PS4's 8GB RAM "a joy" to developers says Dishonored lead designer
Christophe Carrier, and Dinga Bakaba collect the BAFTA for Best Game for Dishonored.
Those were the words of Dishonored lead designer, Christophe Carrier who recently talked to Eurogamer.net and revealed he couldn't be more pleased that Sony has endowed the upcoming Playstation 4 with 8GB of RAM - sixteen times more than the Playstation 3 had at its disposal.
"We were PC gamers at the beginning. We love PC games, and we had to make games on consoles. But the main problem was memory. The processors are good, but the memory, for our games, is the most important. So it's great," he continued.
The quote adds weight to the idea that the next-generation of consoles will not only see a leap forward in console game quality but PC game quality too, with the whole game development industry able to vastly increase the scope of its games.
This follows the acknowledgement that an AMD x86-based processor, rather than the niche Cell processor, will be powering the PS4. With the Nintendo Wii U also powered by AMD, and the Xbox 720 (or whatever it turns out to be called) rumoured to be too, it further suggests cross-platform game development can be streamlined, leading to fewer headaches for developers and a better-looking, greater selection of games, whatever platform is being used.
Christophe Carrier couldn't be drawn on what those future titles might be from Arkane Studios but with Dishonored proving such a success, a sequel seems inevitable. Dishonored 2 built for next-gen consoles? We can't wait.
Maybe it's time to upgrade to 16GB...
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Anyways, I predict that the PC-versions of next gen console titles won't be playable on max settings @ 2560x1600 on a current ~ $1000-setup, but require atleast something like the GTX680/HD7970 with 4GB GDDR5 paired with an i7-3770/FX8350 and 16GB DDR3.
Fun times ahead and most likely way cheaper to buy a PS4, if you're after the best graphics possible :p
In fact, it preferred DDR3 over GDDR5 by a big margin, as GDDR5 have a very high latency... that's the exchange for bandwidth. So the CPU for sure will be either too weak to take advantage of DDR3 to even care about the high latency problem, OR RAM latency will bottleneck the processor of the PS4.
Exactly. And that's basically negating the latency-issues.
Heuuummm that's how it works for DDR3 as well, I mean following the bus speed. That is why you don't see much or any performance increase in memory module faster than the Bus (assuming you don't overclock the bus)
However I don't believe is compensates for the high latency of GDRR5.
Also another thing that was not address, is that if it has 8GB of RAM shared, that means it has only 1 bus. That means, that either the GPU or CPU will bottleneck the other.
Well.. the GPU is faster and more capable, so just that will make larger game world. But mostly you'll enjoy higher res textures or more textures.
Wether we will see better games only time will tell but in truth I dout ram is holding back originality or story telling both if which have gone AWOL in years gone by.
What we will likely see is more native 64bit games to take advantage of more ram but I'm not entirely sure on that there is like 5-10 native 64bit games.
Dev reason has always been they dont want games that cant run on win xp as its a potential lost sale.
Steams last survey had it at 47% on a 32bit OS.
this should be fixed in the PS4 as 4/8gb of ram is silly amount for an console they will have so much fun with that as it must of been an nuisance on the xbox or ps3 to get the games to run with out been laggy or have textures loading that gamers see
with the anti copy or cam stuff (stops the video after 5-10 secs if it detects markers in the video) i just use XMBC or MCE
Yes. We will get way better ports of games. And finally games that pushes our PC .. at least for the second and third year of the console... after that not so much. i exclude the first year, as the first year is when developers get to know the console and generally, beside having no interesting game, to push the console.
Ditto for the GPU - devs are now able to use all of the latest DX11/OpenGL 4 APIs that are available since the hardware on all platforms will support them.
The biggest problem with most ports is the controls actually, atleast from my experience. The gamepads really are very bad input-devices for FPS-games imho and most ports don't adress this issue too well.
Performance-wise most players still play in 1080p, as especially the big screens in the living-room are restrained to this resolution. For 1080p a current $1000 gaming-rig is more then capable to cope with any title released within the next two or three years and the PS4 won't change that much actually. Even on my rig (GTX660 nonTI + i5-3450@stock) I can play Crysis3 @1080p with all settings on high still getting allways above 30fps.
So I'd say that current PCs really have enough headroom for 1080p-gaming and the next gen consoles won't be optimizing for any bigger resolutions really, as affordable big screens for the living-room won't be available with higher resolutions within the next two or three years.
The PS4 only catches up to current PC-performance imho, but that's not bad at all actually, as current PC-graphics are really good allready.
If the ps4 is released chrimbo 2013 in USA then by jan feb 2015 we will see the improved ports that we all want, its not going to be an over night thing where on ps4 release PC games automatically are now better.
Will take 14-16 months as is normal in console development.
The PS3 will be over 6 years old when the PS4 is released, how much RAM did your average PC have 6 years ago and how much does your average PC have now ?
Will we be in the same situation 6 years from now, cursing consoles for holding back PC gaming ?
6years ago most had 4gb of ram now most have 6-8gb of ram if using 64bit OS, if not 4gb is still pretty standard.
It's why price of memory has hit the prices it has as people are not buying it in large quantities.
Similar thing is happening in the 2.5inch laptop hard disk market demand is weakening because ssds are so cheap.
They wont use 8GB of ram in their games. I bet a good 1Gb of it will be used by the playstation home screen, apps and other things running in the background at least.
RAMs dert cheap anyway, the only reason they are slapping that much in. If it were still expensive at the time PS3 was released I know they would be using 4GB or less.
Its never about the amount of RAM really available though, the CPU and GPU power has always been the main reason for games looking and being as good as they can be. Take ARMA3 for example, their recommended specs are now a Core i5 and a GTX 560 or above (+amd equivilant)
As for huge amounts of system ram already on PCs , there aren't games that use that system memory, as most games are within that 2GB 32bit OS limitation still . And the high vram >1.5GB, is really only used for higher res than 1080.
I don't mind GPUs being fixed on a console and not being able to pump out as many polys, but I do mind claustrophobic game designs and lack of environmental freedom in games brought on by limited memory. This has a direct impact on the most important aspect of gaming: the gameplay itself, where the ability to run a wide, highly complex level with lots of opportunity for free-form play and emergent gameplay has to be eschewed for a tightly-scripted one.
RAM is cheap. RAM is easy to install, and implement.
Remember the N64? It had RAM expansion back in '99. What's got me about the Playstation 4 announcement is that all the pundits seem to have the foresight of a sawn-off shotgun; and falling into the same trap of "WOOO! It'll last forever!" I imagine after being chocked by 512MB for so long that 8GB really does seem like an infinite amount.
But we need a little foresight here, and if they plan on dragging out the next gen for as long as they did for this gen, I wish they would implement simple RAM upgrades.
Thanks for the link. ;)
Interesting read
+rep
so 4GB for storing the game and 4GB of space to `play` with it
and changing shadoers on the fly....
but dont worry its `only` AMD so a weak cpu will hamper it and GDDR5 latency will mean its dog slow....
Well, technically, it's pretty obvious that they could, but I wouldn't expect them to do that - the last thing they want is to make the situation even slightly complicated. Marketing-wise, I suspect the last thing they'd want to do would be to have a "Playstation 4 game" which has specific, well, "system requirements".
When they're selling something like this they'll want it to be a simple situation: if it's a PS4 game it runs on a PS4, no further thinking required. I suspect they'd avoid like the plague any situation where you had to read the back of the pack and decide whether your combination of upgrades was enough to run the game.
For each iteration of the Playstation there has been an increase of memory of 16x
That's bollocks. 64-bit software can adress more then 4GB if it's coded this way. Photoshop grabs some 6GB on my rig and I've seen it using up to 30+GB in preproduction, when working with large files. So stop telling such stuff please.
And for the latency of GDDR5... you gave the answer yourself before, and that is that GDDR5 can read and write at the same time per clock cycle ( something that DDR3 can't) totally negating the latency-issues and basically delivering 2-4 times more bandwith.
Also, the PS4 isn't limited that much by the PCI-bus, so communication between GPU and CPU is much much faster.
oh dear
i shall correct your lack of knowledge
32bit programmes on a 32bit OS with large address awars can use up to 2GB (PS uses 1.7GB)
64bit programmes on 32bit OS can use up to around 3GB (ps is slightly above at 3.2 , but thanks to 32bit os hard limits usually doesnt)
64 bit programme on 64 bit OS - whatever ram you have
but apparantly the makers of photoshop are talking **** and your right
http://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/64-bit-os-benefits-limitations.html#main_Opening_32_bit_and_64_bit_versions_on_Windows
And that's the biggest problem with most software and especially games today... the vast majority (95+%) is still only available as 32bit these days. As far as I know there's not a single 64bit game available today.
but yes , your right in that most games are 32bit. so unless `the next step` is made then games will be ram limited ; although from the PS4 review , it will be a 64bit system through and through