Only 256MB chips were available, and they allocated 16 spots on the mobo for them. When 512MB chips arrived and devs pushed Sony to increase RAM size, Sony just replaced old chips for larger ones.
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Xbox One Costs $90 More to Build Than PS4, Teardown Shows ($75 Kinect 2)
- Thread starter Poetic.Injustice
- Start date
Only 256MB chips were available, and they allocated 16 spots on the mobo for them. When 512MB chips arrived and devs pushed Sony to increase RAM size, Sony just replaced old chips for larger ones.
Phawx
Member
Who to believe?
A focus on gaming.
Let's remember why MS was so insistent on 8 GB from the outset. They needed it for all their non gaming extra OS nonsense.
That was the mistake that led us to where we are.
iamshadowlark
Banned
Notice I said pay AMD. As in, how much was the PS4 design contract vs the XB1 contract. I'm pretty sure AMD isn't that involved in manufacturing.
I want to know the prices if the design contracts, because the last indication we got is that MS poured a shit load more money into their project.
Phawx
Member
I firmly believe this to be correct. But this also means that provided Sony *couldn't* get a decent supply of 4Gb chips they would have shipped with 2Gb.
zomgbbqftw
Banned
Sho_Nuff82
Member
Hundreds of millions in r&d to create a $500 brick that is smoked by similarly priced/sized PCs. Take a bow.
Phawx
Member
Let's not forget that the Xbox 360 having more VRAM lead to better looking multiplatform games.
If the PS4 only had 4GB, how much would be usable by games? 3GB? Xbox One would have considerably more space for textures.
GopherD said Sony were helping with the push for 4Gb modules.
Can they move to DDR4 that easily? DDR3 prices certainly aren't going to go down while GDDR5 8Gb modules could come to the PS4 in 18 motnhs or so.
googleplex
Member
Just calling it luck is a disservice. The PS4 was a well executed plan from conception to manufacturing.
Interfectum
Member
Too many internal agendas with that box and they severely underestimated their competitor. Textbook mistakes. MS should be proud.
KoopaTheCasual
Junior Member
Well, we can pretty much say goodbye to the idea of a cheap Kinectless SKU. Even without Kinect, the XB1 would sell for $399-$449, which still doesn't make it appealing compared to the PS4, while STILL generating a loss. MS is better off (from a business perspective) just keeping the Kinect in the box. Yeesh.
geek_box12
Banned
bgr is not where you want to get information from
LoveCake
Member
So for $28 the X1 could of had DDR5, i wonder how much the 32MB of ESRAM costs, so the difference could even less.
What i would like to know is the costs of the HDD on the PS4 & how much it would of cost to have had the SHHD (hybrid drives) people seem to be buying already in the PS4, a 1TB drive with 16GB or 32GB of SHD, people are already spending extra for this themselves so if the PS4 was $60 more i think people would pay, if there was a PS4 version with a bigger drive & also if it was faster.
Only 32 MB of high speed ESRAM seems like a bigger bottleneck to me, in that scenario.
KillerMan91
Member
Reminds me of PS3 once again.
Aizu_Itsuko
Member
No, they just were smarter with their memory setup going for GDDR5, which not only resulted in a better/faster system and easier development but didn't require work arounds like ESRAM that resulted in less room for the rest of the GPU and increased manufacturing costs for nothing.
In other words, they did a great job and now it's paying off.
Harts316
Member
They seem to paint a pretty dire picture. Has this site been known to be biased in the past?
If MS spent a billion on marketing and R&D for the ONE, how much did Sony spend?
The financial cost is one thing, there's also the cost of increased complexity for developers which will haunt them the rest of this generation. I am sure some MS hardware engineer thought they were clever saving $18 to go with ESRAM but that's the problem with over-engineering solutions.
dr. apocalipsis
Banned
Why are people forgetting about better cooling solution, better Wifi support and better build quality? Those things adds some bucks, If someone is guessing.
It was already know that Xbone APU was more expensive, since it have higher DIE area.
It was already know that Xbone APU was more expensive, since it have higher DIE area.
Apple would never sell something at a loss.
Maninthemirror
Banned
Sony spent it on Cerny
KungFucius
King Snowflake
It's not AMD they are paying it is the Foundry. I think it is TSMC. THe AMD design is a single cost with perhaps a royalty per chip that will not show up on a teardown. I think the Xbox die may cost more if it is bigger.
Phawx
Member
That makes sense, but *pushing* for something doesn't guarantee success. If push came to shove, Sony would have elected to use 2Gb chips. Things panned out.
My point is, when Cerny first started designing the PS4 and you asked him 4GB or 8GB of ram, what would he have said?
Looking at the internals of both I would not say the Xbone has better build quality.
zomgbbqftw
Banned
I expect part of the $28 premium is seed money for Samsung to invest in 4Gbit chips. Over a 5m production contract I expect Sony "contributed" $100m to Samsung for accelerated 4Gbit production investment. While Samsung will have other customers for 4Gbit, Sony are clearly the largest buyer and will therefore be expected to stump up some of the investment cost in addition to the regular premium. Samsung have a similar investment model with Apple. I think Apple and Sharp have entered into a similar agreement also. Good to see Sony step up to the plate with the PS4.
KillerMan91
Member
X360 was billion times better designed console than PS3. Pretty much equal amount of power for a lot less money.
ThePowerofX
Banned
Did senior management honestly believe they could do battle with Apple, Google and Sony at the same time and hope to win? An "all-in-one" gaming and home entertainment device meant they had to make compromises (hence old favourites making for the exit door). Perhaps that old Xbox engineer was correct in his assessment when he remarked that the PlayStation 3 era gave Microsoft a false sense of security.
Blu Ray drive was technically more advanced than anything inside a 360.
Nothing out of the ordinary. Microsoft went with DDR3 for fear of shortages of GDDR5 (or having to cut it down to 4GB), and cut out some of the GPUs silicon budget in favor of eSRAM to compensate.
Even Sony wasn't sure they could do 8GB GDDR5 (developers planned for 4) until close to launch/production.
"Fetch me my tub, and the like"
Hopefully, he would have said neither and instead waited to see what they could get given their ultimate silicon budget for the console. Which does seem to appear to be what he did...
infiniteheteroskdasticity
Member
Sony certainly have had things fall into place pretty nicely. I'm pretty certain they started off on the ps4 by thinking about what sort of hardware it would pack. They've said as much. This led them to end up with a very well designed system. Microsoft started off by thinking about to what they wanted their next generation console to do. They probably started looking at hardware later in the process and their design shows that.
Whiteshirt
Member
4GB until people complained about it so they threw out the PS Eye for 8GB. Like what happened with the Xbox 360 memory situation.
They wanted to create a console for developers and this is what we got.
dr. apocalipsis
Banned
So what? PS4 still have more TMU's, so it could move more and better textures.
360 got better multiplats because it have a far better GPU, not because a minor difference in allocated VRAM. That only make devs life easier.
KillerMan91
Member
By the time PS3 launched production costs for X360 were $323. For comparison PS3 costed $840 to make. There is more than just blu-ray in that huge difference. PS3 really was huge clusterfuck and money drain.
EL CUCO
Member
Jack of all trades, master of none.
You guys need to take a look at the WHY of things for once.
Microsoft had a goal for their console which required a minimum of 8 gigs of RAM. They designed a console that could, with minimal risk, meet that.
Microsoft could have went with GDDR5 but they would have had to take a risk that they could not release a console in 2013.
Microsoft had a goal for their console which required a minimum of 8 gigs of RAM. They designed a console that could, with minimal risk, meet that.
Microsoft could have went with GDDR5 but they would have had to take a risk that they could not release a console in 2013.
TakeItSlowDude
Member
Do they have a history of not being accurate? EETimes is fairly reputable (much more so than AllThingsD), I do not think they would post a garbage estimate.
That was quite the debate pre 8GB announcement. There was no clear cut answer as to which was better, less and faster, or more and slower. Besides, we kept hearing about how much of the ram was reserved for the Xbox OS.
Regardless, it's clear MS chose the wrong path. That's not luck. It's a focus on ease of game development paying off.
googleplex
Member
No only is the Xbone base price higher,the ESRAM is making it harder to produce then the PS4. Sony can produce their box cheaper and in twice the volume then MS!
This is NOT a good situation for Microsoft to be in.
Uno Venova
Banned
I remember being happy yet sad about the 8GDDR5 announcement, I thought it would skyrocket the price out of the affordable range. Glad it worked out differently.
Phawx
Member
Okay, so let me flip the question. If you would have asked MS engineers designing the Xbox One how much ram it would have, what would they say?
My point is engineers have a job and they do the best with the requirements given to them. They needed the ESRAM to offset the DDR3 bottleneck so they went and spent the silicon on that.
If you guys want me to admit that the PS4 is a better system all around, hell check my post history. But let's not pretend that Sony had this crystal ball and knew what to expect. Or have we already forgotten the PS3?
I'm not saying that Sony didn't do everything in their power to arrange a certain outcome. But the rhetoric on here that Sony was a seer is kind of nuts.
gundamkyoukai
Member
Well Sony does have PS+ this gen to help off set some cost since you need it for MP.
So MS also lose out if less people buy the console medium term .
Going to be interesting to see things play out since that extra money means a good amount to both parties .