PS4 specs for dummies

[MeachTheMonster]

PS4 For Dummies | liveware.problem

I saw this and thought I'd share it. It adds a lot of insight and objective information on the subject.

Some highlights

People have falsely claimed that the PS4 features 8GB of graphics RAM (video RAM, vRAM). I’ve seen the 8GB RAM compared to the new nVidia Titan card with 6GB.

This is an incorrect interpretation, the PS4 features 8GB of GDDR5 RAM which is a type of RAM used today in high-end video cards. It is however NOT the total available graphics memory for graphics processing. The 8GB GDDR5 RAM is shared with CPU operations (even though SONY was very careful to avoid the word “shared memory” in this context)

Benefits Of Shared RAM in the PS4 (speculation)

The benefit of shared RAM in the PS4 could be a wider flexibility and dynamic access to memory. For example, a game might not use a lot of CPU-bound RAM for general purpose operations like AI, this means that more RAM can be assigned to graphics processing and produce higher graphical fidelity (higher resolution textures). Or, vice versa, if the game is not very graphics-RAM intensive, the PS4 can allocate more RAM to CPU operations. Games could benefit from this massively as this isn’t possible with a standard PC, you either have just enough, or you have too much of something.

On a mid-range PC we often experience “bottlenecking” in either CPU or GPU. A relatively popular example is Mount And Blade which uses primarily CPU power as well as system RAM but GPU and vRAM is relatively underutilized.The PS4′s shared memory architecture could conceivably prevent such bottlenecks.

Concerns (speculation)

As noted before, GDDR5 RAM was never used in conjunction with a CPU architecture before and we don’t really know how this can or will impact performance. Standard components in PCs, and with it the x86-64 AMD chip in the PS4 are not made to handle DDR5 so we have no data on how this will work performance-wise.

The question is, even if we say that the PS4 would allocate 4GB at any given time, would the 1.87 TFLOPS be enough to actually process all this available data?

Looking at the stock cards I would say no. Just slapping more RAM onto something isn’t enough to make it better. If we look at the HIS Radeon HD 7850 4GB iPower IceQ Turbo, which has 4GB integrated RAM, we notice barely any improvement in performance (HIS Radeon HD 7850 4GB iPower IceQ Turbo review - Introduction). It’s a great card, don’t get me wrong, but it could bottleneck the system.

It’s a curious choice to feature this flexible an architecture with this powerful a CPU and shared vRAM if the GPU won’t be able to process it.

In conclusion I think that the PS4 will realistically not assign more that 2GB to the GPU, leaving 6GB for CPU purposes. All those social and connectivity features take RAM as well, even with a dedicated chip handling the processing in the background. Not to mention that a large chunk of RAM will probably be used for the on-the-fly video recording feature that has been demonstrated.

Developers will need to take this into consideration when coding their games, they can’t just assume all the 8GB will be available to them at all times. On a PC we are relatively used to turning off unnecessary programs when we are gaming but a console can not expect the consumer to switch off his ustream because Killzone suddenly dropped 10FPS. If the feature set doesn’t work with “everything on max” it doesn’t work period.

Thoughts?

 

[Mr. Somebody]

PLAYSTATION 4 IS GOING TO BE THE GREATEST CONSOLE SINCE PLAYSTATION 3.

XBOX has weaker ram and more of it is being used for the Operating system with such a minute amount of their weak ram going to games. PS4 will once again have the better exclusives and be an overall more efficient machine. Hopefully its lead platform as well so we get all the super special effects.

 

[aXiom]

In conclusion I think that the PS4 will realistically not assign more that 2GB to the GPU, leaving 6GB for CPU purposes.

The nikka that wrote that shyt is a dummy himself

 

[jalamanta]

Thoughts?

 

[daze23]

On a PC we are relatively used to turning off unnecessary programs when we are gaming but a console can not expect the consumer to switch off his ustream because Killzone suddenly dropped 10FPS. If the feature set doesn’t work with “everything on max” it doesn’t work period.

yep, I was thinking about this. consoles are all about consistency

 

[MeachTheMonster]

PLAYSTATION 4 IS GOING TO BE THE GREATEST CONSOLE SINCE PLAYSTATION 3.

XBOX has weaker ram and more of it is being used for the Operating system with such a minute amount of their weak ram going to games. PS4 will once again have the better exclusives and be an overall more efficient machine. Hopefully its lead platform as well so we get all the super special effects.

you say the same thing in every thread. Do you have any thoughts or opinions on this article.

 

[daze23]

The nikka that wrote that shyt is a dummy himself

not really. that's just more or less the amount of video memory you use at 1080p and with 'high-res' textures. beyond that, they'll be limited by processing power. not to say they won't figure out ways to use it differently, but that is pretty much the state of current games

 

[Prince Akeem]

 

[ThumpDaddy]

Waiting on someone to say "The Playstation 4 is going to be 500Bit"!!!!

 

[MostReal]

dude yall trying too hard...this is getting pathetic

 

[backbreaker65]

I always find articles like this meaningless. One, he doesn't have access to any dev kits or documents. Two, you can't equate a PC to a Console simply because there are too many variables to PC's. Three, Consoles are a closed custom environment with decisions made based on strenghts and weakness and how to off set them.

One Sony within the first 2 minutes of M. Cerny talk said it was "UNIFIED MEMORY" where I come from that sounds like we are sharing memory between the GPU/CPU but these chips are customized to the overall vision of the engineers.

 

[Mr. Somebody]

you say the same thing in every thread. Do you have any thoughts or opinions on this article.

You quoted them already. Thank you.

 

[Real]

PLAYSTATION 4 IS GOING TO BE THE GREATEST CONSOLE SINCE PLAYSTATION 3.

XBOX has weaker ram and more of it is being used for the Operating system with such a minute amount of their weak ram going to games. PS4 will once again have the better exclusives and be an overall more efficient machine. Hopefully its lead platform as well so we get all the super special effects.

Best of both worlds

 

[Ayo]

XBOX has weaker ram and more of it is being used for the Operating system .

 

[aXiom]

not really. that's just more or less the amount of video memory you use at 1080p and with 'high-res' textures. beyond that, they'll be limited my processing power. not to say they won't figure out ways to use it differently, but that is pretty much the state of current games

Games will now start to be built around this new system and new line of thinking, and find ways to put all that extra memory to use, but 6GB of memory dedicated to "other" tasks? 6GB? There's no way the OS takes up that much memory, not even to stream/recored/encode/decode, since all the things will be handled by dedicated chips, 6GB is just an insane overhead. I'm more inclined to believe the reverse is true. It's not like we're on windows with Photoshop, and Chrome+FF got like 50+ tabs open.