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[Opiate]

Well, I think 'high specification' as a philosophy 'won' this generation. Wii may have taken the honours as an individual platform, but more people bought into HD systems than bought into Wii. And that segment alone probably remained flat, if not saw growth, over the whole console industry last gen.

Of course it's more complicated. I'm sure many who bought HD systems didn't buy into them because they were simply powerful, but because they had content they wanted. But then we get into a question of which philosophy the content makers cared more for, and which attracted the content makers more...and that was a matter that certainly seems to have been influenced by 'power'.

So I think Nintendo is right, and finally proved, that you can build compelling entertainment without high spec. But people - more than a dwindling core, and more than Ninendo captured - did care for powerful game machines for whatever reason this gen.

No, I think you're very wrong. You are, for some bizarre reason, limiting this discussion exclusively to home consoles, and then from there conjoining the two "HD" platforms in to one, for some reason, and then also ignoring profits/losses, and only discussing revenue.

Yes, when viewed through that very specific lense, the HD consoles "won." I just think that's an extremely myopic lense.

 

[megashock5]

That's blatantly false.

Performance wise:
SNES>Megadrive
PS1>Saturn
PS2>Dreamcast

This is the first time the weakest has won.

However, the strongest has rarely won.

Atari sold more than Intellivision and Colecovision despite being way behind technically.
NES was weaker than SMS, but beat it handily in NA and Japan
SNES was arguably stronger than Genesis/MD, but didn't pull ahead until the end of the generation. Sega had the majority of the market for a while. NeoGeo stomped them both from a power perspective, but never amounted to more than a niche market.
PS1 was weaker than N64 in many ways (obviously not storage) but sold far more.
PS2 was stronger than DC, but it outsold two more powerful consoles in Xbox and Gamecube, and it wasn't even close.

So while not necessarily the weakest every time, the only time the strongest won is arguably the 16bit era - and even then it was very close.

 

[plagiarize]

Why are people surprised by these specs? Have you not been obsessively checking and subscribing to every Wii U Speculation Threads waiting for news and rumors to trickle then dissect like the rest of us?

i don't mind the people who are surprised by them. i just think it's funny that we have people like DavePooBond asking how Nintendo 'plan' to drive two screens with this hardware.

as if they aren't already driving two screens with this hardware and as if we don't already have a low end expectation of what Wii U games are going to look like from the launch titles.

the main problem with the Wii's graphics remains it's terrible IQ. that's what bothers most people i honestly think. more than its lack of pixel shaders. more than its inability to push as many polys as the HD twins.

garbage. IQ. i play first party Wii games on dolphin on my HDTV, even just at 720p without AA and i see something that looks perfectly acceptable to me. peoples mileage will vary, and i love pushing the envelope tech wise. but that's what my PC is for.

it's going to be very interesting to see whether or not the power gap looks as different when all the consoles are outputting in HD. honestly, i hope the power gap is massive, because i'd love to see a huge bump over what i can buy this year in next year's consoles.

 

[mysteriousmage09]

Well, based on what i've seen from Wii U's first round of games, i'm not at all surprised by these specs.

 

[2MF]

but more people bought into HD systems than bought into Wii. And that segment alone probably remained flat, if not saw growth, over the whole console industry last gen.

What are you saying here? PS3 + 360 sales > what ?

 

[BLACK AMERICAN PSYCHO]

It's all about the raw power and graphics, right? *sigh*

Nope but your console at least has to have decent specs. I can't fucking imagine this lasting until 2018.

 

[NateDrake]

So, basically the same spec as my galaxy s3.

No thanks, I'll wait for a bit.

No.

 

[StuBurns]

Yeah, except for the fact the other two will actually be far more powerful than current gen and wii U. People who have ps3 or 360 already have something comparable to this, albeit without 1st party Nintendo games.

So? That was true last time too, and Nintendo won.

 

[Littlegator]

You know, from a technological standpoint, throwing 3 8 year old cores into a machine is just plain stupid.

The "Broadway" cores are probably just cores using the same architecture. I refuse to believe that the committee at Nintendo is stupid enough to make a move like this.

 

[EloquentM]

So, basically the same spec as my galaxy s3.

No thanks, I'll wait for a bit.

Definitely belongs in the top ten posts of this thread.

 

[DonMigs85]

I reeeeaally wonder why they couldn't have just gone with a midrange GPU like the Radeon HD 5670 or even just the 5570. At least thay have DX11 functionality.
And hey, at least Broadway still had out of order processing - I just hope they clocked this CPU high enough and put lots of cache.

 

[I Stalk Alone]

Ok but if they are serious about wiiu's multimedia and online capabilities they should have included one in at least one of the models.

Forget that, i am getting my own HDD a 500GB external hdd is like $60. I am not prepared to pay for a proprietry hdd up the nose again. plus i have a few eHDD lying around I am sure I can use on of them.

It's similar. But the Wii was at least clearly better than the PS2 in all aspects. We don't know that about the Wii U CPU.

I would guess that on a 3:1 clock ratio to broadway, the Espresso cores would be around 2.187GHz each which might be the maximum clock ceiling the chip is able to reach and probably consuming around 8 Watts. It is possible however that it is only 2:1 ratio at 1.458Ghz which three of these cores will perform about 10% faster than the Xenon if it ran 5 instructions per cycle. We still don't know if there is indeed one main core with more cache.

xenon 2 instructions @ 3.2Ghz x3 cores = 19200 in order instructions

Espresso 5 instructions (similar to power PC G5) @ 1.458GHz x3 cores = 21870 out of order instructions

even at 1.458Ghz the 3 Espressso cores will beat the Xenon and running at only 4 watts.

The Xenon used a lot of one core for sound and the Wii U has a DSP at 120Mhz which will also help. Isn't there also an arm co cpu? Even at this speed it will perform about 1.5x Xenon.

If however it is clocked at a 3:1 ratio on a 729Mhz bus

Espresso 5 instructions (similar to power PC G5) @ 2.187GHz x3 cores = 32805 out of order instructions

+DSP + the arm co cpu will probably perform about 2.5x the Xenon CPU

For reference

The 476FP core has 32/32 kB L1 cache, dual integer units and a SIMD capable double precision FPU that handles DSP instructions. Emitting 1.6 W at 1.6 GHz on a 45 nm fabrication process.

three of these cores are faster then Xenon.

The GPU is what we would really like to know as well.

If the GPU has 640 alu's and is clocked at 607.5MHz then we are probably looking at over 768GFLOPS in the same vain as a HD7750 which is 819GFLOPS, but performs faster than a 4870 at 1.2TFLOPS. More realistically, the gpu can be clocked at around 486Mhz which would be around 622.1GFLOPS but still perform faster then the 1000GFLOP HD 4850 @500MHz @110w TDP. For reference, the Radeon E6760 is 576GFLOPS @35w TDP also outperforms the HD4850 which is around 5x faster than the Xenos in real world scenarios.


The WiiU also has 32MB Edram which will help with AA especially on 720p with 4xAA looking good. 1080 will also be possible but probably no AA.

The ram being 1024MB as of now alloted for games is over 2x that of the xbox 360 which also used its ram for the OS. The Wii U OS might have 512MB or more currently dedicated to it. This will mean multitasking while playing games is definitely possible.


So we are still basically unknown on some numbers so we don't know but is it possible we are looking at maybe two scenarios with the first one being likely but the second one still possible?

Espresso Tri core clocked at 1.458Ghz or 2.187Ghz (i hope it is the latter)
"Enhanced Broadway" similar to PowerPC 476FP architecture.
3MB L2 Cache
core 0: 512 KB
core 1: 2048 KB
core 2: 512 KB
OoOE
5 instructions per cycle (unknown)
45nm @ 4-8w TDP?


GPU
32MB Edram 4x AA 720p or 1080p no AA
1024 MB Video DDR3 (2GB total) or GDDR5 (1.5GB total)
486Mhz or 607.5MHz (HD4850 performance or HD4870 performance)
640 ALU
Open GL 4.3

The low end will outperform the XBOX 360 probably 2.5x and the high number will be 4.5x
if it was low end I would see $249 with no pack in game but on High End I would see $299 without including the pack in game.

 

[gofreak]

No, I think you're very wrong. You are, for some bizarre reason, limiting this discussion exclusively to home consoles, and then from there conjoining the two "HD" platforms in to one, for some reason, and then also ignoring profits/losses, and only discussing revenue.

Yes, when viewed through that very specific lense, the HD consoles "won." I just think that's an extremely myopic lense.

You were talking about elements of a console that 'concern most people'.

i.e. what is popular on the market, and factors that appeal to people

That has nothing to do with profits/losses/revenue, for starters. This was purely about what was/is popular, what is and isn't attractive on the market.

You were appearing to say most people don't care about graphics/presentation/etc. on the basis of Wii's success - and the success of mobile/social.

Now granted on the latter, but as I said in my first reply, I do think it's a bit of a different context.

In the home console context, I'm not sure we can talk about it being clear most people don't care about graphics because Wii sold more systems than any other platform...if elsewhere, 'powerhouse' systems went into more homes than Wii. For whatever reason, more people chose more powerful systems. Regardless of whether there were two different brands on those boxes...that's an immaterial point here. Putting Wii against one or other on their own does not serve your point when they were both trading on the 'high spec' experience you were claiming most people don't care about.

To boil it down - in the home console context, why do you think 'most people' don't care about graphics/presentation, when more people appear to have bought 'high fidelity' entertainment boxes than any other kind? I would say, at the very least, the factors that motivated investment in one or other kind of entertainment were obscure. A simplified 'Wii was number one, and thus people except a small number of core gamers don't care about graphics' isn't very convincing to me, at least when I stop looking at specific platforms in the space and start looking at broader console categories and their relative popularity and longevity, even.

 

[fritolay]

Nintendo has now made it clear, they are in a different league than Sony and Microsoft.

They will keep costs low and keep profit margins going to keep the money flowing in. They rely on their own IP to keep system sales going. That is pretty much it.

The other companies will take a loss with hardware sales, or great loss, push other agendas (Bing & TV sales) to grab market share and then make more money of dashboard ads, etc.

The home console market has officially split.

 

[Hoodbury]

Definitely belongs in the top ten posts of this thread.

I'm actually surprised we haven't seen more "My cell phone has more RAM than that" posts so far.

 

[Palette Swap]

No, I think you're very wrong. You are, for some bizarre reason, limiting this discussion exclusively to home consoles, and then from there conjoining the two "HD" platforms in to one, for some reason, and then also ignoring profits/losses, and only discussing revenue.

Yes, when viewed through that very specific lense, the HD consoles "won." I just think that's an extremely myopic lense.

Retrospectively, even the PS2 tends to prove this point: it had a tremendous success and all its (relatively speaking modest) profits were sunk into the PS3. To put it very broadly, that model doesn't seem to allow much for failure, if at all.

 

[majortom1981]

You know, from a technological standpoint, throwing 3 8 year old cores into a machine is just plain stupid.

The "Broadway" cores are probably just cores using the same architecture. I refuse to believe that the committee at Nintendo is stupid enough to make a move like this.

I think its based on them. The gc and wii used the embeded powerpc processors not the power 6 or power 7 processors. So if nintendo went with the latest version of these embeded processors it would be similiar tech to the wii cpu BUt still be newer.

I think these cpus arent exactly 3 wii cpus taped together and just the newest version of the power pc embedded processors.

You can find the specs for the embbeded cpu's on IBMS website.

 

[Sid]

However, the strongest has rarely won.

Atari sold more than Intellivision and Colecovision despite being way behind technically.
NES was weaker than SMS, but beat it handily in NA and Japan
SNES was arguably stronger than Genesis/MD, but didn't pull ahead until the end of the generation. Sega had the majority of the market for a while. NeoGeo stomped them both from a power perspective, but never amounted to more than a niche market.
PS1 was weaker than N64 in many ways (obviously not storage) but sold far more.
PS2 was stronger than DC, but it outsold two more powerful consoles in Xbox and Gamecube, and it wasn't even close.

So while not necessarily the weakest every time, the only time the strongest won is arguably the 16bit era - and even then it was very close.

This gen is the first time when a console with the smallest incremental upgrade over their last gen competitors won.

 

[Gravijah]

This gen is the first time when a console with the smallest incremental upgrade over their last gen competitors won.

it's also the first gen a white console has won.

 

[miksar]

So I think Nintendo is right, and finally proved, that you can build compelling entertainment without high spec.

They proved it several times already since the inception of NES. The strategy behind Nintendo hardware was always about making it as cheap as possible, that's basically the Gunpei Yokoi philosophy: "innovate within hardware limits". No Nintendo console has ever been really technologically advanced for its time, it is just that before Microsoft entered the market no one could afford to lose so much money on a console.

 

[mrklaw]

....at 720p, won't those Wii cores become a bottleneck for what's otherwise a decent jump for a console cycle? The GPU and available RAM look good, no?

The CPU won't make a difference at 720p or 1080p, that'd be down to the GPU to draw more pixels.

And can't you run a decent gaming PC on an old quad core pentium, or an i3 dual core? If the GPU is doing the heavy lifting you don't need an uber CPU

 

[Sid]

it's also the first gen a white console has won.

A black wii exists.

 

[Gravijah]

A black wii exists.

a majority of the Wii sales were white.

 

[theangrypirate]

this is a rumor, in a couple months we will know how much ram is in it.

Isn't Nintendo holding a press conference Wednesday (9/12) regarding Wii U?

 

[Sid]

a majority of the Wii sales were white.

I thought black was available since launch,nvm then,the ps1 was white too.

 

[mrklaw]

Someone already posted a developer's comment on the Broadway: one core of the 360's CPU is roughly 20% faster than the Broadway's single core. An enhanced Broadway CPU with three cores should be equivalent to the Xenos. Crisis averted.

AND it bodes well for backwards-compatibility.

If they have a separate ARM or similar to run the OS. If they reserve one of the three for OS duties..?

 

[Nightbringer]

1440, 480, 240/960, 120.

 

[phosphor112]

Espresso


Even if this guy was wrong about something he knew something because no way his name was just going to happen to be the same as the CPU.

http://gamenmotion.blogspot.com/2012/06/rumor-wii-u-cpu-is-3-wii-cpu-cores.html



Edit: Now I would like an apology from everyone who called me crazy for believing in this person & treated me like I was a troll every time I brought this up.

One of my favorite posters. B)

 

[zoukka]

the ps1 was white too.

It was gray. PSone was white, but hasn't sold as much I'd guess.

 

[MrCunningham]

However, the strongest has rarely won.

Atari sold more than Intellivision and Colecovision despite being way behind technically.
NES was weaker than SMS, but beat it handily in NA and Japan
SNES was arguably stronger than Genesis/MD, but didn't pull ahead until the end of the generation. Sega had the majority of the market for a while. NeoGeo stomped them both from a power perspective, but never amounted to more than a niche market.
PS1 was weaker than N64 in many ways (obviously not storage) but sold far more.
PS2 was stronger than DC, but it outsold two more powerful consoles in Xbox and Gamecube, and it wasn't even close.

So while not necessarily the weakest every time, the only time the strongest won is arguably the 16bit era - and even then it was very close.

The SNES has a superior video display processor and a more robust sound chip. But the Genesis 68000 CPU spanked the SNES CPU in performance. The Neo-Geo was a high end 16bit arcade system shoveled into a home console. It was never meant to compete with the SNES and Genesis directly.

The Saturn was a uncontrollable beast in terms of raw processing power. But couldn't complete with the streamlined 3D hardware of the PS1.

The PS2 was released two years after the Dreamcast. It benefited from that two year gap. The Xbox and Nintendo GameCube were released a year after the PS2 and benefited from the same technological gap.

 

[OldJadedGamer]

I thought black was available since launch,nvm then,the ps1 was white too.

PS1 was gray.

Edit: beaten

 

[Ridley327]

Isn't Nintendo holding a press conference Wednesday (9/12) regarding Wii U?

They're holding a conference on Thursday, but they're not going to divulge specs. It hasn't been their style to talk about them since the GCN, where talking about the real world performance of the system backfired on them in the face of the more extravagant numbers that Sony and MS put out to hype their systems up.

 

[theangrypirate]

So? That was true last time too, and Nintendo won.

True, Nintendo sold way more consoles than anyone else. I'm more concerned about bang for MY buck though. Yeah you got your Zeldas and Marios and Metroids but almost a complete lack of third party support concerns me. Wii hit hard with the non gamers last time around. If Nintendo could get a quarter of the non-gamers that bought a Wii to buy a Wii U I would be shocked. Not rooting against them, I just think its going to be a far cry from the Wii numbers.

 

[OldJadedGamer]

The PS2 was released two years after the Dreamcast. It benefited from that two year gap. The Xbox and Nintendo GameCube were released a year after the PS2 and benefited from the same technological gap.

PS2 launched 16 months after the Dreamcast, not 24. Gamecube launched 18 months after PS2, not 12.

 

[mrklaw]

Yeah, people have forgotten that for what, pretty much every single console generation that the weakest system has always came out on top?

It's outstanding that people still don't get the industry.

If there is anything to get, it would be not to make predictions. There is no pattern and therefore no way to have confidence in the outcome of the next releases from any of the manufacturers.

 

[Agent Unknown]

So Espresso guy says Broadway derivative but IMB tweets it's Power7? So...IBM is confused or lying? I know I'm confused now.

Edit: If someone could clarify I'd appreciate it since I'm at work and it's hard to read the whole thread (besides the fact folks like cyber turned it into a minefield)

And really disappointed at only 1 GB if true. 1.5 GB would have been more bearable for a cost compromise. I understand dev costs are outrageous and Nintendo needs to keep their own costs down, buf how can they seriously expect to get prolonged third party/core support when they're being so cheap with the specs and not seeming to reach out to third parties in big ways?

 

[theangrypirate]

They're holding a conference on Thursday, but they're not going to divulge specs. It hasn't been their style to talk about them since the GCN, where talking about the real world performance of the system backfired on them in the face of the more extravagant numbers that Sony and MS put out to hype their systems up.

bummer no specs.

 

[gofreak]

They proved it several times already since the inception of NES. The strategy behind Nintendo hardware was always about making it as cheap as possible, that's basically the Gunpei Yokoi philosophy: "innovate within hardware limits". No Nintendo console has ever been really technologically advanced for its time, it is just that before Microsoft entered the market no one could afford to lose so much money on a console.

Right, but Wii took it to the extreme. Prior to that...at least in the home space and during the snes/n64/gamecube eras, their tech was contemporary relative to their competition. And it was somewhat important to them, or seemed to be - I remember Nintendo making a point of their then Dolphin system being 'at least as powerful' as PS2. Wii was taking the philosophy to another level I think. They proved you didn't have to be even remotely contemporary in your 'presentation' tech, and that was a new thing for the home space I think. At least in recent history.

 

[Graphics Horse]

So...IBM is confused or lying?

If it's from a PR guy, flip a coin.

 

[B.O.O.M]

Could someone please tell me the time at which the Ninty conference is at this Thursday?

 

[Matt]

So Espresso guy says Broadway derivative but IMB tweets it's Power7? So...IBM is confused or lying? I know I'm confused now.

And really disappointed at only 1 GB if true. 1.5 GB would have been more bearable for a cost compromise. I understand dev costs are outrageous and Nintendo needs to keep their own costs down, buf how can they seriously expect to get prolonged third party/core support when they're being so cheap with the specs and not seeming to reach out to third parties in big ways?

Sometimes you have to make concessions for your in-game web browsing.

 

[Agent Unknown]

If it's from a PR guy, flip a coin.

Ah, didn't know it was a PR tweet, thanks.

It does have 1.5 GBs of RAM. Sometimes you have to make concessions for your in-game web browsing.

I know but it would have been better if they'd done 2 GB, 1.5 for games, .5 for OS/features. But I'm not a techie so what do I know, but it seems any edge they could have would help.

 

[Opiate]

You were talking about elements of a console that 'concern most people'.

i.e. what is popular on the market, and factors that appeal to people

That has nothing to do with profits/losses/revenue, for starters.

You were appearing to say most people don't care about graphics/presentation/etc. on the basis of Wii's success - and the success of mobile/social.

Now granted on the latter, but as I said in my first reply, I do think it's a bit of a different context.

In the home console context, I'm not sure we can talk about it being clear most people don't care about graphics because Wii sold more systems than any other platform...if elsewhere, 'powerhouse' systems went into more homes than Wii. For whatever reason, more people chose more powerful systems. Putting Wii against one or other on their own does not serve your point when they were both trading on the 'high spec' experience you were claiming most people don't care about.

Right, as I said, you're strangely limiting it only to home consoles, and then combining the two "powerhouse" consoles, as you call it, in to a single unit. Yes, viewed through that narrow lense, the HD consoles have "won."

Profits matter because they indicate investment. For example, let's say Nintendo had decided to sell the Wii for 1 dollar. Would they have "won?" I guess you could call it that, although they might be bankrupt. I don't think that indicates expected market conditions, however. Since this happens to be an industry where some manufacturers loss lead -- often to the tune of billions of dollars -- this can create distortions in consumer preferences.

 

[mrklaw]

Mobile is a pretty different context. Other factors come to the fore.

But overall, what's important in each area is that you present a type of entertainment the market values.

Nintendo was and is correct that you can create popular entertainment without high specification hardware - without 'graphics/presentation/superficial concerns' (although I would argue the potential effect of higher specification platforms on content goes beyond the superficial).

However it doesn't prove the market doesn't care about 'high specification' entertainment. In the home console market, that segment remains the more popular one. Don't let the fact it's split two or three ways from a platform POV fool you about how the market values that kind of entertainment.

Nintendo is simply choosing not to compete for that segment, not to offer that kind of entertainment, which is fine. Their systems need to rely on something else to drive new entertainment experiences. Wii did this very well. We'll see if Wii-U does.

With high power usually comes high price. Lots of people don't like high prices. Core gamers will pay the premium for the experience, which then allows the platform owner to invest in cost engineering later revisions and bring the costs down so the mainstream can jump in.

If you'd released the 360/PS3 for $250 day 1, you think the wii would still have won? You can't take one factor (power) in isolation

 

[megashock5]

The SNES has a superior video display processor and a more robust sound chip. But the Genesis 68000 CPU spanked the SNES CPU in performance. The Neo-Geo was a high end 16bit arcade system shoveled into a home console. It was never meant to compete with the SNES and Genesis directly.

The Saturn was a uncontrollable beast in terms of raw processing power. But couldn't complete with the streamlined 3D hardware of the PS1.

The PS2 was released two years after the Dreamcast. It benefited from that two year gap. The Xbox and Nintendo GameCube were released a year after the PS2 and benefited from the same technological gap.

Yeah, that's why I said it was a niche market. It wasn't part of the same market, but if I didn't include it someone would have brought it up.

And, in NA, Dreamcast came out in 1999 followed by PS2 in 2000 - about one year apart. I know when the Xbox and GCN launched. That doesn't change the point.

Still, the argument holds - the strongest machine hardly ever attains the highest market share, even if the winner isn't necessarily the weakest.

 

[muu]

Right, but Wii took it to the extreme. Prior to that...at least in the home space and during the snes/n64/gamecube eras, their tech was contemporary relative to their competition. And it was somewhat important to them, or seemed to be - I remember Nintendo making a point of their then Dolphin system being 'at least as powerful' as PS2. Wii was taking the philosophy to another level I think. They proved you didn't have to be even remotely contemporary in your 'presentation' tech, and that was a new thing for the home space I think. At least in recent history.

So incorporating motion controls and putting it in the forefront wasn't a radical approach? People were so tied up with graphical prowess that Nintendo essentially pulled the rug from under them by innovating in the controls space. Unfortunate that it was so much so that even devs didn't have the know-how to properly make use of it, but I really don't see this as being different from any other generation -- lacking in some aspects, excelling in another to overcome competition.

 

[ZoddGutts]

Just what I thought with those specs, WiiU will do current gen graphics but will be at 1080p. Don't expect more than that otherwise you'll be disappointed.

 

[BDGAME]

Forget that, i am getting my own HDD a 500GB external hdd is like $60. I am not prepared to pay for a proprietry hdd up the nose again. plus i have a few eHDD lying around I am sure I can use on of them.



I would guess that on a 3:1 clock ratio to broadway, the Espresso cores would be around 2.187GHz each which might be the maximum clock ceiling the chip is able to reach and probably consuming around 8 Watts. It is possible however that it is only 2:1 ratio at 1.458Ghz which three of these cores will perform about 10% faster than the Xenon if it ran 5 instructions per cycle. We still don't know if there is indeed one main core with more cache.

xenon 2 instructions @ 3.2Ghz x3 cores = 19200 in order instructions

Espresso 5 instructions (similar to power PC G5) @ 1.458GHz x3 cores = 21870 out of order instructions

even at 1.458Ghz the 3 Espressso cores will beat the Xenon and running at only 4 watts.

The Xenon used a lot of one core for sound and the Wii U has a DSP at 120Mhz which will also help. Isn't there also an arm co cpu? Even at this speed it will perform about 1.5x Xenon.

If however it is clocked at a 3:1 ratio on a 729Mhz bus

Espresso 5 instructions (similar to power PC G5) @ 2.187GHz x3 cores = 32805 out of order instructions

+DSP + the arm co cpu will probably perform about 2.5x the Xenon CPU

For reference three of these cores are faster then Xenon.

The GPU is what we would really like to know as well.

If the GPU has 640 alu's and is clocked at 607.5MHz then we are probably looking at over 768GFLOPS in the same vain as a HD7750 which is 819GFLOPS, but performs faster than a 4870 at 1.2TFLOPS. More realistically, the gpu can be clocked at around 486Mhz which would be around 622.1GFLOPS but still perform faster then the 1000GFLOP HD 4850 @500MHz @110w TDP. For reference, the Radeon E6760 is 576GFLOPS @35w TDP also outperforms the HD4850 which is around 5x faster than the Xenos in real world scenarios.


The WiiU also has 32MB Edram which will help with AA especially on 720p with 4xAA looking good. 1080 will also be possible but probably no AA.

The ram being 1024MB as of now alloted for games is over 2x that of the xbox 360 which also used its ram for the OS. The Wii U OS might have 512MB or more currently dedicated to it. This will mean multitasking while playing games is definitely possible.


So we are still basically unknown on some numbers so we don't know but is it possible we are looking at maybe two scenarios with the first one being likely but the second one still possible?

Espresso Tri core clocked at 1.458Ghz or 2.187Ghz (i hope it is the latter)
"Enhanced Broadway" similar to PowerPC 476FP architecture.
3MB L2 Cache
core 0: 512 KB
core 1: 2048 KB
core 2: 512 KB
OoOE
5 instructions per cycle (unknown)
45nm @ 4-8w TDP?


GPU
32MB Edram 4x AA 720p or 1080p no AA
1024 MB Video DDR3 (2GB total) or GDDR5 (1.5GB total)
486Mhz or 607.5MHz (HD4850 performance or HD4870 performance)
640 ALU
Open GL 4.3

The low end will outperform the XBOX 360 probably 2.5x and the high number will be 4.5x
if it was low end I would see $249 with no pack in game but on High End I would see $299 without including the pack in game.

Cool info. Thanks. The first rumors tell that Wii U is something like 4x the power of 360, so maybe it is the High end possibility.

 

[Oblivion]

CPU: “Espresso” CPU on the Wii U has three enhanced Broadway cores

Without getting into details, this sounds like utter shit specs.

 

[Triple U]

Right, as I said, you're strangely limiting it only to home consoles, and then combining the two "powerhouse" consoles, as you call it, in to a single unit. Yes, viewed through that narrow lense, the HD consoles have "won."

Profits matter because they indicate investment. For example, let's say Nintendo had decided to sell the Wii for 1 dollar. Would they have "won?" I guess you could call it that, although they might be bankrupt. I don't think that indicates expected market conditions, however. Since this happens to be an industry where some manufacturers loss lead -- often to the tune of billions of dollars -- this can create distortions in consumer preferences.

I don't think profit matters much at all in determining "choice". Profit is dependent on the HW manufacturer and there choices for the HW they sell. The GCN made Nintendo a decent bit of profit(even more than PS2 for a couple years) and was by far a lesser chosen system.

If you want to look at what customers choice is, look at what they are buying and how much. Not how big a margin a company is able to squeeze out of one unit.