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On PC (Nvidia) vs PlayStation, and why PS6 has to have 30GB VRAM
- Thread starter MCH2024
- Start date
rodrigolfp
Haptic Gamepads 4 Life
Are you trolling or following your tag??
So who has a vision here is Nvidia. Not Cerny, not AMD. Cerny at best helps AMD to follow/copy Nvidia.
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You did.
"It's a calculated attempt to.. shut out the PC market."
It's not an attempt to do anything but offer a good system with lots of memory. Nvidias 8GB cards were a calculated attempted to cut costs and charge the same prices. That's all.
Not for 8GB as I showed you.
If you think that then there is no point of even discussing it.
Those are not just 8GB cards the 8GB cards were less desirable. People did not vote for that even if you think their very open bashing of it is some grand conspiracy.
Nvidia has huge marketshare nobody is denying that but that isn't because of 8GB of VRAM it's because of RT/DLSS. Advantages that have been chipped away at by AMD in recent years. What part of that do you not understand?
You can even see this in public votes:
PC gamers agree that 8GB of VRAM "isn't enough anymore" according to our recent poll
8GB graphics cards aren't selling nearly as well as alternatives with more VRAM, and another poll confirms that PC gamers want more.
www.pcguide.com
But let me guess those are fake too.
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IFireflyl
Gold Member
Wildebeest
Member
As totally neutral observer and not a fanboy I think that Sony should put $10,000 worth of silicon in a box and sell it for $500.
Tomorrow
Banned
30GB is not much for next gen console. if 30GB is exclusively for the VRAM then it would be a huge step up yes. They'd also need at least 32GB RAM on top of that. I don't see PS6 coming with ~60GB of RAM lol not with the current state of things.
My PC with 64GB RAM and 32GB VRAM can easily hit 25GB on RAM and 15-19GB VRAM. That's today and I don't even play at 4K.
32-48GB is probably more realistic as a total amount of RAM for next gen consoles. These consoles will also need to come with 2TB minimum SSD. PS6 is going to be stupid expensive and likely weaker than it should be.
My PC with 64GB RAM and 32GB VRAM can easily hit 25GB on RAM and 15-19GB VRAM. That's today and I don't even play at 4K.
32-48GB is probably more realistic as a total amount of RAM for next gen consoles. These consoles will also need to come with 2TB minimum SSD. PS6 is going to be stupid expensive and likely weaker than it should be.
icecold1983
Member
Why would Mark give 2 shits about what PC GPUs are doing memory wise. The PS6 spec will be designed around maximizing performance and usability in a given cost and power envelope. Console gamers dont care about PC and PC gamers dont care about console. Look how absolutely shit the PC market has been for years and console sales are not benefitting. When the PC value proposition was significantly better consoles werent negatively affected. There is very little crosstalk between these 2 markets.
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MCH2024
Member
You are alluding to it as evil. There is no moral angle here. It's console strategy.
You didn't show anything. GN's Steve is a drama youtuber so I disregard. But a quick look at PC market share shows:
15% lower
7% 4GB
10% 6GB
30% 8GB
3% 10GB
15% 12GB
15% 16GB
5% >16GB
12/16GB numbers are slightly inflated by RDNA2/3 GPUs that can't ray trace and have mediocre performance. (So them having that extra memory is irrelevant).
RDNA4 sold far less than RDNA2/3 so Radeon has evolved into truly not mattering at this point.
Ofc, people are free to buy >8GB cards if they want. They cost a little extra but they are mostly worth it.
An army of people still own and buy 8GB card. And this will continue.
I don't think why you are trying to somehow indicate that I don't think more VRAM is better?
Most gamers don't even consider the budget brands, for good reason. They aren't even part of the conversation for casuals. So whether to get 8GB dGPU or more is a strictly a financial decision. It's "how much do I want to pay for a dGPU?", not "how much VRAM do I strictly need?"
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Fortress of Regrets
Member
I... just... wat?
MCH2024
Member
What is unclear to you about the my original post?
rodrigolfp
Haptic Gamepads 4 Life
Not entirely true. We use console specs as reference for what specs our PC will have.
icecold1983
Member
But you arent going to buy one, regardless of how bad the PC market gets.
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vaibhavpisal
Member
Magnus is supposed to be 5080 equivalent. PS6 is supposedly a tier below, that would be 5070ti. So, 6070 ballpark.
Anyone with a small insight into GPU performance knows an 8GB card bought now is going to compromise their experience. 8GB cards are the majority because they've been available for many years. Doesn't mean they are popular now.
I bought an rx480 8GB in 2016.....10 years ago.
rodrigolfp
Haptic Gamepads 4 Life
I bought a Switch 2.
You were just talking about auxiliary discussions and derailing and now you're talking about morality? You know exactly what I meant. It isn't a calculated attempt to shut out anything.
Firstly you're using steams hardware survey for VRAM. Secondly why would "no raytracing" make them irrelevant? You think all those 8GB or less GPUs can? These aren't necessarily the market buying the latest games to influence devs as much as you think. Otherwise PS4 would be getting the latest games too. Devs wouldn't be asking to drop Series S clauses either. A lot of people still play indies on steamdecks and less demanding stuff.
A whole lot of people were free to buy a Series S too and they did. Didn't mean PS or AMD hatched some plan to shut out anybody. If anything MS hatched a plan, just tried to cut costs and offer something cheap and it ultimately failed to keep up due to low RAM. Same will be true here. Nobody likes the low RAM.
You are the one saying people are voting for low RAM and I'm saying it has nothing to do with the RAM amount and everything to do with nvidias greed and shrinkflation strategy of same low-end price but lower BOM cost to nvidia while selling the actual desirable things like RT/DLSS. Nobody actually wants 8GB of VRAM, gamers are not voting for that they're pushing back against it.
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kruis
Exposing the sinister cartel of retailers who allow companies to pay for advertising space.
Not going to happen. PS5 Pro already has 18 GB. Next gen will require more RAM.
darrylgorn
Banned
And be less than $400.
And have all of the games.
And have flawless performance.
And drop the annual online sub.
Any other pipe dreams I've missed?
And have all of the games.
And have flawless performance.
And drop the annual online sub.
Any other pipe dreams I've missed?
So they need ps6 to compete with switch 2? Ps5 and pro too weak to compete?
Killer8
Member
I don't think the VRAM situation really works in the way you think it does. The trend for a while has been GPUs needing less VRAM than total system memory of a PlayStation. 4GB was fine in the PS4 era (8GB GDDR5) and 8GB has mostly been fine in the PS5 era (16GB GDDR6). It's only really when trying to push visuals above the consoles that people ran into issues.
Corporal.Hicks
Banned
Holy cow! I wasn't expecting to laugh so hard when I opened this thread. It's a true delusion and comedy at the same time.
asdasdasdbb
Member
Anything is possible at this point. 4 GB chips def wouldn't be available though if they stick to 2027.
Bojji
Member
8GB was never fine for PS5 era games (after cross gen ended). Minimum GPU memory for PS5 ports is 10GB, optimum: 12GB. Above console settings (PT etc.): 16GB.
That's because most of that unified memory consoles have (~13GB) is used for GPU.
PeteBull
Gold Member
Sorry op but the graph u showed has tons of objectively wrong info, how can u claim having any bit of hardware/tech knowneldge where u put 3060 above ps5(its 5-10% below usually) and on top u gave it 8gigs of vram, its most popular steam gpu, takes 10secs of search to know it has 12gigs of vram.
There use this site, its way more accurate, thats basically gpu in base ps5 so u know where it stacks up vs modern pc gpus, for comparision ps5pr0 is around 16gigs 9060xt:
Cant take u srsly after that, even those i agree ps6 will have visibly more ram/vram from base ps5, and obviously gonna cost a lot(my prediction was/is 999$, which i made right after we got official price of ps5pr0).
There use this site, its way more accurate, thats basically gpu in base ps5 so u know where it stacks up vs modern pc gpus, for comparision ps5pr0 is around 16gigs 9060xt:
AMD Radeon RX 6700 Specs
AMD Navi 22, 2450 MHz, 2304 Cores, 144 TMUs, 64 ROPs, 10240 MB GDDR6, 2000 MHz, 160 bit
www.techpowerup.com
Cant take u srsly after that, even those i agree ps6 will have visibly more ram/vram from base ps5, and obviously gonna cost a lot(my prediction was/is 999$, which i made right after we got official price of ps5pr0).
StereoVsn
Gold Member
Considering cross-gen will be there for 4-5 years and Sony is planning to launch a handheld, I kind of doubt 16GB VRAM is going to be a huge issue for quite a while.
Plus out of 30GB on PS6 (if it launches with that), a portion will be needed for OS and another portion for CPU operations.
Plus out of 30GB on PS6 (if it launches with that), a portion will be needed for OS and another portion for CPU operations.
Mortisfacio
Member
Whatever PS6 launches as, it will be equiv to 2-4 year old mid ranged hardware for PC. Always has been. I don't see that changing.
Windom Earle
Banned
What is the price of that 30GB lmao. Delayed till 2030. Also still 2GB less than my GPU alone.
Reports indicate that Mark Cerny gave PS6 30GB of unified memory; A ludicrous quantity of premium memory.
It's highly unlikely that he did it for the reasons that AMD misinformation peddlers spout (memory is cheap, 8GB GPUs should be free, you will need 16GB VRAM to play games, game developers actually need it, etc).
It's a calculated Attempt to shut 16GB PC GPUs out of the high-end gaming tier entirely. He compromised on raw GPU performance (~RTX 5070) and CPU (~AI 7 350 level) to afford it. That trade-off is the whole game.
Here's the question worth asking:
It's 30GB.
Before we begin, some facts about PC one needs to Accept before. If you disagree with these, fair enough, but don't derail the discussion based on them as these are auxiliary.
With 93%+ market share, Nvidia is the only game in town. It doesn't matter if a niche budget brand (AMD Radeon or Intel Arc) offer a larger VRAM buffer at an affordable price, if nobody's buying them, they don't define the platform. PC Gaming is synonymous with GeForce.
AMD's Radeon has a long history of being delusional about where their GPUs actually land and how they perform relative to Nvidia. This is important because that's the frame of reference you need to adopt when translating the grand performance claims of console vs PC.
PS5 was not equivalent to a 3060 Ti whatsoever or even on the same planet as it. It was equivalent to a 6600 XT to a T.
Now that we got this out of the way, let's divide PC into multiple tiers.
(RTX 60 Series is guesswork/illustrative)
You can immediately see that Cerny tried a version of this last generation.
PS5 launched with ~RTX 3060 raster performance and ~9GB of usable VRAM on the high end, and the vision was this:
PC gamers were having none of it. A lot of them owned 8GB GPUs that genuinely outperformed PS5 in raw rasterization to high hell, and they weren't going to accept being told their hardware was substandard and that they should just run low settings at 400FPS. Despite the AMD influencer ecosystem (MLID, Hardware Unboxed's Steve, etc) pushing hard for Cerny's framing, developers blinked after multiple disaster launches.
They burned an extra gigabyte of RAM on PS5 CPU / underutilized PS5's SSD. because PC was genuinely a bigger platform than high end console at that point. Even though PS5 ate up Xbox, high end console market shrank while PC grew.
The result: the number of games where 8GB is not enough for PS5+ settings (slightly less on textures, significantly better in VRAM light settings) can be counted on two hands. Cerny lost that round.
PS5 Pro was a concession in a way. Since PS5 couldn't really ray trace, so it was being cut out of that side of the generation.
30GB Is the Rematch
This time the gap is massive. That's the entire moat of PS6.
18GB VRAM+ should be mostly safe given the sheer market mass. It's doable engineering work for developers to work around using more CPU side memory and tweak compression to get 20-22GB into 18GB.
16GB is the battleground because Nvidia has so many GPUs there. It ranges from mass market cards (RTX 6060 TI 16GB) to cards that dumpster the PS6 in raw perf (RTX 5080).
Cerny can't afford for those GPUs to be able to match PS6. Because otherwise PC has had RTX 4080, a PS6 equivalent, since 2022.
Which is why he has to wait for lower memory prices to launch with 30GB. He can't launch with 20GB
Nvidia's counter will be straightforward again: flood the market with 16GB cards fast enough and cheap enough that developers can't afford to ignore them. If 16GB becomes the dominant install base at the high end, developers will cater to it the same way they catered to 8GB last gen.
Black_Stride
do not tempt fate do not contrain Wonder Woman's thighs do not do not
HerjansEagleFeeder
Member
Killer8
Member
The keyword is mostly. There are outliers which hog VRAM like the The Last of Us Part 1 and Monster Hunter Wilds, but these tend to be badly coded ports.
Later patches for the former reduced the footprint so 8GB cards could comfortably run it:
Games also tend to allocate more VRAM than they really need on cards with more headroom (see above comparison between 8GB and 24GB availability).
You also don't need anywhere close to 16GB for above console settings in many games! Maxed out Cyberpunk and Resident Evil Requiem with path-tracing run fine on 12GB cards. I had zero issues with CP2077 on a RTX 4070 Super:
Resolution obviously plays a role too. 4K is of course a different beast. But then most games on PS5 aren't even 4K to begin with (hence the "720p res in 2026" meme posters in Digital Foundry threads).
People also don't realize just how much lower the quality settings are on PS5. Battlefield 6 performance mode on PS5, for example, uses the PC equivalent of low texture quality (!), while the balanced mode at best uses the high setting. There are two additional quality levels above even that on PC, ultra and overkill - which of course will tank VRAM but for minimal quality gain:
These are the reasons why Valve are pretty confident in the 8GB amount for the Steam Machine. It's good enough territory to run like 99.9% of games at PS5-like settings and resolutions. But it's also up to the consumer to adjust for that (and for developers to code the games correctly).
Corporal.Hicks
Banned
IMO PS5 is equivalent to the 6600XT, and I'm being generous because supposedly the PS5 GPU isn't even RDNA2. The 6600XT has 10.6TF, so even a little bit higher than 10.3TF PS5. The ps5 GPU has higher memory bandwidth but it needs to share it with the CPU. As for the 6700XT, this GPU has 1TF more than the PS5.Sorry op but the graph u showed has tons of objectively wrong info, how can u claim having any bit of hardware/tech knowneldge where u put 3060 above ps5(its 5-10% below usually) and on top u gave it 8gigs of vram, its most popular steam gpu, takes 10secs of search to know it has 12gigs of vram.
There use this site, its way more accurate, thats basically gpu in base ps5 so u know where it stacks up vs modern pc gpus, for comparision ps5pr0 is around 16gigs 9060xt:
AMD Radeon RX 6700 Specs
AMD Navi 22, 2450 MHz, 2304 Cores, 144 TMUs, 64 ROPs, 10240 MB GDDR6, 2000 MHz, 160 bitwww.techpowerup.com
Cant take u srsly after that, even those i agree ps6 will have visibly more ram/vram from base ps5, and obviously gonna cost a lot(my prediction was/is 999$, which i made right after we got official price of ps5pr0).
Does that mean a 6600XT on a PC will match the PS5's results? Of course not, because console games are usually better optimized.
I remember that my overclocked GTX 1080 10.6 TF delivered similar results to the PS5 in many of the games I tested, and the 8 GB of VRAM was sufficient for most of them. except for Forspoken game.
Bojji
Member
The keyword is mostly. There are outliers which hog VRAM like the The Last of Us Part 1 and Monster Hunter Wilds, but these tend to be badly coded ports.
Later patches for the former reduced the footprint so 8GB cards could comfortably run it:
Games also tend to allocate more VRAM than they really need on cards with more headroom (see above comparison between 8GB and 24GB availability).
You also don't need anywhere close to 16GB for above console settings in many games! Maxed out Cyberpunk and Resident Evil Requiem with path-tracing run fine on 12GB cards. I had zero issues with CP2077 on a RTX 4070 Super:
Resolution obviously plays a role too. 4K is of course a different beast. But then most games on PS5 aren't even 4K to begin with (hence the "720p res in 2026" meme posters in Digital Foundry threads).
People also don't realize just how much lower the quality settings are on PS5. Battlefield 6 performance mode on PS5, for example, uses the PC equivalent of low texture quality (!), while the balanced mode at best uses the high setting. There are two additional quality levels above even that on PC, ultra and overkill - which of course will tank VRAM but for minimal quality gain:
These are the reasons why Valve are pretty confident in the 8GB amount for the Steam Machine. It's good enough territory to run like 99.9% of games at PS5-like settings and resolutions. But it's also up to the consumer to adjust for that (and for developers to code the games correctly).
Many games have problems on 8GB cards, even in 1080p:
I played both CP2077 with PT and AW2 with PT on 4070ti (12GB). With 4k output resolution both games were going out of vram with 1080p base resolution...
Now with 16GB GPU I can see how many games push beyond 12GB of VRAM (reserved).
CP, PT, 864p base res:
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asdasdasdbb
Member
It's more that It's Free Real Estate and there's no point in flushing if you have room.
PeteBull
Gold Member
Well yeh, ultimately it doesnt matter what is inside, what matters is how it performs in games and thats bit above 3060(usually 5-10% depending on particular game/settings etc).
Its same case like back in 2014/2015 ps4 performed similary to 750ti, later games stopped being optimised for that entry lvl maxwell gpu so ps4 was performing more like 1050ti even which was 65-70% stronger and had 2x more vram(we all remember gow pc port
).
cafecat
Member
Nvidia is very strict with their game GPU vram size, one reason is if the vram is large enough, the card will be used as some AI card, which we alreay saw: modded 4090 with 48gb vram and there are money company and individuals buy these card for AI use.
The vram is limit the resolution and texture quality stuff, but I think it's why Nvidia is push neural rendering, but we don't know if next gen game will use more VRAM to achive some new game design.
The vram is limit the resolution and texture quality stuff, but I think it's why Nvidia is push neural rendering, but we don't know if next gen game will use more VRAM to achive some new game design.
They're not really allocating more than they really need, they're allocating what they need but often on 8gb they can't and you can end up with lower quality looking textures that haven't loaded. A prime example of that in action is Monster Hunter on an 8GB card which you mentioned. They're not allocating more for the heck of it though.
Games also tend to allocate more VRAM than they really need on cards with more headroom (see above comparison between 8GB and 24GB availability).
PeteBull
Gold Member
Nvidia isnt some knight in the shiny armor making gaming gpu's have less vram just so AI farms/companies dont buy those out, they simply do it for pure profit.
Hindsight 20/20 ofc but wish i bought 4090 back then in 2022 at launch, would have performance above 5080 and 24gigs of vram on top, framegen above 2x is supershit anyways so really was no reason not to get 4090...
It wasnt even that much more expensive compared to current 5080 prices anyways
Corporal.Hicks
Banned
I think developers stopped optimizing their ports at the end of the PS4 era. Just look at the PC requirements for Uncharted 4. The minimum settings at 720p and 30 fps require a Radeon 290X (5.6TF newer GCN architecture compared to PS4). The PS4 has a 7850/7870 hybrid (1.8TF GCN 1.0) and can run the same game at 1080p with high PC settings. Furthermore, in some locations, the PS4 version was even more detailed than the PC version running at maximum settings. So, on a PC, you needed a GPU that was three times faster just to run the game at half the resolution of the PS4. And you still had to use the lowest settings. In my opinion, the optimization of Uncharted 4 on PC was ridiculously bad. But, because people on PC in 2022 were already using overpowered GPUs (Ampere/Ada Lovelace/RDNA2), so they didn't notice these high requirements relative to PS4 hardware, in fact some even prised itWell yeh, ultimately it doesnt matter what is inside, what matters is how it performs in games and thats bit above 3060(usually 5-10% depending on particular game/settings etc).
Its same case like back in 2014/2015 ps4 performed similary to 750ti, later games stopped being optimised for that entry lvl maxwell gpu so ps4 was performing more like 1050ti even which was 65-70% stronger and had 2x more vram(we all remember gow pc port
.
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Hawk The Slayer
Member
Seems accurate that the PS6 would be around the power of the 5080/5070ti etc with around 30gb of total shared ram without costing a insane amount. For some past comparison, the PC I bought 10 years ago with a gtx 1070 8gb vram was around 1300 before tax. And then a few years later the PS5 came out and it was stronger than my PC with it's 16gb of shared ram while only costing like 500 to 600 dollars forgot. So I think the PS6 that's coming out a few years later could be very powerful around the level of 5070ti/5080 with 24gb to 30gb of shared ram at least 24gb I would think. And could still cost below 1000 dollars.
If it doesn't end up with 30gb of total shared ram than 24gb of total shared ram would be the lowest they'll go.
If it doesn't end up with 30gb of total shared ram than 24gb of total shared ram would be the lowest they'll go.
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asdasdasdbb
Member
As mentioned earlier, the options are 15, 20, 30 and 40. Unless they go back and change the bus.
And using the 4 GB chips would mean a delay until 2028 at the least.
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Haint
Member
The PS6 SOC is known, the GPU is a node shrink/die shrink RX 9070 (non-XT), probably nearly identical to the RX 1060 or 1060XT (successor to the 9060/9060XT). It's going to be well behind an RTX 6070.
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I think for the handheld they might go 24, and 30 for the home console.
S0ULZB0URNE
Member
" A ludicrous quantity of premium memory."
Less than double the PS5's ram isn't a ludicrous amount.
Less than double the PS5's ram isn't a ludicrous amount.
asdasdasdbb
Member
The handheld uses LPDDR(5X?), so the options are different. Yeah, I think that will use 24.
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