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X1 DDR3 RAM vs PS4 GDDR5 RAM: Both Are Sufficient for Realistic Lighting(Geomerics)
- Thread starter ekim
- Start date
famousmortimer
Banned
I assume that this post has popped up in this thread but I haven't been keeping up:
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1763732&postcount=4689
Basically a ram upgrade that makes zero sense as far as logic goes.
An overclock to the cpu (seems possible...?)
Some other crap.
I can definitely see them trying to get the clock speed of the cpu up but given that this is in the same rumor as something as absurd as redesigning the entire motherboard to hold more ram (unless there is a DDR3 size/config I've never heard off...?) makes me doubt the entire thing. That and the people on that forum are as crazy as we are about Platinum games on Nintendo systems or Half Life 3.
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1763732&postcount=4689
Basically a ram upgrade that makes zero sense as far as logic goes.
An overclock to the cpu (seems possible...?)
Some other crap.
I can definitely see them trying to get the clock speed of the cpu up but given that this is in the same rumor as something as absurd as redesigning the entire motherboard to hold more ram (unless there is a DDR3 size/config I've never heard off...?) makes me doubt the entire thing. That and the people on that forum are as crazy as we are about Platinum games on Nintendo systems or Half Life 3.
Glorified G
Member
Beyond3d is officially in the gutter at this point.
ProfessorMoran
Member
They're essentially trying to turn some wishful-thinking into a rumor even though it's this late in the process.
12gb? Are they serious? They're destroying what's left of the B3D's reputation as a legitimate place for tech discussion.
To achieve 12GB wouldn't they have to either use 24 4-Gbit chips instead of 16 4-Gbit chips they currently use? The board they showed at the reveal didn't look like it has room for an additional 8 chips.
Why are they just now addressing the large system reservation if it is such a problem? This seems like it would be something that would had been known well in advance with more than enough time to address the problem before the reveal or E3.
It would also seem that this would be something Xbox fans would hope not to be true. What happens if it is true developers are complaining about the system reservation and MS decides against or is unable to upgrade to 12GB RAM?
Why are they just now addressing the large system reservation if it is such a problem? This seems like it would be something that would had been known well in advance with more than enough time to address the problem before the reveal or E3.
It would also seem that this would be something Xbox fans would hope not to be true. What happens if it is true developers are complaining about the system reservation and MS decides against or is unable to upgrade to 12GB RAM?
Andronicus
Banned
rumors become what now? the design is done
James Sawyer Ford
Member
Man when will this sort of nonsensical wishful thinking end?
famousmortimer
Banned
I've shared this story on this forum once before, I believe, so sorry if it's a repeat to some of you. But back when I was in high school I loved Weezer. The blue album and Pinkerton were amazing. Then they broke up and disapeared for several years. When they got back together I was pretty active on the official weezer message boards. The single for Hashpipe came out and we didn't really like it very much but we tried to convince ourselves that it was just the radio single and the rest of the album was going to be good.
And then the album leaked online about two weeks before it was supposed to. It was awful. It was so watered down and lacked all of the passion and fucked up neuroses of their prior work. The guitars sounded neutered, Rivers' voice sounded lame, his lyrics were complete shit.
Then someone floated the idea that they released this leak on purpose and it was actually all the throw away songs. We started digging up quotes from interviews where Rivers claimed to have written and recorded hundreds of songs during their breakup. It made perfect sense! Hashpipe, we actually hated the least at this point, was the only song that sounded even halfway like their old stuff. IT HAD TO BE FAKE! And we all believed that. Or wished it atleast. And then the album came out and it was exactly what we had heard.
That was my big reality check on wishful thinking. I see so many people construct these insane conspiracy theories either in favor of their console of choice or against the ones they don't like... or even fear, like that MS is going to pay developers to make shitty PS4 ports - and I laugh. I laugh really hard. But once upon a time I was those dudes and weezer crushed my soul.
Hooflung128
Banned
Uh, so you're agreeing with him? Just in an oddly phrased manner? Hope so anyway.
Yes I absolutely agree with him. PS3 has so many awful ports especially per-2010. Dead Space seemed like a black sheep of multi plats because of how good it was on the Ps3. My roommate at the time cracked his lost planet disc in two after frustration with the game. I walked into my room, took out the 360 version and his jaw dropped at the difference. Even bionic commando was slightly better on the 360.
After 2010 things got better except for lazy unreal 3 ports... I don't even touch ue3 games on ps3 even if they get good reviews unless I am just supporting the devs like me3 collectors edition.
I personally don't feel xbone multi plats will fair any better in this regard. It didn't happen last gen and it won't happen this gen unless money hats rule the coop.
Agree. But I think you're overplaying the mobile side. They'll still be restricted by wattage.
But absolutely there is a potential large shift coming, and that make this generation interesting - if Nintendo continue to fail,nor if MS does worse than expected - might they be tempted to have a short gen and release quickly? MS have done that before.
dr_rus
Member
It is even less complicated than this: PS4 will get better fps and/or better resolutions in the same multiplatform titles. A developer doesn't have to do jack shit for that to happen, it simply comes with faster GPU and memory bandwidth. Then there's supposed additional 2 GBs of RAM available to games on PS4 which can lead to better textures and less pop-in, and this is very simple to implement too. And after that comes more complex shaders and effects possible with a faster GPU.
I'm pretty sure that the difference will be quite visible in basically every mutliplatform game in one way or another.
My understanding of the ESRAM is that it is for all intents and purposes exactly like the EDRAM of the 360, but with fewer restrictions. Developers will use it in exactly the same way. Sure, some 1st party developers might do funny things with it (hopefully not anything as fucking dumb as Bungie's Halo 3 HDR implementation) but the overwhelming majority will just use it for a framebuffer.
This is barely any more complex than the PS4's setup as far as I know. I don't know why people are making out like it's some vast gap in complexity and difficulty. Honestly a lot of it reads like 'it's not good enough that I should succeed—others must fail'. They're both going to be very easy for developers to work with.
Precisely this. You don't have to imagine that developers will spend more time and effort on the PS4 version, the difference will be obvious straight away even if they spend exactly the same time and effort.
Wickerbasket
Member
I actually really enjoyed reading this post, because I feel we've all done something similar at some point. Sometimes you just want something to be true so badly that you lie to yourself.
It can be fun at times though, every time a new update gets released on Steam everyone's combing through the data trying to uncover an ARG for Half Life 3. They'll piece bits of data together to make a coherent argument and I'll almost be on the band wagon.
But sometimes you just have to step back and think 'am I only believing this because I want to?'.
Because PS4 has UMA after you load things to RAM there is no other work you need to use that data. It is as vast as you can get.
After eDram in x360 and generally split memory systems of last gen this is not issue for many devs but for PS4 is way better solution than split ram.
360 was always described as having a UMA too, because the EDRAM was only every used to store the framebuffer (as I recall, the ROPs had to write the framebuffer to the EDRAM); both the CPU and GPU had access to the same 512MB of RAM. For all intents and purposes 360 was a UMA, and unless there's some major reason why it's different now, Xbone is too.
Split memory (a la PS3) was a problem because you were severely constrained by what you could put in RAM: your GPU could never access more than 256MB of data and your CPU could not have access to more than 256MB of data either, without passing through the other. That is not a problem with Xbone: both have access to the same 5GB pool.
Gemüsepizza
Member
I don't think both situations are comparable. Xbox 360 had ~4% more RAM for games than PS3 at the same speed AND additional eDRAM. Xbox One has ~29% less RAM for games at ~39% of the speed of the PS4's RAM and additional eSRAM. Having a eDRAM/eSRAM configuration is not a problem when you already have more RAM at the same speed than the competition, because then it's a bonus. But it probably becomes a small annoyance when you have less RAM at a lower speed than the competitor.
Gemüsepizza;69323561 said:
Why is this 'Xbone will be harder to work with' rather than merely 'Xbone is less powerful', though? They'll just cut effects that the Xbone can't manage.
Put it another way, is Wii U harder to program than the Xbone just because it's weaker?
[edit] Sorry, of course it makes it harder. I mean prohibitively harder rather than marginally so.
My point with UMA was that PS4 has only one pool of memory shared between CPU and GPU, no other eDRAM or anything. After you load things to it you don't do anything with it to use it. That is way better solution than pool of memory + eDram/eSram. Not only memory config is faster but it is also easier to use.
Cerny in last "road to PS4" had two choices: 256bit GDDR5 memory which is currently in PS4 and other 128bit bus GDDR5 memory (88GB/s) with small eDRAM pool @ 1000GB/s
They choose not second because it added complexity.
As interesting as the Cerny videos are, they are PR. They might just as well have not done it because, as we have seen from Xbone, EDRAM lowers yields and pushes up cost. I would prefer to hear from someone with experience whether EDRAM causes serious headaches instead of the chief architect of the console's main competitor.
dr_rus
Member
Well, it is more difficult to work with two RAM pools with different bandwidth and sizes. ESRAM of XBO is the only reasonable pool to contain frame buffer but at the same time 32 MBs are not that much for 1080p with deferred shading and all. So you'll have to tile the frame probably which adds complexity to the renderer and increases timeframes.
I think it's safe to assume though that using ESRAM on XBO is nowhere near as difficult as using Cell's SPUs to the fullest of their potential. So it is more difficult than straight 8 GB of GDDR5 on a 256 bit bus of PS4 but it's not that difficult at all for anyone who have been programming engines for PS3 and 360 for the last ten years.
The Xbone didn't go the EDRAM route either, but went ESRAM, which is cheaper, lower bandwidth, and easier to manufacture.
The alternate route Cerny was proposing would probably have been more expensive than the current layout, but the bandwidth to that little pool would have been astounding. Doubt it'd be more useful than high bandwidth to main memory, and it'd certainly be harder to optimize for.
anexanhume
Member
Interesting tidbit - Sony requested AVX support in FreeBSD back in March of 2011. The writing was on the wall then.
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-amd64/2011-March/013740.html
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-amd64/2011-March/013740.html
Salvor.Hardin
Banned
The people that actually make up these rumors are doing it for no other reason than for the shiggles. It's the sheep that believe and share these rumors who need to be blamed.
This poster clearly has no idea what he's talking about. Nothing he said remotely made sense.
krypt0nian
Banned
This one poster on another site eh?
I'll give you a hint: The name of the site starts with a G & has 3 capital letters & a apostrophe after that.
Sony got lucky with GDDR5, they were planning on only 4GB,
The prices fell, and devs asked for more so they bumped the specs.
With the original plan everyone would be talking about how MS will crush Sony.
I hope both consoles do very well. Competition breeds excellence.
Honestly I am an Xbox consumer right now. Will the difference in powers yield the "wild advantages" people are already proclaiming? We'll have to see, but I hope it's not a massacre.
The prices fell, and devs asked for more so they bumped the specs.
With the original plan everyone would be talking about how MS will crush Sony.
I hope both consoles do very well. Competition breeds excellence.
Honestly I am an Xbox consumer right now. Will the difference in powers yield the "wild advantages" people are already proclaiming? We'll have to see, but I hope it's not a massacre.
krypt0nian
Banned
Exciting!
This post makes no sense what so ever. What the hell are hardware lights? Anyway slow cpu is not a concern because according to guerilla is being used to schedule tasks for the gpu and gpu compute is being used for some traditional cpu functions. So you can go to the site which cannot be named and tell that poster to troll elsewhere. Fortunately for us, the people who designed the hardware are smarter than that poster and took steps to alleviate several potential issues.
i assume that when the poster mentioned booleans, he was refering to branch prediction on the cpu.
Brad Grenz
Member
It's always a joy to hear about someone somewhere else who doesn't have any idea what they're talking about, especially when there's no link so I can't go tell them how stupid they are.
I doubt the poster even knows what branch prediction is. He starts off by saying "GPU booleans", as if memory architecture matters for something like that. Then some randomness about tessellation.
Then the next quote has something about "header files to store their memory addresses" -- that's complete and utter bunk. It's like he found some programming terms and jumbled them together to try to form an argument. The rest of the post is the same way.
HomerSimpson-Man
Member
Considering under the original 4GB model, the PS4 still has the GPU being 50% more powerful and even faster GDDR5 RAM, probably not.
Yet Timothy Lottes (FXAA creator) did a blog post on why he still favoured PS4 with its 4GB setup. Clearly you don't know shit.
But it doesn't matter what a lot of people say. Technical threads aren't supposed to be popularity contests.
OK, so I went to the link and it just looks like some idiot pulling crap out of his ass.
If you want a better understanding of GDDR5 vs DDR3 in consoles you guys should check out the posts by dividedbyzero on this link:
http://www.techspot.com/community/t...-between-ddr3-memory-and-gddr5-memory.186408/
I think he does a good job of explaining it and I just don't feel like writing up a wall of text right now.
Come to think of it, I think there's a person on these forums with the same tag, I wonder if it's the same guy lol.
If you want a better understanding of GDDR5 vs DDR3 in consoles you guys should check out the posts by dividedbyzero on this link:
http://www.techspot.com/community/t...-between-ddr3-memory-and-gddr5-memory.186408/
I think he does a good job of explaining it and I just don't feel like writing up a wall of text right now.
Come to think of it, I think there's a person on these forums with the same tag, I wonder if it's the same guy lol.
ProfessorMoran
Member
It reads like complete bullshit, he might as well have tried to convince you that he rides a fucking unicorn.
At least riding a unicorn makes sense. His story was closer to "unicorns were better fighter pilots because there's less to love."
Oh my. Reads like something written by B3D junior
smokeandmirrors
Banned
Yeah I don't know what the fuck he is talking about. Boolean comparisons? Booleans are fucking true/false values.
Boolean comparisons return a true/false value.
Is this greater than that - true or false?
Is this equal to that - true or false?
Is this less than that - true or false?
Etc.
His post is still nonsense though.
Angelus Errare
Banned
Whoever the copywriter assigned to this needs a raise lmao.
CadetMahoney
Member
The fan-drivel is one of the highlights of GAF, especially when new hardware is on the horizon.