The funny thing is that this strong rumor about the CPU been underutilized early on has not been reported by the media. That Project Cars log seems to support it.
Guess there is no fun in reporting it, only fun comes from bashing the Wii U CPU.
Seeing as current gen consoles graphic cards are based on the DirectX9, Wii U on DirectX 10.1 and PS4/XB1 on DirectX11 I found the following interesting. Note as it has been cleared many times, this refers to feature set and not the actual DirectX API, which I think only MS uses.
Disclaimer: I know is not as simple as this, as many other factors weigh in but I thought it was interesting nonetheless. Other components in PS4 and XB1 and the various mysteries in Wii U like the tessellation unit which we know exists but we are not sure about the implementation.
http://www.overclock.net/t/597046/dx11-vs-dx10-vs-dx-9-pics
from there I added the below comparisons. From the pictures IMO there is a bigger difference from DX9 to DX10 than DX10 to DX11 on the lightning, shadows, DOF and detail.
This seems to be around the same difference I am seeing in the batch of games shown @ E3 for Wii U, that even SSB, that its Brawl roots are still obvious, looks very very good with just the lightning, also the WW port, HDfied and better lighting goes a long way.
Road DX9
Road DX10
Road DX11
Dragon DX9
Dragon DX10
Dragon DX11
House DX9
House DX10
House DX11
Another shot from Call of Juarez BiB comparing DX9 and DX10.
Other DX9 vs DX10
Crysis
Age of Conan: Hyborean Adventures
Just lightning, shadows and AA goes a long way in creating more life-like scenes