Along with the 8GB of dedicated GDDR5 RAM, the PS4 has an extra 2Gb of DDR3 RAM, a system teardown by iFixIt has revealed. This extra 2Gb – that’s really 256MB, 2 Gigabit rather than 2 Gigabyte – is suspected to be used for background processes on the secondary processor.
So, while it’s not going to make your games run any better (though we suspect they’ll be just fine), it could be what allows background downloading and installing to take place.
If you think about it, that 256MB for the background processes is the same amount of RAM dedicated to the GPU on the PS3 – that just goes to show how much of a step up the PS4 is, and how future proof it could be.
The teardown shows each individual part of the system, and also reveals that the power supply is rated at an AC 100-240 volts, which means that it’s universal, and you can take your PS4 around the world providing you have the right adapter on the plug end.
3shirts
I love their tear downs, often reveal very interesting stuff.
blarty
It could also be being co-opted for the 15mins recording during game play
cam the man
That’s what I was thinking, using GDDR5 for video recording is a waste. It’s probably goes to the DDR3 before being written to HDD.
Stefan L
Image processing, yes, other menial tasks too, but 15 minutes of video at even half decent bit rates would take up much more than 256MB.
cam the man
Yeah it would take lots of ram to keep the recording in memory. I just meant using DDR3 instead of GDDR5 while processing the recordings as it doesn’t need the extra speed of GDDR5, which can be kept for more magical things.
Kennykazey
This is great news as it means less of the GDDR will be held off by system services and can be put to use in games.
beeje13
+1 Menial system tasks don’t need the high bandwidth of expensive GDDR5, makes sense, but I didn’t see this coming, something the leaks missed.
Blayney
That main PWB is so sparsely populated. Not much happening on there! Looks like it would be simple to fault find. Wonder what it costs to produce. £50?
beeje13
Depends, what do you define as the board? CPU+GPU included? RAM too. With everything on I’d see it over £100, just the bare board, less than £40 maybe.
Blayney
I define it as the fully populated PWB. It depends on what background you’re coming from too. I’m coming from a manufacturing viewpoint, so cost price. If they were selling this as a replacement PWB to a customer – yes over £100 easy. To make? I’m not so sure.
boeboe
mmmm secret sauce.
double-o-dave
Step 14 looks like a futuristic hi-tech Helghast stapler.
FluBBa
Total RAM in the PS3 is 512MB… just sayin’
My guess would be that the extra ram is for background network/hdd cache, maybe they will implement some kind of p2p service later to speed up the store at least? I wish they had put in 8GB of flash ram as cache as well, that would have really future proofed it.
FluBBa
Sooo, they have a completely separate extra cpu of some kind (SCEI CXD90025G) for handling network and other stuff =)
bunimomike
I think Mark Cerny mentioned this with the first reveal back in February. Background tasks wouldn’t impede on the new APU and that the secondary CPU would handle background downloads (especially useful when playing a game and only having the first 20% of it down), etc.
Great thinking as there’s so much to go on outside of the game itself, these days.
Erroneus
So the PS4 has 66Gb of RAM, not bad… :o)
ron_mcphatty
I love a good tear down, especially one without bloody spudgers and fragile glass bits! Shame there’s no PS1 backward compatibility, not surprising though and probably easily patched in later if Sony feel like it. I wonder if the new beast is capable of some emotion chip emulation? Probably not gonna happen :)
Alex C
“for the background processes is the same amount of RAM as the entire system on the PS3”
Not quite. =) There’s 256MB for the GPU, and another 256MB shared between the GPU and Cell.
justerthought
He did not say that. Read it again. The article said same amount of RAM as the PS3 GPU had access to. So the article is correct. You are wrong.