PS4 - GDDR 5 RAM Overkill?

[Stefky]

I'm not a very knowledgeable tech person, but a few developers have said Xbox development is suffering because of its slower ram and the added complexity of its ESRAM means it's often under-utilised. Hence, I'd argue the GDDR5 RAM is probably helping out somewhere along the line.

 

Unified GDDR5 RAM apparently makes things very easy for devs, so they are getting more out of the PS4 earlier. 

 

I think the "complexity" of the ESRAM is a bit over-egged as it's a very similar set up that the 360 used and developers were more than able to make that work.

 

I think the issues of the X1 architecture are twofold:

 

1) The 32mb ESRAM is enough for 1080p, but not for a decent amount of AA to be added (not a technical expert, I have just read this said in several places)

2) The main point is that the PS4 GPU is just better than the Xbox One. 

 

I think devs will work out ways of getting a lot more out of X1 - it has some hardware enabled texture tiling that has not really been touched much - but the GPU issue will always be there.

 

That said, the Xbox One is still a fine system (I have one) graphics are good, controller great, it comes with the Kinect which is great for kids and non-gamers who visit you, and it has some great games on release and more on the way. 

 

If you care about graphics primarily, a PC will always be the best option anyway.

[Tacitus]

Unified GDDR5 RAM apparently makes things very easy for devs, so they are getting more out of the PS4 earlier. 

 

I think the "complexity" of the ESRAM is a bit over-egged as it's a very similar set up that the 360 used and developers were more than able to make that work.

 

I think the issues of the X1 architecture are twofold:

 

1) The 32mb ESRAM is enough for 1080p, but not for a decent amount of AA to be added (not a technical expert, I have just read this said in several places)

2) The main point is that the PS4 GPU is just better than the Xbox One. 

 

I think devs will work out ways of getting a lot more out of X1 - it has some hardware enabled texture tiling that has not really been touched much - but the GPU issue will always be there.

 

That said, the Xbox One is still a fine system (I have one) graphics are good, controller great, it comes with the Kinect which is great for kids and non-gamers who visit you, and it has some great games on release and more on the way. 

 

If you care about graphics primarily, a PC will always be the best option anyway.

 

Yeah, I got a PS4 as my PC is suffering and I can't afford a new one right now, I'm happy with it, and games do look very good on it.

 

What I was sort of getting at though is Sony clearly realised the limiting factor of the PS3 was its complexity, and have wisely sought to avoid a repeat of that. Game developers I don't think are going to dedicate as much time into fully using the ESRAM of the Xbox because to them it probably doesn't pay off when seen in terms of a basic cost-benefit assessment, since without it the Xbox can still produce some very nice looking things. I do think as time goes on devs will get a lot more out of both consoles, but as the 360/ps3 were coming out people started moving to 1080p PC gaming, and soon people are going to move en masse to higher resolutions, or potentially different aspect ratios too. I do think while there are things you could look at and mistake them for PC games (ie. Ryse, Infamous Second Son, to name one from each side) and things will get better, I think the gulf will continue to widen as I don't think these consoles will be able to output higher than 1080p resolutions. Not to mention I've done more Netflix watching than gaming on my PS4... when are the games coming?!?!

 

Hope to get back to PC soon haha

[GeathX]

Unified GDDR5 RAM apparently makes things very easy for devs, so they are getting more out of the PS4 earlier. 

 

I think the "complexity" of the ESRAM is a bit over-egged as it's a very similar set up that the 360 used and developers were more than able to make that work.

 

I think the issues of the X1 architecture are twofold:

 

1) The 32mb ESRAM is enough for 1080p, but not for a decent amount of AA to be added (not a technical expert, I have just read this said in several places)

2) The main point is that the PS4 GPU is just better than the Xbox One. 

 

I think devs will work out ways of getting a lot more out of X1 - it has some hardware enabled texture tiling that has not really been touched much - but the GPU issue will always be there.

 

That said, the Xbox One is still a fine system (I have one) graphics are good, controller great, it comes with the Kinect which is great for kids and non-gamers who visit you, and it has some great games on release and more on the way. 

 

If you care about graphics primarily, a PC will always be the best option anyway.

 

Point 2 is correct, the PS4 GPU is just more powerful, and because they are both AMD its very easy to compare the numbers to each other..

 

Point 1 how ever is correct but with strings attached. The 32MB of ESRAM is enough for 1080p depending on the rendering techniques of the game. If the game engine uses a deferred rendering engine the X1 will have trouble reaching 1080p if not 900p. An example of this is the recent Metal Gear Solid game. 1080p on ps4, 720p on X1, because the way the game renders.

 

It's just been announced that the new wolfenstien game is going to be 1080p/60 for both consoles, which makes sense because it is using id tech 5 engine which is a forward renderer, which the X1 can handle fine.

 

 

Getting back to point 2 though, nothing at the moment that's multiplatform is really pushing either system where the GPU is the bottleneck, the games and software just aren't optimised yet. In a couple years the consoles will be straining for GPU resources, but hopefully devs will be more worried about the actual games and not just the eye candy

[Stefky]

Point 2 is correct, the PS4 GPU is just more powerful, and because they are both AMD its very easy to compare the numbers to each other..

 

Point 1 how ever is correct but with strings attached. The 32MB of ESRAM is enough for 1080p depending on the rendering techniques of the game. If the game engine uses a deferred rendering engine the X1 will have trouble reaching 1080p if not 900p. An example of this is the recent Metal Gear Solid game. 1080p on ps4, 720p on X1, because the way the game renders.

 

It's just been announced that the new wolfenstien game is going to be 1080p/60 for both consoles, which makes sense because it is using id tech 5 engine which is a forward renderer, which the X1 can handle fine.

 

 

Getting back to point 2 though, nothing at the moment that's multiplatform is really pushing either system where the GPU is the bottleneck, the games and software just aren't optimised yet. In a couple years the consoles will be straining for GPU resources, but hopefully devs will be more worried about the actual games and not just the eye candy

 

Thanks for the clarifications.

 

And yes, it will be interesting indeed to see how far these machines can be pushed over the next 8 years. As Tacitus said, Ryse and SecondSon are a pretty solid start for launch window games.

[Sauron]

GDDR5 is justified in this case because the ps4 uses an APU. The graphics core integrated into the APU takes a big advantage from having gddr instead of ddr memory and since the ps4 is a closed system , developers can optimize the games to use gddr5 instead of ddr3 even if it's not as efficient. Since for games the gpu and its memory are more important they chose to use gddr5. It's not that big of a deal as they would want you to believe though, the gpu itself is not very powerful and therefore the type of memory used makes a welcome, but ultimately not impressive difference.

[Sauron]

And yes, it will be interesting indeed to see how far these machines can be pushed over the next 8 years. As Tacitus said, Ryse and SecondSon are a pretty solid start for launch window games.

There are rumors according to which a "next gen refresh" (now with 30% more gen) is expected to be coming 4 or 5 years into these consoles' lifespans as ms and sony realize these platforms pretty much suck.

[GeathX]

There are rumors according to which a "next gen refresh" (now with 30% more gen) is expected to be coming 4 or 5 years into these consoles' lifespans as ms and sony realize these platforms pretty much suck.

The Xbox to 360 was around 4 years, which was a bit early. The average time between console releases has been around the 5 to 6 year mark, so 4 to 5 its not a crazy notion.

 

If Sony sticks with AMD and they develop a new APU with an improved CPU and GPU of the time, chances are something more powerful than even the fastest single cards solutions today, and maintain backwards compatibility, I don't think it would be that bad of a move as they just keep going expanding the library of games.

 

Though between now and then we are also going to get slimmed down models of the X1 and PS4, which is something to keep in mind.

[Sauron]

The Xbox to 360 was around 4 years, which was a bit early. The average time between console releases has been around the 5 to 6 year mark, so 4 to 5 its not a crazy notion.

 

If Sony sticks with AMD and they develop a new APU with an improved CPU and GPU of the time, chances are something more powerful than even the fastest single cards solutions today, and maintain backwards compatibility, I don't think it would be that bad of a move as they just keep going expanding the library of games.

 

Though between now and then we are also going to get slimmed down models of the X1 and PS4, which is something to keep in mind.

 

I doubt the new apu would be so powerful while still maintaining backwards compatibility, to do that they would need to use the exact same architecture but make it faster than a 290x, meaning it would eat 300+ watts

[GeathX]

I doubt the new apu would be so powerful while still maintaining backwards compatibility, to do that they would need to use the exact same architecture but make it faster than a 290x, meaning it would eat 300+ watts

 

It really depends what is the major block with BC, if its the CPU or GPU. If they stay x86 for the CPU, that should remove a decent amount of issues on the CPU, its one of the reasons PCs can manage to play older games. Think there is a bit more wiggle room on the GPU side of things, because we do see older games working on new hardware, though DirectX probably smooths over compatibility issues there. The 360 did software emulation of a decent amount of xbox games and that whet from x86/nvidia to PowerPC/ATI, and the Wiiu to Wii games.

 

But yeah the power consumption, who knows we might see AMD get some nice gains in power efficiency or even where GPUs are going to go in the next 5 years or so.

[Sauron]

It really depends what is the major block with BC, if its the CPU or GPU. If they stay x86 for the CPU, that should remove a decent amount of issues on the CPU, its one of the reasons PCs can manage to play older games. Think there is a bit more wiggle room on the GPU side of things, because we do see older games working on new hardware, though DirectX probably smooths over compatibility issues there. The 360 did software emulation of a decent amount of xbox games and that whet from x86/nvidia to PowerPC/ATI, and the Wiiu to Wii games.

 

But yeah the power consumption, who knows we might see AMD get some nice gains in power efficiency or even where GPUs are going to go in the next 5 years or so.

 

Because of how consoles game optimization work you need to either have the same exact architecture to the millimetre (even then you might have issues with certain games) or simply have the new chip AND the old chip in there (like the wii had the gamecube chip inside it and the wii u has the wii chip inside it). And games benefit much more from gpu capabilities than cpu, so keeping the same graphics chip is not an option.

[GeathX]

Because of how consoles game optimization work you need to either have the same exact architecture to the millimetre (even then you might have issues with certain games) or simply have the new chip AND the old chip in there (like the wii had the gamecube chip inside it and the wii u has the wii chip inside it). And games benefit much more from gpu capabilities than cpu, so keeping the same graphics chip is not an option.

 

But you ignore the fact that the 360 was able to do backwards compatibility despite having both different CPU and GPU architectures and not having any of the previous gens hardware inside?

 

The PS3 at first had full BC because it did have a ps2 inside it essentially, but this was only for the the US/JPN launch, for the European launch they could emulate the ps2 CPU but left in the GPU.  

 

Also that isn't how the Wii and WiiU have BC. The Wii had BC with game cube because it was more or less using a tri core version of what was in the gamecube and ran in a compatibility mode. WiiU only goes back to Wii games, again because its using a PowerPC CPU and a couple of specs of the GPU to match the memory lay out. This leads me to think BC is more of an issue of the CPU rather than GPU.

[Sauron]

But you ignore the fact that the 360 was able to do backwards compatibility despite having both different CPU and GPU architectures and not having any of the previous gens hardware inside?

 

The PS3 at first had full BC because it did have a ps2 inside it essentially, but this was only for the the US/JPN launch, for the European launch they could emulate the ps2 CPU but left in the GPU.  

 

Also that isn't how the Wii and WiiU have BC. The Wii had BC with game cube because it was more or less using a tri core version of what was in the gamecube and ran in a compatibility mode. WiiU only goes back to Wii games, again because its using a PowerPC CPU and a couple of specs of the GPU to match the memory lay out. This leads me to think BC is more of an issue of the CPU rather than GPU.

 

You're right I confused the ps3 with the wiis. But still, it's pretty much the same chip with the same architecture, clocked a bit higher and with addpns that can be used by the newer games. Backwardscompatibility on the 360 was sketchy at best, not really what you could call "full backwards compatibility"... emulation is more complex that just "the cpu is similar so it's fine" unfortunately, by those standards an FX processor with a radeon card should already be able to emulate a ps4. It depends on a lot of factors, and nintendo is able to do it because they engineer their consoles with bc in mind from the start (that's part of the reason the wii u isn't as powerful as we would have liked, it has to remain similar to the wii) which will be harder for sony and ms to do as their chips are x86 which is a more complex architecture.

[GeathX]

You're right I confused the ps3 with the wiis. But still, it's pretty much the same chip with the same architecture, clocked a bit higher and with addpns that can be used by the newer games. Backwardscompatibility on the 360 was sketchy at best, not really what you could call "full backwards compatibility"... emulation is more complex that just "the cpu is similar so it's fine" unfortunately, by those standards an FX processor with a radeon card should already be able to emulate a ps4. It depends on a lot of factors, and nintendo is able to do it because they engineer their consoles with bc in mind from the start (that's part of the reason the wii u isn't as powerful as we would have liked, it has to remain similar to the wii) which will be harder for sony and ms to do as their chips are x86 which is a more complex architecture.

 

lol....Ok I am surprised at how much I'm backing the 360 here...But sketchy at best? While not every game was supported, 400 out of 999 games were compatible and this was through a vetting program that made sure the games worked. The reason they stopped the program  was most likely there are only so many good Xbox games worth bring over to the 360 and people loose interest in BC the further into a generation you get. I would say they had a x86 to PowerPC emulator (opposite to Apple with their Rosetta program allowing PowerPC code to run on x86) that ran on one or 2, while the last core ran the Xbox game code.

 

And your right, an FX with a radeon wouldn't be able to emulate a PS4 in a PC environment, but i didn't suggest that did I? The split memory setup on PC alone would make emulation difficult, let alone all the smaller details they add to the PS4s APU. Going from console to PC emulation would be difficult, going from console to console, provided there is a sufficient hardware match, should remove many of the variables of emulation. It wouldn't be so much hardware emulation as just the software environment being simulated. 

 

My original arguments was with Sony staying with x86 going forward with consoles allowing easier BC, as we see with what nintendo has been doing for the last few gens. Not saying it would be perfect either, just easier going to the same architecture than something completely different. 

[Stefky]

But you ignore the fact that the 360 was able to do backwards compatibility despite having both different CPU and GPU architectures and not having any of the previous gens hardware inside?

 

The PS3 at first had full BC because it did have a ps2 inside it essentially, but this was only for the the US/JPN launch, for the European launch they could emulate the ps2 CPU but left in the GPU.  

 

Also that isn't how the Wii and WiiU have BC. The Wii had BC with game cube because it was more or less using a tri core version of what was in the gamecube and ran in a compatibility mode. WiiU only goes back to Wii games, again because its using a PowerPC CPU and a couple of specs of the GPU to match the memory lay out. This leads me to think BC is more of an issue of the CPU rather than GPU.

 

The 360 did BC via game-by-game emulation, so they knew exactly how many users actually used the functionality as a patch needed to be downloaded for every game. I think I read it was 1 point something percent. They basically spent a load of money providing a service that next to nobody used.

 

This is the issue with BC - it's something everyone thinks they wants, but when it comes to it the last thing anyone wants to do with their shiny new next gen console is play an old game they've already played on it. 

[GeathX]

The 360 did BC via game-by-game emulation, so they knew exactly how many users actually used the functionality as a patch needed to be downloaded for every game. I think I read it was 1 point something percent. They basically spent a load of money providing a service that next to nobody used.

 

This is the issue with BC - it's something everyone thinks they wants, but when it comes to it the last thing anyone wants to do with their shiny new next gen console is play an old game they've already played on it. 

 

I agree with this completely. BC is wanted at the start because there are just not enough games on the new systems, no matter how good the launch titles are.

 

If BC can be done with minimal hit to designing the system, I'm all for it. But seeing as Sony is pushing their streaming service, I could see them not worrying about it at all and if you want BC you pay how ever much the service would be.

[darth_bubbles]

Lets not forget that modern graphics cards also use GDDR5.

My guess is it has 8GB in order that it can support higher resolutions and textures in the future.

The console is expected to last 10 years + after all

10 years lol

[rhyseyness]

10 years lol

Oh hindsight