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FRIDAYTON MK II: 5.5 million bears and salmon create unholy allliance to sack SONY HQ

magawolaz

Member
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I told myself I wasn't going to post in this thread because people are foaming at the mouth and not thinking.... but here I am, which makes me an idiot.


First off, I know all you guys want are hard numbers and I don't have them. But I do know the philosophies in place currently. If you would like to use your brain and think critically about things... keep reading. If you want to get into a 5>4.5 OMG IM CANCELLING MY PREORDER conversation - this thread won't help you, in either direction.


I was told by a couple of Devs in the lead up to E3 that the OS footprint was "bigger than expected" but not a single one of them complained about it. No one is in danger of running out of ram. As some people have mentioned in this thread - games like the The Last of Us are happening with 512mb of ram. Launch titles, of all things, are not going to be pushing the hardware in any sort of way... and that includes ram.

So why is the ram footprint bigger than expected? It's fairly simple - Sony is hedging their bets. They were absolutely caught with their pants down with their OS this gen. Not having the memory overhead to do things like Party Chat gave Microsoft a huge advantage when it came to online gaming, which is obviously a growing sector. So much like $399 as a target price was a reaction to $599 being a disaster... "big OS footprint" is a reaction to "small OS footprint" being a disaster.

But the thing that I'm hearing and I believe there was even a line dedicated to this in the eurogamer article is that these numbers aren't set in stone. The fact of the matter is that high end PC games use around 3gb of ram and use higher res textures (art tends to take up the largest chunks of ram) than the ps4/x1 do. The idea that launch games need 7gb of ram is absolutely ludicrous. 4gbs is fine. Anything more, at this point, is overkill. It won't be overkill forever... but it's overkill for now.

So Sony gets to sit on this chunk of ram, be in 1gb or 3gb - again, I don't know the numbers. I don't know if eurogamer is right (I do know at E3 that some thought more ram would be freed up when the final dev kits shipped... but I don't know anyone working with a final dev kit). But Sony is coming at this from a position of power. They don't need the ram currently so they get to take a wait and see approach before saying "ok, devs, you guys get this." The systems will launch and they will look at what people are doing with their own OS, they will see what features people are asking for, they will see if microsoft or Nintendo (or even steam) come out with some surprise feature that catches fire - and if it does they will have the memory there to be able to do it also. If it doesn't that chunk of ram gets freed up for developers.


This thread is looking at this entire thing like the endgame is the day it launches. That's day one, guys. This is a long term strategic move and, imo, a smart one. They are putting themselves in a position to be able to adapt... something they couldn't do with the ps3. I know as gamers all we want to hear is higher numbers. But find me one developer that thinks the ram available to them on either system isn't enough (and this goes for the x1 as well guys... all this 5gb hurr hurrr stuff is fanboyish nonsense that you can go through my post history and see I never took part in once).


I feel like this post is far to philosophical for this thread of LARGE NUMBER > SMALL NUMBER, but hopefully this info is useful to some of you. Sony have created a nimble system and this is part of that philosophy.

1. They're wrong. They should get better sources, or at least attempt a better analysis.

2. OS matters are a bit more complicated than how this is being portrayed.

3. I clearly have a lot to learn before becoming a master troll.

4. It's Friday. My mobile is getting too much of a workout for a Friday.

Sony is playing it very safe for launch units. Things like clock rates, OS size, and memory allotments are conservative for a reason. Sony does not want to be in a position where they will lose out on a killer feature or find themselves in a position where there is zero room to grow. I wouldn't be surprised if year 3 or 4 of the PS4's life cycle you see a patch to upclock the GPU.

Upclocking the PS4's GPU 200 mhz more would yield a 2.3 TF machine.

As of this moment, not a single developer has complained about "too little RAM". Most developers are very happy by not only the quantity, but the speed of RAM. As we enter the third year of the machine, the OS size will shrink and things will become less bloated.

Let things play their part and STOP overreacting. Some of you have zero idea how well designed and balanced the PS4 is.

Here's the deal...somewhat. From a dev at one of the biggest in the industry. Just a messenger here.

Dev still a little cagey to give out 100% concrete numbers unfortunately like I was previously told, so I apologize ahead of time that they're not as detailed, but these are supposed to be the closest to detailed info I get on the OS footprint:

-At most, the OS uses 1.5GB, with a good amount of that helping the HD recording feature and on the fly switching/ multi tasking
-4.5GB is indeed about what's available for devs at present.
-1GB is set aside for futureproofing OS operations down the line.
-1GB for developer reserve, should they need it

And finally as an important point, I'm being told the faster RAM in the PS4 does in fact make a huge difference.
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tusken77

Member
Here's the deal...somewhat. From a dev at one of the biggest in the industry. Just a messenger here.

Dev still a little cagey to give out 100% concrete numbers unfortunately like I was previously told, so I apologize ahead of time that they're not as detailed, but these are supposed to be the closest to detailed info I get on the OS footprint:

-At most, the OS uses 1.5GB, with a good amount of that helping the HD recording feature and on the fly switching/ multi tasking
-4.5GB is indeed about what's available for devs at present.
-1GB is set aside for futureproofing OS operations down the line.
-1GB for developer reserve, should they need it

And finally as an important point, I'm being told the faster RAM in the PS4 does in fact make a huge difference.

Very nice. Sounds good to me. :)
 

QaaQer

Member
If true, It's kinda crazy all the dedicated gaming hardware this gen ended up with more overhead than PCs.

Isn't it? Geez.

But I guess feature creep appears in a lot of things. We were looking at a Lexus SUV on the weekend, and they have a model with a fucking fridge. I gave it bonus points because I'd like to have an excuse to use the word 'Bubinga' more often.
 

Shin

Banned
Here's the deal...somewhat. From a dev at one of the biggest in the industry. Just a messenger here.

Dev still a little cagey to give out 100% concrete numbers unfortunately like I was previously told, so I apologize ahead of time that they're not as detailed, but these are supposed to be the closest to detailed info I get on the OS footprint:

-At most, the OS uses 1.5GB, with a good amount of that helping the HD recording feature and on the fly switching/ multi tasking
-4.5GB is indeed about what's available for devs at present.
-1GB is set aside for futureproofing OS operations down the line.
-1GB for developer reserve, should they need it

And finally as an important point, I'm being told the faster RAM in the PS4 does in fact make a huge difference.

Final dev-kit hasn't shipped yet (or so I keep reading here and there), right?
So the current dev-kit has 8GB of memory, same as the consumer model.
From that 8GB they'll have to reserve an amount for debugging and what's not, the final dev-kit will have like what 12-14GB?

If the OS takes up 1.5GB with another 1GB reserved + shrinking in the future, then we could very well end up with 6GB+ for games and the rest of the OS.
Which to me seems like nothing has changed at all, just it's now broken down to us on how it's divided CURRENTLY.
 

Akkad

Banned
I hope Sony never answers and this topic goes on until launch, watching people make idiots of themselves is just another reminder that this board is no different than Gamefaqs.
 

McLovin

Member
Not funny at all. I had to cancel my E3 pre-order deals too. Now Sony is affecting gaming on my other consoles too.
You know if you really didn't want it, you could have just sold it and bought an x1 with a bunch of games + gold for a few years. PS4 is gonna be nearly impossible to find for a few months after launch. Idiots bought PS3s for up to 2,000 when it launched.
 
There's some Poe's Law stuff going on with all these hilarious "preorder cancelled" posts I'm seeing. I honestly can't tell if they're serious or not, lol
 
Using any more than 1.5 GB for OS is beyond stupid. I actually assumed it was just 1 GB, maybe even 512MB.

This isn't freaking Windows or Mac. What do they need all that RAM for? Heck, I'm pretty sure even my Mac could run just fine with 4 GB total.
 

Papacheeks

Banned
Very true, but what about Bethesda? They might have actually needed the 7GB of RAM.

Are we talking HD texture pack for skyrim? Because that was a mod, If Bethesda couldn't fix their code to properly work on the ps3 like every other developer did. Then they shouldn't be making games for that platform.

The 4gb mod on skyrim was just that a mod, which then I believe got patched into the game as an update.

Bethesda is known for not optimizing games correctly, hence why some the best running games are ones by different studios, not their internal. Arkane Studios, Human Head( Now disbanded or off Prey 2 project), all knew how to optimize their games without needing insane amounts of memory or VRAM.
 
We still need more info about this OS.

How much work is that OS doing that would otherwise have to be done by developers themselves for gaming purposes? Are there what we'd consider core gaming functions being placed directly into the OS?

Basically, does it matter if the OS has a bigger footprint if its doing some of the work that would have been done by the game itself? In that case its just a shift of RAM from game to OS rather than a hard cap.
 
Here's the deal...somewhat. From a dev at one of the biggest in the industry. Just a messenger here.

Dev still a little cagey to give out 100% concrete numbers unfortunately like I was previously told, so I apologize ahead of time that they're not as detailed, but these are supposed to be the closest to detailed info I get on the OS footprint:

-At most, the OS uses 1.5GB, with a good amount of that helping the HD recording feature and on the fly switching/ multi tasking
-4.5GB is indeed about what's available for devs at present.
-1GB is set aside for futureproofing OS operations down the line.
-1GB for developer reserve, should they need it

And finally as an important point, I'm being told the faster RAM in the PS4 does in fact make a huge difference.

So best information so far then?

Thanks shin
 

Ranger X

Member
What's interesting is that 4.5 go of RAM still is 1.5 x the amount of what's available for devs on Xbone (3go). This is actually a huge difference when we are talking about porting games.
 

javac

Member
This thread is WAY too long so I can't read all of it and I doubt anyone will even read my comment but here it goes!

Wasn't the rumoured Ram amount prior to 8GB around 4Gb or something? If so did they only have around 1Gb allocated for games at the time or did the OS just get more complex and it's footprint increase?
 

LiquidMetal14

hide your water-based mammals
If people read some of the more concise remarks then better conversation will be had.

As it stands, this thread has taken its course.

I'm off to work.
 

deli2000

Member
Just got about to trawl through this thread. I hope Fridayton MKII is as entertaining as MKI.

Hopefully the hyperbole isn't too ridiculous this time round.
 

glenn8

Banned
Alright guys, I think we all agree when I say we should move to PC gaming aye?
Have a problem with ram? YOU CAN EVEN HAS 64GB RAM

Joke, but seems like the PC will finally get more love
 

Raphael

Member
I was reading both threads on the train 3 hours ago - thought the carnival was at its peak. Now reading the rest... I underestimated You GAF.

Carnival of Stupidity has just began.
 
This thread is WAY too long so I can't read all of it and I doubt anyone will even read my comment but here it goes!

Wasn't the rumoured Ram amount prior to 8GB around 4Gb or something? If so did they only have around 1Gb allocated for games at the time or did the OS just get more complex and it's footprint increase?

The latter, I expect.
 

Orayn

Member
This thread is WAY too long so I can't read all of it and I doubt anyone will even read my comment but here it goes!

Wasn't the rumoured Ram amount prior to 8GB around 4Gb or something? If so did they only have had around 1Gb allocated for games at the time or did the OS just get more complex and it's footprint increase?

If this rumor is true, it's the latter. The numbers thrown around beforehand were 512MB for the OS and 3.5GB for games.
 

DR3AM

Member
What's up with the title change? Just because it's "bad" news for Sony, mods try to make into something less obvious.
 

jaosobno

Member
I love how people are preordering PS4s, just so they could cancel them and brag on GAF about it.

Such an epic thread. I'm loving the chaos.
 
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