and monitor them in realtime by profiling tools.
 
As an Xbox One defender (but NOT fanboy, I'll own both consoles), this thread is beautiful. I'm not sold on this being true yet, but all feels even in the gaming world now.
 

KageMaru

Member
Well this thread has been fun to read.

As I said with the Xbone, ~3GB for a console OS is insane. It does make sense for both of them to have similar footprints if they wish to have similar features. This would actually sound impressive for Sony IMO if they could match MS' feature for feature while having a similar footprint size. That's a long way from the early PS3 days.

Can people tweet @ guirrilla games as well? Considering its their slide being used to deliver the news i'd think they might give a proper responds.

It's doubtful any dev would respond to this as the OS footprint is probably covered under NDA like it was this gen.

Best guess is 5.5GB (unless the 7GB is still true), since Witness is already using over 5GB.

Nah, best guess is a repeat of how the PS3 OS worked. Features can be ignored for more memory. So, for example, you have 5GB if you don't use party chat, but 4.5GB if you do.

My guess he is full of shit.

And the $50 argument is valid as we are talking about GDDR5 used for OS/background processes.

Are you saying it doesn't make sense to use that much GDDR5 memory for the OS? It does when that's the memory you're using. It would be more expensive to have a separate bank of memory for the OS alone.
 

farisr

Member
Not sure when people will realize that it's the GAMES and services that should be the draw, and not the ram. It's weird watching people turn their back on what they call a cool looking game simply because the other machine has (had) more ram (but never mention a game). I don't play ram, I play fun games.

This thread is a hoot. Cant wait for the yay or nay from Sony.

Well the few (or is it one?) people that preordered the system just for the RAM advantage have cancelled their preorder.

I for one found just the launch lineup of the PS4 way more interesting than the entire exclusives lineup MS showed off (only 2 MS games of real interest to me, and only 1 of them is a launch title).
 
Wow. I guess the rumors yesterday were right.

Anyone with any semblance of foresight would recognize that Sony wouldn't want to be left out if (when) MS offers new OS level functionality that Sony couldnt react to
 
I remember when having 32MB of RAM on my computer was a big deal! You all need to relax! Maybe they will add a virtual RAM booster or one of these lol

M04668_9_medium.jpg


super-ram-booster-screenshot.jpg
 
D

Deleted member 17706

Unconfirmed Member
Brad Shoemaker from Giant Bomb corroborates this Eurogamer article.

K1UNRva.png


What is strange is how he got the technical difference between the two consoles wrong in May, if he knew about all this 3 months before the podcast was recorded.
(He was criticized a lot in the official giant bomb podcast thread for the downplaying of the well known specification advantages of the PS4.)

It's Brad Shoemaker and fucking Arthur "the secret sauce" Gies.

These guys have proven they know jack and shit about the either hardware during the last couple of months. No reason to start thinking they understand what they're talking about now. I'm not even saying they're wrong (they may be right), but there's no reason to listen to anything they have to say about hardware specs.
 
So here is a theory that I have heard. Note, this is not insider information. A friend who is a developer, not on consoles or PlayStation mind, thinks that the new devkits probably ship with 8GB GDDR5 but the developer tools probably take up 2-3GB on there, leaving addressable RAM at just 5GB. He said the problem is that the APU bus is 256bit which won't allow for more than 8GB RAM until 8Gbit chips are available.

He thinks that the current SDK probably does have 3.5GB reserved for for the OS functions and development tools, but when the next set of kits ship they will have 12GB of RAM and the full 7GB will be addressable.

That makes sense to me. Honestly, this is one of those wait and see moments for me. I could believe both sides, so I'm just gonna wait until something is confirmed fact. Still, the whole 4.5 available thing is interesting if it's true. Aside from streaming and recording, I wonder what they're using that much memory for? Unannounced features? I also wonder what they'd be "turning off" to get that extra GB.
 

Minigo

Member
OS features can enhance game experience. Look at how Sony couldn't implement cross-game chat due to RAM limitations. Cross-game chat ended up being a huge feather in Live's cap. I don't think PS4 will need that much RAM reserved for OS functions. I just think Sony wants to remain flexible. 4.5-5.5GB is plenty for the system's early games. The reserved RAM can be decreased later on, but can't be increased if they run out of room to add features. If they reserve at least as much RAM as Microsoft is doing at the start, then Sony can react to any killer features Microsoft have up their sleeves for the Xbone. Once again, Sony don't want to get caught with another cross-game chat scenario.

And just to add a bit of conspiracy theory for added fun, who's to say Sony didn't already catch wind of some killer feature(s) that Microsoft are planning that needs that much RAM, and Sony found out in time to reserve enough RAM to implement it for PS4?

very plausible, heck Cerny's team might be testing prototype apps and functionality like Gaikai already, stuff that's not even supposed to come out many months after launch.
 

rdrr gnr

Member
This might also explain why we never got an answer to OS allocation earlier. It seemed odd that we didn't even have a baseline.
 

Zukuu

Banned
Why are people using commas now instead of periods? Like what sort of messed up school does that now or is this some meme I have never heard of?
because it makes sense.


1.000.000,38 is way more easy to read and grasp with a very quick glance than 1000000.38
 

Bossofman

Neo Member
I just had a daydream that Sony was seducing me with a BIG, THICK Throbbing 8gb, it shrunk to 7gb, as they needed to keep some 'in reserve', I was OK with that, but suddenly it KEPT shrinking to 6, then five then 4.5(with the 'potential' to go to 5.5 and I was like...DO NOT WANT!
 
I was looking for brads email to write him. Couldn't find it :(

Whats his gaf username?

I want him to know something before the live show coming today.
 

Crisco

Banned
Honestly if this turns out to be true and Sony can show us why it is worth allocating that much RAM to the OS, I'm okay with it. It's not really the same as having to allocate an entire GB to Kinect, as it's all focused on one system.

I mean, if it makes you feel better, you could look at it like they are allocating at least 4.5GB to games. Basically putting a hard cap on concurrent memory usage by everything else on the system. In the future they could allocate more, but never less.
 
Yeah except in Pc you have this thing called windows using up most of the ram. Really LOL if you think games on Pc can use anywhere near all 8gb of ram.

The fuck you talking about? Windows 7 uses up about 1 GB of RAM. It's the other programs you have running that take up the extra space. Which you should be shutting down if you're planning on playing a game.

A game could conceivably use about 7 GB of the 8 GB of RAM you have, if you shut down all nonessential services.
 
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