Pull out your favourite salt shaker and prepare to toss a hefty helping all over your keyboard, because the rumourmongers are out in force today. PS4Daily is reporting that developers will have access to 7GB of the PlayStation 4’s total 8GB GDDR5 RAM for games, with the remaining 1GB being reserved for the console’s operating system.
The site fails to name a source, merely mentioning that the snippet was confirmed by a “PS4 developer”. Still, the figure seems plausible, with the next generation console promising a wealth of social features that will need access to a large pool of memory in order to operate efficiently. Just Add Water’s head honcho Stewart Gilray mentioned in a recent interview that you’ll be able to access all of the machine’s functions in-game.
It’s perhaps worth remembering that 7GB GDDR5 RAM is still an enormous figure. For comparison purposes, the PlayStation 3 currently boasts 512MB RAM (not the super-fast kind, mind), with around 50MB of that being used by the console’s operating system. Meanwhile, the Wii U includes 2GB RAM, with approximately half of that reserved for the system’s functions.
According to Gilray, the original PS4 development kits only featured 4GB GDDR5 RAM, so developers will still end up with more memory than they originally anticipated. “We were told [the PS4] was 4GB," he explained. “When they said 8GB it was like, 'Okay.'"
[source ps4daily.com]
Comments 9
Does the video card have dedicated memory outside the 8(7)? Or is all the RAM dedicated? Cause if its got like a 2gb card with 7 gigs of elbow room....
@charlesnarles: As far as I know, the GPU has no extra Ram for itself but also uses a part of the 8(7) Gigs. But this is still awesome news, because the PS3 has 256MB Ram for the CPU and such and 256MB for the GPU, which made development troublesome or hard sometimes.
The 360 has 512MB of unified Ram that can be divided as needed. That Sony adopts the same strategy for the PS4 is quite awesome, for it means much more flexibility for the developers.
And on the topic: 7 Gigs remaining for games is still awesome...especially if one considers that all PS4 demos up until now were created with the 4Gigs in mind, so minus the Gig for the system they probably ran on 3Gigs.
7GB is more than enough for devs to flex their muscles. The only constraint I could see is if the devs start developing 4K games, which we know won't happen for quite a while.
@irken004 I thought Sony said that the PS4 won't support 4K games.
PS4 2 stronk.
@Jaz007 It can support 4K videos at least, I thought they said that longterm plans were to add 4K games? idk
I think I read that the PS4 will only support 4k videoplayback, not games...but who knows...time will tell.
Thanks for answering this, I asked about 2 week sago
Though my hypothesis went something like 4GB games, 2GB OS, 2GB social media so this is awesome. It's also about 5GB more than the WiiU has available for STORAGE on the Basic model
This is hardly a surprise...unless you're surprised the OS doesn't take a bigger chunk...which I almost am. Great news, anyway.
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