I'd rather see it with 4-6, but eh... Whatever, most gaming computers these days should have around 8 gigs and we definitely want consoles to catch up.
More than anything though, I'd prefer dedicated RAM for certain areas of the console. So you get a dedicated RAM for the OS, and the Gameplay, and on top of that have the standard GDDR ram too. That way all OS features will be pretty much accessible at all times.
2gb of ram is fine for the PS4 if it's vram. 2gb vram is common in most high end gpu's nowadays, so that should be more than enough to keep the PS4 competitive for it's 5 - 10 year life cycle. Now as far as system ram goes 2gb should be enough as well, but I'd rather see 4gb just to keep the PS4 future proof. 4gb should allow the console to run all apps seamless.
They are either going with 2 GB or 4 GB I believe, but I say 6 or 8 would be future proof til the end of the cycle.
2 GB I believe is the bottom line, but I think 4 GB is most likely.
Woah I never looked at that spec sheet. 20 GB RAM in PS4? Sounds like jibberish. BDXL I believe, but other stuff I am very skeptical. Although Zotac is preping a 2 Ghz NVIDIA 680 GPU product. CPUs are multithreaded beyond belief up to 128 threads and beyond.
Still seems like something that was made up. Goes against nearly every rumor that exists as well.
4gb maybe the most would be 8 but realistically it would be better with 4. Even looking at pc's for comparison...the more isnt always the merrier.
Too much ram can have a negative effect on performance as much as too little. There needs to be a balance between the stuff going on in the background while having the proper amount for everything else going on directly.
4gb sounds like a sweet spot for next gen consoles.
I still have 4gb of ram on my pc. I've been wanting to have a reason to make the jump to 8gb, but I haven't found a reason to upgrade yet as the 4GB keeps my pc processes maxed out.
I think the present is still geared towards 4GB of ram with a lot of people waiting for the future with the 8GB's. (excluding professionals like computer programmers of video editors of course).
The question remains as to when games will really take advantage of 8GB's of ram? If soon then console's will need at least 4GB's, if we remain like we are for a while then 2GB's is all that will be needed in a console.
Hows that memory chips become much cheaper support the fact 2GB makes sense? If any thing it means it'll be much more.
Anyway, People thinks that RAM is only for games, i'd like to see it at least 8G.b. only for one thing, so they can add a lot of things to be running while the game is running.
Cross game chat can't be on PS3 because there's no enough ram left while the game is running!
Hell, with more ram they could make even the Store is accessible while playing a game! (ok we might not NEED this).
But you get the idea! They might think of something in the future, and they wont have enough ram to implement it.
There have been multiple tests done on RAM speed, and in gaming the difference is minimal. As in, not even a 1fps difference, minimal. Even stress tests show a similar marginal difference.
High amounts of RAM hinder performance? What? The test below was done with 1600MHz RAM for each category, so the speed is the same.
Stoney, the clock speed is a useless statistic to compare RAM speed with. Memory is slower the larger it gets due to power dissipation, hence why processor cache exists in the first place. This difference is mainly noticeable if your computer is running at peak performance. The chart you provided is useless, considering most of the RAM modules aren't active at the time of playing.
There's a lot of technical detail you can read up on, if you're interested. But long story short, the more memory you use, the slower it gets. Memory Fetches take longer, reducing pipeline throughout and thus processor performance.
Moral of the story: RAM Memory is chosen as the minimal amount the hardware can get away with, which was 512MB for current generation consoles, and will be ~2GB for next generation consoles.
Do you play PC games? A lot of games need at least 4-6 to even play. Consoles need to be a step ahead of that, seeing as the consoles want a life of 10 years. 8-10GB would be perfect.
If you were smart, you'd know that the os on a pc requires at least 2-3 gigs of ram. Hence the reason why a pc needs much more ram.
2-4 gigs on a console would be good enough. So yeah, expect one of those two numbers.
@trenta27 Yeah, 12 gigs more because OS' then will be taking 5 gigs of ram. Man, i thought you pc guys were smart. The max we'll get past 4, will most likely be 6. Dont hold your breath on 12gb, or even 10. Thats overkill for a console.
The lifespan is 10 years. Why don't you see that? At that time, we could all be using 12GB or more! The consoles need to be at least 8-10GB to start out with.
The thing is, consoles are meant to last for a good 5-10 year lifespan. You'd want that much for gaming in the future, just to make sure it can handle games 5-10 years from now. With PC you can always constantly upgrade your rigt, but the same can't be said for consoles. Sure console games don't need that much right now, but it's always a good idea to future proof it. That's why I say 4 GB would be good, 6 GB would be ideal.
Radu you dont know what you are talking about. dont try to explain yourself.
And did you really just give us an example on a game that was optimised to use PC's potential? Especially since LA Noire came out almost half a year after it came out on consoles.
And the ram being a higher requirement is due to the ram running the operating system as well. You are making the basic error everybody does that doesn't use PC's other than browsing the web.
I'd like to see at least 4GB of very high speed RAM. I don't think that will be the case though. This is one of the reasons why I'm really losing patience with consoles.
RAM is friggin' cheap. Why even consider skimping when it's the biggest bottle neck in the machine?
Once again, the "RAM is friggin' cheap" statement doesn't apply for consoles. Consoles don't use DDR2 or DDR3 like most PCs, they use faster RAM units e.g. XDR. Those sir, are not cheap.
The PS2 wasn't trying to run PS4 games though. The RAM for the PS3 is quite low, accessing messages in-game is a pain and loading trophies takes forever. This makes sense though because these features weren't present during the release of the PS3. So maybe Sony will think ahead this time and add bigger RAM just in case.
2GB? thats way too low (especially if they want to think ahead) I can pick up 8GB of DDR3 for about £30, I'm sure Sony could get it for far less than that.
I'd love 8GB, but more realistically I'm guessing they'll go with 4GB :(
xdr ram is crazy fast so i can see them putting a gb or 2 of that but i highly doubt it im banking for 4 gbs of ddr3 and 1 gb of vram... and they can custom the 4gbs as they see fit for the system
This comes back to my last post. Sony needs to consider future features beyond games. Apps, social and media components are becoming increasingly more popular on current platforms. Something that wasn't so 5 years ago when the consoles launched.
I do believe that giving devs [technical] constraints could lead to innovations. But those constraints shouldn't be detrimental to future scenarios. They have to research what's going to be popular 10+ years from now.
when ps3 was being discussed they talked about a upgradeable console, i bet we see something like that for the ps4. want more memory, just buy the addon and plop it in
i would love this, would model more like PC, games have minmum requirements to run and then recommended. So if a person has the money to upgrade so be it, but everyone is playing the same game. i think this could make things much more interesting.
More RAM means better multitasking capabilities. These platforms are not just about gaming anymore. Anticipate future use cases(in-game chat) for greater longevity.
You do realise you are comparing smartphones that run multiple apps at once to a video game console that plays games and may have cross game voice chat running at once...... 2 gigs is plenty can you ppl get that through your heads?
you do realize Future consoles will be expected to run multiple apps just like smart tv's and phones, hell on my vita right now im playing a game, listening to music, party chating and using near. Boom BABY, welcome to the future...
And how much ram does the vita have? It most certainly doesn't even have 2 gigs of ram and it can do all of that? So what makes you think the next gen consoles need 4 to 6 gigs of ram??? Consoles OS's definitely aren't going to as demanding as a OS like windows wich is required to have 2 gigs to run properly. The extra 4-6 gigs people get on pc's are for running those demanding games. All i am trying to say is that 2 gigs of ram is plenty! but nobody seems to understand this.....
Exactly, plus I noticed not many are even making the distinction between Video Ram and system memory.
Since Consoles have one dedicated OS that has a very small memory footprint, they don't need 4GB of ram to run the XMB.
Also keep in mind 2GB of VRAM is plenty by today's standards. The GTX 680 has 2GB of VRAM and does an amazing job at pumping out triple monitor games in 3D.
Quite alot of people are asking for 6-8 gig for the next machine. Dont know much about pc's and ram so my question is: Isnt that gona cost Sony too much to produce every ps4 wiv that amount of ram?
I personally think Sony will put 8-10GB into their next console. Why? Because they do have their foot in their mouths with the fact that you can't "party chat" because of lack of memory, and for what the future may bring them. Hell if they put 20GB in who gives a hell, unless it greatly effected the price.
Depends what Next gen consoles are going to be doing!
If they remain as mainly gaming machines and aren't running multiple tasks at once then 2-4gb max would be all that is needed.. but once you start multitasking it almost becomes a more general purpose pc in nature and you should pretty much look to double that 4-8bg!!
Regardless 10gb + and 20bg is kind of stupid talk really!
@Babyclami But streaming games is already upon so why would they go to the expense of putting more than 4gig of ram in and bumping up the consoles price.. Manufacuters dont earn money really from consoles but rather fromes the games a services on them!
lol an article about an article about a rumour which isn't true.
By the way, VRAM is Video RAM, not Virtual RAM lol. (Virtual RAM doesn't even exist, closest thing would be Virtual Memory that isn't random access, and that's non quantifiable as it can be as large as the hard-drive if need-be).
i can see them using XDR ram but the thing with that is XDR ram is super pricey so if they do use XDR ram i highly doubt it will go up to 4gbs if your lucky you might get 2... but i think they might use a combo of 1gb XRD and 3gbs DRR3 kinda like they did for the ps3
I think they should make the PS4 as powerful as they can because I think these consoles will be the last of it's kind, the more powerful they are the longer they will last.. I think streaming games will be the future of gaming, just connect the controller to your tv and stream games from there and everyone in about 5-10 years will all have good internet speeds for it.. In europe and asia they already have internet speeds of 1Gbit per sec, usb sticks that go as fast as 80Mbit. America is far behind that technology but i think in some years it will catch up. Just my opinion. This website is a Swedish one but you can see the speeds there//
Article is a waste of time. For one, the author doesn't know that VRAM is VIDEO RAM, i.e. RAM the graphics chip uses as opposed to main memory. Based on the fact that they don't seem to know what is frankly a basic point about RAM, take their article and ignore it as they don't know what they're talking about.
Also, anyone saying that "x amount of RAM is too much" is an idiot. There's no such thing as "Too much RAM", developers have to constantly deal with not having enough RAM even if they have 10Gb to work with. More is better in every way except price and RAM has never been cheaper.
Incorrect for two reasons. 1. Larger RAM reduces processor performance. The whole reason Cache was added to the processor was to cope with the larger size of RAM. 2. Costs - the larger the RAM, the higher the price for the console. (which you mentioned yourself).
The difference becomes noticeable when the RAM is fully used, as cache misses become more likely, and the processor pipeline is fully taxed.
Cache wasn't added to cope with large amounts of RAM, cache was added to increase performance as cache is typically several times faster than RAM (since it's on the chip itself). Having more RAM by itself isn't going to decrease performance, rather it'll cause issues if you're constantly accessing the entire contents of memory but that's where good design comes into it from a development perspective. Think of any open world sandbox game, such as GTA or Red Faction. The immediate world can only be so big - you can only get so many vehicles or characters on screen because you run out of room in memory. Adding more memory isn't going to decrease performance, it's simply going to allow you to put even more into that world. If you have extra RAM and don't use it, there's no penalty either (unless you want to be pedantic and talk about voltage draw or something).
Yes, with extremes there's always a limit - if Sony were to add 1Tb of RAM, the console would cost thousands to build and in that sense it would be "Too much" but I did already mention the cost. People here, however, are saying that the likes of 4Gb is "Too much" without even considering costs or knowing how much more that will cost Sony in the end. The don't seem to realise that since the PS3 was initially launched, we've had several manufacturing advances that severely decreases the cost of such things. 4Gb of RAM today is cheaper than 512MB was in 2006.
" cache is typically several times faster than RAM (since it's on the chip itself)"
See, that's where it's clear you don't really understand what Cache is. Cache is several times faster than main memory _because_ it's small, and is otherwise the same as your main memory. That's why you don't see cache sizes of 512 MB for instance.
To understand why that is, you have to understand that Circuit capacitance is what makes things go slow. The bigger your memory, the bigger your capacitance, the slower your memory.
Did you proofread any of what was written before posting this? I'm not normally one to be a stickler for spelling or grammar, but shit. Increasement isn't even a word.
0°
20°
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30°
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20°
I think at MAX, maybe 10gb... even that can been seen to be pushing it.
Either way, i am really interested to see what Sony are doing for the near future at e3.
Less loading is always welcome in my book.
2 GB I believe is the bottom line, but I think 4 GB is most likely.
Woah I never looked at that spec sheet. 20 GB RAM in PS4? Sounds like jibberish. BDXL I believe, but other stuff I am very skeptical. Although Zotac is preping a 2 Ghz NVIDIA 680 GPU product. CPUs are multithreaded beyond belief up to 128 threads and beyond.
Still seems like something that was made up. Goes against nearly every rumor that exists as well.
maybe the most would be 8 but realistically it would be better with 4. Even looking at pc's for comparison...the more isnt always the merrier.
Too much ram can have a negative effect on performance as much as too little. There needs to be a balance between the stuff going on in the background while having the proper amount for everything else going on directly.
4gb sounds like a sweet spot for next gen consoles.
I think the present is still geared towards 4GB of ram with a lot of people waiting for the future with the 8GB's. (excluding professionals like computer programmers of video editors of course).
The question remains as to when games will really take advantage of 8GB's of ram? If soon then console's will need at least 4GB's, if we remain like we are for a while then 2GB's is all that will be needed in a console.
Follow the white rabbit man.
Anyway, People thinks that RAM is only for games, i'd like to see it at least 8G.b. only for one thing, so they can add a lot of things to be running while the game is running.
Cross game chat can't be on PS3 because there's no enough ram left while the game is running!
Hell, with more ram they could make even the Store is accessible while playing a game! (ok we might not NEED this).
But you get the idea! They might think of something in the future, and they wont have enough ram to implement it.
there is a reason they wont go with like 8 or higher.
and i would gladly eat my hat if sony or ms put a 8GB or higher amount of ram in their next consoles.
High amounts of RAM hinder performance? What? The test below was done with 1600MHz RAM for each category, so the speed is the same.
http://media.bestofmicro.co...
RAM is also ridiculously cheap now. You can get 8GB for $40.
There's a lot of technical detail you can read up on, if you're interested. But long story short, the more memory you use, the slower it gets. Memory Fetches take longer, reducing pipeline throughout and thus processor performance.
Moral of the story: RAM Memory is chosen as the minimal amount the hardware can get away with, which was 512MB for current generation consoles, and will be ~2GB for next generation consoles.
That "RAM is dirt cheap nowadays" statement is getting more retarded by the second.
let's take this one ,for example - http://www.game-debate.com/...
You can see that RECOMMENDED for it is 8GB RAM on PC. Then, how the heck does it work on the 256 + 256 RAM of PS3 ... ?
:P
Edit: Ahhh, you changed it. I liked it better the other way. Spelling mistakes FTW.
2-4 gigs on a console would be good enough. So yeah, expect one of those two numbers.
@trenta27
Yeah, 12 gigs more because OS' then will be taking 5 gigs of ram. Man, i thought you pc guys were smart. The max we'll get past 4, will most likely be 6. Dont hold your breath on 12gb, or even 10. Thats overkill for a console.
Way to think ahead...
"at least 4-6 to even play"
"even play"
i can safely assume you never played on a pc before?
I'd rather have 6GB, because who knows what the future will bring.
And did you really just give us an example on a game that was optimised to use PC's potential? Especially since LA Noire came out almost half a year after it came out on consoles.
Here is a better example: http://www.game-debate.com/...
And the ram being a higher requirement is due to the ram running the operating system as well. You are making the basic error everybody does that doesn't use PC's other than browsing the web.
According to your little chart:
PS1: 2Mb of RAM
PS2: 32Mb of RAM
PS3: 256Mb of RAM
and then you go on to say...
"The RAM increasement is being done on a 8x basis"
Tell me good sir, how do you go from 2Mb to 32Mb on an 8x basis?
RAM is friggin' cheap. Why even consider skimping when it's the biggest bottle neck in the machine?
I'd love 8GB, but more realistically I'm guessing they'll go with 4GB :(
however 99.9% of the time having more RAM is better than having faster RAM :)
2-4 GB on a console, is effectively the same as a PC with 8 GB.
Also most big PC games need a minimum of 2gb of ram
This comes back to my last post. Sony needs to consider future features beyond games. Apps, social and media components are becoming increasingly more popular on current platforms. Something that wasn't so 5 years ago when the consoles launched.
I do believe that giving devs [technical] constraints could lead to innovations. But those constraints shouldn't be detrimental to future scenarios. They have to research what's going to be popular 10+ years from now.
Future consoles will be expected to run multiple apps just like smart tv's and phones, hell on my vita right now im playing a game, listening to music, party chating and using near. Boom BABY, welcome to the future...
And how much ram does the vita have? It most certainly doesn't even have 2 gigs of ram and it can do all of that? So what makes you think the next gen consoles need 4 to 6 gigs of ram??? Consoles OS's definitely aren't going to as demanding as a OS like windows wich is required to have 2 gigs to run properly. The extra 4-6 gigs people get on pc's are for running those demanding games. All i am trying to say is that 2 gigs of ram is plenty! but nobody seems to understand this.....
It is extremely unlikely the gpu in next generation consoles will be based off that to keep a price point below $500.
Since Consoles have one dedicated OS that has a very small memory footprint, they don't need 4GB of ram to run the XMB.
Also keep in mind 2GB of VRAM is plenty by today's standards. The GTX 680 has 2GB of VRAM and does an amazing job at pumping out triple monitor games in 3D.
If they remain as mainly gaming machines and aren't running multiple tasks at once then 2-4gb max would be all that is needed.. but once you start multitasking it almost becomes a more general purpose pc in nature and you should pretty much look to double that 4-8bg!!
Regardless 10gb + and 20bg is kind of stupid talk really!
2gb would be fine as most gpu's these days have 1-2gb anyway.
More interest would be gpu bandwidth, are they going with amd or nvidia.
I have 8gb in my pc. But it's not needed in a console tbh.
By the way, VRAM is Video RAM, not Virtual RAM lol. (Virtual RAM doesn't even exist, closest thing would be Virtual Memory that isn't random access, and that's non quantifiable as it can be as large as the hard-drive if need-be).
http://www.bredbandsbolaget...
We saw how limited games were this gen because of ram- eg. how they dumbed down crysis 1 for consoles.
Based on the fact that they don't seem to know what is frankly a basic point about RAM, take their article and ignore it as they don't know what they're talking about.
Also, anyone saying that "x amount of RAM is too much" is an idiot. There's no such thing as "Too much RAM", developers have to constantly deal with not having enough RAM even if they have 10Gb to work with. More is better in every way except price and RAM has never been cheaper.
Incorrect for two reasons.
1. Larger RAM reduces processor performance. The whole reason Cache was added to the processor was to cope with the larger size of RAM.
2. Costs - the larger the RAM, the higher the price for the console. (which you mentioned yourself).
The difference becomes noticeable when the RAM is fully used, as cache misses become more likely, and the processor pipeline is fully taxed.
Think of any open world sandbox game, such as GTA or Red Faction. The immediate world can only be so big - you can only get so many vehicles or characters on screen because you run out of room in memory. Adding more memory isn't going to decrease performance, it's simply going to allow you to put even more into that world. If you have extra RAM and don't use it, there's no penalty either (unless you want to be pedantic and talk about voltage draw or something).
Yes, with extremes there's always a limit - if Sony were to add 1Tb of RAM, the console would cost thousands to build and in that sense it would be "Too much" but I did already mention the cost. People here, however, are saying that the likes of 4Gb is "Too much" without even considering costs or knowing how much more that will cost Sony in the end. The don't seem to realise that since the PS3 was initially launched, we've had several manufacturing advances that severely decreases the cost of such things. 4Gb of RAM today is cheaper than 512MB was in 2006.
See, that's where it's clear you don't really understand what Cache is. Cache is several times faster than main memory _because_ it's small, and is otherwise the same as your main memory. That's why you don't see cache sizes of 512 MB for instance.
To understand why that is, you have to understand that Circuit capacitance is what makes things go slow. The bigger your memory, the bigger your capacitance, the slower your memory.
There's some rather comprehensive notes from the course I completed on this here:
http://www.cs.manchester.ac...