Hypervisor is just a fancy word for the core OS. The gaming OS and Windows OS (or whatever the hell it is) are virtualized and are managed my the hypervisor. The hypervisor should take very little RAM (< 256M) if it's not doing anything more than managing virtualization with the kernel.
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X1 DDR3 RAM vs PS4 GDDR5 RAM: Both Are Sufficient for Realistic Lighting(Geomerics)
- Thread starter ekim
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Hypervisor is just a fancy word for the core OS. The gaming OS and Windows OS (or whatever the hell it is) are virtualized and are managed my the hypervisor. The hypervisor should take very little RAM (< 256M) if it's not doing anything more than managing virtualization with the kernel.
This is a pretty general question, but why do developers need so much RAM? PC developers seem to be happy developing high-end games with 2GB system RAM and 1GB VRAM (all shared with desktop OS) yet apparently 4GB-8GB DDR5 RAM on a console (without the typical desktop OS chugging in the background) is apparently not enough? Since when do console games require more RAM than high end PCs? They sound mightily greedy
Edit: I realize people typically have more than 2GB system RAM...but it doesn't have much benefit for gaming at all.
No it's added more than a little bit of cost.
fabricated backlash
Member
I'm sorry, but if he doesn't want compromises in quality, then he better put up with a bit of effort or stop the pretence that he won't settle for anything less than the best quality.
Gemüsepizza;70055606 said:
Again, if he was sincere, he'd actually spend the money and time to get the best possible quality, which he'll never get on a console to begin with.
All 4 of them.
I understand the comfort angle, but I simply find it hilarious how anyone in this day and age can say with a straight face that they'd not compromise on hardware power, but then go on to buy a console.
The whole idea of a console is a compromise between what's possible and what's feasible. It's nature is a compromise, so to act as if a console purchase is an expression of some form of impeccable standard of quality is laughable.
you guys are seriously underestimating the jump in textures and visuals for next gen. RAM is one of the component that never enough for a game developer. I can see games in 2-3 year utilizing every bit of RAM in PS4, games x10 the size of GTAV with better animations and graphics.
Not having to load every house or city in Skyrim will do me.
iamvin22
Industry Verified
Never forget dr. apocalipsis in the 8 GB GDDR5 thread....
i really want to know what happened to this guy?
I do not underestimate it. I simply say that 8GB is a lot. Some devs right now say it is a lot. IT is biggest jump in therms of memory in console history.
I have no doubt developers will fill 8GB. 8 or 6 GB developers would be happy. 4GB on other hand was not that amazing but still it would be good jump considering it is GDDR5 ram
Also developers are going into streaming engines so games like Uncharted 1-3 can play for 12 hours without single loading. In fact Uncharted 1 whole second part is one big level without any loadings that thanks to streaming engine fits into 512MB
NemesisPrime
Banned
This has nothing to do with RAM. This can easily be streamed from the HDD.
I am firmly in the camp that would have preferred a much better CPU/GPU in next gen consoles (especially for the code I am writing) I think it is a missed chance, but I understand the economics of wanting to make cheapo hardware for Sony/MS/Nintendo.
Now that being said... and yeah people will complain about this, but a part of my CPU problems will be solved next gen by available Cloud processing power.
He is working for the console industry now
that's a one benefit of huge RAM, yet some people fail to see the importance of big ram for games.
I have a question regarding Ram and bandwidth.
Lets say I have a console with 4GB of RAM @ 160Gb/s
The other one has 8GB of RAM @ 80Gb/s
Does 4GB = 8GB in this case since the former can fetch double the data of the latter at the same time?
NemesisPrime
Banned
Fetch it from where?
sleeping_dragon
Banned
Most likely for Microsoft if I might add.This has nothing to do with RAM. This can easily be streamed from the HDD.
I am firmly in the camp that would have preferred a much better CPU/GPU in next gen consoles (especially for the code I am writing) I think it is a missed chance, but I understand the economics of wanting to make cheapo hardware for Sony/MS/Nintendo.
Now that being said... and yeah people will complain about this, but a part of my CPU problems will be solved next gen by available Cloud processing power.
He is working for the console industry now
I mean between the GPU and the RAM
In your case 4GB of ram can use more stored in that 4GB data at single moment. But it can't use more than 4GB without loading another data into its memory (which is ultra slow)
For example you have 4MB with 40Mb/s bandwidth and you have 4 different assets that takes that 1MB each
In other case you have 8MB with 20Mb/s and you have 8 different assets taking 1MB each.
lets assume those assets are trees.
In case a) you will be able to show player 40 trees that will consist of 4 different trees.
In case b) you will be able to show player 20 trees that will consist of 8 different trees.
Bandwidth gives you firepower to fill you game world with assets (if naturally GPU or CPU won't be a problem
Amount gives you variety (which is less connected with GPU or CPU)
And this is why people before 8GB reveal of PS4 thought 4GB of GDDR5 is in reality better than 8GB of DDR3.
I see now, thanks for beautifully clarifying this for me.
dr. apocalipsis
Banned
Why should it? This One vs PS4 war only happens inside some peeps mind.
So the use of double ram chips doesn't, or barely, increase costs.
Do you actually know how a full range of products are fabbed from a single die design? Do you know how much added cost do you need to have a better PCB able to hold more RAM chips?
This is a pretty general question, but why do developers need so much RAM? PC developers seem to be happy developing high-end games with 2GB system RAM and 1GB VRAM (all shared with desktop OS) yet apparently 4GB-8GB DDR5 RAM on a console (without the typical desktop OS chugging in the background) is apparently not enough? Since when do console games require more RAM than high end PCs? They sound mightily greedy
Edit: I realize people typically have more than 2GB system RAM...but it doesn't have much benefit for gaming at all.
There are a lot of PC developers who stick to that figures (2GB RAM and 1GB VRAM) due to their executables being limited to 32bit address. Compatibility stuff to ensure their games work on 32 bits OS. God knows why Microsoft still selling 32bit flavours of Windows.
You keep overstimating what memory can do to textures. TMUs are the responsible of managing textures. Both One and PS4 have the same amount of RAM, but PS4 will be able to crush the former because the higher TMU count.
There are a lot of streaming solutions to solve assets caching.
Have a look at Maldo's Crysis retexture mods on a gaming PC. In raw numbers and sizes, next gen consoles won't be able to match that.
http://maldotex.blogspot.com.es/2013/02/screenshots-from-final-version.html
Sure clever art direction will be able to improve the looks, but not the numbers behind that.
I keep hearing that over and over again. What is the full spectrum of consoles you take into account to hold that? Playstation family?
Genesis/Megadrive:
Main RAM: 64kb
VRAM: 64kb
Audio RAM: 8kb
to
Saturn:
1 MB SDRAM as work RAM for both SH-2 CPUs (faster)
1 MB DRAM as work RAM for both SH-2 CPUs (slower)
512K VDP1 SDRAM for 3D graphics (Texture data for polygon/sprites and drawing command lists)
2x 256K VDP1 SDRAM for 3D graphics (Two framebuffers for double-buffered polygon/sprite rendering)
512K VDP2 SDRAM for 2D graphics (Texture data for the background layers and display lists)
4 KB VDP2 SRAM for color palette data and rotation coefficient data (local, on-chip SRAM)
512 KB DRAM for sound. (Multiplexed as sound CPU work RAM, SCSP DSP RAM, and SCSP wavetable RAM)
512 KB DRAM as work RAM for the CD-ROM subsystem's SH-1 CPU
512 KB Mask ROM for the SH-2 BIOS
SNES:
Main RAM: 128kb
VRAM: 64kb
Audio RAM: 64kb
to
N64
Main RAM: 4mb (8mb with expansion pack)
Game Boy:
Main RAM: 8kb
VRAM: 8kb.
to
Game Boy advance:
Main RAM: 32kb + 256kb
VRAM: 96 kb
PSP:
Main RAM: 32mb (64mb in latter models) + 4mb (Shared between video and media)
to
PSP VITA
Main RAM: 512mb
VRAM: 128MB
Just to put things into context.
Someone needed to say it.
At least nowadays the comfort angle is bunk. They're all a box that plug in with hdmi and can use the same controllers to play games if you so choose to use it. Most of the digital stores also update your software (and drivers) for you much smoother than they do on my consoles.
I agree on the pure hardware power angle, but PCs are also a compromise in a smooth user experience. To get the best from it you need to update your drivers, perhaps tweak config files (you see this in all the PC OT threads here) etc etc. The simplicity of console is valuable in and of itself.
yeah, did say something stupid without thinking.
ChorusLindarr
Banned
Bullshit!
It has everything to do with RAM size and load times. You can't stream every house interior and exterior for an area in Skyrim from the HDD to the measly few MBs of cache on the processing cores. You stream directly into the RAM. The more RAM you have the more data and assets you can hold in at once, so it provides a much bigger effective buffer to improve gameplay load times.
The rate at which you processing cores need data is many orders of magnitude higher than your streaming rate from the HDD. If on the XB1 for example the GPU munches data at a bandwidth of around 170GB/s aggregate, how on earth are you gonna feed it data from a HDD with a data rate sub 500MB/s?
Point is you can't. It's why you need RAM in the first place. And more RAM means more data closer to your processing cores, for when they need it. Which is what you want.
Saying any amount of RAM is too much is just imbecillic, outside of maybe having like more RAM than data on your entire game disc. The ideal would be able to store the entire 25-50GB game in RAM local to the cores. Then your load times would be blisteringly fast, and annoying stuff like pop-in and the texture-streaming issues UE3 was notorious for would be a thing of the past.
The point is Sony would not have been able to get much more in the way of GPU/CPU if they discarded the RAM type or amount. The fundamental goal of their entire design was to have an APU design, i.e. CPU/GPU on the same die, that would afford them major savings in wafer/chip cost, cooling, power consumption, motherboard design, R&D, IHV royalties, assembly, packaging and distribution. Sony pretty much pushed theirs to its manufacturable limits in terms of performance/associated costs ratio. More ALUs (to make a meaningful difference to performance) would have meant a massively bigger chip, thus lower yeilds, plus higher power consumption which in turns means a more expensive cooling solution, larger box thus higher packaging and distribution costs.
To go any higher than PS4, Sony would have needed to go with a dual chip solution, ala PS360. The costs associated with that would have skyrocketed relative to an APU design. At the same time sure the associated costs would have been similar to what the xbox 360 cost MS, but there are also long term factors that would have massively impeded both their ability to sell consoles, but also their ability to cost reduce the box in a cost effective way; namely process shrinks now being far more expensive and far less viable than they ever have been. The knock on effect being their inability to cut price would mean sales would slow considerably as they would struggle to gain access to the more price conscious mass market consumer. Neither Sony nor MS could afford to take a big loss on HW sold, as with less viable process shrinks the risks would be too great.
It would be bad for the entire industry if both Sony and MS went with dual chip designs and couldn't cost reduce them effectively, as you'd see eventual HW LTD installed bases at likely a half of what they were this gen in the same timeframe. With higher production costs and half the market to sell to, publishers would dissappear to mobile platforms.
So no, Sony and MS couldn't have gone much higher in terms of performance than what they did. They actually had a responsibility to launch their consoles at a more mass market price this time, as the more consoles they sell the healthier the industry would remain and the better it would be for everyone.
Also the good thing about a simpler APU design is it makes process shrinkage much easier as you only have to think about a single chip. They can easily move from 28nm down to 22nm once the latter bulk process matures. Afterwhich, they could simply ride it out until next node is ready and launch new consoles on the newer process. That would be what i'd do. So we could be looking at a solid 5 year cycle again. Plus by then some real good stuff like DDR4 and stacked chips would be available, so an orde of magnitude jump in performance could be very very real next time (think 32GB of stacked RAM with a TB/s bandwidth).
NemesisPrime
Banned
That is not very valid any more. Maybe 10 years ago.
They only advantage you have with a console is the price and the size IMHO (and even size is debatable).
NemesisPrime
Banned
Wow... maybe reread that a few times... and think about it. Hehe...
it is less valid than 10 years ago - no more editing config.sys, autoexec.bat. but it is still valid enough IMO.
Look at PC OT threads. They almost instantly end up talking about all the different graphics options to get the most out of it, troubleshooting problems with drivers, and even unlocking hidden config files to get *more* options they can tweak.
I realise that is something that some people like to do, but for me it results in analysis paralysis - I find it difficult to enjoy the game in case I haven't set it up optimally.
ChorusLindarr
Banned
Not sure if this is an argument against what I said or for it?
Care to explain what was wrong with my post?
phosphor112
Banned
It's extremely valid. What AAA PC game today doesn't have ini mod files and even full fledged performance mods themselves?
Also, not all GPU's are powerful in the same regard. So you have to tune your card to the best fit possible. Usually those "autodetect" settings are far from good. You see a card with high bandwidth, and you should be turning up the AA and AF. Auto-detect doesn't really adjust for those things. Steam MOSTLY updates drivers these days, but even then, there is a lot of driver trouble shooting. Hell, I had to help out my brother with his GTX 680 just the other day.
I love PC gaming. I did it for almost 15 years straight (I also had consoles) but PC gaming was my life. I remember first learning DOS commands so I can run my copy of Bio Menace, Duke Nukem 1, or Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure.
Honestly, I think PC gaming is getting more and more difficult. There are many more factors to consider these days when building a PC, and configuring the software for it.
Anyway, back to convenience. If I can go back to PC gaming. I would, but I can't. I'm married now, I've got a family to tend to, bills to pay, 50+ hours a week to work. I can't do it, and my wife wouldn't allow the parts or the space taken up for it.
When I was in college, PC gaming was pretty much what I did. This isn't the case anymore. PS+ has taken care of my hassles with updating games, and I can just "pop" in a game and play.
No worries.
Even if it does look / run more shit-like than my old PC would.
Can Crusher
Banned
Read the topic. Only reason you are making this a PC vs PS4 (instead of PC vs PS4 and Xbox One) is clear as Hawaiian water.
Beefier CPU? That's why Sony invested on those CUs, offloading complex physics and even audio from it. More rops for better filtering and AA. Bandwidth? Enough to keep the GPU fed. Ram? Amount and type, including type of configuration , exceeding developers expectations = Textures, animations, loadings etc
Also throw in dedicated audio hardware for good measure, and it seems to me that the CPU shouldn't really be the focus. Should've invested in a better GPU? They already have.
I can't spend 400$ on a PC and come away with the same value as in the PS4. That is a fact. Your little pc comparison is just sand being thrown around because you got caught with your pants down doing spins with ESRAM and latency. Keep moving playboy, they can't catch you if you keep moving.
fatgamecat
Member
Yes. Any "utilization" of 8GB of RAM for a PS3/360 game would be along the same lines of needlessly adding gigs of uncompressed audio to blu-ray discs to "utilize" all the space on it. Same to a lesser extent for PS4. Modern PC games can run without issue on 3GB total DDR3+GDDR5.
8GB of RAM was a smart choice by Sony given their unified memory pool, and yes it was better than 4GB, but please don't overstate its advantages in either size or bandwidth. At best it will remove bottlenecks to allow the raw specs to perform at their fullest.
Can Crusher
Banned
The argument that "Well Devs can make games on less ram" is some of the most brilliant assessments I've ever read around here.
I mean holy moly Scotland Yard and Batman fucked, and Sherlockman wore a cape. Modern PC games can run on a system with 3 GB of DDR3 + 1gb of Gddr5 too!!!
10 years ago, "modern" PC games could run on 1GB of DDr2 + 128 MB of... GDDr2? Start using common sense people, come the fuck on.
I mean holy moly Scotland Yard and Batman fucked, and Sherlockman wore a cape. Modern PC games can run on a system with 3 GB of DDR3 + 1gb of Gddr5 too!!!
10 years ago, "modern" PC games could run on 1GB of DDr2 + 128 MB of... GDDr2? Start using common sense people, come the fuck on.
You're completely understating the advantages to the developer side of things.
I've said this before, but to restate: the 8GB let's me completely throw away the memory side of development. When I make games, I always have in the back of my head: will all these sprites fit into memory? Where can I unload and load without disrupting gameplay? If I downgrade the sound effects a bit, can I load some extra effects? Is the result of all these crashes memory leaks and loading way too much into memory?
With 7GB of free memory to use, I can forget about all that. I've literally shaved a month out of my development time by not having to worry about memory limits anymore. It would be the most freeing thing imaginable. Sure, once I develop for something other than PS4 I'll have to replan a lot of segments, but man, all this memory is an awesome thing for devs.
Even if it doesn't lead to massive improvement for games, it will definitely lead to faster development for devs, which in itself is totally worth it.
fatgamecat
Member
Given the PS4 specs, it will be running the equivalent of said "modern PC games", and requiring about the same amount of RAM. PC games from 1990 aren't a very accurate comparison.
Devs could pad out RAM beyond reasonable optimization goals, much like stuffing blu-rays with gigs of uncompressed audio, but it doesn't have much practical application.
Sure it could make life easier for devs, I was more looking at the performance/technical side of things.
Devs could pad out RAM beyond reasonable optimization goals, much like stuffing blu-rays with gigs of uncompressed audio, but it doesn't have much practical application.
Sure it could make life easier for devs, I was more looking at the performance/technical side of things.
Can Crusher
Banned
No you are not. And comparing to games 20 years ago to make your point relevant doesn't even make sense. And the PS4 won't be running the games that already came out, it will be running games that are made with its specs in mind as a baseline in the coming years.
Games are built with specs in mind, and if PC games today only need 3 GB of DDR3 + 1GB of GDDR5 to run (minimum specs...), it's because devs can't simply shut off half the market. And the baseline for these games are systems like the 360 and PS3...
Tiago Sousa, from Crytek:
Please, stop posting this "won't have much practical application" bullshit. It's ignorant.
This has nothing to do with RAM. This can easily be streamed from the HDD.
I am firmly in the camp that would have preferred a much better CPU/GPU in next gen consoles (especially for the code I am writing) I think it is a missed chance, but I understand the economics of wanting to make cheapo hardware for Sony/MS/Nintendo.
Now that being said... and yeah people will complain about this, but a part of my CPU problems will be solved next gen by available Cloud processing power.
He is working for the console industry now
Lol at cloud processing. Please stop. The number of things you can use servers to compute is very limited when it comes to stuff that you see on your screen.
Can Crusher
Banned
Cloud computing will be taken advantage of in online features. People expecting it to be used for graphics and physics in real time don't understand the implications.
fatgamecat
Member
Yes I am.
Yes it makes perfect sense. Games like Watch Dogs will utilize about the same amount of RAM between PC and PS4, it's the raw specs that will make the difference in performance. Sure a Crysis dev could put huge textures (or whatever they wanted) into RAM, getting it to perform is another question.
Why are you personally attacking and insulting people while using profane language? It is extremely rude and uncivil.
dr. apocalipsis
Banned
Don't bother with this guy. He is like a wounded animal, he have some sort of paranoia that led him to think everyone is attacking his console.
If you try to make guesses about any other machine architecture, that means for him that you are menacing his beloved console in some way.
Can Crusher
Banned
I didn't personally attack you, I said your opinion on how RAM is A) used and B) needed for is ignorant. Which it is given the opinion of people who actually make games, and how history proves that running on less doesn't mean devs won't know what to do with more. And cursing isn't a big deal to me because I'm not using it to call you names or anything. But different people have different sensibilities, so I'll try to not curse when replying to you.
Your analysis is based on the fact that if GPU cards only come with 1GB GDDR5 then it's because there wouldn't be a practical use for more than that. It's a senseless observation.
The difference between PC and PS4, as the gen goes on will come down to multiple factors. And that will include having more RAM, as it always ends up happening.
Don't bother with this guy. He is like a wounded animal, he have some sort of paranoia that led him to think everyone is attacking his console.
If you try to make guesses about any other machine architecture, that means for him that you are menacing his beloved console in some way.
Far from it. Discuss what's possible, discuss what can be expected. Hell discuss if the differences even matter all that much, but when you start talking latency in one hand and on the other you are talking about how 8GB of GDDr5 is a semi worthless factor, when compared to 4Gb of GDDR5 for example, it's no longer about making guesses or trying to actually see the distinction between architectures and how they translate to the real world.
It's about pushing an agenda based on senseless observations. I've said in this very same thread that if a Sony dev (or not I don't know anymore) says that differences will be small for example, I believe it. But when people that apparently can't even use common sense start imagining and posting implausible scenarios, that contradict everything devs say... then it really does get upsetting.
ChorusLindarr
Banned
Memory is there to pad out with "stuff". That's the entire point of it.
Think of it this way, you have a disc with 50GB worth of game data, i.e assets, textures, video, lighting info etc etc. And you have processing cores that need to crunch that data at a rate that is several orders of magnitude higher than your disc can provide.
Ram allows you to take a big chunk of that data and store it close enough to your cores that they can access it in a reasonable amount of time (i.e. latency), and the ram is fast enough to provide the cores with enough data to sate their incredible appetites (i.e. memory bandwidth).
The more ram you have, the more of your disc data you can store closer to the processing cores. That means that outside of the initial load to boot up the game, you can either have bigger worlds (as you have more data to process before you have to go and get more from the disc), or shorter load times as you store more of your areas in ram than you could with less of it.
So for a performance perspective, more ram helps you with load times and stuff like pop-in and texture pop-in. From a graphics perspective more ram gives you the ability to have higher quality assets and textures stored close to your cores (however only to an extent, as your GPU texturing units will also limit you there). And from a gameplay perspective, with twice the ram you can have gameworlds twice the size, or even twice the amount of variety in your textures and assets in any one given area.
NemesisPrime
Banned
Please come back after you graduate.
There are plenty of things that can be offloaded to cloud based tasks... you should just think about new ways to do things. When multitasking became a reality, many people complained about the same stuff.
Anyway... I am not going through all this again with some junior on an internet forum. Enjoy your shouting.
dragonelite
Member
Wonder why dice has the wave simulation on their servers?
Do you ever elaborate on anything ever, no matter what membership status the poster you quote has?
You said 3GB memory reservation is not true.
You said the PS4 and Xbox One leaks were not true and the difference wouldn't exist 10 days before MS revealed the Xbox One.
You just drop your posts and when challenged you disappear. How often you were asked to elaborate your positions and you failed to do so should be recognized. (And has been in the past with the Member being replaced by Banned)
Because it's part of the map and gives dynamic cover which influences if you can be shot from various angles.
Edit: Or am I supposed to read this as that it's dynamically calculated on some remote host and then send back to the dedicated server because it's actual liquid physics based on millions of particle interactions?
I wonder if unicorns existed?
Can Crusher
Banned
Well I never heard of it, or read about it.
That said, I'm interested, I would love to read about how Dice is doing wave simulation in real time during online matches using the cloud to calculate water physics in real time. I doubt they can get my boat's wave physically impacting the course of the other boat chasing me, if there's considerable lag. But I would love to read about stuff like that, honestly.
What a nonsense example. That is networked waves which means that the location of every wave is stored on different nodes and this data set is available to all players. It's the same thing as passing the data on the location of all players to each individual player. You really have no clue.
shadowsdarknes
Member
I can't imagine the cloud being used for single player games considering the game needs to run and look the same for online and offline gamers.
"But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown." -- Carl Sagan
Synchronization of time, such that the locally computed wave simulations are in sync. No need to do more as long as the locally computed results are deterministic.
phosphor112
Banned
Waves can be done client side, but the calculations are done server side because the game has to sync up. That goes for the rest of the map. You can't blow up a wall client side and then wait for it to blow up for the rest of the server. It doesn't make sense.
Configuration? Install Windows 7, install latest graphics drivers (or let Steam do it for you). Speaking of Steam, it will also take care of your game updates for you. In the same way.
Sure, you'll find us enthusiasts doing INI editing and opening up the console to tweak things. Rest assured, if it was available on consoles you'd see threads on this forum speaking of the same things. But we're an enthusiast community, and we do enthusiast things.
If you just want to double-click and play, the option is there for you just as it is on consoles.