PS4 OS overhead uses 3.5GB of 8GB system RAM

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pxc

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http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/07/report-os-overhead-takes-up-3-5gb-of-ps4s-8gb-of-ram/

It's not from some whack-a-doodle anti-PS4 source, but from current PS4 documentation.

The folks over at Digital Foundry cite "current PlayStation 4 documentation shown to Digital Foundry by a well-placed development source" in detailing the RAM breakdown. The numbers aren't set in stone, though. Digital Foundry reports that developers can take back as much as 1GB of "flexible memory" from the OS when it's available. However, taking back this memory isn't as simple as flipping a switch; it's complicated enough that only first-party games may be able to do it at first, according to the report.​

Also, 2 of the 8 CPU cores are reserved for the OS.

(The Xbone reserves 3GB of memory as a hard limit, for comparison. It also reserves 2 CPU cores for the OS.)

Just goes to show that if you give a console a large memory, the vendor will figure out a way to bloat the OS up to ridiculous sizes.
 
Ok, so 8 - 3.5 = 4.5

If I recall correctly, no games these days even really use more than 4gb?
 
Equal to Xbox One more or less.

Still huge upgrade from the last 10 years...
 
xIronCrossx said:
Ok, so 8 - 3.5 = 4.5

If I recall correctly, no games these days even really use more than 4gb?
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Pretty much. 2 gb of system ram for most games and 2gb of video ram if you're running 1080p and a good amount of AA. There is also the chance they streamline the OS down the line. I doubt ram limits will be the factor this time around it will be more about the cpu bottleneck.
 
Well, so much for the people who were thinking next-gen PC ports would require tons of RAM and VRAM.
 
We run our games at far higher resolutions on multi monitors on PC with more graphics options active. Remember when 2MB of Video ram was amazing? It will not stop growing lol, however it doesn't mean that many cards that have double the memory on them can actually use it on a single monitor machine. I know a few people that have bought 4GB cards and are disappointed when they monitor their ram usage. However running 6080X1080 or 7980 X 1600 with modern high quality shadows and AA with life-like faces will require a lot of onboard memory. So it all depends. Even TV's with 4k might end up fully console supported with our type of graphics quality. Then even the tv consoles may have to expand even more with Vram.

It's a never ending climb of technology.
 
Is there a particularly compelling reason why Sony's OS can't run within a tenth of that footprint?
 
So where were some people getting the 1GB number from, when they were talking about how much better the PS4 was, compared to the Xbox One? As the launch date(s) approach, and as we learn more about both, it seems like these two systems are looking like they have more in common than originally thought.
 
So, before the "upgrade" of 4 GB to 8 GB, games had use of 512 MB of RAM?

Does not compute.

Unless of course they've added a whole load of OS functionality. (Likely the multitasking.)

At the end of the day, I'm still in for a PS4.
 
there is needed stuff running in background and this is the initial release not optimized am sure if the user goes about turning off things they wouldn't use and such it could drop this and even though killzone 4 may use this amount it is not a requirement, it is a launch title so am sure they are trying to go all out pushing as gorgeous as they can to try to push more sales.

PS3 was very limited from the start but look at the variety of games it came out with even with its obsene limitations in regards to ram and apparently nasty time to code for it, PS4 even with limit of 4.5gb avail ram and 2 cores locked will mean very little, more then likely this allows 4 of the 8 cores to run at a slightly higher rate, or it locks 2 of the "worst" cores for background stuff and keeps the "best" ones for everything else allowing turbo speeds or something.

Look at it this way, it wont matter everything in the ps4 will be far more powerful then PS3 ever could even in the best of times, more cpu and cpu resources much more powerful and dedicated gpu with more video memory available at a much faster bandwidth etc, either way new ones are eclipsing the old ones by a large to a fairly large margin, all depends on the devs to wring it out, and MSFT to make up their mind about what they are doing lol.

And yeh games had very little ram for PS3, I think at most was somewhere in the 320 or some odd mb ram at a much slower effective speed, this is night and day difference really is if you take time to read into it some.
 
"If you’re a developer reading this though and you’re pulling your hair out screaming, “God dammit Jon, I needed 5.5GB for my game development dream!” Stop doing that. Really, it’s cool. Some sources of the fine chaps at Eurogamer, are suggesting that there’s actually an extra GB of memory that can be pulled into play when needed. According to them, it’s noticeable in the PS4 dev kits, which have a “Game Memory Budget Mode,” in the debug settings, which has two options: normal and large. Switching from the former to the latter allows for an increase of available memory by almost a full GB.

It’s not easy mind-you and may be restricted to first party developers for a while, as everyone else figures out how it’s done. It would also be interesting to know exactly what OS function is lost during that time of “large” memory usage.

But why so much for the OS in the first place? Some are suggesting that it could mean for more instantaneous switching between console functions. Once a game was loaded, theoretically you could pause, open up something else and come back to the game later, without the need to load it all up again.

It should also be noted, that all the memory in the PS4 is DDR5, giving it a much higher bandwidth than current DDR3 PC offerings.

In other news, we’ve also heard that developers will have up to six of the AMD CPU’s eight available cores to play around with during gameplay."
 
Windows can run in < 1 GB for Windows 7. That comes with a lot of bloat and crap that wouldn't be needed in a game console. I'm very curious as to what they are running that requires 3.5 GB of RAM. Not saying it's a bad thing at all, just curious. If it needs it and uses it, then I'm good. But, if it's just a base OS, then I'd wonder why.... Still, nothing I could do about it just general curiosity. :)
 
Ur_Mom said:
Windows can run in < 1 GB for Windows 7. That comes with a lot of bloat and crap that wouldn't be needed in a game console. I'm very curious as to what they are running that requires 3.5 GB of RAM.
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I'm sure it's all about switching quickly between games, apps, and the OS, so they're holding as much as they can in memory, to have things toggle/pop up instantly. Hell, Microsoft touted the feature multiple times during their unveil. My guess is Sony is looking to do the same. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't annoyed when I hit the guide button on my 360, and it sometimes takes 5+ seconds before text appears in the grey box.

The Xbox 360 dashboard runs on less than 32 MB of RAM, and I think the PS3 uses like 40 something, for it's system. It's crazy to think both of these consoles will use 3+ GBs! Hopefully over time, with updates, both companies actually slim things down.
 
Jerome36 said:
I'm sure it's all about switching quickly between games, apps, and the OS, so they're holding as much as they can in memory, to have things toggle/pop up instantly.
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That is one thing that bugged me with the PS3. The speed of it's dashboard and loading times. Not sure if that was memory issues or HDD speed issues (using a 7200 RPM drive).

I'd like to see it slimmed down, but if they make it work - I'm good with it.
 
pcjunkie said:
Who cares...just give me pretty games.
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Ugh! Sadly this is the resounding voice of the console crowd. I would much rather they come out with quality, well rounded games. Story, play style, and innovation > graphics any day for this gamer.
 
crackbone said:
So, before the "upgrade" of 4 GB to 8 GB, games had use of 512 MB of RAM?

Does not compute.

Unless of course they've added a whole load of OS functionality. (Likely the multitasking.)

At the end of the day, I'm still in for a PS4.
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You win. Being able to switch tasks and share gameplay instantly with the share button... playing games while still downloading them... the amount makes sense to me. Like a previous poster said, this won't be a problem b/c the memory is centralized in the graphics, and remember GDDR5 is insanely fast... So this isn't bad news at all and is more-or-less irrelevant. The only way this could be seen as a negative is by Xbox fans and/or people who have no idea how dynamic memory allocation works.
 
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This makes some sense when coupled with the idea that the system is always recording your last 15 minutes of gameplay. That system is going to take some hardware along with fast switching and multi tasking.

Compared with the current RAM limitations of the PS3 I think they have some room to grow for now.
 
boss6021 said:
Story, play style, and innovation > graphics any day for this gamer.
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Yea, but hopefully you can get the best of both worlds. I've seen some gorgeous games, but they were real shit when you went to play them. I've also been playing a lot of older games (SMS, NES - Saturn) and have been having a ball. Graphics aren't great by today's standards, but the gameplay was there. With today's hardware, you have the ability to have both. That's what I expect. From what I hear (until next week when I get to actually PLAY it!), Last of Us is one of those games with great graphics that really push the system along with game play, story, controls and AI. I know that there will be a few of those among a shit ton of others that are mediocre or crap, but the potential is there. I'll take graphics + gameplay these days. Strict graphics? I'll pass. Great gameplay only with mediocre graphics? Wait for bargain bin. Best of both? Yes, I'll pay full price for the game.
 
wow, that's kind of redicilous. Take a look at all of the crap you have open in Win 7 and I bet that does not even come close to 3.GB let alone 3.5..

But Sony will get it down as times goes
 
YeuEmMaiMai said:
wow, that's kind of redicilous. Take a look at all of the crap you have open in Win 7 and I bet that does not even come close to 3.GB let alone 3.5..

But Sony will get it down as times goes
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It's less ridiculous when you consider all the stuff they want to do at once. Try this: Play an intensive game, record yourself playing it, and stream it in HD quality all at once without tanking your framerate. Keep an eye on your resources, things will go up quite a bit.
 
Originally the PS4 was to have 4 GB and the OS functions took 512 MB, with the extra 4 GB Sony has reserved extra memory to add features to the OS, Unlike the Xbox 1 which needs the 3 GB with a win 8 based OS, Sony has lots of room to tweak their OS functions and can flex up to 1 extra GB from the OS pool and give more to games If you don't really need more than 4 GB for games its a good move to reserve more Ram for possible future OS functions than to later remove Ram from game use , as it stands now developers are guaranteed 4.5 GB..
 
Derangel said:
It's less ridiculous when you consider all the stuff they want to do at once. Try this: Play an intensive game, record yourself playing it, and stream it in HD quality all at once without tanking your framerate. Keep an eye on your resources, things will go up quite a bit.
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Or I can just stream 1080p at 60 fps for borderline free performance wise because some hardware encoder (like Quick sync) is taking care of shit and the service I'm streaming to is saving everything for me anyway.
 
Derangel said:
It's less ridiculous when you consider all the stuff they want to do at once. Try this: Play an intensive game, record yourself playing it, and stream it in HD quality all at once without tanking your framerate. Keep an eye on your resources, things will go up quite a bit.
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no it's not....
 
This is really bad news for PC gamers hoping for some innovation in the games themselves. Really every PC gamer should be disappointed. I was hoping developers would have more ram to go crazy with. Or perhaps 4.5 GB will be enough. I only have six gigs in my PC right now.
 
YeuEmMaiMai said:
no it's not....
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Gonna expand on that?

Blackstone said:
This is really bad news for PC gamers hoping for some innovation in the games themselves. Really every PC gamer should be disappointed. I was hoping developers would have more ram to go crazy with.
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Games like the Last of Us were made on a console with only 512 MB of RAM of which only half was GDDR3. 4.5GB is a HUGE increase over that. Beyond that, take a look at PC games and PC games in 2005. Notice something? Requirements are far beyond what consoles had for RAM. System memory was a major bottleneck on consoles, but still these consoles have 4096MB (3584MB in the case of the XB1) of RAM more than the previous consoles just dedicated to games and devs on the PS4 can access even MORE memory if needed. I'm not seeing the big "doom and gloom" issue here.
 
I actually think they put this limit in there so they can expand the OS in the future, not the other way around. I think Sony fucked the pooch with hard limits on their overall PS3 design. They kept trying to slash off some OS overhead to keep getting it smaller and smaller but now it's slow as hell.

I love the PS3 and it's library but it is incredibly aggravating between game sessions browsing the store, installing games, etc. It is extremely slow all around, the 360 is not like that at all and I believe it goes back to Sony trying everything they knew how to do to make the OS smaller. I might be wrong but it just seems like that is kinda how it played out.

They wanted to give some more memory over to developers but after the update and 1 game came out that used it they couldn't go back, then comes their interface revamp and it got worse.
 
next-Jin said:
I actually think they put this limit in there so they can expand the OS in the future, not the other way around. I think Sony fucked the pooch with hard limits on their overall PS3 design. They kept trying to slash off some OS overhead to keep getting it smaller and smaller but now it's slow as hell.

I love the PS3 and it's library but it is incredibly aggravating between game sessions browsing the store, installing games, etc. It is extremely slow all around, the 360 is not like that at all and I believe it goes back to Sony trying everything they knew how to do to make the OS smaller. I might be wrong but it just seems like that is kinda how it played out.

They wanted to give some more memory over to developers but after the update and 1 game came out that used it they couldn't go back, then comes their interface revamp and it got worse.
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Yeah. The PS3 is just very slow feeling. From install times to load times to switching between things, browsing the store, trying to download anything. The whole user experience of the PS3 feels really bad. Not that the current 360 interface is even better. Take far too many button presses to get anywhere and it's clearly designed more for the Kinect than a controller. Also, too many fucking ads everywhere. The UI on both consoles is crap. I liked the NXE interface for the 360, I thought it was nearly perfect for the console.
 
LeninGHOLA said:
Bloaty as hell. There is no reason for that.
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Please share this inside info you apparently have of how the PS4 OS and under the cover systems work and how it can use so much less memory... :rolleyes: you sound like the same people who complained when vista used more memory..superfetch, which was great for the user...

Why have 8G of memory sitting idle doing nothing... i never understand when people complain of things using their system resources.

As long as games have enough resources, who cares...
 
WOW this ram limitation upset me so much, that I went ahead and pre-ordered a launch day PS4 on Amazon :p

Taking Don Matterick's advice, I will not be getting an Xbone and will continue using my 360 for NHL 14 until they come out with 15 on the PS4 :D
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yC8FbgGnd0
 
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I think they're just being ultra-conservative to start. As has been noted, no games in development are even using more than 4-5 GB, so they are playing it safe and waiting to see what MS console OS can do, and want to make sure they don't prevent themselves from being able to compete with xbone's OS features, but I think that reserved number will go down over time. The 15 minute playback has dedicated ASICs and was implemented when it still only had 4GB, so I think they're just reserving a lot of memory " in case"... I doubt the PS4 OS actually needs 3GB at this point.
 
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