Wii U Speculation Thread of Brains Beware: Wii U Re-Unveiling At E3 2012

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eSATA would be cheaper, as the system already has an SATA controller, but no USB3 controller.

Just learned something new. I guess blu wasn't being greedy after all. :P

I'm down for either option since they are better than 2.0 as I'd probably be the type that would prefer the optional install if available.
 
Just learned something new. I guess blu wasn't being greedy after all. :P

I'm down for either option since they are better than 2.0 as I'd probably be the type that would prefer the optional install if available.

The first problem with eSATA over USB is that it eSATA is not nearly as ubiquitous as USB and therefore increases end-user complexity. That said, I'd love it if they supported both.

The second problem is that back of the Wii U is already crowded, and I wonder if there's even room for an eSATA connector.
 
The first problem with eSATA over USB is that it eSATA is not nearly as ubiquitous as USB and therefore increases end-user complexity. That said, I'd love it if they supported both.

The second problem is that back of the Wii U is already crowded, and I wonder if there's even room for an eSATA connector.

I don't see it being complex for the end-user that would pursue that route. And the way I see it they wouldn't keep a fourth 2.0 port. It would be replaced by either eSATA or 3.0.
 
No way is SATA or eSATA happening.
At all.
They're not nearly standardized enough for Nintendo.
Complexity or "difficulty" of use has no bearing here.
Just the simple fact that anyone can walk into any department store and find a good USB HDD. Can't say the same for eSATA HDDs.
 
The first problem with eSATA over USB is that it eSATA is not nearly as ubiquitous as USB and therefore increases end-user complexity. That said, I'd love it if they supported both.
Or hypothetically speaking, Nintendo could just handle the storage solution themselves USB 3 or Sata, that way developers know exactly what to target performance wise and Nintendo could pocket some extra cash. This has the benefit of eliminating potential user confusion, complexity, extra SKUs or whatever other issues you guys are sugesting might arise.
 
Have Nintendo ever done a dual SKU before though?
Yeah, when they dropped the digital AV port from the cube /still grumpy at nintendo about that stint

No, but those don't have to be dual SKU per se. If they were all made from the same baseline unit with the option for a hdd add-on, one coud think of those SKUs as one vanilla and one with a pre-bundled peripheral. Ideally, that would require a hdd bay, which would increase the size of the baseline unit, which would be a big no-no in nintendo's book. So it'd have to be all external.. did I mention esata already? ; ]

I thought they were pretty strict on just having one and not confusing the market? Even if they did do it though, they'd have to diallow the external USB 2.0 to be used for caching or else there would be performance variants between people with different setups.
My suggestion was about avoiding caching on usb storage at all - all caching would go to either the flash drive or the hdd drive (or both). But given that ms currently do USB2 caching (have not been keeping a tab on them for a while), I assume nintnedo could do that as well. Though passing half-baked solutions to devs is not nintendo's style.
This also adds to the complexity and confusion for consumers as to "what to get". SKU 2 with a built in HDD, or just a regular SKU 1 and add your own.
Not much of a confusion above what the m+ bundles presented vs the standard box - the moment the owner of the standard package decided they needed the add-on they would go out and buy it. In the store the SKUs could be sold as the 'small storage one but expandable' and the 'expanded storage one' for the hdd-prebundled one.
 
With today's release of the first GCN GPUs, what are the changes that WiiU will use something in the range of Cape Verde (est. 12 CUs / 768SP / 12 ROPs / 48 TMUs)? I think this would be a pretty nice chip (read the most we can hope for) and with clock rates around 600 MHz I think it would be quite feasible power wise. But I think we can at least expect 8 CUs / 512SP / 8 ROPs / 32 TMUs, which would also be quite a leap from PS360 (also keep in mind that the ROPs may be also only 8 but are much more powerful now than back in the days) and with a nice amount of eDRAM / 1T-SRAM this would get probably the job done. I still hope for something more powerful though (see Cape Verde).
 
The usb ports are in the front and in the back of the machine (2 + 2)

I hope nintendo raise the internal storage, is not so expensive to put more GB there (althought I'm not an expert).

Edit: you saw that XD
 
Thx for info. Maybe we will hear something around CES, but I guess GDC in March is the better bet.



I hope it will be at least 16GB in the release.

One of the big problems of late gen games have been texture loading...I really hope they can have 8GB of really fast stuff dedicated to a scratch disk of sorts, always feeding RAM from the optical drive...but yea that's wishful thinking.
 
Have Nintendo ever done a dual SKU before though? I thought they were pretty strict on just having one and not confusing the market?

Yeah, these days it's pretty stupid of them not to do a dual SKU considering there are three different DS' on the market (DS lite, DSi, DS XL). I don't understand why can't they offer a normal Wii U package for the average joe and a complete black console package for the fanboys.
 
Thx for info. Maybe we will hear something around CES, but I guess GDC in March is the better bet.



I hope it will be at least 16GB in the release.
Obviously without knowing the limits nintendo will impose on downloadable titles it's hard to know what we need but 8GB does sound pretty small these days. A handful of demos, games, and trailers would be all you'd probably fit.


Yeah, these days it's pretty stupid of them not to do a dual SKU considering there are three different DS' on the market (DS lite, DSi, DS XL). I don't understand why can't they offer a normal Wii U package for the average joe and a complete black console package for the fanboys.
Yeah I'd like a black mamba Wii U for sure!
 
Obviously without knowing the limits nintendo will impose on downloadable titles it's hard to know what we need but 8GB does sound pretty small these days. A handful of demos, games, and trailers would be all you'd probably fit.

Microsoft put 4GB in the 360 Slim core. 8GB will be enough for most users. Heck, the only reason I needed to get off my 20GB was Rock Band.
 
One of the big problems of late gen games have been texture loading...I really hope they can have 8GB of really fast stuff dedicated to a scratch disk of sorts, always feeding RAM from the optical drive...but yea that's wishful thinking.

It would be great if it were 32 gigs.
Then we could install an entire game on there.
 
Isn't one of the "good" things about console gaming that the developers know exactly what they are programming games to run on?

IF Nintendo bought out a WiiU with a HDD/SSD and one without, surely it would make no sense for developers to make games that used the HDD/SSD as they are cutting off a fair % of the potential market?
 
Hard drives and SD cards will be supported from day one, I don't think it'll be an issue really.

Nintendo has had the entire period of Wii's existence to study the pros and cons of HD gaming. So Im sure they have their reasons for choosing the direction they will go with the WiiU in the end. And developers probably have vocalized what they want for the next five years. So Nintendo better not come up with excuses like we didnt expect this or that with the gamers.

So lets hope if the only provide USB2 its because they have found a good solution for it.
 
With today's release of the first GCN GPUs, what are the changes that WiiU will use something in the range of Cape Verde (est. 12 CUs / 768SP / 12 ROPs / 48 TMUs)? I think this would be a pretty nice chip (read the most we can hope for) and with clock rates around 600 MHz I think it would be quite feasible power wise. But I think we can at least expect 8 CUs / 512SP / 8 ROPs / 32 TMUs, which would also be quite a leap from PS360 (also keep in mind that the ROPs may be also only 8 but are much more powerful now than back in the days) and with a nice amount of eDRAM / 1T-SRAM this would get probably the job done. I still hope for something more powerful though (see Cape Verde).

If it were happening, we'd know by now. The best to expect is RV740. Any higher expectations will likely result in disappointment. (Hell, there's a decent chance that expecting RV740 will result in disappointment.)
 
Nintendo has had the entire period of Wii's existence to study the pros and cons of HD gaming. So Im sure they have their reasons for choosing the direction they will go with the WiiU in the end. And developers probably have vocalized what they want for the next five years. So Nintendo better not come up with excuses like we didnt expect this or that with the gamers.

So lets hope if the only provide USB2 its because they have found a good solution for it.


They're supporting USB2 and no large internal HDD because that is the most popular version of the 360.
 
One of the big problems of late gen games have been texture loading...I really hope they can have 8GB of really fast stuff dedicated to a scratch disk of sorts, always feeding RAM from the optical drive...but yea that's wishful thinking.
That's more far fetched than them putting an inexpensive sata port and offer a massive storage option sold separately, that wouldn't cost them much. Including fast type SSD memory in the consoles would be more expensive.
Isn't one of the "good" things about console gaming that the developers know exactly what they are programming games to run on?

IF Nintendo bought out a WiiU with a HDD/SSD and one without, surely it would make no sense for developers to make games that used the HDD/SSD as they are cutting off a fair % of the potential market?
There hasn't been much of a problem with the 360 or PS3, so that satisfies your worries. Or in any event developers are used to it already.
This! Rage needs how much for full installation, 20+ GB?
The demand will only raise over time.
Nintendo could put 120GB of flash memory and it wouldn't work for Rage because the memory laid out like that is too slow. They would need an SSD for that to work.
Microsoft put 4GB in the 360 Slim core. 8GB will be enough for most users. Heck, the only reason I needed to get off my 20GB was Rock Band.
But with MS, the option to update to a hard drive was always available from day one. That's kind of what we should expect from Nintendo.
 
If it were happening, we'd know by now. The best to expect is RV740. Any higher expectations will likely result in disappointment. (Hell, there's a decent chance that expecting RV740 will result in disappointment.)

I still don't believe this tech will be in the final kits, it just doesn't make sense.
 
I still don't believe this tech will be in the final kits, it just doesn't make sense.

from what I have been reading, GCN is really designed with computing in mind.
Considering WiiU will already be getting a pretty decent CPU, what benefit does GCN bring?
partially resident textures (PRT)?
 
It makes perfect sense. 28nm is probably out of the question, so RV740 is the best they can possibly do.

Why? Seriously, I don't know if NEC is behind TSMC on this process, but assuming they are on the same timeline they would have at least half a year to ramp up the initial demand.

from what I have been reading, GCN is really designed with computing in mind.
Considering WiiU will already be getting a pretty decent CPU, what benefit does GCN bring?
partially resident textures (PRT)?

This is correct, but I expect Tesselation to be a big thing next gen and GCN is really the first AMD card to have decent tess performance. I am also not saying that it will be 1:1 consumer card GCN, just something more modern than RV7xx. They can probably get rid of a lot of transistors for instructions that are not used for games.
 
How does a RV770LE compare to a 9800GT 512MB ? favourably ?

Close to even.

Why? Seriously, I don't know if NEC is behind TSMC on this process, but assuming they are on the same timeline they would have at least half a year to ramp up the initial demand.

I'm not sure NEC even can make such a complex 28nm chip in their factories, and it would probably be too expensive for Nintendo anyway.
 
This is correct, but I expect Tesselation to be a big thing next gen and GCN is really the first AMD card to have decent tess performance. I am also not saying that it will be 1:1 consumer card GCN, just something more modern than RV7xx. They can probably get rid of a lot of transistors for instructions that are not used for games.

RV770LE performance with GCN components?
 
I wouldn't be disappointed by 10 CUs / 16 ROPs / 40 TMUs with GCN technology to be honest (even if it would probably have either 8 or 12 CUs, but because of a custom design this could change)
 
From what I could find, PS3 has a 2x BluRay which is about 9 MB/s. There is a practical 12x limit it seems (10,000 rpm) so that would top out at 54MB/s, which is better than USB 2 which practically hits about 40MB/s. Anything less would be 8x (36MB/s) and is in the ballpark of an external USB 2.0 drive so using it for caching is starting to become moot wrt speed (disregarding wear and tear).

So it all depends on what speed Nintendo go for in their bluray drive as to what external connector would give us most speed benefit, but if Nintendo uses anything less than 8x I think it's likely to be 4x (cost/performance tradeoff) which would make using external USB 2.0 advantageous.
 
One of the big problems of late gen games have been texture loading...I really hope they can have 8GB of really fast stuff dedicated to a scratch disk of sorts, always feeding RAM from the optical drive...but yea that's wishful thinking.

Something like this being in the patent, but that patent had the CPU directly accessing the flash memory.

If it were happening, we'd know by now.

Heh. We still aren't even 100% sure on what the dev kit has. No way something like this would be known yet since Nintendo seems to have not sent out final kits yet.

I'm not sure NEC even can make such a complex 28nm chip in their factories, and it would probably be too expensive for Nintendo anyway.

The whole purpose of them going to 28nm was for designing graphics LSIs, not just the GPU like a TSMC (though I don't know if that makes a difference). If you look it up you'll see that the former is how Flipper and Hollywood are identified as. And I don't think it would cost Nintendo "that" much. TSMC was saying their production was at 24,000 wafers per month. And doing some rough calcs since I'm not that familiar with calculating dies per wafer, Nintendo would only probably need about 3,000-5,000. I based that on about 450 dies on a wafer w/50% yields. That would be 675K-1.125M per month.

Looking at the size of the case, I doubt Nintendo would be looking for a size revision down the road. I see them targeting the smallest GPU they can produce that won't be a bottleneck in production. I don't think 40nm makes the cut.
 
man I cannot wait for this to be all over
KuGsj.gif


I am still hoping for something really good, but reading anything from BurntPork makes it hard to be hyped about a good outcome for WiiU's power.

I'm sure the months will fly by as soon as we hit the new year
 
When about do you reckon that a graphic card has to be "finalized" before release?
If it is about a year or so before release, and the Wii U is released next year around this time, then it should be about now that the chip would be completely done - which would have given it a lot of time to end up similar to the GCN.

From what I've seen on this before it seemed like MS/Nintendo/Sony had finalized kits within 3-6 months of launch.
 
http://allthingsd.com/20111222/nint...iday-and-says-what-he-really-thinks-of-zynga/

Reggie said:
The market is going to continue to differentiate based on the types of experiences that consumers want. As an example, if I’m the head of a household of a family of four, and my disposable income is $50,000 to $60,000, I’m going to continue to look at the Wii because of the software, and it’s a great entertainment device. For consumers who want to have the latest gadgets and have a higher disposable income, that’s for the Wii U.

We haven’t announced pricing or availability or any other details, but given the current pricing of the Wii, it’s not going to be there.

We’ve been very clear, the market is going to decide how long these products will coexist side by side. Our goal is to launch the Wii U and drive it into the marketplace, but it will speak to a different consumer than the one that is buying the Wii today during the holidays.

So I need a higher income than 60.000$/year to afford the WiiU? :(
 
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