PS4 games will use 5.5GB of RAM out of 8GB, but there’s a catch

[freak 1,032]

PS4 games will use 5.5GB of RAM out of 8GB, but there’s a catch

 

We’ve known that the PS4 would have 8GB of RAM total — an enormous increase compared to the PS3′s measly 512MB. We’ve also known that the Xbox One will have the same amount of RAM, but would be dedicating 3GB of it to the operating system alone, leaving just 5GB for games. We haven’t known the PS4′s split, though for a while it was rumored to dedicate more than 5GB of RAM to the games, giving it an edge over the Xbox One. Digital Foundry got their eyes on some official PlayStation 4 documentation that detailed the breakdown of RAM the console would dedicated to its games and to its operating system, and the rumors of more RAM for games is true, but there’s a catch.

According to the report, the PS4 will allow games to work with 5.5GB of RAM. Furthermore, the operating system will have a dedicated 3.5GB of RAM. Yes, that would total 9GB. The breakdown is such that the OS will have 3.5GB of dedicated RAM, games will have 4.5GB dedicated, but games will be able to take 1GB from the OS when necessary, raising it to that 5.5GB figure.

Digital Foundry also noted that being able to utilize the flex RAM wasn’t entirely easy, and may just be limited to first-party developers at launch, eventually opening up to other developers once they get a handle on it.

The majority of previous leaks claimed that around 512MB to 1Gb would be used for the OS, and the rest would be used for games, giving the PS4 a massive game-RAM advantage over the Xbox One’s dedicated 5GB. Now, if the split described in these reports end up true, then the PS4 and Xbox One won’t have much of a difference in RAM dedication at all. However, reports claim that as developers become more comfortable with the PS4, the amount of dedicated OS RAM could lessen, freeing up more used for games.

Whatever the case may be, we’ll certainly find out this holiday season when the PS4 releases.

 

[Xanth719 0]

Interesting how you didn't mention the XBox One's Hypervisor in this.
 

http://www.giantbomb.com/xbox-one/3045-145/forums/why-does-the-xbox-one-have-a-hypervisor-and-what-i-1437760/

"The beauty of a hypervisor is we can shut off or suspend operating systems without any effect to others on that same machine. Got a game that needs to load up 6 gigabytes into memory? That's fine - the apps side won't even get in the way. How about 7 gigabytes? I think that's kind of outlandish but let's just suppose. If apps can't run within that last half gig of memory we can just suspend the whole thing and give the whole 7.5 gigabytes to the game."