Dev On PS4's 8GB RAM: 'It Didn’t Really Change That Much For Us'

Sony have received a lot of praise for including 8GB of RAM in its latest console, the PlayStation 4.

[Mikelarry]

for some of you that might not read before commenting

"It’s important to note that Adrian is not criticizing Sony’s move to include 8GB RAM but is simply stating his perspective from a development point of view"

As you were

[geddesmond]

As mandf said below, You can make a game that has so many things going on from enemy AI to more enemies on screen, to atmosphere and particle effects, to trees and grass blowing in the wind to great looking water effects excetera.

Then you can have games that don't have half of that so they don't need as much RAM. As a gamer though wouldn't you prefer a world full of immersement. That dev may not need all that RAM for his current project but in 2 or 3 years that could all change.

[XBLSkull]

I think devs planned on having 4 gigs of RAM to work with. When you bump it up to 8 but the OS occupies 3-3.5 gigs, it doesn't really change much.

[Gaming101]

The dev that is commenting didn't have a strenuous game that pushed the hardware, plane and simple. When your game engine is optimized to push the hardware, you'll need all the RAM you can get and then some!
Plus, not all game engines are well designed, and don't take advantage of the hardware efficiently. When some devs claim they are "maxed out" what they're really maxing out is their game engine, not the hardware, which is why you always see a more advanced game that comes out after their so called previous "maxed out game". They updated their engine to take better advantage of what the hardware.

[Christopher]

***I think devs planned on having 4 gigs of RAM to work with. When you bump it up to 8 but the OS occupies 3-3.5 gigs, it doesn't really change much.***

Actually, they expected only 1-2 gigs, but with the bump to 8 they now have twice that much. It was understood that a lot of it would be taken up by OS operations and certain social features that are always running in the background.

[Kurylo3d]

Doesnt seem like you even understand what ram is used for. The enemy ai.. cpu not ram. Atmosphere and particle effects... cpu/gpu.. not ram.. lol... trees and gress blowing... gpu and some cpu... not ram...

Ram does not add effects. Ram is purely there to load in more textures... high res textures.. and model geometry.. which of course the gpu needs to be able to handle the geometry.

Ram is a lot less important then u think.

[andibandit]

@gaming101

"When some devs claim they are "maxed out" what they're really maxing out is their game engine, not the hardware,"

what??

so when is the hardware running at max then?

[geddesmond]

@Kurylo3d

Really so whats going to read all that simultaneous data together at once huh? Your the expert please explain.

[Silly gameAr]

You two get off of your high horses. Gamingbolt is a terrible site that pushes nothing but flamebait and anyone that's been around should know that.

[Mikelarry]

Get of my high horse what are you on about, the title was a clickbait so I did my fellow gamers a favour by reading article and extracting info that I thought would be helpful not to fall for the obvious clckbait title

[Silly gameAr]

I apologize for being so rude. I guess I took your comment the wrong way. It's been a trying few days around here.

[wsoutlaw87]

gamingbolt is garbage though

[Mikelarry]

no worries fellow gamer, i totally understand where you are coming from with all the articles about gamergate and the kotaku scandal its been a really trying times for us gamers.

[Why o why]

Gracious apology accepted graciously

Nice

Cheers for the extraction

[Mkai28]

Well people can start by not approving these articles, promotion of flame bait resides here too..

[SilentNegotiator]

Not sure why you're getting disagrees; GamingBolt/Rashid tried to make it sound like this article was about contrary words to praise from other developers (by mentioning praise in the description), when it's actually just because they're creating an undemanding game.

Your comment is at least somewhat of a warning against potential clicks.

[Mikelarry]

I know right I thought I was doing my fellow gamers a favour to not fall for the obvious clickbait but hey no good deed

[SilentNegotiator]

I think it's just because of the immediate following reply. People tend to transfer intent of an agreeing, but trolling, comment to the person being replied to.

[FanboyKilla]

I read article. Waste of 1min of my life. It doesnt even say anything worth reading. But ps fans come to defend and makes this the hottest news on n4g. And it isnt news at all.

Im baffled that you guys take any negative ps news as a lie and bs. But when they post negative articles on xone sony fans are the first to say yup. They meet in the comment section to give each other high fives and bash xone. Sad really. It isnt a negative article at all. Its just a stupid one. You interview a guy, and thats the most intresting thing he says? We could have came to that conclusion ourselves. Thanks captain obvious.

[SilentNegotiator]

So you were baited into a click...but have to blame a specific type of fanboy for this article becoming popular?

[3-4-5]

Scaled accordingly, 8GB was the set amount it was going to be, if you Actually look at history and the facts.

[Mithan]

We should flame the Developer anyways!

[digitalwolf]

They don't make particularly high end games so thats expected.

only HUGE games would see any major development change.

[Am-No-Hero]

“It didn’t really change that much for us,”

Well its a console not a pc ! , it really made differences for devs from PS3 to PS4 and no one will argue on that

[ThunderPulse]

Most Devs love the PS4's power.

[Syntax-Error]

No they don't, most gamers love the PS4's power. I am content with the technology we have today. I see no reason for new console in 10 years. What more do we need?

[RegorL]

@ Syntax-Error, 640kB is more than enough!

http://en.wikiquote.org/wik...

[ABizzel1]

It's not even that. Among the sleep just isn't a demanding game to begin with, and the PS4's hardware is more than capable of handling it.

The RAM in the PS4 is going to be used to run games, but also textures, and AtS doesn't have the highest quality textures so no there shouldn't be a need for 8GB of GDDR5 (4 - 5GB for games), for a game that's mean to run on:

HD 5570 < HD 7850+ (PS4)
4GB DDR3 < 8GB GDDR5 / 4 - 5GB for games (PS4)

The PS4 and XBO for the matter are well above the system recommendations for AtS.

The only flamebait thing here is the headline from gamingbolt.

[ABizzel1]

And technically the Wii U should be able to run the game as well, but in that case RAM may very well become a problem.

[The_KELRaTH]

The problem with articles like this is it's so open ended. You create a game with small environments, simple textures etc you won't need anything like as much ram as a large environment game like Battlefield, Farcry, aiming for photo realistic textures etc etc

[windblowsagain]

Indie Dev. Not really surprising.

[Eonjay]

Not all indies are created equal. For example, you have Velocity x2 which runs identical on PS4 and Vita. Obviously, a bunch of memory isn't necessary. They you look at Gone to the Rapture on CyeEngine and I am willing to bet they see things differently.

Also this is really a good thing because they are comparing it to PC development. Translating from PC to PS4 didn't really make a difference in terms of memory.

[LightningMokey]

Same must apply to Witcher 3 Sine CD Projekt red are indie devs as well.

[MadLad]

It's hilarious you are getting disagrees for telling people that CD Projekt Red is an indie developer.

"GUYS! LET'S DISAGREE WITH FACTS!"

Just another day on N4G . . .

[Death]

"indie" and Independant are not the same thing. "indie" and "homebrew" are much more alike. An "indie" studio is an incredibly small studio consisting of a very small group and sometimes single person with a very small budget. A studio like CD Projekt Red is an independant or third party studio that is funded by a larger corportation and/or publisher. The budget for the Witcher 3 is 40 million. $15 for development and $25 million for marketing. They are also being published which isn't something an "indie" studio has.

[WeAreLegion]

"Indie" is just short for "independent".

[Death]

Capcom, Square, EA, Activision, Ubisoft, Rockstar and Sega are all independant or third party developers. Does this qualify them as "indies"?

Indie devs are small in budget and size. They don't have the luxury of publishers backing their work. They are the homebrew developers getting their games distributed without a publisher which is something previously not possible on such a large scale. XNA last gen was an outlet for homebrew developers to get their games released.

Some established third party developers are taking advantage of Sony and Microsofts new policies on indie gaming. Oddworld being one of them. Instead of using a publisher like they have in the past, they are publishing under indie guidelines to reduce costs to publishers and retain more revenue. They are not advancing gaming in any way, they are simply maximizing profit by reducing costs. It's a huge step back for gaming. Cliff's new venture is doing the same. It's a triple A developer creating budget friendly games to mazimize profit.

[LightningMokey]

Those are publishers not developers. Oddworld would be an indie. Dev I missed R* they would also be indie.

[Death]

Those are not publishers. They are third party developers with some having the ability to self publish. Dead Rising 3 is developed by Capcom and published by Microsoft. Sega has the ability to self publish, but also partners with console manufacturers and are published by Microsoft and Nintendo depending on the game. Bungie and Insomniac are also third party or independant developers that rely on publishers to fund their work. Still not "indie".

[MeliMel]

@Death, lol... that was to funny.. so is they're indies within a indie company? You listed some really big PUBLISHERS there. Who each happen to have a stable of different developers. So yeah your notion that there indie doesnt hold up.

Also, I believe Rockstar is owned by Take Two Interactive.

[user5669510]

People state fact fan boys try to twist them so it be in Sony favor. Those are publishers. All Witcher games have been self funded. It maybe change since on consoles this time for only the console version still indie devs.

[Death]

This isn't rocket science gang.

First off, CD Project Red is a developer that is owned by their parent company cdp.pl which is also a publisher in Poland. Games created for the Polish market are published by the parent company. Outside of Poland cdp.pl needs to partner with a larger publishing company to get their games distributed. The original Witcher was published by Atari. The sequel published by Atari and Namco and Witcher 3 by Warner and Namco. It is also being done on a $40 million dollar budget. According to their website they are home to "230 game making professionals". http://en.cdprojektred.com/...

They are third party devs, not "indies".

It's absurd that so many choose to believe "indies" that are very small, have limited resources, and close to no budget since they are not funded by a publisher are the same as a third party.

p.s. those pretty big publishers are third party developers that have the ability to self publish. Not all have the ability to self publish, but it doesn't change the fact they are third parties. Smaller third parties and even larger ones like Bungie need the help of larger development houses that can also act as publishers. If you go to each companies website you can see for yourself that companies such as EA and Ubi are developers and publishers.

[98xpresent]

I don't get your comment

[Imalwaysright]

"Capcom, Square, EA, Activision, Ubisoft, Rockstar and Sega are"... all publishers with many studios "chained" to their demands, money and time constraints. An indie studio is a studio that uses their own resources and self-publishes their games.

Edit: made some research and TW3 is being published by Warner Bros, Interactive so Death is right. I thought that TW3 was an indie game as well but it isn't.

[Eonjay]

It depends on the type of title the developer is working on. If your title isn't a memory hungry beast, then memory wont make a difference. On the other side of that spectrum, some developers are already complaining that it wont be enough by the end of the generation. Other developers are insisting that its liberating. Most modern smartphones have more memory than the PS3 had.

[nX]

The Last Of Us was made with 256mb graphics memory, people who can't make a great game with 8gb (or rather 5,5gb) should better stay silent instead of complaining about memory.

[endzeitkind]

because they never needed it. that mean, that this dev didnt bring the ps4 on his knees. there is so much to come for the ps4 players... none of those indie devs used this amount of ram yet but in future it will for sure.

[hkgamer]

its indie devs, they are most likely not going to push too much. i mean they need to release on to as many pc gamers as possible and 4gb is plenty enough.

its probably a safe to say that if your pc can run half life2 on max settings at 60+ fps then ypu should be able to run most indie games.

[user5669510]

No he mean they been using gddr5 so is not something that's revolutionary and new because it been out for the longest. Take a look the forest, star citizen, etc. They don't use don't use that much memory but let not discredit their hard work cause even these so called non indie devs can't compare. Would name more but forgot the name of the game Kingdom something

[zsquaresoff]

Doesn't xbone also has 8gb of ram? So why only ask about Ps4's?

[LightningMokey]

Different types of Ram PS4 is twice as fast.

[bumnut]

But has higher latency

[ashcroft]

Twice as fast? I love how fanboys state things without any proof.

GDDR5 which is what the PS4 is based on uses graphics memory to which then translates it to the cpu and tells it to become system memory.

GDDR5 is faster but there is an issue with latency. It can carry large information to the cpu but it takes more time to make the request thus increasing latency and affecting and limiting performance.

DDR3 however is system memory and virtually has no latency and is consistent.

To make this comment idiot proof. They're identical, the only difference is Sony and MS switched places, PS4 is easier to develop making it easier to work on and have it perform better, while Xbone is harder to develop for.

When PS3 had this issue, people were defending it saying good things take time to develop for. Now it's Xbox is weak and can't keep up with the ps4.

N4G where drop outs think they know more about tech then people in the IT industry.

[Death]

@Ash,

There are always two sides to an argument. The hardcore fans simply switch their position to the side that they believe proves their point. Last gen sales didn't matter since no one "plays sales". This gen the PS4 is clearly better since sales reflect it. You can't win an a debate where someone doesn't actually believe what they say.

With that said, you are absolutely right as far as memory goes. In a traditional PC setup DDR is needed for CPU calculations. It's not uncommon to see 16gigs or more DDR3 and now DDR4 in a PC. Highend GPU's will feature 4 gigs of GDDR5 since graphics need less. APU's are unique in the way they combine CPU and GPU functions useing a single pool of memory. The PS4 is more capable of "pure" gaming, but the trade off is the console itself will be less able to perform multi tasking. The Xbox One with it's more complex memory setup offers more functionality like the ability to snap processes, but the gaming side will is more complicated to get the same results as the PS4. You can say the PS4 is a gaming console first or you can say it has less functions. It all depends on what supports your arguement. Transitioning from the PS3 to PS4 almost takes a step backwards as far as features and functions go.

[LightningMokey]

Point was overall it still the better ram. I wasnt knocking at Microsoft. Calm down bro.

[BiggerBoss]

The dev is developing this game for PC and Ps4, not Xbox one. So I'd say that's why.

[Yodagamer]

They arent working on Xbox one so asking them about the Xbox 1 would be pointless.

[Funantic1]

Both the X1 and PS4 only slightly improved power over last gen. Some of the games on PS4/X1 look like last gen. I haven't seen a game yet that impressed me visually on either newer systems.

[cbuc1125]

@Funantic1...Well at least 15 million people have, so i guess that makes you special.

[Spotie]

You prove time and time again that you're clueless.

There aren't a whole lot of titles out yet that aren't cross generation, so you wouldn't see much difference there. However, if you think the likes of Killzone was graphically possible on last gen hardware, you need your head checked.

[kevnb]

Even cross gen games are way better on ps4, destiny is a prime example.

[hkgamer]

i think its safe to say that 8gb would be plenty of enough ram for indie developers, 4gb maybe a struggle though if they come close.

[Psychotica]

If it doesn't make that much difference doesn't that just mean that your game doesn't require much? I doubled the RAM in my PC and it really had no effect on how Notepad performed or any other minor application.

[Forn]

It's going to be slow news me thinks leading up to TGS.

[Rainbowcookie]

I was going to say the same , you beat me to it. I also wanted to say "it's quiet... too quiet , but man people seem to jump 0on every post now and argue about the smallest things. Me i'm just waiting for the games man :)

[Forn]

Indeed :-)

[Dannylew]

Probably the developer is Crytek hahahaha... the most expensive and overrated developer ever.

[ultralow]

8gigs bullshit again its 4.5gigs and 5gigs and 1gig........ ps4,xbone,wii u....numbers in order

[Rainbowcookie]

will those number increase in the future if they "release ram by sorting out the OS? I was wondering. Did it happen past generations ?

[kingdom18]

How does going from 512MBs to 8(4.5)GBs not make much of a difference?

[Dark_Overlord]

I can only think of 1 instance, if you made a game that was using for example, say 300MB of RAM max, then 8GB's wouldn't make any difference at all. The second you started exceeding the original 512MB, then 8GB's would make a difference :)

[DafunkyRebel]

Whaaa? PS3 had 512MB of Ram and now PS4 has 8GBs(which is about 4.5GB right now but that could change) of Ram so I doubt it isn't that much of a change.

[stormplyr]

I love how you can tell which articles are from Gaming Bolt just by reading the title.

[mediate-this]

I don't take the title as flame bait, it's kind of black b white, it didn't change much for us, and if you read the article he explains. I don't that is wrong in anyway

[WheatBread]

Most games only use about 1-2gb of ram.

[Christopher]

Yeah, but by having the 8GB it allows Sony to keep their OS going at full speed (no delays in switching back and forth), allows the share options (video record last however many minutes in real time constantly), and other things without taking away the RAM of the developers. And, some developers are pushing the limits of the RAM as they so far have, in general, not focused on optimizing memory management so much as getting games to run at specific resolutions and fps without other issues. In a year you will see a lot more memory management done to enable them to keep pushing for better results in the games.

[ziggurcat]

you'll probably also start seeing sony freeing up memory used by the OS for devs as time goes by as well.

[kingduqc]

Well specially since ps4 cpu and gpu are not fast enough to use 8gb...

[OUROSMAG]

swing and a miss.

[Christopher]

That makes no sense whatsoever. You store data in RAM and you can store as much as you want there up to its limit. Speed of processing has nothing to do with how much can be stored in RAM.

[kingduqc]

Video memory(vram) and system memory are combined on the ps4. The gpu need an amount X of vram space to draw on a framebufer. The ps4 gpu will not be fast enough(computing the frames) to draw on this framebufer. Basically even with all the memory in the world the performance won't really improve.

The bottleneck in the system isn't the memory, it's the gpu and cpu. Developers have 5.5gb of memory available to them, considering the split should be something like 3gb to the gpu and 1.5gb to the cpu there is no way in hell a 7850 can saturate and trully use all of it. It won't be fast enough. Even 780ti that are 2-3 fold faster are not yet bottlenecked by 3gb in 99% of the games even in 4k.

[Christopher]

This is in response to your comment #19.2.1

Again, the how fast something can or can't process something has nothing to do with how much RAM you have. RAM is used to store data to be processed. With more RAM, you can store more data that can be processed (or not and just removed).

Data can be stored in bulk in RAM and not needed for processing. Furthermore, you can store excess data in RAM if there is more RAM but only use portions of it for processing. You can bet that most first-year titles on the PS4 and XBO are using a lot more RAM than they need to right now. It's inefficient and more a sign of meeting specific requirements to meet specific benchmarks, but it is far from optimized as far as putting only in what you need to get out what you need and then clearing it from memory.

But, this developer doesn't have that issue with large data sets or textures to be stored. It's not that the RAM isn't useful for others who need it to hold such large data elements, it's only that it wasn't something they worried about since their game didn't utilize much RAM to begin with.

It has absolutely nothing to do with processing or about how much could or couldn't be stored in RAM and used at once, it's merely about how much RAM they need to use for their specific game at this time.

There are certainly going to be a lot of games that will utilize the majority, if not almost all, of the 4.5GB of RAM. An example is KZ:SF, which stores frames in memory to then merge them in their hybrid 1080p online gameplay. If they had half the memory, I'm certain the multiplayer would have not have made it to 1080p actual frames and instead would have been pushed down to 900p. But, that extra RAM, that extra storage space, gave them what they needed to keep a 1080p frame by frame, even if it was software altered to be 1/2 of the previous frame and 1/2 of the current frame melded together.

[Jack_Reacher]

So im assuming that every pc forum member is going to comment here on how more ram is better so this devs does not know what he is talking about.

Im sure in time devs will want to get every bit of the machine they can

[madjedi]

Given how badly the lack of ram held back ps3 and 360 games last gen, you don't need to be a pc gamer to know that it's better to have an abundance of ram than a shortage.

Willing to bet any developer making a open world\sandbox games, will be saying something quite different regardless of console.

[Macdaddy71]

As Smart as Sony n Ms is they both really dumb up there systems, they both knew what it took to get 1080p @ 60fp way before the consoles was even built!!!! They pay millions to research this crap, n they both still F****k pooch on this one

[Maxor]

The PS4 OS and hardware totally gimped the 8 GB to be a none factor. If a large portion of the RAM isn't locked up and reserved for the totally useless task of game recording, then we might have something. Apparently some idiot at Sony thought this feature would be super important to the "social gaming console". But 1080p and 60 FPS is not.

[masterfox]

PS4 was made from developers, Sony create the design in how to achieve those developer request and the same time cheking how to make the console affordable.

[one2OMG]

LOLcano! Who gives a $hit?!