Next Car Game Dev on PS4's RAM Latency Claims And Next Gen Development Costs

"We recently had a chance to speak to Bugbear Entertainment producer Joonas Laakso, who is currently working on Next Car Game (the developer's credits also include the famous FlatOut series)."

[ABeastNamedTariq]

Strangely titled. Dev didn't even say anything about latency really. It was kind if a politician answer.

[gameseveryday]

He was asked what he thinks about the latency issue and the PS4's ram and architecture and he answered that question in the second paragraph. I am pasting it here for others to read:

"There is going to be room to flex your big power PC’s muscles, too, don’t worry – our emphasis on physics uses up pretty much all processing power it can get its hands on. Sorry for giving a more technical answer than that!"

It basically means their engine will use any resources on offer so latency and the amount of power wont be an issue at all.

[black0o]

GPUs hve no problems with latency, and GPU performance is enhanced by the GDDR series compared to the normal memory .. http://www.amd.com/us/produ...

if the ps4 was meant to run a heavy OS like WIndows linx ..etc then the latency 'd hve been a big problem and that's why in the pc world as a system memory we use DDR series and to improve the gaming/steaming/playmovies quality we add GDDR to get better performance from the GPU

this Q was stupid to began with and that's why it got no answer

[Eonjay]

This is so backwards.

'Given that they’re developing so far behind the latest technology, it makes sense there will be no problems when faced with GDDR5 RAM. But that power won’t be limited to the PS4 version alone. “There is going to be room to flex your big power PC’s muscles, too..."'

He is saying that the PS4 Ram is more powerful. The title makes no sense.

[Ezz2013]

@eonjay

my friend
the title is just for hits
that's how gaming media works

[loulou]

gamingbolt. always a title that is fishing for hits. come on rashid tell us, how many hits a week do your blogs get from n4g? and how many hits a week does flamebolt get without n4g? i would say that flamebolt is nothing without n4g..... ban this site

[CuddlyREDRUM]

That is a stretch to say that is about latency...

[nukeitall]

The article also states:

Laakso stated, “We’re developing for mainstream PC hardware, so some 2-3 years behind the curve right now. We are mostly interested in scalability. We have a lot of fans who are telling us to keep it light, and we’re doing our best to comply.”

i.e. they are developing for 2-3 year old hardware meaning it isn't top of the line so I doubt they even have that demanding game to begin with.

This is a very misleading title, so mark the article and site accordingly as a click baiter.

[Death]

@Black0o

That really couldn't be further from the truth. If the PS4 is a giant GPU that doesn't have an OS like windows, then why so much GDDR5? High end GPU's use a couple gigs of it. Not one CPU uses GDDR5 outside the tablet combo CPU/GPU we have in the next consoles. Graphics Double Data Rate memory is for graphics, not CPU's. It will not enhance the CPU side of the coin, it is actually a technical limitation. This is why we are seeing more and more comments about the GPU helping out with CPU calculations.

[Gamer1982]

Exactly title is very misleading it talks about it but not in negative way.

[badz149]

latency claims? who did?

[mewhy32]

LOL you got to love how bone fans are fishing for something negative to talk about on the PS4. LOL
Face it. The PS4 is the most powerful gaming console ever conceived...period. Now go pre-order your 900p bone qte Ryse....oh and smile because you're on camera!!!!!

[Blaze929]

im more interested in this two months minimum part. He's saying, it 'can' be possible to port a PC game to PS4 and Xbox One in two months? Granted everything went right.

[KwietStorm_BLM]

That much has already been proven with PS4. The development time is a fraction of what is was with PS3. Warframe is just one example. They had their game up and running smoothly on PS4 in 3 months, before optimizations.

[Beastforlifenoob]

dont get the xbox one involved in this is a ps4 article

[Blaze929]

@Beastforlifenoob

you clearly didn't even read the article then

[GraveLord]

Because there isn't an issue. Even if there was, these devs are under an NDA.

[corvusmd]

Welcome to the world of being an Xbox One Fan. A misleading title that doesn't say anything bad in the article or even the opposite always turns into a negative about XB1...just showing that no one reads articles...just the headline. Its how the US ended up with it's current set of politicians

[ThanatosDMC]

Yup, mark down this site. It's just asking for hits.

[Beastforlifenoob]

dont bring xbox one into this this is a ps4 article

[heliumhead2030]

Anything with the slightest hint of Sony slander. BANNED. There are xbox click-bait articles all over this side

[Sono421]

umm this won't be banned for "Sony slander" it would be banned for having a misleading title... i'm guessing your one of the people who didn't read the article..

[heliumhead2030]

I dont care what it is. Theres 20 click-bait articles on Xbox daily with crappy articles and irrelevant titles. The political correctness of the Sony b**** boys all over this article is hilarious

[WeaseL]

Title for hits

They asked but there is none.

[black0o]

''Latency Issues'' since when the ps4 had an issue?
didn't most of devs say that they are in luv with that 8 GB of pure GDDR5

and last time i checked all high-end GPU cards has GDDR5

[andrewer]

It's simply not what they are used to. Imagine you used a car for your hole life and then need to use a motorbike. It has great potential thanks to AMD, it's just like they are not simply going to port stuff or something...Because of the differences, it must have some extra work.

[Ezz2013]

you do have a point but
that's not what they are saying though:

'""Given that they’re developing so far behind the latest technology, it makes sense there will be no problems when faced with GDDR5 RAM. But that power won’t be limited to the PS4 version alone. “There is going to be room to flex your big power PC’s muscles, too..."'"

[black0o]

@andrewer
dude the ps4 is machine build to run games not programs -heavy once- and since the GDDR is memory specifically made to improve and enhance the games and any graphical-processes there's no issue with it being the main system memory in a gaming machine

the GDDR become a stander in GPU-cards since 2007 it's not like something new or very exclusive like the eSRAM which require the extra work

so i disagree with u

[Death]

You can't set a Radeon 7990 up on you desk and plug it into your monitor and start playing games. You are 100% correct on GPU's loving graphics memory. What you are completely ignoring is the GPU does not work alone. A PC's CPU is still working when we play games. This is why there is a CPU minimum requirement with games. The video card is just one part of the equation. You will never see a gaming PC with GDDR5 on the main board. You see 8-16 gigs of DDR3 and a couple gigs of GDDR5 on the video card. Latency does need addressed on the PS4 which once again is why we are seeing more devs comment that the GPU can off load some of the tasks the CPU typically does. If the GPU is doing CPU tasks, that will take away from the GPU's peak performance since it doesn't have an infinite amount of resources to pull from.

[andrewer]

I think you guys didn't get it...What I'm trying to say is that GDDR5 was never used for system, cpu memory, only as GPU memory. The integration that AMD made with both is a new thing. And there's where there must be some extra work, in comparison with other systems. I know what's happening here, I just didn't make myself clear lol

[Ezz2013]

like i said
i understand you
and your comment make alot of sense and bring very good point

[black0o]

@andrewer now i get it

@death what u are saying is 100% right if we were talking about PCs, but the ps4 doesn't do any calculation or run analysis program such as nastran ..etc
the ps4 only runs games and some stream apps and thats why the cpu job is to feed the GPU and with the new tech GPGPU were coders take task like physic lighting ..etc and run it on GPU becuz the gpu does it better per frame

as u said the ps4 is build around the GPU power while the cpu is taking a 2nd seat unlike the ps3 where sony pushed really hard on the cpu department and kinda ignored the gpu which didnt help that much

[deecee33]

@blakOo

You beat me to it with that AMD link. GDDR5 is THE choice when building systems where graphics performance is the main objective. The title is click bait. I really shake my head at how some of these sites seem to be reaching for some nonexistent controversy a month from launch.

[Nerdmaster]

The problem is that a game isn't only about graphics. The processor also works like hell, and for that the GDDR5 isn't as good as DDR3. If GDDR5 really was better for everything, do you think high-end PCs wouldn't use it for everything, too?

I don't know what Sony was thinking when it decided to use only GDDR5, but I guess it's for the little "5" in the name, like going back to the old "bit wars" (32-bit, 64-bit...) where bigger numbers meant more powerful machines.

[nypifisel]

It's a made up issue. GPUs aren't even latency sensitive...

[black0o]

u summed it all .. +up

[Volkama]

Title is nonsense (per everything form gamingbolt) but that doesn't mean latency is a no-brainer. Consoles aren't just a graphics card, and games can be CPU intensive as often as gpu.

CPUs look like being the challenge and possibly bottleneck for both consoles to be honest.

[nypifisel]

CPUs is the least important factor when writing pixles on a screen you know.. For dedicated gaming machines the CPU is even less important seeing how it won't be needed for simultaneous background tasks.

[black0o]

@volkama look back at the ps2 arch or dreamcast ..etc most of the consoles were build around powerful silicon-based ship which behave like the GPUs this days except for the ps3 ''the cEll''

when it comes to running a game it all comes down to the GPU department and soon in future when the coders switch more to use GPGPu the CPU may take 3rd seat and thats why both X1/Ps4 didnt get a powerful CPU in my opinion

@nypifisel i agree with ya

[Elit3Nick]

Latency has always been an issue for GDDR5, where GDDR5 has high bandwidth but low latency, DDR3 has lower bandwidth but high latency, this is why gaming pcs use DDR3 ram for CPU and GDDR5 for GPU processing. Although I don't think it'll really be an issue, we'll need to see down the road if it'll have problems.

[lilbroRx]

You got those in reverse.

DDR3 has low latency and GDDR5 has high latency. In fact, GDDR5 is literally just DDR3 with higher bandwidth/latency. Low latency is good. High latency is bad. It makes world a difference in any RAM modules performance.

People downplay this now that Sony is going with all GDDR5 in their next console, and so they want to portray it as perfect "god ram" when its not. GDDR was meant purely for graphics. That is literally what the G is for and why it is only used by GPUs "sometimes"(a lot of GPU's still use DDR3). Its not meant to be used as system RAM and for anything that isn't graphics, it is burden, not a boon.

If GDDR5 was so great, then people would be putting it in motherboards instead of DDR3 and they wouldn't be making DDR4 or any other DDR RAM.

"Awaits disagree hammering for stating inconvenient facts that aren't in favor of Sony on N4G"

[nypifisel]

That's not at all how it works. Latency is not important for GPU tasks. Why PCs use low latency memory is because they're not made to only play games, they're made for mainly multi-tasking, creating a desktop environment for whatever use you might need it for. It that sense low latency is preferred seeing how it's CPU heavy. Games aren't at all. That in mind too the latency of GDDR5 is so negligible that it doesn't even matter.. Stop trying to create issues where there are none just to make MS solution look more preferable cause it's bullshit.

THE ONLY REASON MS went with DDR3 is to be cost effective, it would never be the first choice for a machine created mainly to play games on. Had MS not invested so heavily on Kinect the Xbox One would also use GDDR5 since it's by far the best solution. So just stop it.

[Elit3Nick]

@lilbroRx Ya thanks for the correction, I had the feeling that I made a mistake but I didn't think any more of it.

[Volkama]

Nypifisel a PC is made for whatever you want to use it for. You can build a PC purely for gaming, or any other specialist purpose. There are a huge range of components for every price and audience, and there is definitely an audience for high-end gaming. There are motherboards for gaming, network cards for gaming, even RAM for gaming but GDDR is exclusively used on graphics cards, never on the main board for the CPU.

From the information we've been given about both consoles it looks to me as though the PS4 has a GPU advantage, the One has a CPU advantage. You can downplay the CPU if you like but actually games are about more than "putting pixels on screen".

[nypifisel]

That's an uneducated answer to say the least. The 150mhz increase on the Xbox CPU doesn't even give you 1 more FPS in a game. And I know of enthusiast PC parts, I've build all my PCs by myself, I majored in IT-engineering in college.

And as I said. A computer wasn't designed only to play games, it was designed for a range of different uses. The single most important thing for games is a good GPU with a good amount of FAST GPU MEMORY. CPU is of second rate importance, even more so now when GPGPU is being more and more utilised for things like physics (which was traditionally handled by the CPU). Now why put that on the GPU? Because it's better at it. You're talking out of your ass Volkama. And if you want a good looking game you better know it, putting them pixels on the screen is the just of it.

[RevXM]

The new consoles are a new breed of architecture. Having GPU and CPU on the same die like APU's. I mean, in a modular setup sure latency is a lot more visible as the data have to travel further and through joints of connections. Now it is all very dense, a tight SoC design so Id imagine the latency wont be as bad, also now that the system is all designed around this type of memory.

Only time will tell if latency will turn into any sort of obstacle, but as a console with a light os, tight architectual and graphics heavy design I would imagine it to turn out great.
If launch games are any indication to go by then atleast it is seemingly doing noticeably better than the much comparable XB1.

[Nerdmaster]

@nypifisel
Games aren't CPU heavy at all? Go play BF3 with 64 players and come back to tell us about the load on your CPU. Or any MMO, actually.

[DJMarty]

@black0o - Yes, PS4 don't have 'Latency Issues'.

Reason Sony modified the tech they were using to hide any such latency.

[Tooly]

wheres the issue i dont see it

[SkippyPaccino]

File this under a rock and let's never speak of it again....

[MCTJim]

I just read it and he didn't answer the question at all. Did I miss anything? or is the title misleading of this article?

[Eonjay]

The article goes on to say that the GDDR5 ram is the "latest tech" and that the developers should have no problems using it... weird title. How do you turn a positive quote into a negative title.

[thehitman]

Flame Bait article no where was there a direct question asked and answered regarding "latency issues".

Story Quality-WTF Like this website-No

[MCTJim]

Gotta agree with you there :)

[HammockGames]

Agreed fellas'.

Anyone know how low a web site's rating stars have to go before they are banned/penalized?

Looks like this site is sitting on ~ 1.5 (and falling)

[Volkama]

Same website had a "warhammer dev loves PS4 GDDR!" Article headline, when the content interview said "we haven't started ps4 development yet so I can't answer, but we'll make the best game we can".

If sites can be banned this one should be on the list.

[jhoward585]

Bugbear's collision engine is highly advanced and would need enough processing power to run properly.

So, I think the problem here is whether the PS4's CPU can handle it.

The PS4's RAM isn't the problem.

[gamertk421]

Exactly. He said that the physics of the game is what is really going to push the system, which tells me that the RAM wouldn't be an issue. The mitigating factor, therefore, will be the CPU and how well it will handle the physics of the game. I'm glad someone else saw this, too.

[strickers]

But GPU Compute will handle lots of the physics , wouldn't it? Plus , look at Infamous, physics will not be an issue for PS4. That game has best physics I've seen anywhere.

[PixelNinja]

Would really like to see the profit margin for the PS4, it must be quite slim judging by the specifications.
Hopefully Sony will gain a profit on each console and not have to rely on each owner buying a game to achieve a profit like the Wii U.

[torchic]

I remember Sony saying they will recover lost money on PS4 from the sale of one new game and PS+ subscription. Eurogamer sources said each PS4 accounts for a $60 loss.

but yes, one new game + PS+ subscription and they make a profit

[PixelNinja]

Thanks for the info :)

[speed389]

whoever titled this story is an idiot just trying to get a flame war started.. @$$ hole... yes I read the article and the ps4 dosnt have a latency issue according to the dev, was never even mentioned by the dev... the word "issue“ didnt even come out if the devs mouth

[Pancit_Canton]

The only next car games you really need are Drive Club and Gran Turismo 7

[TechMech2]

What about the crew?

[Hicken]

Like everyone else, I'm not seeing the relevance the title has to the actual article.

And I'm not seeing why the article itself is so awkwardly written.

[1nsomniac]

HAHA, the dev doesn't mention a single word about any console what so ever in fact he only just slightly mentions the PC & that's it.

That is without doubt the worst article I've ever seen!!

[KingDadXVI]

Bugbear Entertainment producer Joonas Laakso said absolutely nothing in this article either positive or negative about GDDR5.

The issue of latency for the PS4 comes in on the CPU side. as the CPU is latency sensitive. For those who think that this just has to do with the operating system you are mistaken. The CPU along with running the OS also basically determines what data the GPU needs and directs the GPU to process that data. The main issue with this is that the GPU can become starved waiting for the CPU which is latency sensitive (the CPU would work much better with DDR3). Sony has put in some work arounds for this but it will be a year or so before we see whether they are adequate. So yes the GPU loves the GDDR5 but the question is can the CPU feed the GPU fast enough with the latency caused by this same GDDR5?

Note that this has nothing to do with the bandwidth, the latency is the time the processor waits for an answer from memory not how much data can flow once the answer is received.

Remember that you cannot say that a game runs great on a PC that has a graphics card with GDDR5 so the PS4 will too. You have to remember the PC also has DDR3 for the CPU which the PS4 does not have.

The real danger is that the PS4 will become CPU bound.

[wishingW3L]

Glad to see some people on this site that actually know what they are talking about. Because I'm telling you, on this site this is rare!

But to me more concise, GPUs are monsters at parallel computation, so they benefits more from higher bandwidth than synchronized memory. Meanwhile CPU can do many kinds of computation at the same time because their cores are fully synchronized, so it benefits more from synchronized memory than memory with higher bandwidth.

---------
And for those that still don't understand. Parallel means that every resource goes toward a common goal. So a huge and demanding workload would be processed much faster and more efficiently by the GPU. Meanwhile more modest but diverse workloads run better on a CPU because they are snappier. And by its cores being synchronized it means that each core can be programmed to do totally different jobs independently.

Of-course there is more to this but if you wanna know more then read a book or something. XD

[sAVAge_bEaST]

wOW,what a poorly worded title.

[jhoward585]

Question*

PS4 has HSA right? wouldn't that help with the latency issue since its easy to program the GPU/CPU for parallel computing??

[ATi_Elite]

Great Question and the answer is YES!

The PS4 has HSA for great parallel computing but more important is that the PS4 uses HSA along side "HUMA" (heterogeneous unified memory architecture) to help eliminate and or lower latency as the CPU/GPu swap data and share a huge memory pool.

The long term goals:

The PS4: is banking on HSA/HUMA to add punch to games a year or two down the road as Devs become fully familiar with the system and start pushing it hard.

right now Devs are just using the GPU to do all the heavy lifting while the CPu just feeds the GPU constant work. so expect PS4 games to really improve even more in a year or two when Devs fully have the CPU/GPU working together almost as one unit through HSA/HUMA.

The Xbox1: is banking on The Cloud and Esram to add punch to games a year or two down the road as Devs become fully familiar with the XB1 and start pushing it hard.

Right now XB1 Devs are just using the CPu/GPU combo to do the heavy lifting but expect XB1 games to improve in a year or two as Devs utilize the cloud to improve Non Latency sensitive visuals and Esram to improve Speed for XB1 games thus freeing up the CPu/Gpu to do other things like higher levels of Latency Sensitive rendering.

[jhoward585]

@ATi_Elite

PS4 is a powerhouse ;)

Thank you for the info BTW...i really appreciate it.

+bubble.

[shahab91]

Thanks for the amazing and unbiased info bro. I like people like you =)

+1 bro well said

[ATi_Elite]

What Latency issue? When did the PS4 get a Latency issue?

OH wait the PS4 DOES NOT have a latency issue.

It's not like the PS4 will be calculating asteroid movements in space in accordance to external gravity from solar flares in real-time and transferring this data to a interactive 3D Data graph and power point presentation while encoding the results to a .vob file.

It's just gonna play Games therefore the 8gb GDDR5 is perfect for it. No Latency issue.

Who exactly sits around and makes up these B.S. titles?

[MCTJim]

Well...When I read it a couple hours ago it said nothing about the PS4, then the PS4 was added, but it still didnt answer the question, now its been edited a 3rd time...3rd time is a charm I guess. I am not too sure about gamingbolt other than bad headlines and false titles for hits...

[slampunk]

Another flame bait article by who...... F-ing Gamingbolt

Don't click the link people......and don't support that crap website!

[mmj]

So a developer who has had nothing to do with PS4 development is being asked about PS4 memory latency? why not just ask Nintendo and do an article on their equally clueless answer?

[Jazz4108]

Dont the n4g community vote in the articles they want on this site? If so why blame gamingbolt just dont approve the article?

[TechMech2]

Ps4 won't have latency issues. Even if it did, it doesn't matter. Games are great, regardless of hardware.

[headblackman]

why is this even up on the Xbox one side of n4g?

[Ulf]

"Bugbear Entertainment producer Joonas Laakso"

Read that CLOSELY. Note the title "producer", which is basically a game industry politician, NOT an engineer. Producers, for the most part, have NO idea what RAM latency is, or how if affects their project, outside of making engineers seem grumpier than normal.

[SynestheticRoar]

You would get more precise information, if you ask the guy who serves hot dogs. lol.