WiiU "Latte" GPU Die Photo - GPU Feature Set And Power Analysis
- Thread starter Thraktor
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I think the word 'awful' is a bit over the top, they haven't been that bad. The ports haven't been top-notch for several reasons - unfinished dev kits and tools, second tier developers for the most part and porting games from two 'CPU heavy' consoles with in-order and multithreading to a console that's 'GPU heavy' with out-of order processing and no multithreading.
eDRAM is 3x as dense, not 6x. As the above answer explains.
How do you mean? It may be like many console designs where the GPU gets fed the full bandwidth and after passing through that, the CPU gets a lower amount of bandwidth to it, like the PS4, One, 360, etc etc designs. In fact, it's certainly like that, looking at the layout.
Why do you say 70GB/s would make a bottleneck? How do we know that? And even if it was a bottleneck, there's no assurance that it's not true just because it's a bottleneck.
Saying it's more likely 130GB/s instead of 70 just based on which would be "better" is kind of unfounded. I'll have to look back through when the bandwidth was first debated, but I felt sure the 70GB/s was the far more likely position? It was based off the GPU clock speed of 529 or whatever MHz and the pin count on the internal eDRAM I believe. And in fact, looking back through the thread, it wasn't 130GB/s that was the possibility at all, it was 103.
Somewhere in this thread we did a number swap, whoops, lol. 103, not 130, and that was based on the assumption of the eDRAM being clocked higher than the GPU despite being in the same die.
OG_Original Gamer
Member
Is eDRAM clock based on Renesas numbers or is the clock based on assumption. Is there any reason why it wouldn't be clocked higher than Latte?
phosphor112
Banned
Nothing major it seems, but just wanted to note that a Gametrailers Review went up for Wind Waker HD. Apparently the "frequent frame drops are all too noticeable."
http://www.gametrailers.com/reviews/orhjbl/the-legend-of-zelda--the-wind-waker-hd-review
Considering it's a small project, I wouldn't be too worried though.
http://www.gametrailers.com/reviews/orhjbl/the-legend-of-zelda--the-wind-waker-hd-review
Considering it's a small project, I wouldn't be too worried though.
So trying to have a discussion / asking for proof that the Wii U is based on something other then the R700 that is present in the dev docs and dev kits (iirc) and also trying to point that it is far more likely to be bottlenecked by other things to effectively use 1+TB/s of ram is doing with Krizzx? no, im sorry, thats crap.
I don't think the Wii U is a lemon, I just don't think that is 100% from the ground up Nintendo hardware which increases efficiency by large amounts like people in this thread where previously suggesting.
Maybe they're wind waker noobs and are talking about the effect when your weapon strikes an enemy and it feels like the game drops frames? At least it did to me many eons ago, before I realized it was intentional. Or maybe not. The footage I've seen hasn't shown any excessive frequent dropping though.
Edit: azak it's no longer really a GameCube game. There are numerous changes that require a lot more graphics processing than the original, not the least of which is a huge resolution jump.
Pretty terrible to be honest. For a GameCube game, of which the Wii U should outpower it beyond belief, to see framerate drops (Where I assume the original didn't have) is rather sad.
phosphor112
Banned
Maybe it's a data streaming thing causing hick ups?
I assume the original did have them.
I assume StevieP is right and they don't know it's an animation of the game and not a drop.
I assume. The game.
It's possible. Or it's possible they've overextended the GPU budget as well, doing all the new light rendering or post processing or something. Or maybe it's nothing. If someone remembers what the data rate off the GC disc was, feel free to chip in.
Is it running at 1080 p "60 fps" with some drops?
phosphor112
Banned
They need to resign if they mistaken that for frame rate drops.
Of course its efficient, a la the memory hierarchy I was arguing more against the introduction of new FF gear that people where previously suggesting.
lostinblue
Banned
GC data rate was 2 MB/s to 3.1 MB/s depending on the area of the DVD it was reading.
That's not really indicative here though:
Game might look the same, but they changed pretty much all the texture assets for heftier ones.
The game is out now in US on digital form, if you want the blu-ray version you'll have to wait for October 4th still. So people should be testing it installed to the flash ROM or external hard drive (making GC's drive data rate inconsequent); now, it could be a specially lousy drive being used for streaming in this case, or the game really has consistent slowdowns; installs are still a best case scenario for Wii games after all and people that reviewed it reviewed the digital version... same case for people that are playing through it now.
That's the first time I'm reading about it though, and I know people that are playing through the game now; I'll have to ask them.
That's not really indicative here though:
Game might look the same, but they changed pretty much all the texture assets for heftier ones.
The game is out now in US on digital form, if you want the blu-ray version you'll have to wait for October 4th still. So people should be testing it installed to the flash ROM or external hard drive (making GC's drive data rate inconsequent); now, it could be a specially lousy drive being used for streaming in this case, or the game really has consistent slowdowns; installs are still a best case scenario for Wii games after all and people that reviewed it reviewed the digital version... same case for people that are playing through it now.
That's the first time I'm reading about it though, and I know people that are playing through the game now; I'll have to ask them.
OminoMichelin
Member
In the OT people talk about slowdowns during intense naval battles, which occurred in the original verison too iirc
Thunder Monkey
Banned
30 fps because Nintendo keyframed every animation. Putting it up to 60 fps would just make the animations cycle through faster. It'd look really weird. Getting around it would require redoing the animations. No simple fix.
I can't say one way or another, but I hope Stevie is right that it's that frame delay effect.
Yeah. Seems to be hard to fix. Even Ocarina 3D suffers some animation bugs despite the effort in adding more animation frames. Dodongos spin like crazy for instance.
They could of added keyframe interpolation to the engine (something that just about all modern engines have).
Did Halo Anniversary fix the animations? If so, how?
Thunder Monkey
Banned
Yes they could have, but there's still a chance of borking it along the way. So they decided not to touch them. Can't blame them. Animation tends to be the most complicated portion of model and asset production. Especially doing it old school.
Bony Manifesto
Member
I highly doubt it's the specifically the animations that are the problem. It's much more likely that all the game logic is hard-coded to 30fps, and all the update and draw code is all muddled together (as was the style of the time).
phosphor112
Banned
Yeah, we need some footage being analyzed.
lostinblue
Banned
Halo was a PC game from the ground up (well, a mac game, originally, but point stands) those "optimizations probably don't apply as said game didn't have locked framerate, the original build before going console exclusive would have to accept various target specs, existent and to be released after all.
I'm not so sure most Nintendo GC games were coded like that though; as the Wind Waker engine was pretty ground breaking and cutting edge back then. But I know even some Xbox games suffered due to it, some games would go turbo when people hacked 1.4 GHz Pentium 3 Tualatins in.
efyu_lemonardo
May I have a cookie?
how does that work? does it simply add frames with coordinates averaged from the previous and next frame for all data points, or is there some clever way of doing it that accounts for inverse kinematics, center of mass etc?
People will use it as an indicator that the GPU and CPU are crap.
They look for anything to feed their point of view.
Both. The Renesas parts I see are clocked at 500MHz, plus running at the GPU clock would make the most sense (being on the same clock domain physically would help keep power low, and would mean no missed cycles or bubbles [as an aside that's why Nintendo has liked running everything in proportion, before now]) so ~529, with a side possibility of running at the main memory clock of 800MHz. The two net you 70.4 or 102.4GB/s. But the eDRAM doesn't seem to be connected to the main RAM in the way the 360s was, so I'm thinking GPU clock is more likely.
It's 131GB/s if it's 2048bit at 550MHz. The 70 and 103GB/s figures are based on randomly made up clock frequencies. If the eDRAM runs at 550MHz, it can't be 70GB/s. It's either 65.5 or 131.1. If we assume that it needs to be at least 70 for the ROPs, and considering MEM1 isn't just a framebuffer, it's probably 131.
Unless the embedded memory is indeed running at some random clock frequency, then it could be anything.
frankie_baby
Member
thank you based wsippel, I knew I wasn't crazy thinking 130ish was a good probability
I thought the bit width had been determined by the pin-out? Is 2048 bit a realistic possibility?
lostinblue
Banned
I don't know about pinouts, but the PS2 Graphics Synthetizer eDRAM had 2560 bit width quite a few years ago.
It's possible, it's also expensive.
EDIT: Regarding pinouts, I reckon the pinouts we could determine/ballpark were the DDR3 ones, since they were off-the-shelf parts; for the GPU embedded memory it's most certainly trickier.
It's possible, it's also expensive.
EDIT: Regarding pinouts, I reckon the pinouts we could determine/ballpark were the DDR3 ones, since they were off-the-shelf parts; for the GPU embedded memory it's most certainly trickier.
frankie_baby
Member
i'm pretty sure the pin out suggested it had to either be 1024bit, 2048bit or some other number that would have given it a ridiculous bandwidth
Sure. All off-the-shelf UX8 macros are either 128 or 256bit, and MEM1 consists of eight macros.
phosphor112
Banned
Yes, but we don't know if that's what the video is even talking about.
lostinblue
Banned
The so-called pause-effect.
I remember people complaining about constant slowdown on the original Wind Waker; those were it. I don't remember sea battles taking a big toll on the framerate, but it was a long time ago.
Also, there are three more considerations as to why 131GB/s seems like a good guess:
- The number of banks on the macros is, in fact, 256 as far as I can tell.
- Why would they use eight 128bit macros when they could have used four 256Kw x 256b macros?
- The whole point of pseudo-static RAM is perfect single cycle latency. Running the RAM at any clock other than 550MHz would cancel that benefit out.
OG_Original Gamer
Member
So why not go for 4096?
frankie_baby
Member
that does make a lot of sense
megabytecr
Member
If indeed 131GB/s how does it stack up with current/next gen.
1080p games possible or still best suited for 720p+effects?
1080p games possible or still best suited for 720p+effects?
I'm thinking the same. No other review I read mentioned drops. They are confused.
Shin Johnpv
Member
MS's original claim on it's eSram was like 102/103 GB/s, but they now claim they just discovered it's closer to 200 GB/s. I believe I've seen it claimed that real world it's actually closer to 133 GB/s.
Fourth Storm
Member
Not random. But obviously not using the same calculation for bandwidth as you are using. I seem to remember blu and yourself talking about that. How are you getting those numbers again?
If you add up the columns in a macro, you get 256, yes. The thing that throws me off and prevents me from saying one way or another is that they are in a "sandwich" pattern. The bottom of the columns (the lighter portions) being on either side of what must be some type of path out to the interface on the left of the modules. If we just count horizontal and assume that each "sandwich" is sharing the same path, it would be 128. I'm really struggling to describe my thoughts here. lol
Something I've been thinking about. Do we know if the GPU downclocks in Wii mode? I know the CPU def does, but I don't think we've gotten word on Latte. In trying to figure out the bandwidth of the eDRAM pools, this info might help. If the eDRAM is playing the part of Wii's 24MB 1t-SRAM, then it would have to be on a different clock than the rest of the GPU...if they are doing BC that way.
Halo could unlock its frame rate, yes. But model animations were locked to 30. It's rather jarring to play because of that.
You mean in terms of keyframe interpolation? Nope, because Halo Anniversary is locked at the same 30fps that the original game is, despite CEA being a port of the 60fps-capable Halo PC. It "doesn't need the fix", basically.
There's a lot more to choosing a resolution than output bandwidth.
Here's a consideration: the original Xbox is generally seen as rather fillrate limited, and the PS3's RSX's total bandwidth is only about 2/3rds the 360's bandwidth to eDRAM ROPs alone.
Yet the original Xbox was the console of its gen that was pushing quite a lot of 720p games, and IIRC the PS3 has more 1080p titles than the 360 does. In both of those cases, a major deciding factor would have been the lack of small eDRAM pools. The WiiU's 32MB pool might make it an eDRAM-based design that alleviates that issue to an extent, of course. But it's still up to the devs to decide whether it's worth spreading the pixel shading power (and other things) that thin. The render output scheme does look like a compromise between the extreme strengths of the 360's and PS3's design, and so I would guess that in that respect 1080p might look less costly on WiiU. But that's just one part of the pipeline.
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