Crytek: 8GB RAM Will be a Limiting Factor For PS4/Xbox One Development

Darmy647

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Sep 28, 2012
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I dont know. We can expand a ps4s harddrive...ram though. ..thats pretty far man..
 

Kenjitsuka

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They can complain, but I'm pretty sure the previous gen had SIXTEEN times less RAM, and for the PS3 that was also SHARED with the GPU if I recall correctly.

Sure, 512 MB always was low and 8 GB will be low in a year or two, but to start dissing it now -when *loads* of people still have older PC's with just 2 or 4 GB in it...
 

BrotherRool

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lacktheknack said:
BrotherRool said:
The PS4 has a separate chip for it's recording function and I believe that chip isn't counted within the 8GB. They were really wary about how they got stuck on the cross-party chart thing last time, so they wanted to make sure that most of the OS services were offloaded to something else instead of running with the game playing hardware
What kind of chip? "A separate chip" doesn't really mean much.

If you're talking "An extra 4GB", then that was smart of them.

BrotherRool said:
Then it shouldn't be a problem for consoles either. And you can't upgrade a laptop but there's never going to be a time when buying a whole extra computer seems sensible or a time when buying a computer that I can't pick up and take wherever I want seems attractive.
Three things:

It isn't a problem for consoles... for now. But if they have dreams of high-quality visuals in two years, they simply don't have the hardware to pull it off without some major visual tricks.

Also, you CAN upgrade a laptop, it's just annoying as hell.

Also also, high-end gaming on a laptop? Don't even try, dude. It just won't ever turn out well.
I know that's why I never go for high-end gaming laptops, which is why I probably won't ever upgrade it. Unfortunately the convenience of a laptop is always going to be worth so much more to me than a PC. I don't have a day where my laptop isn't more useful than a PC would be, heck right now I'm typing this in a position where a PC would be untenable.

What I normally do is split my gaming between a console and my laptop. My laptop can play 2-3 year old games, which I don't have a problem with and when I switch it out in a couple of years I get the next batch of games. The console can play game that I want to play right now. As we come towards the end of a console cycle, the consoles forcing developers to design games for non-cutting edge specs allows me to play some even newer games on my laptop. etc

It's a worthwhile system to me. Buying a console instead of a second computer ends up working out as cheaper and more convenient in the long run. As a student I can put a console in my bag and take the train home, something I'd never be able to do with a desktop and I get the guarantee that any game I buy in the next 6 years will run pretty much as it's meant to run without having to put any effort in during that time.


But this does mean that the specs race from a new console cycle is very unattractive to me. All news like this means to me is 'Crysis devs want to design games you can't play', clearly it means something else to hardcore PC enthusiasts.
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Anyway the PS4 has 8GB of DDR5 RAM for it's game playing and then it runs it's background processes on 2GB of DDR3.

Remember the consoles are almost certainly lighter on RAM for their background processes than Windows. A lot of the background features that the new consoles have were the same with the last gen (like OS processes, internet browser, playing music in the background etc) and they did that on a system with 512MB total RAM.
 

Roxor

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This again? Haven't these guys ever heard of procedural content? You know, make some functions, feed them parameters, and have them make content using just tens of kilobytes of memory, rather than hundreds of megabytes.

Make some procedural texturing shaders and feed them some input parameters instead of using gigabytes of raster textures. This kind of stuff has been possible for decades. When Tron was made back in the 1980s, it used procedural texturing for everything because computers of the time didn't have enough RAM for raster textures. You remember what its CGI looked like? Yeah, pretty basic ray-traced constructive solid geometry. The demoscene has been doing that sort of stuff in real-time on the CPU since the turn of the century. Yes, you read that right. Ray-tracing in real-time on the CPU for more than a decade.

It's like the devs are only seeing the options of "draw one wall texture and have it repeating everywhere" and "draw a dozen variations of that wall texture and use 100MB of memory". There are other approaches, you know.
 

Hairless Mammoth

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Ah, they guys known for making games that tax high end PCs are complaining about console limitations. Though, they might be right in that in a few years 8GBs of RAM might be really limiting, but future(now in fact, if you like 1080p 60FPS) games will most likely hit another major bottle neck in console(GPU?) itself before RAM becomes a worry.

I've got mixed feeling about that last comment about upgrading RAM in the consoles. Breaking them open to get at the motherboard will void the warranty, and if I remember from tear down pics, the memory soldered on, not DIMM or SO-DIMM slots so no soup for you there. Releasing updated systems with more RAM will piss off the early adopters. MS just did that last weak. And future generations with more upgradable components blur the PC/console line even further. Devs would have to work around multiple configs of the same console to get out to everyone while supporting the guys who spent more on hardware expecting prettier graphics, and the didn't they confuse and/or anger the players who can't afford or don't know they need extra RAM. Most devs might not even use the extra RAM, making it another expensive(you know console makers will find a way to make cheap RAM proprietary and jack up the price) add on that never gets used after that one game. It's like the N64 Expansion Pak that broke some players banks just to play one or two games or the Genesis/Mega Drive 32X confusing many into thinking it made Genenis games better and tricking others into buying it for the promise of years of more 32X titles.
Roxor said:
*snipped for length*
Thanks to the whole games industry going for "make it purdier"and the rising costs of that route, I don't think any major dev has time to learn new APIs and experiment with different methods like they could have 15 years ago. Perhaps this generation and its nearly already reached limitations will get developers to try Ray-tracing and procedural texturing to surpass the problems with the anemic Home Theater PCs MS and Sony are selling as game consoles.
 

LordMithril

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So yeh, they both have 8Gb.. of shared RAM.
On my pc I got 8Gb of System RAM and 6Gb of Video RAM.
People seem to forget that on pc we got separate graphics card with their own memory.

I saw a comment somewhere about The last of us. that it was done with just 512Mb.
True, 720p/30 with textures to match that. Pretty small environments, not much going on besides some particle/lighting systems and enemy's.

now scale that up
720p/60 = twice as much shit to calculate.
1080p/60 = even more stuff (lazy sorry :p)

Now throw in some extra effects, higher resolution textures (because he, we are @ 1080p now)
Bigger environments, more stuff going on. Perhaps NPC's each with their own routines.
All refreshed 60 times a second.
And now remember that you got 8Gb (-OS/overhead) shared between graphics and processes.


I can see why they would say that its the limiting factor.
 

erbkaiser

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Jun 20, 2009
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Are Xbone and PS4 games 32-bit or 64-bit?

Because going by PC, Crytek has dropped 64-bit support. Crysis 1 and Warhead had a 64-bit executable, but Crysis 2 and 3 are 32-bit only. This means they can only address about 3GB of RAM, no matter how much you have installed.

If the Xbone/PS4 game is running on the console's 32-bit architecture, 8GB should be more than enough.
--

If I run Crysis 3 on max settings on my Windows box, RAM use never goes above 8GB. About 5GB is resident crap and the OS, the game takes up another 3GB.

The only programs I have that actually use more RAM are stuff like Photoshop which is 64-bit native.
 

DarkhoIlow

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Of course it gets filled up easily because of the unified ram.

That said..I don't see these consoles managing to handling games that are going to be developed in the coming years. Technology is evolving at a rapid pace.

I do wonder when this happens if some developers will go "Why should be compromise and change our game to work for these underpowered consoles when we can make it for the PC that has pretty much freedom when it comes to hardware."
 

gigastar

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Sep 13, 2010
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Just keep in mind that most devs were pulling 720p 30fps out of the PS3s 256MB of RAM.

Though itll be interesting to see whether the trend will go towards higher resolution or higher framerate.

DarkhoIlow said:
I do wonder when this happens if some developers will go "Why should be compromise and change our game to work for these underpowered consoles when we can make it for the PC that has pretty much freedom when it comes to hardware."
And then PC Gaming will flourish anew, as was foretold in the Book of Gabe.
 

grigjd3

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gigastar said:
Just keep in mind that most devs were pulling 720p 30fps out of the PS3s 256MB of RAM.
It's not that simple. 720p is 1280 x 720 = 921600 pixels. Today, people are expecting 1080p (I've been played at that level on my PC for about four years now). That comes in at 1920 x 1080 = 2073600 pixels. More over, at higher resolutions, you need much detailed textures. 1024x1024 textures have for a long time been standard on 720p machines but even 4096 x 4096 doesn't look terrific at 1080p (unless you are playing largely dark-looking games like Deus Ex). More over, I am tired of horribly scripted AI's. I want some real logic behind their actions and I want that to occur when I am not looking as well. Lastly, it would be nice if character movement wasn't stiff as a brick. These things are all bringing up the hardware cost but so are many other things.

As games become more complex, developers can no longer afford to program in a lower level language like C where they get more efficiency but rather are largely starting to program in higher level languages like Python. These languages are not as perfectly efficient, but when you are making a game with a ~20 GB compiled executable (and that is reasonable by today's standards), if you were to optimize every line of code, you would add five years to the development time.

They're making a very real statement here.
 

Waaghpowa

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Apr 13, 2010
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Assuming the Xbox one is running Windows, which it probably is, then 8 gigs might be a problem in the long run. Windows is a hog in general, as in memory and storage requirements. When it gets to be near the end of the generation, I would not be surprised if the 8 gigs becomes an issue as graphical quality improves the longer the generation lasts. Just look at the last gen. Devs were somehow making due with 512mb (total, this isn't taking into consideration Sony's split memory for system and video).

As a Linux user, I don't think the solution would be to "just add more RAM", make the software more efficient. But as technology progresses, we inevitably have to increase hardware specs to accommodate more advanced technologies, and unfortunately, I think consoles are severely behind the curve. This is especially true when you consider that these things are supposed to exist, as is without possibility of expansion, for a decade.

erbkaiser said:
Are Xbone and PS4 games 32-bit or 64-bit?

Because going by PC, Crytek has dropped 64-bit support. Crysis 1 and Warhead had a 64-bit executable, but Crysis 2 and 3 are 32-bit only. This means they can only address about 3GB of RAM, no matter how much you have installed.
Current gen consoles are x86_64 and Crysis 2/3 games were 32 bit arch using memory aware flag to address more ram, although I believe you still need to be using a 64bit OS in order to make use of that RAM. Who the hell uses 32 bit arch OS except for ancient machines and cheap laptops?
 

Eruanno

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lacktheknack said:
BrotherRool said:
The PS4 has a separate chip for it's recording function and I believe that chip isn't counted within the 8GB. They were really wary about how they got stuck on the cross-party chart thing last time, so they wanted to make sure that most of the OS services were offloaded to something else instead of running with the game playing hardware
What kind of chip? "A separate chip" doesn't really mean much.
There is a separate (probably ARM) chip seen on the iFixit teardown of the PS4. Scroll down to step 20 here: http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/PlayStation+4+Teardown/19493
 

RicoADF

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Steven Bogos said:
Just opened up my memory usage on my PC and it's hovering around 4gb - just from the OS, browsing the internet, and listening to music. So... 4GB of passive memory usage plus 4 GB of games... bam, you're already at 8 GB. And you say some games are already using 6 GB?
You can't really compare the PC (with bloated Windows and lots of extra software) to consoles which are dedicated to playing games first and foremost. Also since the games made for it are optimised better than PC games the requirements aren't as high. Unfortunately because alot of AAA companies have the attitude of "the user can always upgrade their hardware" they don't optimize the games as well/put as much effort in as on console especially since most games are made for the consoles first, PC second. So the performance/requirements of a game on PC aren't at all compatible to console.

To be frank Crytek seem to be whiners all around, they make games to look as pretty as they can, often with little story or substance and want PC level power on consoles which is stupid. Consoles have never and will never surpass a PC on hardware power, which is not a bad thing their designed for a plug and play market not Crytek's market of pushing the graphical envelope which they haven't done as much since they basically gave PC gamers the finger and turned to console.

EDIT: That said my system is sitting at 2GB with the browser open, starting a video and running steam pushed it to 2.32GB on a system with 8GB. I've never seen my system push past 4GB, heck the one time I had to drop down to 4GB due to a faulty ram stick there was no drop in performance as it's all my system uses anyway.
 

Under_your_bed

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Steven Bogos said:
Just opened up my memory usage on my PC and it's hovering around 4gb - just from the OS, browsing the internet, and listening to music. So... 4GB of passive memory usage plus 4 GB of games... bam, you're already at 8 GB. And you say some games are already using 6 GB?
Jesus H. Christ, how inefficient and bloated is your install? Do you know what I have to do to break 4GB?


Let's start with 10 RAM-hungry youtube tabs on google chrome!


Followed by 10 less-consumptive pages with images, e-mails and a forum or two.


Plus Bioshock Inifnite at Ultra, for which 4GB of RAM is recommended.


Yahtzee's latest Indie game, because why not?


Along with Skype, Audacity, Windows Media Player and Windows Movie editor.


Look at all those lovely programs!


....And look at how much I don't actually need that much RAM!

http://imgur.com/a/jjQi6#0 [Imgur gallery]

The only time I have ever used all 8GB in my PC was when I had 2GB reserved for a ram drive [AsRock Xfast RAM, which I have since stopped bothering with], 1GB for my Intel integrated graphics [I've since upgraded], Bioshock Infinite running and about 20 youtube tabs open in the background.

OT: Colour me unsurprised. This is what happens when both the XBOX one [http://gimmegimmegames.com/2013/05/microsoft-confirms-xbox-one-os-uses-3gb-ram-5gb-ram-for-games/] and the PS4 [http://www.vg247.com/2013/07/26/ps4-has-up-to-5-5gb-of-ram-for-developers-4-5gb-guaranteed-1gb-of-flexible-memory/] have only 5-ish GB available for developers to work with. But it's worth it for TV-Sports-Kinect/The PS4 share button, amirite folks?