Isn't 8GBs of RAM a bit excessive?

[QUOTE="Teufelhuhn"]

There is of course a limit on how much a game can read and write to memory during a frame which is determined by the bandwidth and other hardware characterstics, but even if you're bottlenecked by bandwidth it's still better to have more memory since you can keep more textures/meshes/AI/physics objects/whatever in memory at any given time without having to unload them.

Strakha

Yes and that is exaclty what I was trying to demonstrate and that's why whether it's a 256MB 7800 vs 512MB 7800 or 1.5GB 580 vs 3GB 580 you aren't going to see much a perfromance boost by giving it more RAM because card developer always err on the side of caution when it comes to RAM.

[QUOTE="Teufelhuhn"]

There is of course a limit on how much a game can read and write to memory during a frame which is determined by the bandwidth and other hardware characterstics, but even if you're bottlenecked by bandwidth it's still better to have more memory since you can keep more textures/meshes/AI/physics objects/whatever in memory at any given time without having to unload them.

Strakha

Yes and that is exaclty what I was trying to demonstrate and that's why whether it's a 256MB 7800 vs 512MB 7800 or 1.5GB 580 vs 3GB 580 you aren't going to see much a perfromance boost by giving it more RAM because card developer always err on the side of caution when it comes to RAM.

I hope pc gets gddr5 ram soon. Cant wait to upgrade.

[QUOTE="ActicEdge"]

[QUOTE="Wiimotefan"]

:lol:

Wiimotefan

Blatantly stolenn from another user but it was too good to not be used again.

No shame in that, I saved the image as soon as I saw it.  :P

Same. I know you're a dev so you actually have a better grasp on the benefit of more RAM. I just find it funny when people with no idea of how hardware works as a unit try to talk like they have a clue.

[QUOTE="Strakha"]

[QUOTE="Teufelhuhn"]

There is of course a limit on how much a game can read and write to memory during a frame which is determined by the bandwidth and other hardware characterstics, but even if you're bottlenecked by bandwidth it's still better to have more memory since you can keep more textures/meshes/AI/physics objects/whatever in memory at any given time without having to unload them.

Teufelhuhn

Yes and that is exaclty what I was trying to demonstrate and that's why whether it's a 256MB 7800 vs 512MB 7800 or 1.5GB 580 vs 3GB 580 you aren't going to see much a perfromance boost by giving it more RAM because card developer always err on the side of caution when it comes to RAM.

Yes and there is only so much memory a card can use effectively based on it's hardware. When it hits it's bandwidth limit that's it. Doesn't matter if it has 1.5GB of RAM or 800GB if it can reach peek permormance or near to it with 1.5GB you aren't going to gain anything by having extra RAM.

[QUOTE="Strakha"]

Benchmarks of 1.5GB 580 vs 3GB 580. It's very rare for a card manufacturer to put less RAM in a card than it can use effectively. The PS3's RSX was based on the GeForce 7800 which at the time came in 256MB (the same amount of RAM it had in the PS3) and 512MB versions. In benchmarks the version with more RAM will only perform a few FPS better as is the case with the 580 which is similar in floating point operations to the card in the PS4. Considering this and the benchmarks below I believe about 1.5GB is about right for a card of the performance of the one in the PS4 and 6.5GB for OS and system RAM seems excessive. The difference is less than 3 FPS when the card is pushed to the point when it is only performing just above what is considered a playable frame rate of 30 FPS.

 

Teufelhuhn

Your logic here doesn't really make sense. PC games have to target a wide variety of hardware, so the developers will come up with a fixed budget based on common hardware and that budget will determine exactly how much memory is consumed by the game. Then when you run the game you might have way too much memory or not enough memory, depending on how recent and expensive your video card is. If you have enough memory then the GPU runs normally, and if you don't your performance rapidly degrades since the driver will attempt to page data in and out of video memory during a frame. If you have way more than enough memory for a game there's no "bonus", it performs exactly the same as if you had exactly enough memory. On consoles a developer knows exactly how much memory will be available on that platform, so there's no chance of "using too much" or "not using enough"...they will simply use all of it. There is of course a limit on how much a game can read and write to memory during a frame which is determined by the bandwidth and other hardware characterstics, but even if you're bottlenecked by bandwidth it's still better to have more memory since you can keep more textures/meshes/AI/physics objects/whatever in memory at any given time without having to unload them.

Thanks for this post, this is exactly what I wanted to reply to Strakha and you summed it up pretty well. I feel like we still cant fully appreciate what the excessive amount of RAM can do for devs when they will be able to design games with it in mind.

[QUOTE="Teufelhuhn"]

[QUOTE="Strakha"]

Yes and that is exaclty what I was trying to demonstrate and that's why whether it's a 256MB 7800 vs 512MB 7800 or 1.5GB 580 vs 3GB 580 you aren't going to see much a perfromance boost by giving it more RAM because card developer always err on the side of caution when it comes to RAM.

Strakha

Yes and there is only so much memory a card can use effectively based on it's hardware. When it hits it's bandwidth limit that's it. Doesn't matter if it has 1.5GB of RAM or 800GB if it can reach peek permormance or near to it with 1.5GB you aren't going to gain anything by having extra RAM.

ram isnt just for graphics

its also for map size, objects on screen, physics and background process

like someone else said never underestimate the need for ram more ram = faster system overall as well

keep in mind everythign the system does has to be loaded to ram then fetched from ram
it is more efficent and effective to have stuff sitting in ram then having to run through ram to see if the process exist if it does is there enough space >load process to ram > fetch from ram? if it doesnt ? then clear space >load to ram> fetch from ram

[QUOTE="Wiimotefan"]

[QUOTE="ActicEdge"]

Blatantly stolenn from another user but it was too good to not be used again.

ActicEdge

No shame in that, I saved the image as soon as I saw it.  :P

Same. I know you're a dev so you actually have a better grasp on the benefit of more RAM. I just find it funny when people with no idea of how hardware works as a unit try to talk like they have a clue.

Yeah, that's the nature of System Wars.  Everyone is an expert about everything by default lol.

And truth be told, I'm no expert myself.  I produce assets based on the budget allowed by an art director, or senior artist.  They give me a maximum triangle count/ texture resolution / amount of maps I'm allowed to work with and I generate the best assets I can based on those limitations.  I may have a better understanding of how it all comes together than a lot of the users on this board, but at the end of the day I'm certainly no authority on the subject.

[QUOTE="Teufelhuhn"]

[QUOTE="Strakha"]

Yes and that is exaclty what I was trying to demonstrate and that's why whether it's a 256MB 7800 vs 512MB 7800 or 1.5GB 580 vs 3GB 580 you aren't going to see much a perfromance boost by giving it more RAM because card developer always err on the side of caution when it comes to RAM.

Strakha

Yes and there is only so much memory a card can use effectively based on it's hardware. When it hits it's bandwidth limit that's it. Doesn't matter if it has 1.5GB of RAM or 800GB if it can reach peek permormance or near to it with 1.5GB you aren't going to gain anything by having extra RAM.

Instant resume game, streaming stuff seamlessly and all that. I think some of the memory is used for things they showed at the presentation.

Developers seem to think it will be useful, self appointed system wars 'experts' disagree.JamDev

Armchair developers at their finest.

We should come up with a fantasy developers league.

Either way your benchmark really has nothing to do with this...that was just demonstrating what happens on PC games when you don't have enough memory on your video card.

Teufelhuhn

Actually it was demonstrating what happens when you already have enough and the small performance increase you get by adding more.

Developers seem to think it will be useful, self appointed system wars 'experts' disagree.JamDev

[QUOTE="ActicEdge"]

[QUOTE="Wiimotefan"]

No shame in that, I saved the image as soon as I saw it.  :P

Wiimotefan

Same. I know you're a dev so you actually have a better grasp on the benefit of more RAM. I just find it funny when people with no idea of how hardware works as a unit try to talk like they have a clue.

Yeah, that's the nature of System Wars.  Everyone is an expert about everything by default lol.

And truth be told, I'm no expert myself.  I produce assets based on the budget allowed by an art director, or senior artist.  They give me a maximum triangle count/ texture resolution / amount of maps I'm allowed to work with and I generate the best assets I can based on those limitations.  I may have a better understanding of how it all comes together than a lot of the users on this board, but at the end of the day I'm certainly no authority on the subject.

Honesty is a good thing :P

I like to stay away from hardware debates. I don't know anything about that topic :P

Developers seem to think it will be useful, self appointed system wars 'experts' disagree.JamDev

Until the 22nd developers were working on dev kits with 4GB of RAM. Not even 1st party Sony developer knew about the increase in RAM and most hardware changes this late aren't done purely to increase performance. Sure 8GB is better and will increase it's performance slightly but there is no way they were planning on 8GB before they heard the Xbox would have that and the marketing people decided they couldn't have a number of importance in the specs smaller than the compeition. This is very common in consoles as consumers often focus on numbers with little relevance to processing power when other factors aren't taken into consideration. Nintendo was the first to use this kind of marketing well with the 64-bit N64. It was a lot more powerful than the PS1 but not because it's processor was 64-bit.

[QUOTE="Wiimotefan"]

[QUOTE="ActicEdge"]

Same. I know you're a dev so you actually have a better grasp on the benefit of more RAM. I just find it funny when people with no idea of how hardware works as a unit try to talk like they have a clue.

ActicEdge

Yeah, that's the nature of System Wars.  Everyone is an expert about everything by default lol.

And truth be told, I'm no expert myself.  I produce assets based on the budget allowed by an art director, or senior artist.  They give me a maximum triangle count/ texture resolution / amount of maps I'm allowed to work with and I generate the best assets I can based on those limitations.  I may have a better understanding of how it all comes together than a lot of the users on this board, but at the end of the day I'm certainly no authority on the subject.

Honesty is a good thing :P

I like to stay away from hardware debates. I don't know anything about that topic :P

Yeah, me too.  I know just enough to discuss some on-the-surface topics, but I know when I'm in too deep and I don't like looking foolish.  :P

If ya don't know, ya don't know.  

I am not so sure, the last gen REALLY suffered early in its lifespan due to the RAM included, and back then people considered that "a good amount"

Atleast Sony is aiming high this time, when it comes to RAM. I consider it a really good idea.

RAM is great for super fast loading of high res textures, which leads to much less pop in and faster load times overall. Frame rate however is decided by the TFLOPS of the GPU.

Who can really say what will be needed in the future, what i can say is that it's better to have too much then not enough.

I hope pc gets gddr5 ram soon. Cant wait to upgrade.

nihonking

They already do, have done for years atleast as far as the GPUs are concerned. Next for system RAM will be DDR4 this year.

Wouldn't 4GBs be good enough? I'd imagine the PS4 would run into bottlenecking issues that would prevent it from being able to effectively utilize all of that RAM, when the rest of the PS4's specs are mid-range at best. It would be like purchasing a 680 GTX when your CPU only runs at 3.0GHz.

nekrothing

You can utilize effectively any ammount of RAM, more ram is always better

Also this is fast and unified ram, removing all PC bottlenecks, it is a marvel and PC will never match it

[QUOTE="nihonking"]

I hope pc gets gddr5 ram soon. Cant wait to upgrade.

andmcq

They already do, have done for years atleast as far as the GPUs are concerned. Next for system RAM will be DDR4 this year.

PC is far behind, does not use unified ram and its main ram is slow

PS4 is the future, why do you think PS4 games look 10 generations better than Crysis 3 maxed ?

The problem is that the graphics are shown only in exlusives, since PC is holding PS4 multipltform games graphics way back

I'm not an expert, but i'm sure that RAM is never enough.

[QUOTE="ActionRemix"]

It has to share the RAM with the GPU and it's going to be doing video compression in the background among other tasks.

ShadowriverUB

Wouldn't 4GBs be good enough? I'd imagine the PS4 would run into bottlenecking issues that would prevent it from being able to effectively utilize all of that RAM, when the rest of the PS4's specs are mid-range at best. It would be like purchasing a 680 GTX when your CPU only runs at 3.0GHz.

nekrothing

[QUOTE="nekrothing"]

Wouldn't 4GBs be good enough? I'd imagine the PS4 would run into bottlenecking issues that would prevent it from being able to effectively utilize all of that RAM, when the rest of the PS4's specs are mid-range at best. It would be like purchasing a 680 GTX when your CPU only runs at 3.0GHz.

loosingENDS

You can utilize effectively any ammount of RAM, more ram is always better

Also this is fast and unified ram, removing all PC bottlenecks, it is a marvel and PC will never match it

Cant believe I would eventually end up in the same boat with you, mate. Lets go get 'em!

for sh!tty consoles it isn't...is a closed box that needs to share the ram with rest of the system..CPU,GPU etc...so it needs as much RAM as possible but it won't make magic either...PC in the other hand can go up to 48GB of dedicated RAM just for the system and them you have your GPU with 2,3 and 6gig dedicated just for the GPU,that alone is a massive step over consoles... lets not forget superior CPU and GPU's.Tessellation

I'm not an expert, but i'm sure that RAM is never enough.

PAL360

Yeah, I'm glad they're going with 8gb.  It may seem like overkill now, but better to have room to breathe than being constantly constrained.  At least we know ram wont be the bottleneck this time around.

[QUOTE="nekrothing"]

Wouldn't 4GBs be good enough? I'd imagine the PS4 would run into bottlenecking issues that would prevent it from being able to effectively utilize all of that RAM, when the rest of the PS4's specs are mid-range at best. It would be like purchasing a 680 GTX when your CPU only runs at 3.0GHz.

loosingENDS

You can utilize effectively any ammount of RAM, more ram is always better

Also this is fast and unified ram, removing all PC bottlenecks, it is a marvel and PC will never match it

 It's so weird seeing you sided with the cows...

RAM is great for super fast loading of high res textures, which leads to much less pop in and faster load times overall. Frame rate however is decided by the TFLOPS of the GPU.

dream431ca

I'm not an expert, but i'm sure that RAM is never enough.

PAL360

48GB of what slow ass DDR3.?tormentos

For real?  DDR3 is now obsolete over night?  Come on man.

Anyways, GPUs have been using DDR5 for years now.

And no, I'm not a hermit, I'm a console guy and thats were 90% + of my games are played.

But this is just getting ridiculous.  Consoles will never reach PC potential in hardware.  They're not supposed to.  The PS4 is already outdated, who gives a f*ck, it still sounds like an amazing console and with developers squeezing every bit out of the standard hardware we will see some excellent looking games.

and faster load times overall

dream431ca

Actually a SSD would give a much bigger boost to loading time. 

RAM is not excessive. The more unique objects you have on screen, the bigger the world is, more variety of textures the more RAM it will take. A developer can make use of 4GB, 8GB or even 16GB if he wants too. 

RAM is awesome for multitasking too which PS4 seams to offer a lot with its other services. The more you can avoid writting/reading on the disk the faster it is going to be. Especially when it is a HDD and not a SSD.

Yeah, I'm glad they're going with 8gb. It may seem like overkill now, but better to have room to breathe than being constantly constrained. At least we know ram wont be the bottleneck this time around.

Wiimotefan

I'm glad they are going with 8GB instead of 4GB too.

It may sound alot now, but i'm sure in 4 or 5 years, devs will be complaining about lack of it. It happens every gen.

The PS4 is already outdated, who gives a f*ck, it still sounds like an amazing console and with developers squeezing every bit out of the standard hardware we will see some excellent looking games.

sandbox3d

OBJECTION: The fact that you can build a top of the line expensive PC that is way more powerful than PS4 doesnt make it outdated. We can expect that PS4 games will be up there on par with the best looking PC games played on the best hardware for some time.

Other than that I approve your attitude.

OBJECTION: The fact that you can build a top of the line expensive PC that is way more powerful than PS4 doesnt make it outdated. We can expect that PS4 games will be up there on par with the best looking PC games played on the best hardware for some time.

Other than that I approve your attitude.

BlbecekBobecek

Looking at it strictly from a hardware perspective, it is.

But yes, in real world application, PS4 games will be able to hold their own for some time.  On one side, PC games wont be developed to take full advantage of the craziest builds.  Then you have well funded console devs pulling everything they can out of a standardized machine.  The games will be in the same ball park for a while.  Immediately, higher end builds will pull ahead in resolution and performance, but truly noticeable differences likely wont arise until years into the PS4s life.

[QUOTE="Tessellation"]for sh!tty consoles it isn't...is a closed box that needs to share the ram with rest of the system..CPU,GPU etc...so it needs as much RAM as possible but it won't make magic either...PC in the other hand can go up to 48GB of dedicated RAM just for the system and them you have your GPU with 2,3 and 6gig dedicated just for the GPU,that alone is a massive step over consoles... lets not forget superior CPU and GPU's.tormentos

So how can games that are using pc mid range tech own high end pc's??

Keep in mind these games will likely be ported to pc with improved graphics.

[QUOTE="Strakha"]

[QUOTE="Teufelhuhn"]

There is of course a limit on how much a game can read and write to memory during a frame which is determined by the bandwidth and other hardware characterstics, but even if you're bottlenecked by bandwidth it's still better to have more memory since you can keep more textures/meshes/AI/physics objects/whatever in memory at any given time without having to unload them.

Teufelhuhn

Yes and that is exaclty what I was trying to demonstrate and that's why whether it's a 256MB 7800 vs 512MB 7800 or 1.5GB 580 vs 3GB 580 you aren't going to see much a perfromance boost by giving it more RAM because card developer always err on the side of caution when it comes to RAM.

8 gb isnt excessive. It will be used and more is better. Ram have been the number one complain since the PS1 era with the Capcom 2d games running better on the saturn because Saturn hade more ram. Saturn hade faster load times and more fluid animations in the Streetfighter Vs X men games and all the other 2d fighters even streetfighter alpha hade cutdowns in animation.

Dreamcast hade better textures than ps2 because of only 4MB Vram in the ps2 vs 8MB vram on the much weaker Dreamcast. Still dreamcast pulled higherres and more colourfull textures even with a lower bandwidh. Dead or alive 2 Dreamcast version hade better textures and colour and most ps2 games hade a washed out look because of the limited variation in textures compared to early dreamcast ports.

PS3 hade ram issues too because of the split pools of ram and games like Skyrim were in slowmotion after people have been playing for X + hours and changed the gameworld. Even Farcry 3 PC gets slow downs and a quite big framerate hit after you have explored all the stuff in island one and 2 and you travel back to island one. Its much slower because game have to load the changes via the split system ram. Games crawls to 20fps and I have a decent setup. Lowering the resolution doesnt helps much.

Open world games like skyrim, farcry will run much smoother even after you explored the world and changed it. The unified ram will help maintain the framerate much better and more of the unified ram is better in these types of open world games.

The ram will even give you a slight 5-10% boost compared to a system with less of it.

GDDR5 is the new reality synthesizer. $ony - Make believe :lol:

8 gb isnt excessive. It will be used and more is better. Ram have been the number one complain since the PS1 era with the Capcom 2d games running better on the saturn because Saturn hade more ram. Saturn hade faster load times and more fluid animations in the Streetfighter Vs X men games and all the other 2d fighters even streetfighter alpha hade cutdowns in animation.

Dreamcast hade better textures than ps2 because of only 4MB Vram in the ps2 vs 8MB vram on the much weaker Dreamcast. Still dreamcast pulled higherres and more colourfull textures even with a lower bandwidh. Dead or alive 2 Dreamcast version hade better textures and colour and most ps2 games hade a washed out look because of the limited variation in textures compared to early dreamcast ports.

PS3 hade ram issues too because of the split pools of ram and games like Skyrim were in slowmotion after people have been playing for X + hours and changed the gameworld. Even Farcry 3 PC gets slow downs and a quite big framerate hit after you have explored all the stuff in island one and 2 and you travel back to island one. Its much slower because game have to load the changes via the split system ram. Games crawls to 20fps and I have a decent setup. Lowering the resolution doesnt helps much.

Open world games like skyrim, farcry will run much smoother even after you explored the world and changed it. The unified ram will help maintain the framerate much better and more of the unified ram is better in these types of open world games.

The ram will even give you a slight 5-10% boost compared to a system with less of it.

XBoxgamer555