Rumor: PS4 Games shown so far was developed on devkits with only 1.5GB of VRam

[MonkeyClaw]

you are correct. Like said earlier, the OS reserved RAM takes care of all these things. It will most certainly be less than 1GB

Wasn't it rumored to be 512MB of RAM reserved for the OS? I would also imagine that footprint will decrease over time as well just like it did with the PS3, so that just means later on down the road even more RAM will be available to the developer!

[mooninites]

Looks like we're in for a treat next gen. I just pray the devs don't choose to keep going with the cookie cutter military shooter.

Sent from my Nexus 4

[RedOrb_Collector]

Looks like we're in for a treat next gen. I just pray the devs don't choose to keep going with the cookie cutter military shooter.

Sent from my Nexus 4

Unless its heavily sci-fi, I avoid shooters all together.

[itachi73378]

Wasn't it rumored to be 512MB of RAM reserved for the OS? I would also imagine that footprint will decrease over time as well just like it did with the PS3, so that just means later on down the road even more RAM will be available to the developer!

Yeah 512mb is highly likely. We probably wont know for certain unless some devs spills the beans

[VayMasters86]

It'll probably be much larger than it needs to be initially. If they try to add new features to the OS afterwards, they won't be able to reduce available RAM that devs have otherwise previously made games or the new features won't work. So starting with 1GB or 512MB, and then freeing some RAM up a year or 3 after release would be smarter.

[Tutankhamun]

I don't quite buy this rumor. Why would Sony, trying to show of the PS4 from the best possible light, restrict the RAM for the developers on stage to sell the PS4 for the first time? Doesn't make sense to me.

[PeanutButterMunky]

I don't quite buy this rumor. Why would Sony, trying to show of the PS4 from the best possible light, restrict the RAM for the developers on stage to sell the PS4 for the first time? Doesn't make sense to me.

Because! -tries to find logical reason... doesn't find one-

[MonkeyClaw]

I don't quite buy this rumor. Why would Sony, trying to show of the PS4 from the best possible light, restrict the RAM for the developers on stage to sell the PS4 for the first time? Doesn't make sense to me.

I am guessing because the dev kits weren't in their final form yet, so they limit the specs to a certain degree until they have everything set in stone! I bet if you look back on early PS3 dev kits they did the same thing...but now...with 8GB of GDDR5 they can release the Kraken!

[Tutankhamun]

I am guessing because the dev kits weren't in their final form yet, so they limit the specs to a certain degree until they have everything set in stone! I bet if you look back on early PS3 dev kits they did the same thing...but now...with 8GB of GDDR5 they can release the Kraken!

Granted. But 1.5GB of RAM? Was the price difference to, say, 2GB too much to bear?

[itachi73378]

I don't quite buy this rumor. Why would Sony, trying to show of the PS4 from the best possible light, restrict the RAM for the developers on stage to sell the PS4 for the first time? Doesn't make sense to me.

Its simple...and same with all previous generations. The launch titles are in production for specs that are subject to change at any moment. In that case you aim at the lowest possible spec, which apperently was 1.5GB VRAM. It may also be because the dev kits were actually PCs, so the equivalent (in terms of flops and compute units) graphics cards may only come with 1.5 GB vram

Second and more plausible reason is that 8GB was a decision made very recently on a whim

[MonkeyClaw]

Granted. But 1.5GB of RAM? Was the price difference to, say, 2GB too much to bear?

1.5GB of VRAM, so you also have the OS which rumored takes 512MB, and then they probably left them with 2GB of system memory totaling 4GB, but that is just a guess on my part...I also thought the early dev kits only had 2GB total memory (I might be wrong on this), they only recently received the 4GB kits from what I remember at the end of last year.

[Tutankhamun]

Second and more plausible reason is that 8GB was a decision made very recently on a whim

You can't mass produce anything on a whim. The final hardware decisions, more or less, must have been nailed quite a while ago.

[Felix336]

The only thing I'm confused about is that in that article from Eurogamer about the devs being surprised by the announcement of 8 GBs (http://www.psu.com/forums/showthread...8Eurogamer-%29), it said that Dev kits usually have more RAM, and then are cut down at launch:

"Traditionally console dev kits contain more memory than retail units. With the PS4 dev kits containing 8GB of RAM, Sony's announcement that the retail unit would contain the same amount delighted as much as it surprised."

I guess I could be missing something or just reading it incorrectly, but aren't these two things basically saying the complete opposite of one another?

[itachi73378]

The only thing I'm confused about is that in that article from Eurogamer about the devs being surprised by the announcement of 8 GBs (http://www.psu.com/forums/showthread...8Eurogamer-%29), it said that Dev kits usually have more RAM, and then are cut down at launch:

"Traditionally console dev kits contain more memory than retail units. With the PS4 dev kits containing 8GB of RAM, Sony's announcement that the retail unit would contain the same amount delighted as much as it surprised."

I guess I could be missing something or just reading it incorrectly, but aren't these two things basically saying the complete opposite of one another?

Generally devs kits have twice as much RAM, I asked that with the efficiencies in software recently, we may see dev tools not requiring too much extra memory to run on dev kits. Never expected the exact same memory in final kit. Its no doubt sony is still keeping some cards close to its chest to counter any MS announcements

[Coconut_Crunch]

I don't quite buy this rumor. Why would Sony, trying to show of the PS4 from the best possible light, restrict the RAM for the developers on stage to sell the PS4 for the first time? Doesn't make sense to me.

Maybe at the time they were going to use that smaller amount but decided later to up the ram?

[Abdou23]

Actually non of the game shown made me go crazy, graphics, animations and even the ideas look like current gen games. It won't for another 2 years into the systems life cycle before we see some real next-gen games.

It's not the Playstation fault it's just devs needs time to get used to the new tech. same with every gen.

[ps3freak18]

Actually non of the game shown made me go crazy, graphics, animations and even the ideas look like current gen games. It won't for another 2 years into the systems life cycle before we see some real next-gen games.

It's not the Playstation fault it's just devs needs time to get used to the new tech. same with every gen.

I thought the games looked great but you are right. 2 years from now they will start to look quite awesome.

[Serinous]

Looks like we're in for a treat next gen. I just pray the devs don't choose to keep going with the cookie cutter military shooter.

Sent from my Nexus 4

Pretty much a cash-cow... military fps games will ALWAYS be here.

[Vulgotha]

Ok.. Devkits normally have twice as much memory as the retail unit in order to facilitate the associated overhead of dev tools (game making software\debugging etc). Now, devkits are released in waves to developers for a new console. The first few are based on what the console manufacturers are trying to target spec wise. Normally these are window boxes\towers with off the shelf PC parts that approximate the hardware.

Gradually they get refined down to the final and near final specs.


Initially the PS4 was slated to have 2GB of RAM. Then it went to 4GB. Finally it arrived at 8GB.

So developers probably had varying waves of the devkits at their disposal. If the current devkits only have 4GB of RAM then this likely means that other 4GB of RAM won't really be used effectively until the 2nd or 3rd wave of games imho.

There was a similar situation with the Xbox 360 for years where the devkits only had 512MB of RAM (just like the console) so they couldn't properly exploit that 512MB because of devtool overhead. This would be exacerbated with the PS4.

So. While the launch games will look amazing to all of us and probably be awesome, they're absolutely nothing compared to what is to come.

[Serinous]

So. While the launch games will look amazing to all of us and probably be awesome, they're absolutely nothing compared to what is to come.

Hard to imagine right now, but super excited for the future nonetheless.

[SZRT_Ice]

To prevent spec leaks like that of the PS4 controller. The dev kits didn't have final specs, so the demo's prepared by the developers were restrained. The remaining memory may have been capped. E3 will reveal a new light on things. Sony is in super damage control mode it seems against MS imitating.

[Ixion]

Actually non of the game shown made me go crazy, graphics, animations and even the ideas look like current gen games. It won't for another 2 years into the systems life cycle before we see some real next-gen games.

It's not the Playstation fault it's just devs needs time to get used to the new tech. same with every gen.

I don't know man. Look at the difference between Killzone 3 characters and Killzone: Shadow Fall characters:

[itachi73378]

You can't mass produce anything on a whim. The final hardware decisions, more or less, must have been nailed quite a while ago.

And most devs didn't even know about it till the announcement? I doubt that.
It definitely seems an impulsive decision. We STILL don't know how sony will get yeilds high enough to provide this much expensive ram

[Ryunosuke]

And most devs didn't even know about it till the announcement? I doubt that.
It definitely seems an impulsive decision. We STILL don't know how sony will get yeilds high enough to provide this much expensive ram

Far more likely than it just being an impulsive decision. Only way it was an impulsive decision is if they suddenly got a great deal on the GDDR5 memory or some other part freeing up some of the costs.

It is also possible it is a decision they had been contemplating for awhile and didn't want to include it in the dev kits or tell developers until they were sure that it was something they could and wanted to do(price and system design).

Chances are though with all of the leaks they just wanted to keep the upgrade to 8GB GDDR5 memory a secret for as long as possible. To do this they had to keep it a secret even from their own devs.

[jlippone]

If devkits had VRAM, it's pretty clear that they weren't anything like final devkits.
I'm sure developers will see new revision of devkits within a year which will give more than 8GB of memory, the additional memory is there for a reason.