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

Fh3ro.gif

Still needs a ram head or horns shopped on.
 
But the thing that I'm hearing and I believe there was even a line dedicated to this in the eurogamer article is that these numbers aren't set in stone.

This is also what I'm hearing. Sony have future proofed some of the available RAM for future OS operations. It isn't "bloat" like some are worried about.

I'm being told some of these numbers are flat out wrong.
 

Zornack

Member
Then why doesnt it make sense when MS did it? MS will reduce their OS footprint as well, and people (rightfully? subjective) gave them shit. Yet it makes sense in Sony's case, of course.

Nothing mortimer said is specific to the PS4. This is how all consoles have operated. The OS size will be reduced as it always does.

It's not about OS footprint, it's about setting aside 1+ GB of RAM for later. Launch games don't need it, the OS doesn't need it, so Sony is saying "okay, no one needs this RAM at the moment, let's not give it away. If the app portion needs it in three years, have it. If it doesn't, games get it."

Or at least that's what I took away from the post.
 

daveo42

Banned
I told myself I wasn't going to post in this thread because people are foaming at the mouth and not thinking.... but here I am, which makes me an idiot.


First off, I know all you guys want are hard numbers and I don't have them. But I do know the philosophies in place currently. If you would like to use your brain and think critically about things... keep reading. If you want to get into a 5>4.5 OMG IM CANCELLING MY PREORDER conversation - this thread won't help you, in either direction.


I was told by a couple of Devs in the lead up to E3 that the OS footprint was "bigger than expected" but not a single one of them complained about it. No one is in danger of running out of ram. As some people have mentioned in this thread - games like the The Last of Us are happening with 512mb of ram. Launch titles, of all things, are not going to be pushing the hardware in any sort of way... and that includes ram.

So why is the ram footprint bigger than expected? It's fairly simple - Sony is hedging their bets. They were absolutely caught with their pants down with their OS this gen. Not having the memory overhead to do things like Party Chat gave Microsoft a huge advantage when it came to online gaming, which is obviously a growing sector. So much like $399 as a target price was a reaction to $599 being a disaster... "big OS footprint" is a reaction to "small OS footprint" being a disaster.

But the thing that I'm hearing and I believe there was even a line dedicated to this in the eurogamer article is that these numbers aren't set in stone. The fact of the matter is that high end PC games use around 3gb of ram and use higher res textures (art tends to take up the largest chunks of ram) than the ps4/x1 do. The idea that launch games need 7gb of ram is absolutely ludicrous. 4gbs is fine. Anything more, at this point, is overkill. It won't be overkill forever... but it's overkill for now.

So Sony gets to sit on this chunk of ram, be in 1gb or 3gb - again, I don't know the numbers. I don't know if eurogamer is right (I do know at E3 that some thought more ram would be freed up when the final dev kits shipped... but I don't know anyone working with a final dev kit). But Sony is coming at this from a position of power. They don't need the ram currently so they get to take a wait and see approach before saying "ok, devs, you guys get this." The systems will launch and they will look at what people are doing with their own OS, they will see what features people are asking for, they will see if microsoft or Nintendo (or even steam) come out with some surprise feature that catches fire - and if it does they will have the memory there to be able to do it also. If it doesn't that chunk of ram gets freed up for developers.


This thread is looking at this entire thing like the endgame is the day it launches. That's day one, guys. This is a long term strategic move and, imo, a smart one. They are putting themselves in a position to be able to adapt... something they couldn't do with the ps3. I know as gamers all we want to hear is higher numbers. But find me one developer that thinks the ram available to them on either system isn't enough (and this goes for the x1 as well guys... all this 5gb hurr hurrr stuff is fanboyish nonsense that you can go through my post history and see I never took part in once).


I feel like this post is far to philosophical for this thread of LARGE NUMBER > SMALL NUMBER, but hopefully this info is useful to some of you. Sony have created a nimble system and this is part of that philosophy.

Good post. Hedging their bets this time around is a good thing. I will say that's one big hedge to maintain though if Eurogamer is right.
 
I told myself I wasn't going to post in this thread because people are foaming at the mouth and not thinking.... but here I am, which makes me an idiot.


First off, I know all you guys want are hard numbers and I don't have them. But I do know the philosophies in place currently. If you would like to use your brain and think critically about things... keep reading. If you want to get into a 5>4.5 OMG IM CANCELLING MY PREORDER conversation - this thread won't help you, in either direction.


I was told by a couple of Devs in the lead up to E3 that the OS footprint was "bigger than expected" but not a single one of them complained about it. No one is in danger of running out of ram. As some people have mentioned in this thread - games like the The Last of Us are happening with 512mb of ram. Launch titles, of all things, are not going to be pushing the hardware in any sort of way... and that includes ram.

So why is the ram footprint bigger than expected? It's fairly simple - Sony is hedging their bets. They were absolutely caught with their pants down with their OS this gen. Not having the memory overhead to do things like Party Chat gave Microsoft a huge advantage when it came to online gaming, which is obviously a growing sector. So much like $399 as a target price was a reaction to $599 being a disaster... "big OS footprint" is a reaction to "small OS footprint" being a disaster.

But the thing that I'm hearing and I believe there was even a line dedicated to this in the eurogamer article is that these numbers aren't set in stone. The fact of the matter is that high end PC games use around 3gb of ram and use higher res textures (art tends to take up the largest chunks of ram) than the ps4/x1 do. The idea that launch games need 7gb of ram is absolutely ludicrous. 4gbs is fine. Anything more, at this point, is overkill. It won't be overkill forever... but it's overkill for now.

So Sony gets to sit on this chunk of ram, be in 1gb or 3gb - again, I don't know the numbers. I don't know if eurogamer is right (I do know at E3 that some thought more ram would be freed up when the final dev kits shipped... but I don't know anyone working with a final dev kit). But Sony is coming at this from a position of power. They don't need the ram currently so they get to take a wait and see approach before saying "ok, devs, you guys get this." The systems will launch and they will look at what people are doing with their own OS, they will see what features people are asking for, they will see if microsoft or Nintendo (or even steam) come out with some surprise feature that catches fire - and if it does they will have the memory there to be able to do it also. If it doesn't that chunk of ram gets freed up for developers.


This thread is looking at this entire thing like the endgame is the day it launches. That's day one, guys. This is a long term strategic move and, imo, a smart one. They are putting themselves in a position to be able to adapt... something they couldn't do with the ps3. I know as gamers all we want to hear is higher numbers. But find me one developer that thinks the ram available to them on either system isn't enough (and this goes for the x1 as well guys... all this 5gb hurr hurrr stuff is fanboyish nonsense that you can go through my post history and see I never took part in once).


I feel like this post is far to philosophical for this thread of LARGE NUMBER > SMALL NUMBER, but hopefully this info is useful to some of you. Sony have created a nimble system and this is part of that philosophy.

Great post
 

Saty

Member
The point isn't how much RAM is enough but that Sony was picked as the 'gamer's console' also because its specs advantage and mainly the 8GB of GDDR5, but now the specs aren't much different and the DRM is the same.
 
Rational thoughts
Exactly this. It's not a big deal. This console is future proofed in several ways. Didn't we jur a thread all about how slow and awful some people think the XMB is? Wasn't there just a thread about how ps4 devs are still trying to think if how they'll use the ram ps4 offers now (though I'm sure they'll think of ways in the coming years).

It's a hedge, and it's very smart, and it's pretty similar to what the competition is doing. No serious person would cancel a pre-order over this. Come the hell on. GAF!!
 

SystemsGo

Banned
So certain people knew about this for a while now and we only hear about this after many of us have pre-ordered the PS4. This...this is just not right.
 

QaaQer

Member
I like how everyone stating that PC Games only use 3-4 gigs of ram forgets about how much video memory they use as well.

yup. I was pushing >3gigs of VRAM with that unoptimize POS skyrim after installing some mods.

If these next gen systems are going to be using 5 gigs for cpu+vram, well I guess there really is nothing cutting edge about these machines.

I mean 3gigs for TV-shit/apps for xbone, and 3gigs for dumbass game footage sharing + apps on PS4 all powered by a midrange laptop cpu...they made us wait for 8 years for this?

oh well, not cancelling my order, but definitely downgrading expectations. It is kinda pathetic when the most exciting system for for 2013 is the 3ds.
 

Gestault

Member
Can someone explains what's happening in layman's terms?

It appears the pool of RAM in the PS4 may have a greater proportion dedicated to OS functions, closer to the allotment of the XB1. People had previously used the gap as a justification for or against each device, and there's been a lot of reactions to the news/rumor.
 
This doesn't make any sense.

Why would they reserve that amount of GDDR5 for the OS. It's absurd. So absurd that I think Eurogamer is just posting this from some outdated devkit info, and doing so to get hits to their website.
 

Yoday

Member
If this story turns out to be true what will happen to all those visually impressive PS4 games we've seen at E3 and elsewhere? Will they get canceled? Development moved to mobile devices?
Killzone will get a name change.

Killzone: RAMfall

One side of the wall is all about teh gamez. The other side is all about multitasking. The Games side just wants to hold onto their Ramz and caress their finely textured coats, but they keep wastefully leaping off the wall to their doom to the OS side. Which side will you choose?

WE JUST WANT TO LOVE YOU!!
ram.jpg
 

Shin

Banned
I get that they want to avoid another crossgame chat situation, but 2.5GB is a bit crazy.

I don't know about that, in this time and age where electronics are "supposed" to come with all the bells and whistles in just one machine it kinda makes sense.
Hell even smartphones have 2GB RAM as base for smooth operation, I still stand by 6GB for games and 2GB for the OS.
And that just might happen knowing and reading how Sony manages their system/OS.
 
This is also what I'm hearing. Sony have future proofed some of the available RAM for future OS operations. It isn't "bloat" like some are worried about.

I'm being told some of these numbers are flat out wrong.

If so Sony need to comment on this fairly soon.
I would like to know accurate numbers, rather than stuff we've got that could be wrong (like EG gave the other day with the recording).
 
THIS is a post that should be added to the OP before the article. Fucking voice of reason/sanity right here.
Sounds like serious spin "I don't know if the ram number is correct, but devs are happy, pc doesn't even use that much for graphics, not final, long term strategy, plenty of ram, etc."
 

dubq

Member
It's terrible that Sony let people think for so long such a larger number of RAM was available to developers.
They may not have blatantly lied with numbers but I think their lack of clarification is a case of misdirection.
If they'd made it clear earlier and communicated about it that would be fine, but in this instance they deserve any backlash they get. Pretty bad move by them.

#SMH
 
The OS is based on FreeBSD. As in something that could be run off a 256MB memory stick and be snappy.

They need the extra ram to accommodate the extra functions, functions by and large I do not give a shit about.

Even if they optimise further down the line, most third partys will target the day 1 specs, throughout the generation. It wont matter what might be available in the future.

The value proposition of the console has gone way down in my eyes. I cannot anymore justify being a early adopter if true.


It's nonsensical that a pure gaming machine with 5.5 gigs of ram is fine with you but a machine with 5.5 gigs dedicated to gaming and another 2.5 for other things is enough to cause you to lose interest. I don't see how additional features could be a bad thing in your eyes.
 
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.

This does make a lot of sense.
 

Proelite

Member
Xbox One has close to 1 gig set aside that's to be used for future proofing. Pure OS is 2 gig, hypervisor is a miniscule amount. I expect PS4 to have the same amount if not more set aside for future proofing.
 
Anyone care to explain me what do consoles need to reserve so many GBs of RAM just for the OS? I mean Windows can run with less than 1GB RAM available on a PC.

Multitasking probably.

There are no reason why would a console use more than 1 gigs for system ram but I imagine that would not be enough for multitasking. Windows 7 (64-bit) + game + video running in the background can use almost 4/5 gigs of system ram.
 

Globox_82

Banned
So certain people knew about this for a while now and we only hear about this after many of us have pre-ordered the PS4. This...this is just not right.

How is it not right? tell me what are YOU losing? Would you rather have more ram for games but shitty slow OS or smooth OS with bunch of features, with amazing games?
 
I told myself I wasn't going to post in this thread because people are foaming at the mouth and not thinking.... but here I am, which makes me an idiot.


First off, I know all you guys want are hard numbers and I don't have them. But I do know the philosophies in place currently. If you would like to use your brain and think critically about things... keep reading. If you want to get into a 5>4.5 OMG IM CANCELLING MY PREORDER conversation - this thread won't help you, in either direction.


I was told by a couple of Devs in the lead up to E3 that the OS footprint was "bigger than expected" but not a single one of them complained about it. No one is in danger of running out of ram. As some people have mentioned in this thread - games like the The Last of Us are happening with 512mb of ram. Launch titles, of all things, are not going to be pushing the hardware in any sort of way... and that includes ram.

So why is the ram footprint bigger than expected? It's fairly simple - Sony is hedging their bets. They were absolutely caught with their pants down with their OS this gen. Not having the memory overhead to do things like Party Chat gave Microsoft a huge advantage when it came to online gaming, which is obviously a growing sector. So much like $399 as a target price was a reaction to $599 being a disaster... "big OS footprint" is a reaction to "small OS footprint" being a disaster.

But the thing that I'm hearing and I believe there was even a line dedicated to this in the eurogamer article is that these numbers aren't set in stone. The fact of the matter is that high end PC games use around 3gb of ram and use higher res textures (art tends to take up the largest chunks of ram) than the ps4/x1 do. The idea that launch games need 7gb of ram is absolutely ludicrous. 4gbs is fine. Anything more, at this point, is overkill. It won't be overkill forever... but it's overkill for now.

So Sony gets to sit on this chunk of ram, be in 1gb or 3gb - again, I don't know the numbers. I don't know if eurogamer is right (I do know at E3 that some thought more ram would be freed up when the final dev kits shipped... but I don't know anyone working with a final dev kit). But Sony is coming at this from a position of power. They don't need the ram currently so they get to take a wait and see approach before saying "ok, devs, you guys get this." The systems will launch and they will look at what people are doing with their own OS, they will see what features people are asking for, they will see if microsoft or Nintendo (or even steam) come out with some surprise feature that catches fire - and if it does they will have the memory there to be able to do it also. If it doesn't that chunk of ram gets freed up for developers.


This thread is looking at this entire thing like the endgame is the day it launches. That's day one, guys. This is a long term strategic move and, imo, a smart one. They are putting themselves in a position to be able to adapt... something they couldn't do with the ps3. I know as gamers all we want to hear is higher numbers. But find me one developer that thinks the ram available to them on either system isn't enough (and this goes for the x1 as well guys... all this 5gb hurr hurrr stuff is fanboyish nonsense that you can go through my post history and see I never took part in once).


I feel like this post is far to philosophical for this thread of LARGE NUMBER > SMALL NUMBER, but hopefully this info is useful to some of you. Sony have created a nimble system and this is part of that philosophy.

Good post and makes a lot of sense. Sony only 5 months ago decided to pull the trigger on increasing the RAM to 8 GBs and has yet to be able to deliver dev kits that meet that spec and other developers that are already knee deep on their games are having a hard time coming close to filling up the amount recenlty given to them. Therefore why not make it so that on launch day the OS has plenty of overhead and then it can shrink over time as Sony continues to fine tune the OS after launch and then ramp up development tools at the same time.

Too much sense.
 

Kane1345

Member
I told myself I wasn't going to post in this thread because people are foaming at the mouth and not thinking.... but here I am, which makes me an idiot.


First off, I know all you guys want are hard numbers and I don't have them. But I do know the philosophies in place currently. If you would like to use your brain and think critically about things... keep reading. If you want to get into a 5>4.5 OMG IM CANCELLING MY PREORDER conversation - this thread won't help you, in either direction.


I was told by a couple of Devs in the lead up to E3 that the OS footprint was "bigger than expected" but not a single one of them complained about it. No one is in danger of running out of ram. As some people have mentioned in this thread - games like the The Last of Us are happening with 512mb of ram. Launch titles, of all things, are not going to be pushing the hardware in any sort of way... and that includes ram.

So why is the ram footprint bigger than expected? It's fairly simple - Sony is hedging their bets. They were absolutely caught with their pants down with their OS this gen. Not having the memory overhead to do things like Party Chat gave Microsoft a huge advantage when it came to online gaming, which is obviously a growing sector. So much like $399 as a target price was a reaction to $599 being a disaster... "big OS footprint" is a reaction to "small OS footprint" being a disaster.

But the thing that I'm hearing and I believe there was even a line dedicated to this in the eurogamer article is that these numbers aren't set in stone. The fact of the matter is that high end PC games use around 3gb of ram and use higher res textures (art tends to take up the largest chunks of ram) than the ps4/x1 do. The idea that launch games need 7gb of ram is absolutely ludicrous. 4gbs is fine. Anything more, at this point, is overkill. It won't be overkill forever... but it's overkill for now.

So Sony gets to sit on this chunk of ram, be in 1gb or 3gb - again, I don't know the numbers. I don't know if eurogamer is right (I do know at E3 that some thought more ram would be freed up when the final dev kits shipped... but I don't know anyone working with a final dev kit). But Sony is coming at this from a position of power. They don't need the ram currently so they get to take a wait and see approach before saying "ok, devs, you guys get this." The systems will launch and they will look at what people are doing with their own OS, they will see what features people are asking for, they will see if microsoft or Nintendo (or even steam) come out with some surprise feature that catches fire - and if it does they will have the memory there to be able to do it also. If it doesn't that chunk of ram gets freed up for developers.


This thread is looking at this entire thing like the endgame is the day it launches. That's day one, guys. This is a long term strategic move and, imo, a smart one. They are putting themselves in a position to be able to adapt... something they couldn't do with the ps3. I know as gamers all we want to hear is higher numbers. But find me one developer that thinks the ram available to them on either system isn't enough (and this goes for the x1 as well guys... all this 5gb hurr hurrr stuff is fanboyish nonsense that you can go through my post history and see I never took part in once).


I feel like this post is far to philosophical for this thread of LARGE NUMBER > SMALL NUMBER, but hopefully this info is useful to some of you. Sony have created a nimble system and this is part of that philosophy.

Thanks for the post famous, much apprecited.
 

JackDT

Member
So why is the ram footprint bigger than expected? It's fairly simple - Sony is hedging their bets. They were absolutely caught with their pants down with their OS this gen. Not having the memory overhead to do things like Party Chat gave Microsoft a huge advantage when it came to online gaming, which is obviously a growing sector. So much like $399 as a target price was a reaction to $599 being a disaster... "big OS footprint" is a reaction to "small OS footprint" being a disaster.

But the thing that I'm hearing and I believe there was even a line dedicated to this in the eurogamer article is that these numbers aren't set in stone. The fact of the matter is that high end PC games use around 3gb of ram and use higher res textures (art tends to take up the largest chunks of ram) than the ps4/x1 do. The idea that launch games need 7gb of ram is absolutely ludicrous. 4gbs is fine. Anything more, at this point, is overkill. It won't be overkill forever... but it's overkill for now.

So Sony gets to sit on this chunk of ram, be in 1gb or 3gb - again, I don't know the numbers. I don't know if eurogamer is right (I do know at E3 that some thought more ram would be freed up when the final dev kits shipped... but I don't know anyone working with a final dev kit). But Sony is coming at this from a position of power. They don't need the ram currently so they get to take a wait and see approach before saying "ok, devs, you guys get this." The systems will launch and they will look at what people are doing with their own OS, they will see what features people are asking for, they will see if microsoft or Nintendo (or even steam) come out with some surprise feature that catches fire - and if it does they will have the memory there to be able to do it also. If it doesn't that chunk of ram gets freed up for developers.


This thread is looking at this entire thing like the endgame is the day it launches. That's day one, guys. This is a long term strategic move and, imo, a smart one. They are putting themselves in a position to be able to adapt... something they couldn't do with the ps3. I know as gamers all we want to hear is higher numbers. But find me one developer that thinks the ram available to them on either system isn't enough (and this goes for the x1 as well guys... all this 5gb hurr hurrr stuff is fanboyish nonsense that you can go through my post history and see I never took part in once).


I feel like this post is far to philosophical for this thread of LARGE NUMBER > SMALL NUMBER, but hopefully this info is useful to some of you. Sony have created a nimble system and this is part of that philosophy.

It's absolutely the smart move. The only thing I would add is that even with very fast memory like in the PS4 you couldn't access 8 or 7 gigs per frame anyway.
 

dubq

Member
Sounds like serious spin "I don't know if the ram number is correct, but devs are happy, pc doesn't even use that much for graphics, not final, long term strategy, plenty of ram, etc."

I would figure someone with a Pearl Jam inspired username would have the ability to separate logic from spin..
 
I definitely expect Sony to reserve a chunk of memory for OS features and what-not, but if the Vita OS is capable of being snappy and fluid with a footprint of 80MB of ram, I can't imagine what Sony could possibly do with 3.5 gigs, regardless of whatever feature is implemented in the future. I'm still believing the 1 gig reserved for OS as that's an extremely high amount of RAM for a console OS.

I'm leaning more on the unfinished dev kit theory, firstly because I'm a raging Sony fanboy, secondly because it seems to make the most sense and has math to back it up.
 

DietRob

i've been begging for over 5 years.
Mortimer on point.. and basically what I said many pages back with much fewer words to answer Neuromancer.
 

Curufinwe

Member
How many times does Arthur have to confirm he is a lying corporate ballwasher and the only reason he is in gaming journalism is so he can land a community manager job at some game publisher before people stop paying attention to him?

The guy has zero integrity.

It's baffling why he keeps making easily disprovable claims when they are totally unnecessary to support his argument. He think DF is credible and we should believe them, fine.

But why try and bolster that argument by falsely claiming that DF knew about the 8 GB of RAM first when two minutes of googling find this from Edge on February 1st:

Importantly, we’ve learned that Sony has told developers that it is pushing for the final PS4 RAM to match up to Microsoft’s 8GB.
http://www.edge-online.com/news/playstation-4-revealed/2/

And this from DF on February 9th.

Sony has opted for a tighter system - fewer memory modules, but all of them very, very fast. It retains GDDR5 as the single memory pool with all the raw bandwidth advantages that entails, but it is limited to 4GB (there are rumours of 6GB/8GB upgrades but this is highly unlikely to happen).
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/df-hardware-spec-analysis-durango-vs-orbis
 
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