Rumor: Wii U final specs
- Thread starter EatChildren
- Start date
That's honestly a lot better than having the same people troll for the sake of trolling
The reason i didn't include Ideaman, is because he stays too vague too often, leaving to much to interpretation. Even though his info checks out, and i've always believed him to tell the truth. More context than actual facts. Somewhat frustrating. Now again, he knows what i'm talking aboutAlso, he's not a techie himself, just a messenger.
Why i didn't include Arkam, is because he does't really seem to know what he's talking about. Even though he works for a dev, his info seems to be second hand and void of any form of context (basically the exact opposite of Ideaman in that regard), has admitted to not being a techie.
Same for Lherre. Confirmed as working for a dev. He has some factual info, but never elaborates or provides context. Often hit & run. Has given some shady responses in the past that make me wonder just how much hands on knowledge he actually has.
John Harker, haven't seen him post too much to begin with so not really an issue.
Guys like Zomle/fourth storm/... seem to be a notch or two below the likes of Blu, Wsippel, BG... but make for interesting conversations nevertheless. I know Atonz is somewhat in the know, but i've never really seen him dish something up (or maybe just missed it). Donnie... i don't know how much he knows, and maybe a couple of others i forgot.
Thing is, we're talking about two different type of posters, the leakers, and the "tech explainers". I'm a leaker with 15% of "tech explainer" because it's not my specialty even if i have some awareness (required to understand the second-hand knowledge i gather thanks to my past activities of game journalist). And when you're a leaker, you must make sure to protect your sources, by not spilling the beans precisely for certain matters that may make those sources recognizable.
For example, and you're the prime witness of that because it's thanks to your questions in february in the Wii U speculation thread 2 i think that all this huge space for OS, 1GB for games, the breakdown of the total memory, was first heard worldwide, i couldn't revealed it directly because i thought back in the days, considering the date of arrival of dev kit and other parameters, that it may be easy to track back to the sources who told me that. And this is why i firstly said it privately to people like lherre in pm (mods can confirm it). Altought the hints were so big a lot of posters have guessed well the numbers. But once some of those parameters change (dev kit more widespread, critical moments like E3 ended, etc.), i can reveal more (hence why around E3 i said 1GB for games, and 2GB total). And for other subjects, i can be precise though (like the separated 512MB of nand for the OS, 2 DRC support, no system redesign, bundle with a game + wii u controller pro, v1 dev kit only having classic controller through an adapter, 1GB locked for games/2GB total, etc, etc.). I'm saying that because some people apparently don't understand why leakers can't reveal everything.
And they are people more "tech explainers" who are developers or folks having studied the subjects thoroughly, sometimes they happen to have some info, but the main part of their contribution is to explain how all work, what to expect, etc.
Finally there are posters that combine both, like lherre, a leaker (but even more discrete, and it's understandable) and with the capacity of tech explanation.
So yep, for a list of people to listen for hardware explanations, i would definitively put the folks you and others mentioned, + alstrong, and i won't be in that list because there are a lot of contributors who know more about tech than me.
Otherwise, for leaking stuff, it's another thing, after the two assessments (post E3 and post september nintendo direct, with 90% of the stuff correct) i've made, i put myself shamelessly in the top of the list, and this ram story is the crowning achievement, a timed bomb waiting to be confirmed since 7 months, can you believe that ?
But well, to be serious, it's mostly thanks to the reliability of my sources.
Pfft, your sources said NA launch of Nov 13th. I saw your posts in the Wii-U thread before it got locked at like 2 AM NA time.
Just pulling you chain, you've been a big, helpful, and great part of the WUST community.
Pfft, your sources said NA launch of Nov 9th. I saw your posts in the Wii-U thread before it got locked at like 2 AM NA time.
Just pulling you chain, you've been a big, helpful, and great part of the WUST community.
No it was the 13/14th and a few days later for euro, but as explained in the ND thread, they were surprised by this late switch, it seems there are matters of game submissions involved, NOA being late and NOE in advance (while it's usually the reverse).
Anyway, thanks
Thing is, we're talking about two different type of posters, the leakers, and the "tech explainers". I'm a leaker with 15% of "tech explainer" because it's not my specialty even if i have some awareness (required to understand the second-hand knowledge i gather thanks to my past activities of game journalist). And when you're a leaker, you must make sure to protect your sources, by not spilling the beans precisely for certain matters that may make those sources recognizable.
For example, and you're the prime witness of that because it's thanks to your questions in february in the Wii U speculation thread 2 i think that all this huge space for OS, 1GB for games, the breakdown of the total memory, was first heard worldwide, i couldn't revealed it directly because i thought back in the days, considering the date of arrival of dev kit and other parameters, that it may be easy to track back to the sources who said me that. And this is why i firstly said it privately to people like lherre in pm (mods can confirm it). Altought the hints were so big a lot of posters have guessed well the numbers. But once some of those parameters change (dev kit more widespread, critical moments like E3 ended, etc.), i can reveal more (hence why around E3 i said 1GB for games, and 2GB total). And for other subjects, i can be precise though (like the separated 512MB of nand for the OS, 2 DRC support, no system redesign, bundle with a game + wii u controller pro, v1 dev kit only having classic controller through an adapter, 1GB locked for games/2GB total, etc, etc.). I'm saying that because some people apparently don't understand why leakers can't reveal everything.
And they are people more "tech explainers" who are developers or folks having studied the subjects deeply, sometimes they happen to have some info, but the main part of their contribution is to explain how all work, what to expect, etc.
Finally there are posters that combine both, like lherre, a leaker (but even more discrete, and it's understandable) and with the capacity of tech explanation.
So yep, for a list of people to listen for hardware explanations, i would definitively put the folks you and others mentioned, + alstrong, and i won't be in that list because there are a lot of contributors who know more about tech than me.
Otherwise, for leaking stuff, it's another thing, after the two assessments (post E3 and post september nintendo direct, with 90% of the stuff correct) i've made, i put myself in the top of the list, and this ram story is the crowning achievement
But well, to be serious, it's mostly thanks to the reliability of my sources.
& I'm a detective who is good at putting 1 & 2 together & getting 99
http://gamenmotion.blogspot.com/2012/06/rumor-wii-u-cpu-is-3-wii-cpu-cores.html
but people ignored me & called me crazy.
blu
Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
No hierarchy. Remember, it's a circlejerk.
ForeverZero
Member
Question: Why is the bird demo the best looking thing we have seen so far on Wii U? I mean it was made on early dev kits.
Is it possible that Nintendo downgraded the specs? Hopefully not.
Is it possible that Nintendo downgraded the specs? Hopefully not.
wait, you're french ? also, it's really enhanced
I guess it's brag time, who else for a little self-promotion ?
Well, the latest builds of ZombiU, Nintendoland, Wonderful 101 and other games are rather impressive.
But you have to consider the nature of the games composing the Wii U launch window library. There's a good bunch of projects that started on Wii, even more "ports" or multiplatforms titles with origins that are making difficult to really exploit the system capabilities.
And even if the bird demo was real time, it's still a tech one, focusing on eye-candy content while all developers involved in Wii U projects this late year were mostly focused on gameplay mechanics taking advantage of the dual screen setting and other features of the console. The visuals weren't their top priority, they had to get accustomed to this setup, which itself evolved, it wasn't totally ready from day one, the very first dev kit used classic controllers for instance. The resources draw of the gamepad was a key factor in their development also, my sources were impressed by it, they had to be familiarized with it, make sure the content has a good framerate on both screen, etc, before thinking of polishing the visuals.
Let me try...wait, you're french ? also, it's really enhanced
I guess it's brag time, who else for a little self-promotion ?
I know something you know and others don't.
Thing is, we're talking about two different type of posters, the leakers, and the "tech explainers". I'm a leaker with 15% of "tech explainer" because it's not my specialty even if i have some awareness (required to understand the second-hand knowledge i gather thanks to my past activities of game journalist). And when you're a leaker, you must make sure to protect your sources, by not spilling the beans precisely for certain matters that may make those sources recognizable.
For example, and you're the prime witness of that because it's thanks to your questions in february in the Wii U speculation thread 2 i think that all this huge space for OS, 1GB for games, the breakdown of the total memory, was first heard worldwide, i couldn't revealed it directly because i thought back in the days, considering the date of arrival of dev kit and other parameters, that it may be easy to track back to the sources who told me that. And this is why i firstly said it privately to people like lherre in pm (mods can confirm it). Altought the hints were so big a lot of posters have guessed well the numbers. But once some of those parameters change (dev kit more widespread, critical moments like E3 ended, etc.), i can reveal more (hence why around E3 i said 1GB for games, and 2GB total). And for other subjects, i can be precise though (like the separated 512MB of nand for the OS, 2 DRC support, no system redesign, bundle with a game + wii u controller pro, v1 dev kit only having classic controller through an adapter, 1GB locked for games/2GB total, etc, etc.). I'm saying that because some people apparently don't understand why leakers can't reveal everything.
And they are people more "tech explainers" who are developers or folks having studied the subjects thoroughly, sometimes they happen to have some info, but the main part of their contribution is to explain how all work, what to expect, etc.
Finally there are posters that combine both, like lherre, a leaker (but even more discrete, and it's understandable) and with the capacity of tech explanation.
So yep, for a list of people to listen for hardware explanations, i would definitively put the folks you and others mentioned, + alstrong, and i won't be in that list because there are a lot of contributors who know more about tech than me.
Otherwise, for leaking stuff, it's another thing, after the two assessments (post E3 and post september nintendo direct, with 90% of the stuff correct) i've made, i put myself shamelessly in the top of the list, and this ram story is the crowning achievement, a timed bomb waiting to be confirmed since 7 months, can you believe that ?
But well, to be serious, it's mostly thanks to the reliability of my sources.
To be clear, i wasn't knocking you. I wasn't trying to knock anyone really, just described my view of them, and it's true, i was speaking more in terms of tech-savvy people, not just leakers who try to protect their source. But that's often frustrating for people who don't have the same info, or don't have the technical background needed in order to interpret the bits and pieces of info. In that regard, i was praising wsippel, blu, bg as "beacons".
Oh i understand you clearly, and i've excluded myself of a list of "tech-savvy" people to listen to for complicated hardware thingy
wait, you're french ? also, it's really enhanced
I guess it's brag time, who else for a little self-promotion ?
French? no!
How enhanced is really?
like so enhanced that it shouldn't even be called Broadway anymore but Nintendo just liked the name so they stuck with it, or it's still pretty close to the old design but they mixed some newer tech inside of the design to push it higher without going with a whole new chip?
lol, yeah Ideaman, how about it
(i've been bugging him to explain how much better the framerate has gotten from certain games since february, since he remains vague about it and says "really really", lol)
enhanced in bold because the way some people understand it, it's like three broadway put together, with some slight improvements here and there, some sort of 3-core broadway 1.1. And from what third-parties are managing to do with it, it can't be that. Now, is it possible they built a CPU with such roots for its architecture that it still may be designated by the broadway name (like some PC CPU's that kept the same architecture designation for decade but with a difference of perfs between the first iteration and the last one so huge it's really like they aren't from the same origins) but at the same same achieving those - at the very least - comfortable capabilities level, balanced with the rest of Wii U components that constitute a solid system ? This is a case where the more tech-savvy-than-me people can answer you
blu
Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
Keep in mind nintendo like to reference their old hw in their SDK docs, in the sense of 'previously you used to do X, now you do Y'. Basically, there's a good sense of cross-generation continuation. If the docs mention the CPU as 'enhanced broadway' that could be just to hint devs that everything they used to do on broadway is still good on the new CPU.
stupidvillager
Member
Broadway was never designed to be multi-core or go much above 1ghz. So theres 2 major things that would have to be "enhanced". So I'm going with the "so enhanced it shouldnt even be called broadway".
blu
Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
For what it's worth, IBM used to do run their 90nm 750cl at up to 1GHz.
frankie_baby
Member
Grampa Simpson
Banned
blu
Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
When did that happen? I'm looking at the Oct 2009 specs and they max out at 1GHz. Or do you mean overclocked?
I am a bit sceptical of the 75Watt comment and when they say they are not selling at a loss, plus the gamepad is almost half the WiiU price, which leaves a lot less of its price for the graphics hardware
We will see i guess, tech demos always look a lot better than the first wave of rather unoptimized games
The gamepad costs what it does so Nintendo can make a healthy profit on them. Your standard run of the mill controller costs 3-4 dollars to actually produce yet people pay 40-60 dollars for them. that's a 1200%+ markup.
Gamepad based on what it has probably costs 30-35 dollars to make. Obviously they aren't going to do a 1200% markup in that case but they will still make a healthy return on it
Quite the contrary - supposedly.
Still, it was a techdemo. An early techdemo, so certainly something developers should be able to exceed, but a techdemo nevertheless. And we have absolutely no idea who developed the demo or what tech it ran on. My guess to this day is that it was by either Retro, EAD Tokyo or Monolith, as those three (and the Zelda team which had its own rather promising techdemo) should be the most capable Nintendo studios when it comes to tech - and we haven't seen a game by either of those three studios yet. If I had to pick one, my money would probably be on Retro.
JordanN
Banned
Smh, people still going on about the CPU myth? Especially the part about it being Broadway.
I said it before. The Wii version of Dead Rising could only handle 100 objects at a time versus the 800 (and later optimized, thousands) Xbox 360.
The Wii U destroys those numbers in better situations, that's not Broadway.
Couple that with officials statements that said Wii U was based on an all new design and that publishers wont be able to turn down Wii U for technical reasons, the notion was dead from the start.
I said it before. The Wii version of Dead Rising could only handle 100 objects at a time versus the 800 (and later optimized, thousands) Xbox 360.
The Wii U destroys those numbers in better situations, that's not Broadway.
Couple that with officials statements that said Wii U was based on an all new design and that publishers wont be able to turn down Wii U for technical reasons, the notion was dead from the start.
No one thinks that its just unmodified broadway. lherre said these specs are accurate.
And objects that can be handled is meaningless when it depends on the engine, RAM, and the objects themselves, no one uses that as a performance metric.
MadeInBeats
Banned
He confirmed the term "enhanced Broadway", a term isn't a spec.
Graphics Horse
Member
So Wii could barely manage Lemmings. Wow I never realised.
JordanN
Banned
I'm not sure. I think If I went digging I can find posts that clearly say Wii U is using Wii chips.
Basically, any post that tried to discriminate Wii U's abilities based on CPU (in relation to PS3/360), I'm saying is wrong.
And the objects in questioned where pulled from Dead Rising, where the Wii version was performing behind on all fronts.
Edited original post to better reflect position.
GPGPU!
JordanN
Banned
What about it?
JordanN
Banned
Ok, but why are you telling me this?
Because it could be the GPGPU that's letting the Wii U handle more objects.
JordanN
Banned
For the games that didn't originally target Wii U's hardware, I don't see it being the case.
Teletraan1
Banned
Wasnt a Core 2 Duo just an enhanced Pentium 3? Just because a microarchitecture is old doesnt mean it cant be spruced up into something new.
He said the information in this thread is correct.
It's obviously been modified to better match modern hardware. Question is if its gone far enough.
Eteric Rice
Member
Basically this. Weather it can do current gen stuff isn't the question, it's weather it'll be able to handle next generation stuff.
I'm not expecting it to have the best graphics of the next generation, but the question is will it be able to handle the upcoming games without the game having the be completely re-done like with the Wii.
Zoramon089
Banned
Shouldn't people be calling out the source in the OP? We got the same "specs" that were supposedly on the Warioworld site from the press site and it makes no mention of Broadway. So unless Nintendo refers to it as Power-based in EVERY other resource but that one site, it seems that detail was either changed of inferred for whatever reason
Call'em out for what? Enhanced Broadway is what Nintendo had in the documents.
Thunder Monkey
Banned
No, it doesn't get the RAM wrong.
1 gig is currently all games can use. Might be 2 gigs of RAM in the thing, but that doesn't mean much if only 1 gig is usable for games.
And honestly mentioning GPGPU stuff is kind of a misnomer. That functionality has existed since 2004. The 360 has the capability. WiiU it's likely expanded on, but just having GPGPU functionality isn't exactly much more of a tell on the power in the system than using a unified shader model GPU.
We need to know what the general bandwidth and fillrate are, how many stream processors, triangle counts etc.
The thread is hilarious because you cant say final specs and then not have any specs. Its really that simple.
Not that it matters really because trolls will be trolls.
The Information VGleaks acquired from a gaffer originated from a member that frequents the community threads and the origin source even called it out in this very thread that a gaffer took what he said word for word but people keep going past that because it doesn't fit their narrative.
Not that it matters really because trolls will be trolls.
The Information VGleaks acquired from a gaffer originated from a member that frequents the community threads and the origin source even called it out in this very thread that a gaffer took what he said word for word but people keep going past that because it doesn't fit their narrative.
What information though? Like people have said many times, the term "enhanced broadway" is how Nintendo described the CPU. It's no spec, it tells us nothing about the actual processor. So lherre saying the info is correct, just means that this is indeed the term Nintendo used for the CPU. Nothing more. It says nothing about the actual performance of the CPU. There are cpu's who's lineage is over a decade old, yet can not be compared performance-wise.
Also, Ideaman was better informed about the actual SPECS than lherre was, who didn't believe when Ideaman said 2 GB of Ram total memory. So I for one am suspicious about how much real hands on experience lherre has or how much actual info he can gather.
+1
If you only have 1GB of RAM to work with then that is what you would say it has, it even notes that in the OP!
A GPGPU is nothing to rave about due to the fact that just about all GPUs are now GPGPUs and have been for a fair few years.
Referring to POWER 7 as "enhanced Broadway" is very strange, POWER 7 is very different from the POWERPC 7xx family that Broadway is based on, the closest POWER CPU to it is the POWER 2!
That coupled with the complaints about the WiiU CPU speed from devs (the POWER 7 is very, very fast.) and the info in the OP that has so far proven to be right, I see no reason to doubt what it says about the CPU.
bgassassin
Member
So is this the new argument from you now?
I think most everyone (who cares) knows general processing on the GPU has been around for awhile. And if it's being put to actual usage in a console for once, then it does deserve acknowledgment.
Error Macro
Member
CPU? RAM? Nothing to rave about. CPUs have been CPUs and RAM has been RAM for years now.