Why PlayStation 4 With 2GB RAM Makes Sense

Steve007 · 2012-06-09T11:45:07Z

maindevice writes: Playing on the first PlayStation with my friends was so much fun… We weren’t playing games like the first Max Payne or Hitman on it, sport-games was our thing, but I remember the joy and glow in our eyes when seeing the first PlayStation. Things have evolved quite a lot 6 years after, with the 2nd generation and PlayStation 3 being already the top-notch of console gaming.

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-Mezzo-4336d ago

A 2GB RAM will blow, in a time where Smartphones have almost reached 2GB RAM's, a Next Gen console with the same amount of RAM can forget about being successful.

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ProjectVulcan4335d ago (Edited 4335d ago )

This article is rubbish anyway and makes little sense. The writer clearly is not writing in their native language, because of all the inaccuracies.

To be honest he cant even do basic math. If PS4 was to have 2Gb of unified memory, i.e total, how is that 8 times more than PS3 which has 512mb, total? If it has 2GB VRAM and that is the 8x referred too, then it has to have another bunch of memory for System RAM. Either way it is not very clear what the writer is on about.

Since when was 4GB huge power anyway, since when was that amount so outrageous when that amount of memory now costs so little to manufacture.

Sighzzzzzzzz low article quality anyone?

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NewMonday4335d ago

it was said Sony are considering 4g ram after developer requests, i hope they do what MS did when Epic requested more ram for the 360, they doubled it and it is a big reason developers are most comfortable with it

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Noctis Aftermath4335d ago

I had almost finished writing up a wall of text(with paragraphs though) about how it would be near impossible for sony to have 2gb ram but realised that it was a waste of time.

Ram is something that starts off somewhat expensive but becomes cheap after a couple years, sony want to keep their 10 year plan so they will not cheapen out on a part of the system that screwed them over this generation.

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ProjectVulcan4335d ago (Edited 4335d ago )

It does depend on the configuration of the machine, if a machine is designed with a large pool of unified memory, then it could cost a fair bit to have say 4GB of GDDR5 or especially XDR2.

Then again there has been talk of Sony using a 512bit wide bus and having the GPU and CPU etc all on that to share as well. They could probably use DDR3 and get away with it, have around 150GB/s. This option is harder because of the wide bus. BUT it could work very well, because they could even have 8GB of memory for a very low price being DDR3.

Finally there is that option of splitting the pools again, and using DDR3 or XDR2 for system memory, and GDDR5 for graphics memory.

Personally i think their best option is dumping 4GB of GDDR5 on the system with a 256bit bus or something like that for a unified architecture with again somewhere around 150GB/s.

A quality CPU can do just fine using about 15-20GB/s. For example the memory bandwidth of an intel i7 3770k is 20GB/s with 1600mhz of DDR3.

Using the rest for the chipset and graphics would be pretty reasonable.

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lzim4335d ago

For Sony and Nintendo it gets to be irritating to see them still courting faster data-rate RAM (but in smaller pools than seems rational) while GDDR5 offers considerably better performance than DDR1 did by opted for XDR and 1T-SRAM.

Meanwhile MS made this even more moot by focusing on eDRAM for the frame buffer while will in the next generation be invaluable for larger frames, and more of them for 3D.. such as for 3D 4K support and multi monitor support without murdering performance.

Until 8ghz XDR2 hit the lanes and murdered GDDR5's progress to near bandwidth parity.

http://semiaccurate.com/for...

Meanwhile again.. in internet speculation land, bad writing and math aside, I wouldn't put it past Sony to stick with only 2gigs of XDR2 (you'd have to consider availability and which DRAM maker has the capacity to make xdr2 modules in volume for Sony.. and maybe even Microsoft too). It wouldn't doom their platform but in the short term it would help adoption rates to have hardware that kicks the previous hardware's ass, as long as the rest of their offering is strong as strong and devs are not calling for Kaz's balls out of the gates.

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crazytechfanatic4336d ago

Well, Mezzo is correct on what he's saying. And with that 2GB, games at 1280x720 are hardly reaching console quality.

We are talking next gen here, 1080p. Requirements at that resolution become many fold.

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4335d ago

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hellvaguy4335d ago

Remember the stories of when the 360 was all set on doing 256mb ram and they thought that was more than enough at the time until the company Epic talked them off the cliff and convinced them to do 512 megs of ram. Ya thats what 2GB of ram would be like doing now.

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Steve0074335d ago

4GB or bust.

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Neko_Mega4335d ago

But doesn't most PC games run off of 2GB's? So why would it be bad that PS4 has that much? At best I guess is 2.5GBs or even 3GBs, but who knows.

Sony does like making the most powerful console to last along time, so maybe they might be crazy and just do 5GBs. Which might be not needed but who know's until Sony puts out info about it.

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bwazy4335d ago

Go play Battlefield 3 with 2gb's of ram :)

You'll have oh so much fun.

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Grap4335d ago (Edited 4335d ago )

u do realize there is OS in PC.. BF3 doesn't take all the 2GB or 4GB ram. Console in other hand will have almost all the Ram in the system.+ i can run BF3 on High on my system with 4GB ram and i still have almost 1GB free.

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ProjectVulcan4335d ago (Edited 4335d ago )

Consoles have OS overheads too, they are just smaller.

I don't think you realise Grap that the game is not all run inside system memory, it runs inside graphics memory too.

Battlefield 3 can use 1.5Gb+ of graphics memory ALONE, thats before you factor in the system memory requirements the game needs.

In fact BF3 can use 1.5Gb of system RAM and 1.5gb of video memory quite comfortably. That means the game can use 3GB of memory total, WITHOUT counting the OS or background processes or anything like that.

Even a console has to have an OS and other things running, so in order to just match PC here, you'll need at least 3GB in your console almost certainly.

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lzim4334d ago

@GRAP

This is an immaterial argument because BF isn't the only games people are playing. While it might be a demanding game.. I'd hazard that most of the work is done in the GPU compared to other shooters which generally aren't as RAM intensive as other games where there are thousands of units in play, dynamic environments etc.

What whets the pallet is that those many thousands of currently cardboard cut-out warriors could look as good as BF characters if there's more RAM and processing power in the next generation (and if that isn't overkill in the context of most games)...

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