PS4: 3.5 of 8 GB
X-Box One: 3 of 8 GB
Link in the article goes to a breakdown of Killzone: Shadowfall memory usage. It’s already at 4.6 GB. So does this have implications for the games that’ll be developed?
PS4: 3.5 of 8 GB
X-Box One: 3 of 8 GB
Link in the article goes to a breakdown of Killzone: Shadowfall memory usage. It’s already at 4.6 GB. So does this have implications for the games that’ll be developed?
I’m guessing that a lot of that is just roping off buffer real estate for possible future additions to the OS. Sony, specially got burned hard by not being able to add some essential features due to the limitations of the space available to the OS.
It sucks for PC gamers cause now the memory footprint of the lowest common denominator is even lower. In terms of games, well, that means less high resolution textures and the continuation of level streaming as has been done before. It might also affect the possibility of having certain AA filters turned on.
I don’t really see a super huge impact on what are machines targeting 1080p/30fps for the foreseeable future, except in that open worlds might be a bit more limited than they would have needed to be.
This is amazing for PC gaming. 64-bit executables are finally here. No more 2GB limit.
I would have thought that texture resolution and AA filters would have to do with the graphics card, right? Even if RAM is limited, PC games can still have high resolution textures and AA filters. Don’t most games tend to have them on PC even if they’re absent on the console version?
I do see how it could be limiting for open worlds. But, just how much open world can you have in 5GB? If 0.5GB of RAM can have Skyrim, Fallout and GTA IV, what can we expect with 10 times that?
I know I’m not the first to say: “With all the resources we have at this point, how could we need more?”. I’m aware that people have said that a long time ago about systems which seem ridiculously limited in hindsight. But still, what does it mean to have 5GB of usable RAM, especially as opposed to 8?
Yes, it’s good that the consoles finally have more RAM than PC from 2002. But games will be targeting that 5 MB buffer, not the larger buffers most PC have/will have in the future.
Well, there will always be the occasional multi-plat that will go the extra mile for PC gamers, and the exclusive here and there from some talented small or mid-level PC dev.
On PC there is system RAM and GPU RAM. Anything that is involved in the rendering of a 3D frame needs to be on the GPU buffer, and a higher resolution frame, as well as certain AA method will take up a bit more of that buffer.
On consoles the CPU and GPU share the same RAM buffer.
Skyrim exists on consoles as a small area around the player. Levels are streamed in as you move around the world. This literally means that a lot of objects and AI simply don’t exist until you get pretty close to them. On PC, that area is larger and it has a noticeable impact in the way the world feels.
With a large amount of RAM you can easily imagine just how large that area that is actually active could be.
As I said, I don’t think it would mean much. If the difference was say, 5 and 12, that might be significant. But yeah, those 3 gigs just means a smaller “active” world, possibly not as high resolution textures available, or less texture variety as you’d might have had.
That’s not entirely accurate, vertex buffers may or may not be in GPU memory. In Open GL 3.3+ this is what the “buffer hints” are for (GL_STATIC_DRAW and GL_DYNAMIC_DRAW); whether you have the buffers in main or GPU memory generally depends on whether you plan on deforming/breaking/altering the meshes or not. Though the developer doesn’t have complete control over this, hence why they’re called “hints”, it can drastically affect performance, but the library (and/or driver and/or device) is free to ignore your request and put it wherever the hell it pleases. There’s probably something similar in DirectX 10+, but I don’t work with DirectX so I don’t know what it would be.
I figured someone was going to get nitty gritty on me with what I said.
Ok 99% of the stuff you need to render a frame either should be or is required to be on the GPU buffer, otherwise the frame either can’t be drawn or performance hits the floor.
So how much memory are PC games using now? The Killzone: Shadowfall article said 3 GB just for video leaving 1.6 for the rest of the game. But that was just a demo.
Well most are still running under 2 Gigs of System RAM and 1 gig of VRAM. Some PC exclusives and games running on engines that are obviously meant for next generation consoles, can use a lot more, depending on game settings.
Crysis 3 still runs on under 2 Gigs of system RAM, I believe, but then again, the areas aren’t super huge or anything, and I’ve seen my full 2 Gigs of Vram being allocated, however allocation doesn’t mean actual use, and I’m running games at 1440p, almost twice the resolution of a 1080p panel.
Generally around 1000 to 1500 MB of system RAM, I’d say. Video RAM is generally less than 1000 MB, but can be much much more if you’re running high resolutions with antialiasing or high-resolution texture packs. Killzone using 3 GB of RAM for video is more than most PCs are capable of doing these days, but it’s less than what the latest and greatest hardware can do. Though those video cards cost more than either console (and some cost more than both!)