PS4 8gb GDDR5, a huge waste of fast memory?

it's hidden amongst troll posts, but there's some good information in this thread.

Refer to my example

Also, there is NO CURRENT mid PC at 400$ (even a high end PC at 400$) that has the performance of a PS4.

Really, you PC fanboys should be better then this... youre almost acting as bad as xboners have been acting

Lets see legitmate sources to back up all the numbers you claim

Lying ass PC trolls!

I don't think the ps4 will be able to keep up even with optimization (highest high end PCs run new games a 4K, which is four times more pixels than 1080p) yes it will beat a pc with equivalent hardware. But there are already graphics cards with gpus that a more than 3 times more powerfull than what the ps4 has. Looking at history no gaming console has been able to keep up with a pc with twice the power. I'm not saying that the ps4 won't be able to run upcoming games at 1080p, just that hi-end PCs will run them better.

anyways

Cheers :)

LOL. On PS4, it's only the GPU has full access to 176 GB/s peak GDDR5 memory bandwdith.

For PS4,

1. the connection between CPU-to-GPU is 10 GB/s per direction

2. the connection between CPU-to-memory is about 20 GB/s.

PS4's Onion and Garlic links actually shares the same CPU-to-GPU connections.

$260? try $199 Radeon HD R9-270X (2.68 TFLOPS at 1050Mhz, 33.6 Gpixels** with 179 GB/s VRAM).

**All Gpixel numbers in this thread are not sustainable i.e. fill rate is a function of both ROPS and memory bandwidth.

lol, needs proof its facts look them up,

Got my 760 for $230 (on sale) but even the 7970 ghz Gpixel rate is only around 35.... Texel rate the r270x (1050mhz) only does 84, and 7970 does around 135. PS4 is outclassed

@Pray_to_me said:

Looks like the Lemmits are jelly that KZ:SF is graphics king:

Meanwhile Lemrits still need duel titans just to play last gen Crysis 3 with a stable framerate LMFAO!

all those images look so real, it makes me think its not killzone, but real life instead, except no

http://www.onlinegamer.se/2013/11/qwrfdqaw/

I dare you to build a PC that has similair performance as a whole to a PS4 for under 400$

The simply FACT is you wouldnt be able to do it

There is NO 400$ PC out there that has the specs and performance of a PS4

PC fans are so insecure and feel so threatend by the PS4, that they go out of their way to try and downplay the PS4....its pathetic.....you PC dweebs act like scorned little women...

The dumb build me a pc that has similar performance excuse..... PS4 has one main focus while PC's is infinite..... difference in productivity and profit ratios that your ignoring.

Companies that build consoles do not look into making profit at release, they try to break even with the hardware to get their product out quicker and in mass numbers to get a user base. when material and infrastructure costs go down that is when they start making profit on the hardware.

You can build a pc for as low as $450 to match Xbox 1

For under $550

You can build a Pc that more versatile, and has a gpu that is faster then PS4 gpu by over 700 GFLOPS or roughly 71% faster. Plus comes with a free copy of BF4.

@

PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2j2tW

Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2j2tW/by_merchant/

CPU: AMD Athlon II X4 740 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor ($74.99 @ Newegg)

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-F2A55M-HD2 Micro ATX FM2 Motherboard ($42.99 @ Newegg)

Memory: G.Skill Ares Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($52.99 @ Newegg)

Storage: Seagate Barracuda 500GB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($51.00 @ Amazon)

Video Card: MSI Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition 2GB Video Card ($149.99 @ Newegg)

Case: Rosewill FBM-01 MicroATX Mini Tower Case ($22.78 @ Amazon)

Power Supply: CoolMax 600W 80+ Certified ATX Power Supply ($29.99 @ Microcenter)

Optical Drive: LG UH12NS30 Blu-Ray Reader, DVD/CD Writer ($41.99 @ Newegg)

Total: $466.72

(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)

(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-12-12 00:57 EST-0500)

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iBuyPower's $499 Steam games console is similar to above PC build and it includes AMD Radeon HD R9-270 (20 CU at 925Mhz, 179 GB/s memory bandwidth).

Both Radeon HD R9-270 and Radeon HD 7870 GE has better BF4 results when compared to PS4 and that's before Mantle.

PS; There's a high demand for AMD Radeon HD GCNs and stocks are running low. This could be due to digital coin mining (earning digital coin income) e.g. Litecoin (requires high memory bandwidth (e.g. GDDR5) with good GpGPU and it's design to overcome FPGA based coin mining solutions).

Sony should allow Litecoin type software to run on PS4 so it's users can earn some digital coins and this makes PS4 a much better purchase i.e. earning digital coin income that can be exchanged for real money.

@ronvalencia said:

@stereointegrity said:

@ronvalencia said:

@tormentos said:

@MK-Professor said:

(click on the photo for full rez)

These are called OLT (inside the red circle) and help boost CPU performance up to 70% by increasing the efficiency of multithreading, nonetheless PS4 and XboxOne have the same CPU (as seen in photo above) but OLT units are missing from the PS4 cpu.

Weak PS4 CPU confirmed!

8 Aces 64 commands,volatile bit...

Heavily modify for compute the PS4 GPU is,and can run both at the same time without compute hurting graphics,which ease workloads on the CPU,that with true HSA design and hUMA.

Xbox One has 2 ACE units with 16 commands and two graphics engines. First-gen GCN is not NVIDIA Fermi.

the aces cant do compute asynchronously in the xbox one

From http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-microsoft-to-unlock-more-gpu-power-for-xbox-one-developers

"In addition to asynchronous compute queues, the Xbox One hardware supports two concurrent render pipes,"

1st-gen GCNs can do asynchronous compute i.e. hint: 1st gen GCNs has atleast two ACE units..

ACE = Asynchronous Compute Engine. LOL.

PS4 and R9-290/290X just has more of it i.e. 8 ACE units.

AMD Temash SoC has 4 ACE units.

The increase in ACE unit count is just an attempt to counter NVIDIA GK110's Hyper-Q.

then color me wrong i swore i read it somewhere it couldnt do it...oh well i was wrong

No.

You didn't "break my bubble" whereas you didn't write anything I wouldn't know already. See my answers in bold above.

It was confirmed by an insider that the PS4 uses 6gb for gaming

Are you claiming a PS4's 1080p view port containing 4 GB worth of data?

Your not factoring in PS4's 72 TMU capability against 4GB VRAM vs R9-290's 160 TMUs against it's 4GB VRAM.

As long the texture data can be stream into 2 GB GDDR5 when it's required, the GPU's performance should be OK.

In terms texture cache and render target storage, Radeon HD R9-270's 2GB GDDR5 179 GB/s is far from Xbox One's tight 32 MB ESRAM setup.

PS4's GPU can just enable 1920x1080p based game let alone a R9-290's 5760x1080p design targets.

Games like BF4 are mostly CU bound i.e. the frame rate can be estimated based on CU count and CU (Compute Units) contains TMUs (texture management units).

lol, to answer your wrong bold points

OMG are you that blind? the PS3 nor 360 is not even close to using the same assets as the PS4 or Pc assets. BF4 on 360/PS3 is using the same settings as BF3 using resolutions and assets that are below lowest setting on Pc which totally changes what you wrote

And what is your point? those gpu's arent even meant for gaming. All medium to high end gpu's use GDDR3 to GDDR5.

Here is the problem, you think that the PS4 will have true 5.5gb but in fact only still has 4.5gb of real memory. That extra 1gb of flexible memory is memory managed by the PS4 OS on the game's behalf, and allows games to use some virtual memory functionality. which means paging at least half of that onto the harddrive, Also the PS4's gpu does not have enough ass behind it to be able o make use of 4gb of memory. why do you think the PS4 can only run BF4 on a slew of slew of settings that range from medium, high and ultra settings at only 900p and target 60 average.... If BF4 at 900p uses only 1.2gb of memory on high, why didnt DICE use the other another 1gb of memory to allow better assets on PS4? Fact is that the gpu too weak to use 4gb. 2-3gb will be the average.

lol, it's not even remotely that expensive anymore. I just picked up a 7870 for $180; it was $130 after the rebate, and given that I was able to sell my 560ti for $100, it really only cost me $30 to upgrade the GPU.

Yeah good point, then to this you need to add the tower, cpu, ram, power supply, disc drive, hard drive, monitor, mouse, keyboard, speakers/headset, and operating system. Really feasible that it will stay under 399.99.

I don't think they were talking about price, but rather where the PS4 hardware falls in terms of low/med/high end components, mainly GPUs

More cu = advantage. Gddr5 = no extra advantage.

but isn't the point of non-bottlenecked RAM that you can concentrate its usage in a few areas? I gather that the ps4 has got rid of its bottlenecks but cannot fully take advantage of that situation. Since a gaming console is a dedicated machine I would think that putting large amounts of RAM towards graphics would be desired.

What people dont understand is that these consoles are very much like pc's hardware wise and how they allocate memory not streaming. The main reason why they decided to go with a unified memory pool with 8gb is to allow them more freedon in how they can allocate resources. The PS3 had two sets of memory pools one was for the system and game cache and the other was for VRAM. Because of that they could never allocate unused memory from one area to help the other or allow more usage outside the limit. The 360 had an advantage where they could supply the gpu with more ram to beef up detail or take it away for system use PS3 didnt have that freedom. Sony had to work endlessly to shrink the OS footprint to make room on that 256mb pool.

The PS4 while has the same freedom now they still have abide to the memory allocation for the OS and features. And developers have 4.5gb of physical memory to play around with as they see fit. But since these consoles use the same memory allocation as pc's loading almost all needed data into the memory for faster loading and flexability allowing more data to stored at once. they still have cache game data to allow these more complex, detailed and larger worlds. Which leaves whats left for the gpu's buffer.

i also think that they decided for the unified pool (accessed by 2 different memory controllers) to have all the unused RAM from one side avaliable to the other

but thats the 4gb gddr5 ram design, the original ps4 design

they added 4gb only not to lose from M$ on marketing strategy,

i think PS4 is well suited with 4gb gddr5 but the additional 4gb is a waste, super heavy games like battlefield use only 1,8gb system ram + 1,2gb Vram, 3gb total ram is already pushing the max output of the system

we have to blame M$ for the sh**ty ports like nfs rivals that look as bad as the x1 version

we also have to blame M$ for the 4gb of expensive wasted ram

Agreed on all fronts

I think it is obvious that people here on system wars obviously know more than the system architects behind the PS4. I MEAN OBVIOUSLY.... and I'm super cereal.. obviously.. I mean obviously right? GOD.... heh

CPU does not need much bandwidth, which is why modern PC CPUs can run fine on slow DDR3 RAM.

SONY's reason for having a big pool of GDDR5 RAM is because they wanted a unified memory architecture (Devs' #1 request) that the GPU and CPU can use interchangeably without crippling one or the other. It's basic logic, kid. Having a slow pool of DDR3 RAM would cripple the GPU, while having a very fast pool of GDDR5 RAM would satiate the needs of both CPU and GPU, so why in the world would SONY want to use DDR3 RAM?

You and your MisterXMedia possy keep thinking that the eSRAM is some sort of master plan in order to offload processes to gain unprecedented efficiency, when it's nothing more than a very, VERY small pool of RAM that's ever so slightly faster than DDR3 RAM in real-world performance. The eSRAM will only be used as a framebuffer. Nothing else. Furthermore, the decision to split the memory pools into very slow DDR3 RAM and slightly faster eSRAM will make it difficult for devs to be flexible with their framebuffer sizes. You remember how the split memory architecture crippled the PS3? Well, it's the same concept. Devs are limited to 32 mb to use as framebuffers for their games, while the unified fast memory architecture on the PS4 allows devs to use more memory as a framebuffer if needed. Killzone Shadow Fall is using 48 mb in framebuffer, for example.

Microsoft's design is more complicated, as they needed to pool their R&D to ensure that the eSRAM worked in their APU due to poor architectural decisions to go with the DDR3 RAM. Microsoft's design is bloated, inefficient and far less elegant than SONY's solution.

But so many other things benefit from very fast system RAM, like GAMES, installs, loading all those pictures from the store, friends lists, etc.

Do it all at the same time is sometimes a problem, but without a doubt each will be faster on PS4.

So how come the PS4 can install multiple games within mere seconds AND multitask with no hiccups?

How come the Xbone takes hours to install 1 measly game while lagging like a mofo if you try to do anything else?

Why the hell do you keep saying that? Do you even know what you are talking about?

Let me ask you this:

Which uses more RAM? Which uses more CPU?

a) Game installs

b) OS

c) Matchmaking

d) Party Chat

I've seen this whole "buh buh $400 build" quote thrown around a lot lately, mostly on post that have NOTHING to do with price (I don't understand it).

The users where merely pointing out that a PS4 is below midrange which is true (a highly clock AMD x4/x6 series from 3-4 years ago where mid range and faster than the PS4's CPU, most midrange cards of 2012 such as the 660ti and 7870XT are significantly faster than the PS4's GPU ).

Most of PS4's memory bandwidth is allocated to the GPU i.e. the CPU only has ~20 GB/s direct connection to 176Gb/s GDDR5 memory.

PS4 roughly resembles a PC with AMD FX8xxx 8 core at 1.6Ghz (underclocked) + Radeon HD R9-270 at 733Mhz (underclocked)

@walloftruth said:

@04dcarraher said:

@AM-Gamer said:

@lostrib: Digital Foundry.

Foilage,draw distance , alpha effects were equal to high. While lighting and textures equaled Ultra.

PS4

God, how can someone play like that? What's the point of spending $500 on a console to get those kind of graphics? What a joke.

that is like 4 player splitscreen on halo 3 bad,

QUICK someone do the same for xbox one so we can laugh at that version too!!

Without AMD's Mantle, PS4 would win any GpGPU compute that affects gameplay i.e. GpGPU results being returned to the CPU.

The PS4 is a very powerful machine, but it, like the Cell, does not utilize all it's power. Xbox One was designed brilliantly, as was the Xbox 360, because all of it's power is fully utilized thanks to the Microsoft engineering team. This will prove to be the long-term advantage as the Xbox One will get cheaper to produce over time much quicker than the PS4, which will lead to larger Microsoft margins, which will lead to better 1st part titles and more money for R&D.

Looks like it's going to be Xbox: 3 Playstation: 0

Can't beat that logic

You're set for a great future

Wow...

You must be in Colorado considering how high you are.

Tell you what, go and learn about hardware then come back and try and formulate an argument.

There's no PC Radeon HD SKU with 18 active CUs. $499 PC = R9-270 (with 20 CU at 925Mhz, ~2.36 TFLOPS) based Steam machine.

PS4''s GCN slots between 7850 and R9-270.

@btk2k2: how you gonna tell me to formulate an argument when Im the one whos making it and I got an AA in computer science and a couple of certs, I think I know alil about hardware and theres something that's slowing the CPU of the ps4 down making them having to use the GPU for CPU computes its not bandwidth because CPU gets bandwidth first so it has to be the RAM theres not one launch game on the ps4 with a steady or consistent fps except the indie game resogun. Keep telling yourselves that bullshit but I know what I see.

Also the smartest people you considered a genius be HIGH on something FYI lol

You are not making an argument, you are talking bollocks.

What you think you know about hardware and what you actually know about hardware are so far apart you could park a galaxy in there.

The only CPU benchmark we have so far is showing the PS4 CPU to be ahead of the XBox 1 CPU on a per core level. Until we have more benchmarks we cannot state which CPU is faster because we only know the clockspeed of the Xbox 1 CPU.

Fifa 14 has a steady frame rate on the PS4 btw, probably does on the Xbox 1 too as its not really pushing the hardware.

I hate zombie threads.

that first statement is not true at all I've build plenty of pcs from regular desktops to gaming pcs and its common sense you don't use gddr5 for CPU task because while its great at doing heavy tasks it has a problem doing to small things that needed for the CPU. EVERY APU that's being used right now and coming out this year none of them are using ps4 APU why? They are all using ddr3 for cpu task if the ps4 was so advanced and so great Im sure AMD, NIVIDIA, and VALVE would have followed, sony cut corners tried to save money, you can deny it and yes I know how much gddr5 cost but it would cost more to put 3 different memory in a console than just putting one kind of RAM. Im not talking about benchmarks for a cpu because that not PS4 whole system it don't shows how it pertain to the ps4 arch.

where can consumers buy gddr5 memory modules?

@CrownKingArthur: there are none that's why its a problem to the CPU you have to make drivers for that arch and its still not going to be 100% efficient. like I said good luck with that lol

GDDR5 isn't used for PC CPUs because CPUs don't consume as much bandwidth as modern GPUs do. How many times do I have to drill that into your skull?

With the GDDR5 RAM modules priced higher than DDR3 RAM modules, there is no economical reason to replace your current system RAM with GDDR5 because the limitations on current CPU technology can't utilize 100+ GB/s bandwidth.

PC manufacturers like DELL and HP know this. RAM manufacturers like Samsung and Hynix know this. As a result, DDR3 RAM is produced far more than GDDR5 RAM. Economies of scale lowered the price of DDR3 RAM sticks to consumer-friendly territories.

GDDR5 RAM, on the other hand, was limited only to mid to high-end GPUs, as it was more expensive to manufacture and that only sufficiently powerful GPUs can maximize high RAM bandwidth. No point in replacing DDR3 RAM with GDDR5 RAM for your CPU if you're going to get the same performance with either RAM modules and if GDDR5 RAM was more expensive to manufacture.

Someone doesn't know that GDDR stands for GRAPHICS double data rate and it can't be directly compared to DDR

The name doesn't matter when talking about utility. GDDR5 RAM is from the same memory architecture pool as DDR3 RAM, hence why the AMD 7750 and 7770 series had DDR3 as VRAM when they were first released.

http://www.game-debate.com/gpu/index.php?gid=1704&gid2=1186&compare=radeon-hd-7750-1gb-ddr3-vs-radeon-hd-7770-be-super-overclock-edition

GDDR5 was engineered to be used for graphics processing, which is why RAM manufacturers gave the G acronym to its name. It's a DDR3 RAM with much higher bandwidth.

"Like its predecessor, GDDR4, GDDR5 is based on DDR3 SDRAM memory which has double the data lines compared to DDR2 SDRAM, but GDDR5 also has 8-bit wide prefetch buffers similar to GDDR4."

Regardless, GDDR5 can be used for system RAM with no drawbacks except for cost. Look at how the PS4 OS mops the floor with the Xbone OS in terms of multitasking capabilities and fluidity. How many games can the Xbone install at once without lagging the system when browsing the web? 0. Just 1 install and your OS starts crawling.

The PS4 can install 8 at once without a hiccup (Personally tested).