ginger ninja
Banned
In dragon ball terms, how far behind behind ms is compared to Sony if the rumored specs are true?
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Why didn't MS use a portion of GDDR5 RAM instead of eSRAM?
- Thread starter IHaveCandy
- Start date
IrrelevantNotch
Banned
That's good to know. I was wondering about that. I guess Wii's memory just cost less?
XANDER CAGE
Member
That makes the Wii-U more appealing to me currently than it really is.
IHaveCandy
Banned
Let's use Dragon Ball instead
PS4- Goku w/ tail
360- Krillin
PS4- Goku w/ tail
360- Krillin
The reason why I used the Androids is because:
A: They both have a similar power setup
B: They're twins
C: 17 is stronger. But not by much.
Anticipated cost/availability of gddr5, back when they were designing Durango, led them to place their bet behind ddr3 for 8gb. If we accept the leaked specs as accurate.
If you like, it was fortuitous for Sony that things emerged to allow them to use 8gb of gddr5. MS wasn't willing to bet on things working out, they knew they wanted 8gb from an early stage, and ddr3 was the reliable route...so they designed for that, and designed in features to try and mitigate its bandwidth deficiencies.
It's a shame, because that bet seems to have informed so much of the design, mostly for worse.
edit - sorry, was early, misread the question
I guess the main reason for not doing that is they would not want to split main memory, and have only 2GB reasonably addressable by the GPU. Or, at least, that was probably their original thinking. Asides from original plans, it would be messy to make that change now.
If you like, it was fortuitous for Sony that things emerged to allow them to use 8gb of gddr5. MS wasn't willing to bet on things working out, they knew they wanted 8gb from an early stage, and ddr3 was the reliable route...so they designed for that, and designed in features to try and mitigate its bandwidth deficiencies.
It's a shame, because that bet seems to have informed so much of the design, mostly for worse.
edit - sorry, was early, misread the question
I guess the main reason for not doing that is they would not want to split main memory, and have only 2GB reasonably addressable by the GPU. Or, at least, that was probably their original thinking. Asides from original plans, it would be messy to make that change now.How does Dennis not have some tag glorifying his legendary graphics whoring? I would come up with something but I am not a creative man.
NemesisPrime
Banned
eSRAM is far superior.
BrainZEROX
Member
Can someone explain how latency will benefit a GPU that will mostly perform vector accesses from L1 and L2 cache and not from esram directly? I don't understand how it will benefit the CPU much either as cache miss are fewer and fewer nowadays. Are gaming algorithm more prone to generate cache miss?
Anyway, if someone has a good explanation for that, I'm genuinely eager to read from it because this argument is getting championed and nobody seems to be able to back it up.
It isn't like the specs have been officially announced. That being said, I imagine MS's configuration well best represent powerful hardware without pricing it out of mainstream tastes.
I think many people forget that MS has rumored 1,2tf GPU. Going for GDDR5 with that GPU doesn't make any sence. Bandwidth only works if you have power to push things with that bandwidth.
Right now they don't need GDDR5 using it would be waste of resources. Instead they choose slower big pool of memory and because it is to slow for system they patched it with SRam to give them boost to bandwidth.
Right now they don't need GDDR5 using it would be waste of resources. Instead they choose slower big pool of memory and because it is to slow for system they patched it with SRam to give them boost to bandwidth.
Ol No Bones
Banned
Why is the Xbox doing this? We don't know what their doing. Yeah but why are they doing it?
It's like everyone heard about gddr5 for the first time and decided that without a gddr5 memory solution a device is weak.
Are we gonna be talking about memory this whole generation?
There is better memory than gddr5 out there btw.
It's like everyone heard about gddr5 for the first time and decided that without a gddr5 memory solution a device is weak.
Are we gonna be talking about memory this whole generation?
There is better memory than gddr5 out there btw.
Dictator93
Member
Your suggestion seems kind of against what microsofts designs have been about. They will not throq away a unified RAM pools (even if SRAM technically changes that up bit). It is just too nice for console development.
IMO... the most interesting thing about PS4 will be when devs have about 4 to 5 Gigs of RAM ffor VRAM usage. The variety of Assets in some games could be a healthy change!
IMO... the most interesting thing about PS4 will be when devs have about 4 to 5 Gigs of RAM ffor VRAM usage. The variety of Assets in some games could be a healthy change!
XDR2?
Ol No Bones
Banned
I think those same people forget that the ps4 only has a confirmed 1.8tflop.
REMEMBER CITADEL
Banned
A very similar thing happened the last time around with XDR, and then when people started seeing both consoles' real-life results, it quickly died down.
Latency isn't a big issue for GPU operations where you're generally working on larger quantities of data at a time, and that data demand can be predicted in advance. This is why high end graphics cards use GDDR5, it's high bandwidth is the big gain for graphics processing.
Latency is a big deal for general CPU operations where the CPU will demand a lot of small packets on short notice.
Imagine you ran a parts supply company with a wide array of products and had the choice between two delivery contractors.
Delivery contractor A can delivery 176 crates of various parts a day to your customers, but you need to supply those crates 2 days in advance so they can load the trucks correctly.
Delivery contractor B can deliver only 68 crates of various parts a day to your customers, but also only needs to receive the crates 1 day in advance from you.
If your customers know what they need long term and are looking to go through large quantities of your parts they'll be best serviced if you choose delivery contractor A. If your customers have a hard time predicting day to day usage and are making a wide array of demand based products they would be best serviced by contractor B, assuming contractor B can meet demand.
A GPU is the first kind of customer. It's easy to predict what resources it will demand next and therefore your biggest concern is just giving it enough to work with.
A CPU is the second kind of customer. What we as end users choose to do within the OS can change at the drop of a hat and the CPU needs to service that as much as possible. Being able to deliver 176 crates of parts in a day doesn't do much for your customer if those are the wrong parts. Being able to deliver data extremely fast to the CPU doesn't do the CPU much good if it isn't the right type of data.
What you are suggesting would result in either developers having to really muck around with how they address the two pools, or a lot of what amounts to double handling of data, wasting resources. More than likely a mix of the two. What I mean by double handling is that you would often see situations where the DDR3 pool would be used to pre-fetch data for the GDDR5 pool, making it a less effective solution.
Also, as Brad Grenz said in this thread, you start running into serious bus logistics that will start handicapping both pools. This is why ESRAM is beneficial.
That depends WAY too much on MS' implementation of the two pools, both in a hardware handler (which we know it has) and how much of the access developers will have to customize flow between the two pools and to the silicon. It's an unknown at this point.
DDR3 stacked runs circles around GDDR5.
What's your point to this post? Are you trying to say that the PS3 wasn't actually a more powerful system? Or do you not understand how pain in the ass design and a comparatively fat OS limited the hindered the PS3?
If we had been given the kinds of details we currently have for PS4 and rumored for X720 with last generation's systems the various bottlenecks and obstructions in the PS3 would have been spotted very quickly.
True but there is point when you need to get better ram.
GDDR5 was already put into 1,5tf cards before that point was GDDR3 and that was used mostly on cheaper cards that couldn't output high resolution with good framerate.
As long as your hitting the cache on the CPU (and you will be often, the cache algos are insane) then you should be fine, it'll make a difference when you miss the cache but the difference will not be widely drastic it'll be smaller 20% probably.
Ol No Bones
Banned
I think the 8gb gddr5 is awesome and we will eventually see if it has the desired effect. I just think its funny how people are suddenly so interested in memory and memory bandwidth. It's like Sony knew gaf would freak out about it.
It's the one thing developers have been clamoring about this entire fucking generation.
Sony not only delivered the goods in that department, they doubled down on it, making for happy developers that can look forward to working on a platform that isn't hideously constrained in every way possible.
Ol No Bones
Banned
Yes but we aren't talking 8gb on these cards. Ms might have gddr5 on its gpu.
It also costs a bunch too, and if MS was using a 3DS DDR3 setup they'd have no need for the ESRAM.
So unless MS is looking to ship a $600 box with useless features I don't think we much have to worry about them using 3DS DDR3. That or every rumor is completely wrong about the X720, which while possible seems unlikely as many of the publications that had the PS4 most accurately pegged are all saying the same things for X720.
Ol No Bones
Banned
I think it was a great decision. I think how the talk shifts is so funny though. People are setting themselves up to believe that the next Xbox is weak as hell unless it has at least 8gb gddr5. I just think its funny.
REMEMBER CITADEL
Banned
Um, we had very precise PS3 specs (with a slightly stronger RSX than what eventually shipped, and a lot of peripheral stuff that never made the cut) a year and a half in advance, since at least E3 2005. It didn't stop people from talking about things they didn't really understand and others following their words blindly. The history is repeating itself, as it so often does.
Not to just shoot down your post in such a lazy way, but latency becomes far less important as speed increases. The speed of the Vram with GDDR5 is what essentially compensates for the lesser latency. It's been that way each ram generation actually, with older models of ram having less latency, but newer models being faster and/or having more bandwidth.
I.e, DDR actually has less latency than DDR2, DDR2 less than DDR3, and DDR3 less than DDR4. But it matters little because the latter are much faster, and the added speed is far more useful.
It's not at all if both pools are large enough. It's essentially what every PC game has, although the OS obfuscates it
Estocolmo
Member
Thats exactly what I was thinking about, especially reading the title of the thread "Why didn't MS use a portion of GDDR5 RAM instead of eSRAM?"
Why didnt MS use a portion? Why didnt? No information about the new Xbox has officially been release, yet some are already speaking about the next Xbox like it has been revealed!
Are you talking about CAS latency? Because that is just a measure of the number of clock cycles it takes, and memory running at a higher frequency has faster clock cycles. So DDR-667 running with a CAS latency of 3 has just as much latency as DDR-1333 running at a CAS latency of 6.
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