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Epic's Mark Rein: "I really am excited" about PlayStation 4's 8GB of Ram
Posted: 21.02.2013 10:46 by Jamie Davey Comments: 16
Epic Games co-founder and vice president Mark Rein has been expressing his excitement about the PlayStation 4 on Twitter, saying "I really am excited" about the 8GB of GDDR5 memory.

"8GB of super-fast RAM - holy cow!" Tweeted Rein. "Can't wait to see what Microsoft has in store to combat this!"

Epic Games appeared at the PlayStation 4 announcement to show us a new version of the Elemental real-time tech demo running on PS4. The demonstration, which you can see below, features real-time reflections, subsurface scattering, GPU-powered particle effects, dynamic lighting and shadowing.

Studio founder and CEO Tim Sweeney said, "We are thrilled to build onto our long-established success with PlayStation. Unreal Engine 4 is expertly designed for the next generation of game development and the outstanding power of PlayStation 4. Today’s demonstration offers a preview of what developers can accomplish using our tools to create games for PlayStation 4."

Comments

By SirRoderick (SI Elite) on Feb 21, 2013
SirRoderick
So it has something that I wouldn't be ashamed of having in my PC...with purpose built architecture. That is actually pretty good!
By HenoKutus (SI Core) on Feb 21, 2013
HenoKutus
Looks promising!
By nocutius (SI Elite) on Feb 21, 2013
nocutius
Anything less would be a hazard :)
By JonahFalcon (SI Elite) on Feb 21, 2013
JonahFalcon
Except... the price of the PS3 is expected to be over 400 GBP.
By nocutius (SI Elite) on Feb 21, 2013
nocutius
I wonder how much does that ram cost then, it can be that expensive compared to the rest of the system.
By JamieSI (SI Core) on Feb 21, 2013
JamieSI
Wouldn't that RAM cost about £50 - 70?
By SirRoderick (SI Elite) on Feb 21, 2013
SirRoderick
You can't buy GDDR5 off the shelf so I haven't a clue. It's always integrated in a GPU card, there is no direct comparison for PC RAM, that's all DDR3. I don't know how much of a GPU's cost comes from that RAM usage, but when you look at equivalent card with 1GB and 2GB memory respectively, you can get pretty big differences.

A GeForce GTX 650 1GB is currently $109.9 on best buy, the 2GB version is $139.99. Same manufacturer and everything. So if I'd use that as a benchmark, 8GB of DDR5 RAM could be over $200 to fit. Realistically it's going to be less in the end product since they don't plan on making profit of the machines etc though.
By herodotus (SI Herodotus) on Feb 22, 2013
herodotus
So, about $500 in Australia.
Bottom line is, how long will it be for games developers to utilise the benefits of DDR5 RAM in their game engines? I'm sure you won't need it for Unreal Engine 4, and that's the most popular engine for multiplatform titles.
I don't think, as PC users, we'll need to get into that area of upgrade for quite some time to come. When the time DOES come I'll be upgrading CPU, GPU and RAM at the same time, buy them wholesale and install the components myself. It'll turn out quite inexpensive I'm sure.

But I've got quite a bit of time to save to do that, is my point. I generally do have one...most of the time.
By FoolWolf (SI Elite) on Feb 22, 2013
FoolWolf
While 8 GB of GDDR5 menories is nice of course - the PC's have to benefit of counter with 16 - 32 GB's memory that can in the long run count for slower memory types. And give it another year or so and new computers will most likely either sky-rocket or be extinct since evryone should have a table PC instead ;)
By herodotus (SI Herodotus) on Feb 22, 2013
herodotus
Don't forget Virtual memory as well, and that by setting a good Page File Size many hiccups can be given a glass of water.
By SirRoderick (SI Elite) on Feb 22, 2013
SirRoderick
Nice expression there, I'll be nicking that. :)
By nocutius (SI Elite) on Feb 22, 2013
nocutius
I see the position of the SI Historian Poet has already been taken :).
By herodotus (SI Herodotus) on Feb 22, 2013
herodotus
Yes, well too ancient to be a warrior poet:)
By nocutius (SI Elite) on Feb 22, 2013
nocutius
Just put them to sleep with poetry first and you can clobber them at your leisure :)
By FoolWolf (SI Elite) on Feb 24, 2013
FoolWolf
To get back to the video at hand - it is sure nice with videos - but Aliens kinda hollowed the media's reliability though so now we say - yeah and on the actual console in play - how does it look?
By herodotus (SI Herodotus) on Feb 24, 2013
herodotus
Thanks for the moderation there, Wolfy. Always nice to see someone with a level head bringing us back on-topic:)
As to the topic, I have to agree that "Aliens: Colonial Marines" will have destroyed the faith of many, not just by the pre-rendered videos but the shameful way the PC demo was tirelessly replayed as gameplay footage right up until a month prior to release.