Can someone clarift the PS4's RAM

[Dylan1999]

So I did some reading about the specs of the PS4 and saw that the RAM is 8gb og gddr5. Does this count as a GPU because its gddr5. RAM is only ddr,ddr2 and ddr3. Or is this a custom type of ram/gpu by sony? Please clarify. I am having trouble deciding whether to get a ps4 or build a custom pc. So if you could clarify the RAM for the ps4 and how good it is and stuff like that, that would help alot. Thanks

 

[Dylan1999]

I meant clarify in the heading

 

[fulle]

The Xbox One and PS4 use APUs. Meaning, that the GPU and CPU are on the same die, and share the same memory resources. CPUs like DDR, because of lower latency, but GPUs like GDDR, which has higher memory bandwidth.

With the PS4, the memory used was GDDR5, because Sony felt that the high memory bandwidth would better benefit performance. With the Xbox One, DDR3 was used, which created a big memory bandwidth bottleneck on the GPU. To help alleviate that, they put a ESRAM embedded memory on the die, for a small amount of higher bandwidth memory to use for things like AA and post processing effects.

In building your own PC, you don't have to worry about this as much. You can have a CPU using DDR type memory, and a videocard with a good amount of GDDR, preventing any memory bottlenecks. Only when you use an APU do you hit memory bottlenecks, because generally DDR3 isn't fast enough to drive an APU unless the DDR3 is running at really high speeds. With DDR4, however, I think that problem will mostly go away.

 

[Platinum Era]

Sony is using a custom made GDDR 5 ram so it could be faster (and be easier for devs working on PS4 exclusives) than the current DDR3 standard. The only games that would be able to take advantage of the stronger RAM would be PS4 exclusives or games optimized for the PS4.

 

[Dylan1999]

ok thanks guys!

 

[youcanDUit]

The Xbox One and PS4 use APUs. Meaning, that the GPU and CPU are on the same die, and share the same memory resources. CPUs like DDR, because of lower latency, but GPUs like GDDR, which has higher memory bandwidth.

With the PS4, the memory used was GDDR5, because Sony felt that the high memory bandwidth would better benefit performance. With the Xbox One, DDR3 was used, which created a big memory bandwidth bottleneck on the GPU. To help alleviate that, they put a ESRAM embedded memory on the die, for a small amount of higher bandwidth memory to use for things like AA and post processing effects.

In building your own PC, you don't have to worry about this as much. You can have a CPU using DDR type memory, and a videocard with a good amount of GDDR, preventing any memory bottlenecks. Only when you use an APU do you hit memory bottlenecks, because generally DDR3 isn't fast enough to drive an APU unless the DDR3 is running at really high speeds. With DDR4, however, I think that problem will mostly go away.

is the esRAM that effective? can it really balance out GDDR5?

 

[gamerk316]

Yes, but devs need to spend a LOT of time working on manual memory management in order to make sure the right data is where it needs to be when its needed. Its a LOT of extra work.