Smurfman256
Member
Actually (if I remember the Iwata Asks correctly), they said that it was an entirely new architecture with components altered to make it backwards-compatible with Wii code.
Rumor: Wii U final specs
- Thread starter EatChildren
- Start date
Actually (if I remember the Iwata Asks correctly), they said that it was an entirely new architecture with components altered to make it backwards-compatible with Wii code.
Apophis2036
Banned
So the OP is BS confirmed then ?.
Saint Gregory
Member
The enhanced Broadway cores always sounded a bit crazy but it's been echoed by so many different sources that it's hard to believe that there's not some truth to it.
No if anything Iwata has gone out of his way to say its not older materials being used for certain parts. Same for IBM at best the part shares familiarity in the power architecture lineup but has had modifications done to it as usual.
Apophis2036
Banned
Before i am banned i should clarify i meant the 'OP specs BS' and not the OP lol 
.
.I haven't put to much thought into it since IBM stated in the first press release
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/34683.wss
Smurfman256
Member
It's an OLD CPU now.
Saint Gregory
Member
But you could technically build a new CPU with multiple cores from the old Broadway design.
If it's true I'm sure that they won't be direct reproductions of Broadway duct taped together but descendants of Broadway specifically designed for a multi-core CPU.
I was simply pointing out that IBM decribes it as an "all-new, Power-based microprocessor". As far as I know Broadway was never described as being an all-new processor.
EatChildren
Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
Before i am banned i should clarify i meant the 'OP specs BS' and not the OP lol
The claim is that the OP specs are copy/pasted directly from Nintendo's own WarioWorld website, which is a resource for developers. Given I know who sourced the info, I am 99% confident the information is completely accurately. Obviously the nitty gritty details of not just the CPU, but everything related to the hardware, would be provided in extensive documentation and not just the summary. But the summary does exist, and that's exactly what it says.
Smurfman256
Member
I'm not entirely convinced that they are "copy/pasted from WarioWorld". Until I see a screenshot off of that website, I'm gonna remain skeptical.
EatChildren
Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
It's wise to remain sceptical in face of no proof of your own. But personally, I've seen enough proof to know the source is someone with access to this information, and I have no reason to believe they'd lie. Concrete enough for me.
Smurfman256
Member
I have one: generate buzz and traffic for their website. The same reason why CVG did it several months earlier.
EatChildren
Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
Correct, but that is not my point. My point is I know the person who sourced this information. And I know, for a fact, they have access to this information. And I know the original source did not post it on a website.
Scepticism is absolutely warranted and I can understand and appreciate people not trusting it without knowing the full extent of the situation. But without saying exactly who is who and what, I know for a fact this is not a case of some journalist guy posting crap on a website to drive hits. I know who the info came from, and I know they know the info legitimately.
DICKS AHOY
Banned
Wasn't the part about the storage and memory of the Wii U in the OP already contradicted by what was said in one of those Nintendo Directs?
And that's a serious question by the way, I have no clue what half this stuff actually means so for all I know 2 gigs of RAM has nothing to do with 1 supposed gig of memory.
And that's a serious question by the way, I have no clue what half this stuff actually means so for all I know 2 gigs of RAM has nothing to do with 1 supposed gig of memory.
lwilliams3
Member
In this case, there have been people that have saw this documentation before it was posted to the public.
The info in the OP stated that there is 1GB for games, and that has not changed. It didn't say that the system has another GB for other things or that another SKU has 32GB of flash, but the document is consistently not very detailed at all.
EatChildren
Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
Nope. The main purpose of a website like WarioWorld is to provide developers with the baseline of what the Wii U can offer, so they don't overshoot.. In this case they state that the system has 8GB internal storage with support to expand via SD and USB, and this is true. They state that the system has 1GB of RAM that applications can use, which is also true. The Wii U has 2GB of RAM, but 1GB of that is inaccessible to developers. Only 1GB is available for their software.
To be fair,the specs in the OP don't really say much and aren't detailed enough to get a feel for the power anyway.
Re-reading it, I wonder if the 'three enhanced broadway cores' could be talking more about them being broadway compatible, rather than sharing explicitly the same architecture? That one line has led to a ton of speculation it his thread.
And the memory is interesting. It says 8GB internal wi expansion support via SD etc. how does that gel wi the various SKUs being sold? Eg, is the basic just with the built in 8GB and no expansion? Does the 32GB have 32GB internally or just the same 8GB and then 24GB via memory card (can you even get a 24GB memory card?)? Or are Nintendo not counting the internal 8GB and all systems come with an SD card of varying size?
Re-reading it, I wonder if the 'three enhanced broadway cores' could be talking more about them being broadway compatible, rather than sharing explicitly the same architecture? That one line has led to a ton of speculation it his thread.
And the memory is interesting. It says 8GB internal wi expansion support via SD etc. how does that gel wi the various SKUs being sold? Eg, is the basic just with the built in 8GB and no expansion? Does the 32GB have 32GB internally or just the same 8GB and then 24GB via memory card (can you even get a 24GB memory card?)? Or are Nintendo not counting the internal 8GB and all systems come with an SD card of varying size?
EatChildren
Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
The basic system is 8GB. The premium is 32GB. The reason the website lists only the 8GB is similar to the reason it lists 1GB: to give a baseline of what developers can work with to make their games. Even though the system technically could have 'more' (storage by expansion or premium, and 2GB of RAM instead of 1GB), it's not much use if developers overshoot requirements and hardware use for their games.
8GB internal storage with 1GB RAM for application use is the baseline to which games should be made, as that's the 'minimum' Wii U a user could own.
If you're talking about it technically (rather than the listed spec stuff EC is talking about), it's probably something like an 8GB flash chip on board with the basic, while deluxe has a 32GB one (or multiple smaller chips depending on space and cost), like iOS devices with 16/32/64GB capacities. Everything else with the hardware would be identical.
I has a question.
So both the 360 and PS3 were able to lower the amount of RAM that would be needed to run their OS, leaving some additional memory for games that wasn't accessible before, right?
I've actually been wondering about this for quite a few weeks but haven't asked. Wouldn't developers STILL not want to use the additional RAM for their games because not everyone has these updated 360s and PS3s?
So both the 360 and PS3 were able to lower the amount of RAM that would be needed to run their OS, leaving some additional memory for games that wasn't accessible before, right?
I've actually been wondering about this for quite a few weeks but haven't asked. Wouldn't developers STILL not want to use the additional RAM for their games because not everyone has these updated 360s and PS3s?
Thunder Monkey
Banned
Firmware updates can also be on the games themselves.
Yep, that's it exactly. If a game wants to use reclaimed RAM, it'll include the latest update with it.
So for example, if you find an old blades 360 in the wild and decide to play Halo 4 with it, Halo 4 is going to update it to the Metro dashboard.
aren't some updates mandatory? I.e you can't play game X unless you have firmware Y? I think Nintendo did that quite a lot with Wii
EatChildren
Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
Yeah, some updates are mandatory, for stabilisation and firmware reasons. I'm going to assume that Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo all have a policy where the latest, essential firmware is included on disks, first and third party, to prevent anyone from getting locked out of a game.
Thunder Monkey
Banned
I'm shocked that that's shocking Obli. Is code.
Code can be altered. It's not static like hardware. Discs contain code.
This been Monkey programming teach for special needs GAFers.
Code can be altered. It's not static like hardware. Discs contain code.
This been Monkey programming teach for special needs GAFers.
Thunder Monkey
Banned
Not that anyone in here is "special".
Not special in that Glenn Beck playing with poop way at least.
More special in that "Never tell anyone that you waste at least 6 hours a day doing nothing but bullshitting with a bunch of videogame addicted men and the occasional female getting trapped in conversations about vagina bones."
Not special in that Glenn Beck playing with poop way at least.
More special in that "Never tell anyone that you waste at least 6 hours a day doing nothing but bullshitting with a bunch of videogame addicted men and the occasional female getting trapped in conversations about vagina bones."
The Abominable Snowman
Member
My guess? Drugs.
Thunder Monkey
Banned
I don't do drugs.
Unless pot and liquor are drugs.
In which I done did drugs.
BlockheadBrown
Member
To my knowledge, this is true. I have a friend who doesn't have Internet connectivity. He purchased a Ratchet & Clank game for the PS3 and had to update the firmware with the version that was on disc before he could play it.
Yes it was described in a press release, which is exactly why you shouldn't believe it word for word. PR people are the last to know anything about the technical specifications and are only there to make the company and their products look good.
The Abominable Snowman
Member
On Disc Firmware has been a thing since the first Xbox. All Xbox and Xbox 360 games have the recommended firmware on disc and other platforms at least check
Apophis2036
Banned
Ok, cheers for clearing that up.
The fact that the info comes from the WarioWorld site pretty much makes it 100% legit, i never actually went to the link just read what you put in the OP
.Saint Gregory
Member
Have any of our GAF insiders clarified whether or not the WiiU memory structure is unified like the 360 or seperate pools of 1GB RAM more similar to the PS3 setup?
And would that even impact the possibility of addition RAM being made available for use to devs in the future?
And would that even impact the possibility of addition RAM being made available for use to devs in the future?
This concerns me as well. Also what about VRAM?
Apophis2036
Banned
Isn't the 32MB of eDRAM considered the Vram ?.
This is getting quite amazing that less than 3 weeks till launch and we still don't even have a rough estimate on the CPU clock speed and how many FLOPs the GPU can push.
Im expecting a 2.5Ghz CPU and a 500 GFLOP GPU, anything below that and it would be worrying for next gen multi platform games.
On the subject of opening up more Ram from the 1GB of OS memory, didn't either Iwata or Miyamoto say just after E3 that the system is only being pushed by 50% of what it is capable of with regards to launch games ?, that would fall into place if they could open up a further 700 - 800 MB's of Ram for game development once / if next gen multiplatform games start to be developed for the system.
I'm expecting a CPU in the low 1 ghz range and a 400 GFlop GPU.
Saint Gregory
Member
A 400 GFLOP GPU wouldn't shock me at all but I'm not sure why the CPU would need to be clocked that low. A multi-core CPU with a low TDP could be clocked much higher than that today using IBM's fabrication processes.
It could be clocked that low if Nintendo felt any more than that was completely unnecessary I guess.
Christberg
Member
In spite of some folks on this board claiming that the memory chips were different sizes from the Nintendo Direct teardown, I'm fairly certain it's unified DDR3 spread across 4 chips with a 128 bit bus. The perceived "size difference" is down to perspective shift from there not being a direct top-down picture of the board.
Even if it was a split RAM pool it still wouldn't matter. I believe the high RAM utilization is down to the system's built-in browser being 100% HTML5 compatible for use with MiiVerse and the size will shrink significantly with time. Don't hold me to that though.
Now that I know 100% that the system's being sold at a loss on hardware alone I'm a lot higher on what the internal specs could be. Early software might not be that impressive from a tech standpoint but regardless of that fact we still haven't seen a good, reliable analysis of how the first wave of software stands up to PS360 stuff. Just a little less than 3 weeks to go...
Apophis2036
Banned
Oh the meltdown if that were to be the case
.I think the best case scenario is that the GPU is 600 - 800 FLOPs and the CPU is clocked at 1Ghz per core meaning a 3Ghz CPU, i don't think either of those are possible going on the power / heat envelope tho.
If all you are buying it for is the big exclusive Nintendo games / exclusives (which i am) then specs mean jack shit at the end of the day, look at what they got out of the Wii.
Those two tech demos, esp the Bird one has me really excited tho, if they done that demo in only a few months with a small team on the very first dev kit then the mind boggles at what they will be able to achieve on the latest devkits with a two year development time and bigger budget on games such as Starfox, F Zero, 3D Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Smash Bros, Retro's game ect !.
frankie_baby
Member
I reckon we'll be looking at 1.4ghz CPU (with 2.1 a slight possibility) and a GPU just shy of 600 GFLOPS
Grampa Simpson
Banned
1.6-1.8ghz.
lightchris
Member
No. You can't store many textures in 32 MB.
The "1 GB for games" is meant to serve as main and VRAM, the eDRAM being a helpful addition nonetheless of course. It's just like what we have in Xbox 360.
Depends on what they mean with "enhanced Broadway cores". If it's not a major overhaul they can't just raise the clock as they like. Broadway has a short pipeline, 5 stages as far as I know. Generally speaking: The longer the pipeline, the higher the possible clock rates.
I wouldn't be surprised if it'll be clocked below 2 GHz.
That Matt dude who people seem to believe, said 600MHz GPU was a little too high. Take that for what you will.
Me sad panda if true.
Kai Dracon
Writing a dinosaur space opera symphony
I'd be really surprised if the CPU is clocked lower than 2 ghz considering the apparent quality of the multiplatform titles seen so far. Tekken Tag 2 is a good example - that game is already making the 360 and PS3 creak with its dynamic resolution drops to maintain framerate. Aside from possibly less fish in the boat stage, it appears comparable to the PS360 versions.
KojiKnight
Member
Oh the meltdown if that were to be the case
I think the best case scenario is that the GPU is 600 - 800 FLOPs and the CPU is clocked at 1Ghz per core meaning a 3Ghz CPU, i don't think either of those are possible going on the power / heat envelope tho..
That's not how CPUs work... -_-
My god what's with the sudden doom and gloom on the ultra low CPU specs? Developers were saying they felt the CPU was a LITTLE weak, not massively underpowered.
frankie_baby
Member
CPU clock speed and and CPU power often have little in common