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

Xman490

Doctorate in Danger
May 29, 2010
1,186
0
0
Steven Bogos said:
As someone who's had 16 GB of RAM in my PC for the last two years, I have to agree that 8 GB seems a little low for the new consoles. Perhaps Microsoft and Sony will release a way to upgrade RAM in their consoles so we can surmount this obstacle in the future?

Source: Gaming Bolt [http://gamingbolt.com/crytek-8gb-ram-can-be-easily-filled-up-will-surely-be-limiting-factor-on-ps4xbox-one]
I think there should be full upgrades to the consoles in the next few years. They would then be able to run games at 1080p and at least 60fps. After all, most televisions meet that golden standard. It seems feasible for "new" consoles to run what their previous iterations have done, but much better.
 

kasperbbs

New member
Dec 27, 2009
1,855
0
0
What he is saying might be true, but i would rather that they made games actually worth playing and not just something pretty to look at. Yes Crysis 3 was pretty, but was it a good game? Well, sort of, wouldn't touch it a second time. And Ryse was just a bunch of quick time events. I really don't care what the guys who make interactive tech demos have to say about consoles.
 

SonOfVoorhees

New member
Aug 3, 2011
3,509
0
0
More is better. But they Crytek has always been about the graphics first. Which is why Crysis 2 and 3 wernt that good. Though i do hear Crysis 1 is so much better? Gears had great graphics, GTA5, Skyrim and FC3 look great on the 360.
 

erbkaiser

Romanorum Imperator
Jun 20, 2009
1,137
0
0
Waaghpowa said:
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?
Even with the flag set (LAA, Large Address Aware), the limit is a hard 4GB per app for a 32-bit application, at least on Windows.
 

Gailim

New member
Oct 13, 2009
79
0
0
Under_your_bed said:
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?
It's not bloat.

If the ram is free windows will try to use it for prefetching. Basically Windows will preemptively load your most common programs into the RAM in order to launch them faster. But it will only do this when the ram is not needed for something else. that is why your memory usage is high when your not doing much

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista_I/O_technologies#SuperFetch
 

Callate

New member
Dec 5, 2008
5,118
0
0
I only recently expanded to 9. I'm hoping that will be enough for a while. I got by on 3 for quite some time before that...

And, yeah, OSs and such will frequently leech over to fill all available space, given half a chance; I don't know that that means we should be enabling programmers in such behavior.

Remember that the XBox 360 and PS3 each had half a gig of memory apiece. They're still making games for them. I'm sure it's gotten to feel very restricting, and more would be handy, but I can't help but look askance at the idea that at least ten times as much memory (including the memory-gobbling OS that comes with the XB1) isn't at least a place to start making inroads.
 

Something Amyss

Aswyng and Amyss
Dec 3, 2008
24,759
0
0
Charcharo said:
I agree with what he is saying, 8 GB of RAM will be hard to last for 7-8 years.

HOWEVER.
People, your games right now, Crysis 3, Metro Last Light and Battlefield 4 included do not make use of EVEN 6 GB of RAM (and usually even 4 GB is enough).
@Steven Bogos
Currently and at least for the next 2-3 MAYBE even 4 years, 8 GB is more then enough.
almost half of that is consumed by the OS out of the gate for both consoles, meaning that 4 GB will HAVE to be enough.

But remember, that's fine largely because consoles have been "holding gaming back," and this console gen was supposed to remedy that. Crytek isn't completely right, but yeah, they've got a point.
 

Something Amyss

Aswyng and Amyss
Dec 3, 2008
24,759
0
0
RicoADF said:
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.
Yes, but we're not talking about those consoles. We're talking about the Xbone and PS4, which have 3.5-ish GB of RAM dedicated to their OS and other functions. In fact, the major difference appears to be that PC, unlike Xbone and PS4, doesn't have to reserve that much space.
 

The White Hunter

Basment Abomination
Oct 19, 2011
3,888
0
0
Um yeah no, neither of their GPU's has a hope in hell of saturating it's available memory any time soon.
 

oldtaku

New member
Jan 7, 2011
639
0
0
PS4 and XB1 are announced with 8GB RAM instead of the expected 4GB of RAM. A huge step up from the pathetic 512 MB on PS3 and XBox 360.

Devs everywhere: 'Wow, that's awesome!'

Crytek: 'Lol, we can bloat that up no problem.'
 

PoolCleaningRobot

New member
Mar 18, 2012
1,237
0
0
My main pc only has 4GB of ram and I never go over 2GB unless I'm playing a game. My netbook has only 2GB and while running a decent Linux distro, I don't even go over 200 or 300MB and I can still do all the same stuff a windows machine does. I'm building a gaming computer and the only reason I'm getting 16GB of ram is so I can run virtual machines on it.

Developers have the freedom to make a game need as much system specs as they want, but I've played plenty of games that look and play good and can run on just Intel HD graphics or even mobile processors. More processing for a game is a choice, not a necessity
 

Callate

New member
Dec 5, 2008
5,118
0
0
archiebawled said:
Callate said:
OSs and such will frequently leech over to fill all available space, given half a chance; I don't know that that means we should be enabling programmers in such behavior.
Given that the memory gets yielded when a program actually wants to use it, what's the problem?
Well, it isn't, necessarily, so long as the system is designed to release RAM properly; something Microsoft has occasionally struggled with in the past. But as the author chose to broach basic systems functioning on his computer taking up 4 GB of available RAM, it seemed worth mentioning that such waste wasn't necessarily something that should be accepted as a standard.

Somewhat more on-topic: what he said is that "it WILL be a limiting factor.", not that it is at the moment. How is that controversial?

Sure, Ryse may well have had trouble with memory quantities, but he noted that games don't have access to all the RAM, and given that they were implementing wholly-new engine features for Ryse (which, as a release title, had a hard limit on development time), I don't think it's a stretch to suggest that it wasn't optimised as much as it could have been.
You may well be right, but Crytek has been chafing about having to scale back their ambitions for some time now, mostly with the "Crysis" series. If they're already hitting the limits of available RAM, I wouldn't count on an effective admission that it was their own optimization, rather than the hardware's limits, that was to blame.
 

RicoADF

Welcome back Commander
Jun 2, 2009
3,147
0
0
Zachary Amaranth said:
RicoADF said:
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.
Yes, but we're not talking about those consoles. We're talking about the Xbone and PS4, which have 3.5-ish GB of RAM dedicated to their OS and other functions. In fact, the major difference appears to be that PC, unlike Xbone and PS4, doesn't have to reserve that much space.
Sony says that 4.5gb is available for games however devs can request access to another 1GB bringing it to a total of 5.5GB. The XBO has 5GB locked in as it's cap and cannot request more.
 

Something Amyss

Aswyng and Amyss
Dec 3, 2008
24,759
0
0
RicoADF said:
Sony says that 4.5gb is available for games however devs can request access to another 1GB bringing it to a total of 5.5GB. The XBO has 5GB locked in as it's cap and cannot request more.
I read numbers significantly lower. The ones I gave, specifically.
 

sneakypenguin

Elite Member
Legacy
Jul 31, 2008
2,804
0
41
Country
usa
Umm i know nothing about software dev but I'm pretty sure the gpu is gonna be the weak point, neither console has the horsepower to actually move stuff around fast enough to use 5gb of ram.
 

RicoADF

Welcome back Commander
Jun 2, 2009
3,147
0
0
Zachary Amaranth said:
I read numbers significantly lower. The ones I gave, specifically.
Sources:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-ps3-system-software-memory

http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/07/26/35gb-of-playstation-4-ram-reportedly-reserved-for-os

Basically it has 4.5GB available but can access an additional 1GB if required.

That said, even 4.5GB is plenty, most games uses less than 3-4 as their 32bit programs and have a max of 4GB that they can read, very few (less than 1% of games I believe) are 64bit as it requires serious work on the game engine, which publishers aren't willing to spend money on when 32bit works.
 

Arawn

New member
Dec 18, 2003
515
0
0
I have a question; what'
RicoADF said:
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.
That's an interesting point, isn't that the problem as well? People(the developers of said systems and on somepart the consumers) want their consoles to do more than just play games. While I saw CD and DvD(Blu-ray now) play as the eventuality of said units, now they have game/video capture and other social aspects. It's much our phones have changed from just making calls Now we make messages, live chat, games, pictures, and web browsing. There have been many times I get a text rather than a phone call from someone. I walk into a restaurant and there are 3-4 people sitting at a table staring down at their phones. Consoles are going the same path. More features aside from the main.


RicoADF said:
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 ...
That can be said for alot of games. People are constantly talking about 1080p+ rez and nothing of the game's story or mechanics. Why do graphics keep getting the front seat when the meat of the game what truly decides it's success. How many times has high resolution and fps made you forgive crappy controls or an horrible camera? I can't think of one. Yet there are numerous games where a I'll do the reverse. Risk of rain looks like something put together in a week in a garage. Yet I've played and replayed it so many times it's pathetic. One finger death punch is freaking stick figures, yet again hours upon hours of gameplay. Most high production games with they had that level or replayablity outside of multiplayer. That's why my eyes roll up everytime the resolution fights start. Yes PCs for more power, but if that power is only used for making it pretty I don't care. Most times when I play on my desktop the only option I mess with is sound and brightness. Trying to make games more realistic is all fine and good, but it's not the important part imho.
 

RESURRECTION21

comrade
Mar 7, 2011
101
0
0
Arawn said:
I have a question; what'
RicoADF said:
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.
That's an interesting point, isn't that the problem as well? People(the developers of said systems and on somepart the consumers) want their consoles to do more than just play games. While I saw CD and DvD(Blu-ray now) play as the eventuality of said units, now they have game/video capture and other social aspects. It's much our phones have changed from just making calls Now we make messages, live chat, games, pictures, and web browsing. There have been many times I get a text rather than a phone call from someone. I walk into a restaurant and there are 3-4 people sitting at a table staring down at their phones. Consoles are going the same path. More features aside from the main.


RicoADF said:
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 ...
That can be said for alot of games. People are constantly talking about 1080p+ rez and nothing of the game's story or mechanics. Why do graphics keep getting the front seat when the meat of the game what truly decides it's success. How many times has high resolution and fps made you forgive crappy controls or an horrible camera? I can't think of one. Yet there are numerous games where a I'll do the reverse. Risk of rain looks like something put together in a week in a garage. Yet I've played and replayed it so many times it's pathetic. One finger death punch is freaking stick figures, yet again hours upon hours of gameplay. Most high production games with they had that level or replayablity outside of multiplayer. That's why my eyes roll up everytime the resolution fights start. Yes PCs for more power, but if that power is only used for making it pretty I don't care. Most times when I play on my desktop the only option I mess with is sound and brightness. Trying to make games more realistic is all fine and good, but it's not the important part imho.
this guy gets it can we just get passed this graphics junk this is the thing that is holding the industry back I do not care how the game looks how is the story the gameplay and the characters? this is what gamers should ask not about the rez or fps this is why crytek has never made a game worth a damn they are the michael bay of game makers all flash no substance