Captain Europe
Member
There's no way of telling that yet, we've seen very little footage and we don't know what resolution and framerate it will run at.
How big is the power gap between Wii U and PS3/360?
- Thread starter Zee-Row
- Start date
There's no way of telling that yet, we've seen very little footage and we don't know what resolution and framerate it will run at.
Yes, neither Sony or Microsoft allocated half their system memory to the OS. Nintendo's inexperience with complex OS's is really showing in this regard, and hopefully as the lifespan of the console goes on, they'll manage to shrink the OS down somewhat.
That said, at various points in their lifespan, up to a 3rd of the memory in the PS360 could have been used for the OS. That's certainly fractionally less, but it's still a significant amount of their overall memory, and gives the Wii U far more usable RAM for developers, in comparison to the PS360.
Could Nintendo have done a better job designing the hardware, even given their budgetary limits. Yes I do believe so, they hobbled themselves by insisting on a super small form-factor, absurdly low power requirements, and diverting at least some funds away from better chip-sets in order to cover the cost of the controller. I'm certain that if Nintendo hadn't been hobbled by these constraints, they could easily have put out a console that was at least in the same general hemipshere as the PS4/X1.
However it's fairly clear at this point that in comparison to the PS360 at least, the Wii U is a more powerful beast. Granted, it would've been hard not to make a machine more powerful by then, but still.
Any Wii U game is gonna be beyond PS3's/360's capabilities if it uses more than 512MB of memory. It's not always about how a game looks, but also what kind of game it is underneath the graphics. A game like Skyrim is gonna run so much better on the Wii U than on the 360 and especially PS3.
Otakumegane
Member
Getting some of the Ram opened up would be nice to reduce some of the texture pop-in in Xenoblade.
eddfromtheriver
Banned
Exactly, there's a reason they went with this pseudo cel-shaded art style over the more realistic one used on the "tech demo" (hint: not as demanding), and i've yet to see a title that makes me think... "this couldn't possibly run on a 360/PS3".
Maybe the gap is there... but it must be miniscule because i sure as hell ain't seeing it.
Mihael Mello Keehl
Banned
It wont be interesting. I believe Kamiya said on twitter its the 360 version just with the added stuff.
th3sicknness
Member
To be honest I think they went with less power consumption and form factor based on their home market (Japan likes to save space) and also to scale the technology down enough for the next generation. If the rumors concerning the next console are true this is a good way to kinda set themselves up for that transition. They have the 3ds / Wii U markets that if they merged the two creating 1 market for two types of users it could be really big for them (If they truly unify the account systems this gen I will assume this is their plan for the future).
Phoenician_Viking
Banned
And yet Wipeout came in 2008 at 1080p/60 FPS, while MK8 just released and it runs at 720P/59 FPS.
Bold, i have yet to see it.
thedarknight87
Banned
sörine;116825192 said:
Well I must have been hallucinating when I played UC2 (720p, 2xMSAA, 30 fps locked) and GoW3 (720p, MLAA, Avg. 45fps) and many other first party and 3rd party deferred rendering based games.
sixteen-bit
Member
If you're talking about framerate and resolution, Ridge Racer 7 was 1080p and 60 fps at PS3 launch. Unlike Wipeout HD it was legitimately 1920 x 1080.
BlockheadBrown
Member
Who cares? What do you want to play? Get a system that has that. Spec cred waving does no good if there aren't games you want to play on that system.
Current: PC/PS3/PS4/Wii U owner.
Previous: Xbox 360/Xbox One owner.
Have owned: Orig. Xbox, Gamecube, Wii, Orig. PS & PS2.
And yes, I'd actually like a X1 again. Not yet though.
Current: PC/PS3/PS4/Wii U owner.
Previous: Xbox 360/Xbox One owner.
Have owned: Orig. Xbox, Gamecube, Wii, Orig. PS & PS2.
And yes, I'd actually like a X1 again. Not yet though.
eddfromtheriver
Banned
I'll just leave this here ..
Now tell me the 360 or the PS3 can do that. Heck, even the PS4 would melt trying to run that.
Are you implying somehow that the Wii U is more powerful than the PS4?
Wipeout HD is not really 1080p, it's dynamic resolution up to 1080p and it has really noticeable aliasing at times. It also doesn't look better than Mario Kart 8 at all. Far more simplistic, much less going on. I just played it all night yesterday after spending a few days with Mario Kart 8.
SomedayTheFire
Member
Now I believe the Wii U is stronger than the PS3 and 360, by how much? I don't know but it seems lots of people are being fooled by Nintendo's amazing art styles when it comes to talking about graphics. Their lighting system and general art style's make their games look amazing.
Mihael Mello Keehl
Banned
Its a joke tho
I'll just leave this here ..
Now tell me the 360 or the PS3 can do that. Heck, even the PS4 would melt trying to run that.
I'm assuming you're joking, but just for the fuck of it, a PS2 could probably run Zelda U at that resolution and that IQ no problem. Even if you're joking fuck off with the downscaled heavily compressed tiny cherry picked gifs please.
Eh, no I'm sorry, but I don't buy these rumors one bit. While the low power usage in the Wii U is impressive, as an transitional step between consoles, handhelds, and an eventual unified platform, it doesn't really make sense.
Even a nominal portable device, capable of competing with tablets and smartphones, is going to need a workable battery life, and given where chemistry is right now a portable Wii U would drain any reasonable sized battery very quickly. Sure, with some work you could make improvements to the design that might get it roughly where it needs to be, but, it'd be rather silly to do it like that.
If Nintendo wants an architecture that can give them Wii U or better visuals in a portable, with a workable battery life, it'd be simpler just to use certain architectures and designs AMD's been working on for the past few years.
Not only would it be cheaper for both Nintendo, but it'd result in a less expensive machine that ultimately had greater horsepower.
Now, I do fully accept the idea that Nintendo pushed for low power requirements, and a small form factor, in an attempt to appeal to Japanese consumers. However, I believe this too was somewhat misguided. In terms of form-factor, the PS4 isn't all that much bigger, and Japanese consumers have certainly bought larger consoles in large numbers in the past. Similarly, I do not believe even Japanese consumers pay as much attention to electricity usage as Nintendo seemed to think.
Peterthumpa
Member
By Bayonetta 60 FPS %.
GhostTrick
Banned
That is arguable. First of all, yes, Zelda, from what we seen, seems to be beyond PS360 capabilites, and look better than WipEout HD/GoW games.
I'd also argue that Xenoblade Chronicles (except for the faces) looks somehow better.
Peterthumpa
Member
Now I'm assuming you're joking too.
Your statement is as nonsensical as the one you're replying to.
Not sure why you start mentioning resolution and framerate while I was talking about a game like Skyrim (or any future potential games on Wii U) which uses a lot of memory and the reason why it crippled the PS3 to it's knees and gave it a heartattack.
Mihael Mello Keehl
Banned
Calm down. He was joking, referring to Watch_Dogs OT thread title.
Clairvoyance
Member
Someone took that post a bit too personal. Don't go bursting a vain.
Phoenician_Viking
Banned
LOL.
Not sure why you mentioned Skyrim while i specifically mentioned GOW and Wipeout. Yeah PS3 had memory issues, but the Cell took the grunt. And why only talk about Skyrim when there are plenty of games that look better on the PS3. CPU of the WiiU is weaker than PS360.
Clairvoyance
Member
That had more to do with design choices, but Trials was one IIRC. It's ultimately a bit silly debate because it's guesswork outside of games that chose to detail their rendering pipeline though - a lot like polygon counting was in PS2 gen (where people almost always grossly overestimated polygon throughput - on every platform).M3d10n said:
I already explained why I mentioned Skyrim which has nothing to do with graphics. The Cell processor isn't gonna take any grunt. If you lack memory, the Cell isn't gonna help at all. The Cell only helps offload some GPU tasks because the RSX is weak. But it seems you only want to compare graphics and not beyond that.
entremet
Member
That's a bad way to benchmark hardware.
We will never know if that's possible on the Wii U since it's a Sony exclusive.
Just because a game shines on one platform doesn't mean it's not technically capable on another.
th3sicknness
Member
I dont think anyone conceived that Nintendo would put a screen in their next console and be able to stream games at 60 fps with virtually no lag up to 30 ft away from the television. Just because you think it isnt feasible or it isnt possible with the current battery / technology available doesnt mean it wont be possible 2 to 3 years down the road. Miyamoto at e3 discussed that it is a likely possibility down the road and Iwata discussed in his investor relations meeting that he would like Nintendo Platforms to take an Apple sort of approach with their ecosystem (1 account where it works across all platforms ie download games / music on the iphone and it works on ipad vice versa). Hell they already merged the console / portable software and hardware development teams under one roof which is even further evidence it could be true?
Nintendos real problem for the future outside of its direct competition / mobile is that they have 3DS and WiiU competing against each other with almost the same games. If they could leverage the 50 million 3ds users with the 6 million Wii U users into 1 market why wouldnt they? Nintendo is the company to try something that crazy.
Now I am just talking out of my ass here but why couldnt they create a device similar to the way a laptop works with a docking station (Doc connected to tv for home console output)? Maybe the docking station has another GPU inside of it that works like crossfire / SLI? The portable device could use speedstep or something similar to under clock the cpu and gpu when it is off the doc to accommodate the limitations of the battery .. maybe even the game itself adapts to it.
Nintendo doesnt do things for no reason they experiment and try crazy things. I dont think it is outside the realm of possibility that they hardware was scaled this way because they are thinking about their next platform.
DAREALGUMMY
Member
This topic still exists?
Captain Europe
Member
Are you serious?
MemoryHumanity
Member
I think the Wii U has the PS3 beat in certain aspects, and vice versa. For example, Bayonetta Wii U runs at 60fps, NFS Most Wanted and FIFA both have better textures than on PS3.
But I honestly don't know if the Wii U could handle something like Uncharted 2 or God of War 3.
But I honestly don't know if the Wii U could handle something like Uncharted 2 or God of War 3.
And I can name plenty of others like Battlefield 3, GTAIV, SASRT, Viva Pinata, Trine 2, etc, that fail to hit one or both benchmarks.
Trine 2 is actually a great example of Wii U's advantages in deferred vs forward rendering. On Wii U it's 720p and a consistent 30fps with vsynch, on PS3 and 360 it's dynamic res with a less stable 30fps and occasional tearing. Wii U's more modern GPU and greater memory allocation give it big advantages for deferred shading.
JordanN
Banned
Blue Dragon was one of the few open world JRPG's with towns last gen (because ol' Squenix sucked at it).
It's only problem is it sometimes suffers from the "tech demo" look. Lots of powerful tech, but artistically, a bit rough (like the overdone bloom crap).
Depth of field
Well rendered ocean.
GhostTrick
Banned
You know, I used argument to answer you sir, the least thing you could do is at least showing respect or using arguments, instead of showing disrespect to others because you disagree.
Chemistry doesn't advance as quickly as chipsets, and given the power draw of the Wii U, chemistry would have to improve a, "LOT," to turn it into a viable reasonably sized portable, with a decent battery life. It'd be simpler to just use better and more efficient chipsets, and as such, it'd be cheaper just to hire out the task to a company like AMD.
Also, yes, Nintendo experiments, but they are not a chipset company. The bulk of the insides their consoles have been based on, have always been designed by outside companies. So, if they really wanted to experiment with chipsets that could be adapted into a portable/console a few years down the line, they had better options.
More likely, they wanted something cheap for them to make, similar to their existing hardware in certain respects to make development easier, and low wattage. The Wii U fits all these criteria, which is likely why they went with the hardware design. The problem is that it didn't fit the criteria that third parties wanted, and, that the console itself didn't have the same novelty as the original Wii
entremet
Member
Why not?
The problem with these discussion is that a lot is based on conjecture, which makes them moot.
Just because we haven't seen more realistic games on the Wii U doesn't mean it cannot handle such games.
I am assuming this is a troll post
If it isn't do you even remember what PS2 games look like
A lot of people talking shit in this thread being fucking disrespectful. People who reply with LOL need a good slap at times. Jeez. They can't actually come up with a good reply so they try to blow off the comment like the poster is stupid. Why not actually bestow us with your wisdom oh wise one...or better yet, don't.
I forgot about Trials. I remember some articles on how they managed it. You're right that ultimately it's a design choice: if the target is 60fps, things will be cut/scaled/reworked to hit it no matter what.
OmegaDL50
Member
Are you honestly trying to say that the Wii U with more ram and a better GPU isn't capable of running GOW3 at a solid and consistent frame rate if it was available on the Wii U. You clearly aren't saying this, are you?
I would love for you to clarify this.
Captain Europe
Member
Blue Dragon was one of the few open world JRPG's with towns last gen (because ol' Squenix sucked at it).
It's only problem is it sometimes suffers from the "tech demo" look. Lots of powerful tech, but artistically, a bit rough (like the overdone bloom crap).
Depth of field
Well rendered ocean.
Blue Dragon looks nice in pictures, but it had a terrible framerate and tons of slowdowns.
Lovely Salsa
Banned
There's nothing on wii u that looks better or is at the same level as this:
th3sicknness
Member
There's nothing on wii u that looks better or is at the same level as this:
There is a difference between not possible and not yet ... If and when hardware sales pick up you might see a developer talented enough to create something like that.. Right now no one other than Nintendo is taking risks with the hardware (IT does look rather impressive).