Rumor: Wii U final specs

Zoramon089 said:
It is funny how when the Wii U is rumored to be 2-3x the PS3/360 and people claim it's not a huge jump over them but the PS4/720 being rumored to be 2-3x over the Wii U IS a huge jump over it
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Well, the CPU is likely not 3x the previous generation and the RAM is about 2x. The twins should have a nice advantage in the CPU area if we're talking about the Wii U sporting very low clock tweaked broadways and probably triple to quadruple the memory allocated to games. The RAM alone can make a huge difference. I really feel Wii U is closer to 1.5x the previous gen in most regards.

Anyway. Again its almost like a Dreamcast situation. The difference in power level between the N64 to DC and DC to PS2 is very similar. But since the increase of power, like a virtuous cycle allows so much more to be done computationally, the DC is seen as dramatically underpowered.

Edit: Or another way of putting it. Last gen is like having a dollar. Wii U is like having 3 dollars. Durango/PS4 is like having 9 dollars. There is a bigger difference between 3 and 9 (6 dollars) than there is between 1 and 3 (2 dollars), even if the ratio is the same..
 
TheD said:
Tessellation is a hugely intensive task!

It is also in no way anything like LOD!

Adaptive tessellation can be used to enhance LOD, but it is nothing like swapping models out based on distance!
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For one thing... it's a hell of a lot easier on the modelers.


TheD said:
+1

Shader model 4.1 =! Shader model 5

Just because it has some custom stuff that is not in the SM4.1 spec does not mean it is SM5.

All modern GPUs have have things that are not in a Direct X shader model, but that does not mean they support a higher Direct X shader model!

If it is R7xx based then one of the "beyond DX10.1" things would be it's older style tessellator.
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Yes, but that also doesn't mean it's purely limited by that older design.

Arkam was one of the first people GAF personally heard about the hardships devs are having porting code directly to WiiU CPU. He's the guy that's pointing us in the direction of expanded SM4.1 functionality. Has he mentioned what he means by that yet?

I mean, he's not the tech savviest guy out there. Neither am I being completely honest. But he's got the creds, and he's saying these are accounts from others more involved. I've always believed him to a degree, because we'd all seen the case size, and his stance was more realistic than that espoused by others.
TheD said:
Just because it does not use the DX API does not mean it is pointless due to the DX specs mandating a minimum level of feature support.
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Nintendo has yet to use a stock part from any company.

It's always been highly modified from the original schematic. This thing could have as much in common with the R700 series as it does a Kepler. Until someone really lets us in on what the thing is capable of. All we have to go on is ports. That can tell you a little, but not everything. Obviously this thing is powerful enough to run ports of games with code unsuited for the CPU/GPU combo. If it didn't take reworking the physics engine of Fifa would be portable now. Since they never questioned the systems capability.

I don't think there's likely a hidden bank of "power". But it wouldn't surprise me to see that Nintendo altered the design to fit what they viewed as needs. Whatever that could be.
 
TheD said:
No, the 476P is Power ISA 2.05, Power 7 is Power ISA 2.06.
Click to expand...

Yes, but the chip is custom made for Nintendo. So, again... the PowerPC 476FP is an enhanced "Broadway" with "*the same processor technology found in Watson".

*according to IBM Watsons twitter
 
Zoramon089 said:
It is funny how when the Wii U is rumored to be 2-3x the PS3/360 and people claim it's not a huge jump over them but the PS4/720 being rumored to be 2-3x over the Wii U IS a huge jump over it
Click to expand...

Well, even if what you say was true, it's not too hard to grasp the difference. These (PS4, 720, and Wii U) are consoles that are going to co-exist for 5-7 years. Wii U wont coexist with PS3 and 360 for the next 7 years.

If Wii U was the only new console coming for the next 7 years I'd say yeah, all aboard the Wii U train. But it's not, obviously.

As always with the caveat that I havent even seen Wii U games that look better than 360 ones, yet, so 2-3x has yet to be proved. The reason people say Wii U isn't a huge jump is it's games so far are not a huge jump. They just arent. Hell they're all in 720P for starters (and no AA as of E3)
 
Log4Girlz said:
Well, the CPU is likely not 3x the previous generation and the RAM is about 2x. The twins should have a nice advantage in the CPU area if we're talking about the Wii U sporting very low clock tweaked broadways and probably triple to quadruple the memory allocated to games. The RAM alone can make a huge difference. I really feel Wii U is closer to 1.5x the previous gen in most regards.

Anyway. Again its almost like a Dreamcast situation. The difference in power level between the N64 to DC and DC to PS2 is very similar. But since the increase of power, like a virtuous cycle allows so much more to be done computationally, the DC is seen as dramatically underpowered.

Edit: Or another way of putting it. Last gen is like having a dollar. Wii U is like having 3 dollars. Durango/PS4 is like having 9 dollars. There is a bigger difference between 3 and 9 (6 dollars) than there is between 1 and 3 (2 dollars), even if the ratio is the same..
Click to expand...
And also the Creampants received a heckuva lot of ports of PS1/N64 titles with little enhanced other than resolution and/or framerate (Tony Hawk, Vigilante 8, Toy Story 2, etc). But later games like Unreal Tournament got cut down on DC, while receiving enhancements on PS2.
 
jerd21 said:
Probably because 2-3x isn't really as much as it sounds like, is attached to a value that doesn't mean a whole lot, and is on a launch console. If I remember correctly, the Xbox gpu was about 4x as powerful in terms of flops when compared to a PS2, but that doesn't mean Xbox games looked 4x as good. So your "even the most incompetent" dev argument doesn't really hold up. I'm not saying that the Wii U is a beast, because it isn't, but implying that it is simply exactly on par with the PS360 is a little silly.
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800GFLOPS is approaching GTX460 territory. With that level of performance, teams no doubt identical to Wii U's porters (small, inexperienced, low budget) are able to get PC console ports running at 1080p/60fps with a number of additional improvements. This is of course on the unoptimized PC. If U were really packing a GPU approaching that level of performance, from my perspective, it simply doesn't make logical sense that any developer on any budget would be having difficulty running 720p UE3 fare. If you want to call GFLOP's meaningless, then so is the comparison to Orbis/Durango's supposed 1.8TFLOPS--which is what I was responding to. While that could theoretically only be 2-3x faster than U, they may have other features that would push real world performance to 6x, 8x, or what have you.
 
Dreamcast was a huge leap over the other systems on day 1 (in the US at least). Games like Sonic were far ahead of previous gen games.
 
Mastperf said:
Dreamcast was a huge leap over the other systems on day 1 (in the US at least). Games like Sonic were far ahead of previous gen games.
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Still had a lot of low-poly stuff like the NPCs and it wasn't even shipped at 60FPS.
Soul Calibur is a much better example. I also remember that Sega Rally 2 also had a trick to remove all background detail to make it run at a solid 60FPS.
 
specialguy said:
Well, even if what you say was true, it's not too hard to grasp the difference. These (PS4, 720, and Wii U) are consoles that are going to co-exist for 5-7 years. Wii U wont coexist with PS3 and 360 for the next 7 years.

If Wii U was the only new console coming for the next 7 years I'd say yeah, all aboard the Wii U train. But it's not, obviously.

As always with the caveat that I havent even seen Wii U games that look better than 360 ones, yet, so 2-3x has yet to be proved. The reason people say Wii U isn't a huge jump is it's games so far are not a huge jump. They just arent. Hell they're all in 720P for starters (and no AA as of E3)
Click to expand...

And how many games have we seen built from the ground up on full wii u specs? none.
 
Thunder Monkey said:
For one thing... it's a hell of a lot easier on the modelers.
Click to expand...

No, it is not.

It is much harder to make a model that will tessellate well.

Thunder Monkey said:
Yes, but that also doesn't mean it's purely limited by that older design.
Click to expand...

That is irrelevant, the R7xx found in the HD4870 is also not limited to DX SM4.1, but that does not mean it is DX SM5 compliant.


Thunder Monkey said:
Nintendo has yet to use a stock part from any company.

It's always been highly modified from the original schematic. This thing could have as much in common with the R700 series as it does a Kepler. Until someone really lets us in on what the thing is capable of. All we have to go on is ports. That can tell you a little, but not everything. Obviously this thing is powerful enough to run ports of games with code unsuited for the CPU/GPU combo. If it didn't take reworking the physics engine of Fifa would be portable now. Since they never questioned the systems capability.
Click to expand...

Just because it is not an off the shelf GPU does not mean that it is radically changed, e.g the RSX is not an off the shelf part but it is using the G70 architecture and is closely based on the 7800/7900.

The "leak" we have says that it is R7xx based, we have no data to say that it is heavily changed, thus if you take this leak to be true you can not claim that the GPU is wildly different.

Also, nothing makes a port of a 360 game "unsuited" for it.

It seems to share the whole concept of the 360.
3 PowerPC or Power cores, a unified shader pipeline, UMA and fast eDRAM.
 
22.5MB/S Blu Ray drive speed just confirmed? If so, that suggests a 4x blu ray drive compared to PS3's slow 2x drive. With 2x the memory to fill, Wii U should have similar load times to the PS3.
 
DonMigs85 said:
Still had a lot of low-poly stuff like the NPCs and it wasn't even shipped at 60FPS.
Soul Calibur is a much better example. I also remember that Sega Rally 2 also had a trick to remove all background detail to make it run at a solid 60FPS.
Click to expand...
But it was still leaps and bounds better than the Playstation, Saturn and N64. The WiiU doesn't fit that description.
 
antonz said:
No. He mentioned they are using a GPGPU and then jumped straight to ram
Click to expand...

How is anyone surprised that the GPU can work as a GPGPU?
The R7xx can (if it is based off it) and even the Xenos can.

It would be far more of a shock if it could not.
 
Things confirmed:
2GB RAM: 1GB for games, 1GB for the OS
22.5MB/S Blu Ray drive speed
32GB flash memory in the premium, 8GB in the standard
Will feature a GPGPU
 
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