How big is the power gap between Wii U and PS3/360?

gogogow

Member
Artistically beautiful, but not really technically impressive. Nothing the PS3 or 360 couldn't do.

The same thing being said over and over in every friggin' Wii U graphical capabilities thread.
Yep, drawing distance, animated grass, smoke, explosions, particle effects, still tons of trees being rendered far in the distance, clouds casting shadows etc. has nothing to do with tech. The way the game is being rendered has nothing to do with tech. Sure.
 

Amentallica

Unconfirmed Member
The Wii U, or rather, Nintendo's approach to hardware is a little weird. We're comparing a recently released console to consoles released eight/nine years ago. Does anyone know how the Wii compared to the PS3/360? I'd like to know how the Wii/PS3/360 compare and how the Wii U/PS4/XB1 compare. Can anyone simply put these consoles into a ratio as far as how much more powerful or capable each one was/is.

Example: Wii/PS3/360; 1:3:3

Does this make sense? I'm trying to find out whether Nintendo has released a more comparable console to the current PS4 and XB1 consoles than their Wii to the former PS3 and 360 consoles.
 

Rvaisse

Member
Am i wrong if i say that MOST

WiiU games are native 720p
vs
PS360 games are 592p (or other) upscaled to 720p
?

I think that shaders, lights and particles effects are WiiU's strength (vs PS360) and it makes a BIG difference for the eyes.

Also we shouldn't forget that WiiU is rendering on 2 screens at the same time, you have to take this in consideration.
 

borghe

Loves the Greater Toronto Area
It has more RAM and a more powerful GPU. I don't know much about the CPU.

this about sums it up. RAM and GPU are actually a pretty fair step ahead of PS3 and 360.. but the CPU isn't so great (though still a tiny better than PS3 and 360). If a game is CPU constrained you won't see a huge bump over PS360.. but if it's not you typically see a noticeable improvement (asscree IV and NFSMW for example)

Also we shouldn't forget that WiiU is rendering on 2 screens at the same time, you have to take this in consideration.

No it's not. The display chipset takes care of scaling and encoding for the gamepad. Basically very similar technology PS4 uses to stream twitch, etc. It doesn't consume any GPU cycles. Sadly this is proof positive Nintendo could "flip a switch" to stream to Twitch if they wanted to. Unfortunately it seems like that's no in the cards.
 

hodgy100

Member
The Wii U, or rather, Nintendo's approach to hardware is a little weird. We're comparing a recently released console to consoles released eight/nine years ago. Does anyone know how the Wii compared to the PS3/360? I'd like to know how the Wii/PS3/360 compare and how the Wii U/PS4/XB1 compare. Can anyone simply put these consoles into a ratio as far as how much more powerful or capable each one was/is.

Example: Wii/PS3/360; 1:3:3

Does this make sense? I'm trying to find out whether Nintendo has released a more comparable console to the current PS4 and XB1 consoles than their Wii to the former PS3 and 360 consoles.

It was a much bigger gap. the Wii's cpu was about as powerful as one core of the 360's cpu and it had 1/5th of the RAM. but the GPU was miles behind with only 11 GFLOPS compared to the 360's ~200 GFLOPS.
 
(Thinks: Do I jump into this one?) Oh, what the hey.

I spent way too much time looking into this issue leading up to and after the release of the CPU and GPU die shots. In essence, what some have already said are true:

CPU is 3 Wii CPU cores with alot more cache. There is other easily accessible for those really interested, so I'll just leave it at that. Easier to use than Xbox 360 CPU and Cell but less peak performance. Devs got quite good at working around the PS3/360 CPU weaknesses last gen as well.

RAM is twice as much (accessible) but slower. It has eDRAM as well, kind of like Xenos in the 360 and it seems to have similar bandwidth to the GPU (32 GB/s), but no high speed connection to the ROPs (units used for many things including anti-aliasing, which reduces jaggies).

GPU is a more modern architecture, but not as modern as some people think. It is based on the Radeon HD4000 series, but Nintendo's custom tools make for some differences. There is no indication of significant tweaks to the shader architecture. It has 160 shaders vs Xenos' 240, and with architecture and clockspeed difs that adds up to 176 GFLOPS vs Xenos' 216 GFLOPS (theoretical).

Audio DSP is the same as in Wii at around ~120 Mhz. ARM security processor is also the same as in Wii (ARM926 something).

I think that covers the major points...


and we are done here.
 
No it's not. The display chipset takes care of scaling and encoding for the gamepad. Basically very similar technology PS4 uses to stream twitch, etc. It doesn't consume any GPU cycles. Sadly this is proof positive Nintendo could "flip a switch" to stream to Twitch if they wanted to. Unfortunately it seems like that's no in the cards.

It's still rendering 2 different scenes most of the time,
 
I dont think ive ever been wowd by frame rate on the 360 or ps3 .. with what the wii u has done with mk8 and most first party titles you can tell the wii u does some things more efficiently.

Locked vsync 60fps is impressive.
 
Nintendo's games fit alongside the best the x1 and the ps4 have to offer, but the 3rd party ports dont have a lot of effort put into them so the publishers seem fine making them just a bit better than the ps360 versions (or worse, depending on who you ask, splinter cell runs about the same as the 360 version and has no screen tearing so id say the wii u version is the best console release, bud DF thinks otherwise)
 

Rvaisse

Member
this about sums it up. RAM and GPU are actually a pretty fair step ahead of PS3 and 360.. but the CPU isn't so great (though still a tiny better than PS3 and 360 ). If a game is CPU constrained you won't see a huge bump over PS360.. but if it's not you typically see a noticeable improvement (asscree IV and NFSMW for example)



No it's not. The display chipset takes care of scaling and encoding for the gamepad. Basically very similar technology PS4 uses to stream twitch, etc. It doesn't consume any GPU cycles. Sadly this is proof positive Nintendo could "flip a switch" to stream to Twitch if they wanted to. Unfortunately it seems like that's no in the cards.


So...
WiiU is slightly more powerful than PS360 ?

As someonelse pointed, what about games with different stuff on screens ?
 
Nintendo's games fit alongside the best the x1 and the ps4 have to offer, but the 3rd party ports dont have a lot of effort put into them so the publishers seem fine making them just a bit better than the ps360 versions (or worse, depending on who you ask, splinter cell runs about the same as the 360 version and has no screen tearing so id say the wii u version is the best console release, bud DF thinks otherwise)

I'd take 1 or 2 frames per second less any day if it means no tearing, I occasionally try to play darksiders 2 but it just grates my eyes
 

Renekton

Member
GPU is a more modern architecture, but not as modern as some people think. It is based on the Radeon HD4000 series, but Nintendo's custom tools make for some differences. There is no indication of significant tweaks to the shader architecture. It has 160 shaders vs Xenos' 240, and with architecture and clockspeed difs that adds up to 176 GFLOPS vs Xenos' 216 GFLOPS (theoretical).
Wasnt it 320 shaders?
 
V-Sync, locked 60fps and Nintendos lighting is all i need to know. It´s not a gen ahead but the difference IS noticable. The GPGPU compensates for the CPU if you use it and not just port your code over from the HD Twins. More power would have been nice but 3DWorld, X, Zelda, Mariokart and even Nintendoland are proof enough the Wii U can pull some tricks at 60fps that would be hard to do on last gen hardware with 30fps.
 
Looking at Zelda for Wii U , it just looks so beautiful and to me beyond what the PS3 and 360 can do. I also think that a game like Smash Bros Wii U wouldn't run on the PS3 and 360 without framerate issues.

I remember people on here saying that the Wii U has more RAM than the PS3 and 360 but its clocked much slower that it doesn't really help it as much, but was that really true now with the games we see coming out for the Wii U?

Well the best on Ps3/360 is still pretty amazing.
I don't think GTA V get beaten by Zelda U.

I don't see anything special about Smash, there are many 60FPS fighting games on Ps3/360 looking equally as good.

Of course, different people prefer different artstyle.
Its also very hard to compare the best on Ps3/360 to the best on WiiU.
How would you compare Uncharted 3, Beyond:Two Souls, GodOfWar: Ascension, Killzone3 and GTA V to MarioKart8, Zelda U and Xenoblade?
Completely different looking games.


But WiiU is stronger than Ps3 and Xbox360.
Especially the GPGPU stuff. Compute commands allow developers to pull of more stuff while maintaining a high framerate.
 

Nicktendo86

Member
I dont think ive ever been wowd by frame rate on the 360 or ps3 .. with what the wii u has done with mk8 and most first party titles you can tell the wii u does some things more efficiently.

Locked vsync 60fps is impressive.
The lack of screen tearing and silky smooth frame rates have made a big difference personally compared to my ps360 games, so I can agree with this post.
 

Dizzy

Banned
Am i wrong if i say that MOST

WiiU games are native 720p
vs
PS360 games are 592p (or other) upscaled to 720p
?

I think that shaders, lights and particles effects are WiiU's strength (vs PS360) and it makes a BIG difference for the eyes.

Also we shouldn't forget that WiiU is rendering on 2 screens at the same time, you have to take this in consideration.
Most ps3/360 games were 720p, and even the ones below rarely went down to 592p.
 

Hermii

Member
So...
WiiU is slightly more powerful than PS360 ?

As someonelse pointed, what about games with different stuff on screens ?

I think it boils down to that Wii U exclusives does things not possible on ps3 or 360 with the same framerate.

Just like 360 probably woudnt do last of us as good as ps3, and halo4 woudnt be as good on ps3 as 360.

Games tailored around the capabilities of the machine puts the superior gpu features and ram to work, and hides the deficencies in other areas.

Also I think how balanced it is makes it easier to predict in advance how it will handle various scenarios which makes planning for consistent fps easier. This is purely speculation.
 

borghe

Loves the Greater Toronto Area
So...
WiiU is slightly more powerful than PS360 ?

As someonelse pointed, what about games with different stuff on screens ?

the number of games with substantially different renders on both screens are few and far between. Most of the time games have relatively simple content on the game pad. the ones I can think of that this isn't true of would be multiplayer games with different full screen displays, though those games are very few and far between.

Just like 360 probably woudnt do last of us as good as ps3, and halo4 woudnt be as good on ps3 as 360.

Not sure about the Halo comment. Does Halo run locked 720p60? If so then the PS3 "might" have a problem keeping up. But if Halo is 720p30 the PS3 could easily do it with enough time on the port.
 

Rvaisse

Member
I think it boils down to that Wii U exclusives does things not possible on ps3 or 360 with the same framerate.

Just like 360 probably woudnt do last of us as good as ps3, and halo4 woudnt be as good on ps3 as 360.

Games tailored around the capabilities of the machine puts the superior gpu features and ram to work, and hides the deficencies in other areas.

Also I think how balanced it is makes it easier to predict in advance how it will handle various scenarios which makes planning for consistent fps easier. This is purely speculation.


I do think Artstyle makes the bigger part of the job and WiiU was built by nintendo for themselves.
Nintendo has a clear vision of the visuals they're targeting with their system, and your speculation makes perfect sense with this in mind.
 
Stylized graphics and 60 fps goes a long way. Nintendo image quality is beautiful, and i wish Sony/MS and third parties focused on IQ and framerate as priority #1. So many of PS/Xbox games are a janky messy experience, but look "nice" in stills. This is one area where i absolutely love Nintendo's philosophy.
 

BuggyMike

Member
The WiiU is definitely a bit stronger.


Based on what?

Can anyone showhow me any ps360 game that has wind interacting with trees and every individual blade of grass in a such a beautiful open world game? Did you see how impressive the fire was in the Zelda trailer? Everything in the envirnment caught on fire with particles from the flames flying everywhere. Not to mention the destructable envirnment. All in a damn open world game, confirmed to all be in-game.

That Zelda game is most certainly an 8th gen game with a less pretty coat of paint imo. It's simply doing things ps360 couldn't do all in the same game.

EDIT: sorry for the crapy writing im on a crappy phone.
 

Xav

Member
The Wii U is basically a PS3/Xbox 360 but with more RAM. Don't overthink it too much.

The reason Wii U games look as good as they do is because Nintendo know what the fuck they're doing. They make games designed around the system, they acknowledge the limitations. Other developers just make whatever they want and then accept whatever framerate/resolution/etc the system will allow.
 
Wasnt it 320 shaders?

It appeared so at one point, but all things considered, the evidence now points to 160. There's also documentation out there that says 160, but admittedly you never really know with leaks and stuff. To me, it makes it all the more impressive what Nintendo are doing with the machine. They have some fantastic artists and that they are prioritizing 60fps gameplay in many titles is admirable.
 
Everyone keeps saying that they haven't seen anything that cant be done on the ps3 or the 360 .. My question is why haven't they done it then?

Nothing i've seen on the 360 / ps3 has looked as silky smooth.
 

prag16

Banned
(Thinks: Do I jump into this one?) Oh, what the hey.

I spent way too much time looking into this issue leading up to and after the release of the CPU and GPU die shots. In essence, what some have already said are true:

CPU is 3 Wii CPU cores with alot more cache. There is other easily accessible for those really interested, so I'll just leave it at that. Easier to use than Xbox 360 CPU and Cell but less peak performance. Devs got quite good at working around the PS3/360 CPU weaknesses last gen as well.

RAM is twice as much (accessible) but slower. It has eDRAM as well, kind of like Xenos in the 360 and it seems to have similar bandwidth to the GPU (32 GB/s), but no high speed connection to the ROPs (units used for many things including anti-aliasing, which reduces jaggies).

GPU is a more modern architecture, but not as modern as some people think. It is based on the Radeon HD4000 series, but Nintendo's custom tools make for some differences. There is no indication of significant tweaks to the shader architecture. It has 160 shaders vs Xenos' 240, and with architecture and clockspeed difs that adds up to 176 GFLOPS vs Xenos' 216 GFLOPS (theoretical).

Audio DSP is the same as in Wii at around ~120 Mhz. ARM security processor is also the same as in Wii (ARM926 something).

I think that covers the major points...

I'm not sure if this was how you meant to frame it, but for those who are not tech savvy, or only marginally tech savvy, the takeaway from your post at face value is "the Wii U is weaker than PS360". For example the "more slower RAM" thing; have we EVER actually had any dev complain about memory bandwidth? Or the GPU (in comparison to PS360)? You managed to cast both in the worst possible light with that post.

Wii U is definitely no "generational leap" by any stretch, and is definitely in the same "ballpark" as PS360. But I'd bet the farm that those consoles would not be able to run MK8 at locked 60fps with v-sync without severe compromises.
 

wsippel

Banned
Artistically beautiful, but not really technically impressive. Nothing the PS3 or 360 couldn't do.
You know, this statement comes up all the time, but nobody ever managed to back it up. Because it's not possible. Any game using deferred shading with eight or more render targets would not run on PS360, because neither system supports eight render targets (360 only supports four, and even that requires a ton of work). Any game that makes use of 1GB RAM would not run on PS360 no matter what, because neither system has 1GB RAM (and Wii U supports 3Dc/ 3Dc+ texture compression, unlike PS3). And so on.

So no, PS360 couldn't do it. They might be able to do something remotely similar, or something else you think looks as good or better, but you would need to downgrade pretty much every single 1st party game to make it work on PS360.
 
Wii U is definitely no "generational leap" by any stretch, and is definitely in the same "ballpark" as PS360. But I'd bet the farm that those consoles would not be able to run MK8 at locked 60fps with v-sync without severe compromises.

Agreed ... The ps3 / x360 couldnt even run Sonic Transformed at a locked 30 with no screen tearing (I understand the game wasnt developed with 60 fps in mind).. Modnation Racer couldnt even run at a stable 30 as well.
 

clem84

Gold Member
(Thinks: Do I jump into this one?) Oh, what the hey.

I spent way too much time looking into this issue leading up to and after the release of the CPU and GPU die shots. In essence, what some have already said are true:

CPU is 3 Wii CPU cores with alot more cache. There is other easily accessible for those really interested, so I'll just leave it at that. Easier to use than Xbox 360 CPU and Cell but less peak performance. Devs got quite good at working around the PS3/360 CPU weaknesses last gen as well.

RAM is twice as much (accessible) but slower. It has eDRAM as well, kind of like Xenos in the 360 and it seems to have similar bandwidth to the GPU (32 GB/s), but no high speed connection to the ROPs (units used for many things including anti-aliasing, which reduces jaggies).

GPU is a more modern architecture, but not as modern as some people think. It is based on the Radeon HD4000 series, but Nintendo's custom tools make for some differences. There is no indication of significant tweaks to the shader architecture. It has 160 shaders vs Xenos' 240, and with architecture and clockspeed difs that adds up to 176 GFLOPS vs Xenos' 216 GFLOPS (theoretical).

Audio DSP is the same as in Wii at around ~120 Mhz. ARM security processor is also the same as in Wii (ARM926 something).

I think that covers the major points...

Going by your post, WiiU would be at best equal and at worst significantly underpowered compared to the PS3/360. So there's obviously something you're forgetting, or that you ignore about its architecture that make it produce graphics like, Mario Kart 8, XCX, Zelda U, Wonderful101 etc...
 

niunhuiio

Member
Ubisoft said that Watch Dogs Wii U looked like a mix between last gen and current gen, no? So, that must make it 1.5x powerful.
 

Hermii

Member
You know, this statement comes up all the time, but nobody ever managed to back it up. Because it's not possible. Any game using deferred shading with eight or more render targets would not run on PS360, because neither system supports eight render targets (360 only supports four, and even that requires a ton of work). Any game that makes use of 1GB RAM would not run on PS360 no matter what, because neither system has 1GB RAM (and Wii U supports 3Dc/ 3Dc+ texture compression, unlike PS3). And so on.

So no, PS360 couldn't do it. They might be able to do something remotely similar, or something else you think looks as good or better, but you would need to downgrade pretty much every single 1st party game to make it work on PS360.

Yea and its not like Nintendo is the only developer in the world that has good artists so its a silly argument.
 
I'm not sure if this was how you meant to frame it, but for those who are not tech savvy, or only marginally tech savvy, the takeaway from your post at face value is "the Wii U is weaker than PS360". For example the "more slower RAM" thing; have we EVER actually had any dev complain about memory bandwidth? Or the GPU (in comparison to PS360)? You managed to cast both in the worst possible light with that post.

Wii U is definitely no "generational leap" by any stretch, and is definitely in the same "ballpark" as PS360. But I'd bet the farm that those consoles would not be able to run MK8 at locked 60fps with v-sync without severe compromises.

In terms of raw horsepower, yes, the HD twins of last gen have the advantage. Wii U has the advantage of having more main memory, more pools of memory, and more cache memory pretty much everywhere. I also listed the ARM processor and audio DSP. Although they aren't that impressive nowadays,360/PS3 completely lacked any comparable hardware, so that gives Wii U a slight bump.

Developer complaints are not an objective measurement of the system specs. Yes, the RAM bandwidth seems to be enough for the games we are getting on Wii U - people seem happy with the visuals and that's what matters.
 
You know, this statement comes up all the time, but nobody ever managed to back it up. Because it's not possible. Any game using deferred shading with eight or more render targets would not run on PS360, because neither system supports eight render targets (360 only supports four, and even that requires a ton of work). Any game that makes use of 1GB RAM would not run on PS360 no matter what, because neither system has 1GB RAM (and Wii U supports 3Dc/ 3Dc+ texture compression, unlike PS3). And so on.

So no, PS360 couldn't do it. They might be able to do something remotely similar, or something else you think looks as good or better, but you would need to downgrade pretty much every single 1st party game to make it work on PS360.

Thanks for posting this.
 

BuggyMike

Member
Artistically beautiful, but not really technically impressive. Nothing the PS3 or 360 couldn't do.
If it was on the ps360 the wind wouldnt be interacting with the grass and trees. The moving clouds wouldnt be casting shadows on the world. You certainly wouldn't be getting anything close to the fire you see in the Zelda trailer, or the particles from the fire. There probably wouldnt be destructable invirnments, and the fire would not interact with the world (grass catching fire etc). That Zelda trailer is far beyond anything ps360 can do. They sure wouldny be doing all of that in one game. And definatly not in an open world game.

On another not I hope Nintendo unlcoks like 700mb of ram for games on Wii U so we can have an even sexier world for Zelda.
 
Even among stylised/cartoony games, they are just barely finally catching up with Sonic Generations. Pre-MK8, their output still looked much worse than that.
 
Stylized graphics and 60 fps goes a long way. Nintendo image quality is beautiful, and i wish Sony/MS and third parties focused on IQ and framerate as priority #1. So many of PS/Xbox games are a janky messy experience, but look "nice" in stills. This is one area where i absolutely love Nintendo's philosophy.
What are you even taking about? Wii U games have garbage IQ, just look at MK8 in comparison to something like Second Son.
 

prag16

Banned
You know, this statement comes up all the time, but nobody ever managed to back it up. Because it's not possible. Any game using deferred shading with eight or more render targets would not run on PS360, because neither system supports eight render targets (360 only supports four, and even that requires a ton of work). Any game that makes use of 1GB RAM would not run on PS360 no matter what, because neither system has 1GB RAM (and Wii U supports 3Dc/ 3Dc+ texture compression, unlike PS3). And so on.

So no, PS360 couldn't do it. They might be able to do something remotely similar, or something else you think looks as good or better, but you would need to downgrade pretty much every single 1st party game to make it work on PS360.

Did we get any info on whether 1st party games are using deferred rendering?

Anyway, while the raw power is definitely PS360 ballpark, the architecture is definitely closer to PS4/bone in many ways. I still don't think down-ports would be as horribly impossible as most will say (with no proof). Just isn't economical. Project CARS will probably be our first real indicator of how good a PS4/PC -> Wii U down port can look.
 

Sendou

Member
Even among stylised/cartoony games, they are just barely finally catching up with Sonic Generations. Pre-MK8, their output still looked much worse than that.

I don't know about that. I seem to remember that Generations on consoles runs at unstable 30FPS (and at what resolution? I can't find any good info on this). I fail to see how that's a benchmark of any kind.
 

Renekton

Member
It appeared so at one point, but all things considered, the evidence now points to 160. There's also documentation out there that says 160, but admittedly you never really know with leaks and stuff. To me, it makes it all the more impressive what Nintendo are doing with the machine. They have some fantastic artists and that they are prioritizing 60fps gameplay in many titles is admirable.
Ah bummer :(

But still major thanks to your guys for helping to analyze the chipworks photo.
 

lherre

Accurate
Wii U is more "powerful" (if we could use this term).

I will say that Wii U is more efficient than ps360 and stronger in some areas.

But overall it is in the same ballpark than those machines. I wouldn't say that it is a generation ahead of them.
 
Ah bummer :(

But still major thanks to your guys for helping to analyze the chipworks photo.

Don't sweat the flops thing. It is all theoretical anyway. You have seen what the machine can do. And yeah, we had alot of fun with the die photos. Hopefully, we can do it again next gen (although with cooler heads, myself included)

Wii U is more "powerful" (if we could use this term).

I will say that Wii U is more efficient than ps360 and stronger in some areas.

But overall it is in the same ballpark than those machines. I wouldn't say that it is a generational ahead of them.

What is your definition of "power?" Haha. What is listed on paper? Engine benchmarks? Final in-game results?
 
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