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[Donnie]

But it's the same if you only have 1 gb to "play". I mean it doesn't matter at all. The os memory doesn't change anything.

Would you rather have 1.5GB total RAM with 512MB used for the OS or 2GB with 1GB used for the OS? Obviously the second option leaves much more room for future increases in gaming RAM. So having 2GB is certainly a positive thing and most definitely make a difference.

Exceeding DX10.1 should be expected

Of course, reasonable people did expect it.

 

[EloquentM]

A console usually doesn't release with such exceptionally primitive hardware.

nintendo is insulted by this comment

 

[hxcmuziq]

I was just hoping that the system would be capable of playing Wii games upconverted to at least 720p like Dolphin. I'd love to play Epic Mickey in 720p but my rig wouldn't run it no matter what build or settings I threw at Dolphin.

So Backwards compatible, but without upconversion.

 

[DonMigs85]

No, you can´t say PS2 was "DX7 like", Dreamcast was DX7-like, but PS2 can do a lot of things that DX7 can't, and it can do a some things that Xbox can, even without shader language.

Actually the PowerVR in DC was only a DX6 part.

 

[Barack Lesnar]

Are the specs you're referring to the ones you've imagined? Because enhanced Broadway cores isn't a spec. Based on a certain GPU isn't a spec.

1gb of ram certainly is. It's also fair to assume that the CPU and GPU aren't going to be very advanced when it's got 1gb of ram for games. That and all the rumors we've heard for months now. No need to put your head in the sand.

 

[antonz]

I was just hoping that the system would be capable of playing Wii games upconverted to at least 720p like Dolphin. I'd love to play Epic Mickey in 720p but my rig wouldn't run it no matter what build or settings I threw at Dolphin.

So Backwards compatible, but without upconversion.

Good news is Epic Mickey 2 is on the Wii U though

 

[AzaK]

1gb of ram certainly is. It's also fair to assume that the CPU and GPU aren't going to be very advanced when it's got 1gb of ram for games. That and all the rumors we've heard for months now. No need to put your head in the sand.

What do you mean by "Advanced". It's going to WAY more advanced than the PS3/360 as far as features go.

 

[Graphics Horse]

I was just hoping that the system would be capable of playing Wii games upconverted to at least 720p like Dolphin. I'd love to play Epic Mickey in 720p but my rig wouldn't run it no matter what build or settings I threw at Dolphin.

So Backwards compatible, but without upconversion.

Was never going to happen and never happened as standard in the history of consoles. PS2's texture filtering of PSone games was the closest.
Best you can hope for is a Wii remasters range.

 

[DonMigs85]

So it really won't even do the type of upscaling the 360 does? It'll actually go to 480p when playing Wii games?

 

[lherre]

In my opinion I won't put the difference between ps4/xb3 and wii u as the difference between ps2 and xbox. I'll put it bigger than xbox-dc (performance, here it appears that only the gpu is the "main" part in a console ... I think ps3 show us that the cpu can do great things if there is room for it).This is why I said some time ago that I'm interested in the bussiness approach of the companies this "next" gen.

This is only my opinion and nothing more, not a fact, I want to be clear with this, to avoid misunderstandings (so please don't quote me in other forums, etc, it's just a personal opinion).

 

[shinra-bansho]

In my opinion I won't put the difference between ps4/xb3 and wii u as the difference between ps2 and xbox. I'll put it bigger than xbox-dc (performance, here it appears that only the gpu is the "main" part in a console ... I think ps3 show us that the cpu can do great things if there is room for it).This is why I said some time ago that I'm interested in the bussiness approach of the companies this "next" gen.

This is only my opinion and nothing more, not a fact, I want to be clear with this, to avoid misunderstandings (so please don't quote me in other forums, etc, it's just a personal opinion).

Out of curiosity do you have access to devkits or documentation to all three next-gen consoles - or just the Wii U?

 

[XtremeXpider]

In my opinion I won't put the difference between ps4/xb3 and wii u as the difference between ps2 and xbox. I'll put it bigger than xbox-dc (performance, here it appears that only the gpu is the "main" part in a console ... I think ps3 show us that the cpu can do great things if there is room for it).This is why I said some time ago that I'm interested in the bussiness approach of the companies this "next" gen.

This is only my opinion and nothing more, not a fact, I want to be clear with this, to avoid misunderstandings (so please don't quote me in other forums, etc, it's just a personal opinion).

I know that it is only your opinion, but it sounds like PS4 and 720 will be 10+x...

 

[USC-fan]

PS2 was a 6GFLOPs console, XBox was a 21GFLOPs console, the difference is greater than we are hearing from Wii U to PS4, which is ~600GFLOPs to 1843GFLOPs. So while we can't say anything for sure (we still don't know even Wii U's performance atm) it's about the only thing we can talk about since we have to take these rumors as the base for our speculation.

No way the wiiu is even close to 600, more likely around 400-475 at most.

In my opinion I won't put the difference between ps4/xb3 and wii u as the difference between ps2 and xbox. I'll put it bigger than xbox-dc (performance, here it appears that only the gpu is the "main" part in a console ... I think ps3 show us that the cpu can do great things if there is room for it).This is why I said some time ago that I'm interested in the bussiness approach of the companies this "next" gen.

This is only my opinion and nothing more, not a fact, I want to be clear with this, to avoid misunderstandings (so please don't quote me in other forums, etc, it's just a personal opinion).

How about the difference between the ps360 and wiiu? That seems to be very close to the ps2-xbox difference. Maybe less?

 

[Zoramon089]

No way the wiiu is even close to 600, more likely around 400-475 at most.



How about the difference between the ps360 and wiiu? That seems to be very close to the ps2-xbox difference. Maybe less?

What is anything in your post based on? People more informed than you have made claims of 600+ flops (like bgassassin) and you just denounce them based on...nothing?

 

[lherre]

I know that it is only your opinion, but it sounds like PS4 and 720 will be 10+x...

I hate the multiplier thing sorry. It can't be measured.

And I repeat it's only my personal opinion.

 

[antonz]

What is anything in your post based on? People more informed than you have made claims of 600+ flops (like bgassassin) and you just denounce them based on...nothing?

you will get used to him. we all have

 

[USC-fan]

What is anything in your post based on? People more informed than you have made claims of 600+ flops (like bgassassin) and you just denounce them based on...nothing?

science.

 

[Instro]

1gb of ram certainly is. It's also fair to assume that the CPU and GPU aren't going to be very advanced when it's got 1gb of ram for games. That and all the rumors we've heard for months now. No need to put your head in the sand.

Currently. I think we can all agree that is likely to change.

 

[Gravijah]

Currently. I think we can all agree that is likely to change.

this is Nintendo we're talking about, i'm sure they'll figure out a way to INCREASE the size of the OS footprint.

 

[nikatapi]

this is Nintendo we're talking about, i'm sure they'll figure out a way to INCREASE the size of the OS footprint.

That was not the case with the 3DS, why change now?

 

[specialguy]

Would you rather have 1.5GB total RAM with 512MB used for the OS or 2GB with 1GB used for the OS? Obviously the second option leaves much more room for future increases in gaming RAM. So having 2GB is certainly a positive thing and most definitely make a difference.

Only thing I'm worried about is if Nintendo was stupid enough to build any kind of permanent roadblock to the 2nd GB being freed up for games later.

We'll see I suppose. I would say the odds are 80-20 they didn't, but it's still possible.

 

[Thunder Monkey]

Only thing I'm worried about is if Nintendo was stupid enough to build any kind of permanent roadblock to the 2nd GB being freed up for games later.

We'll see I suppose. I would say the odds are 80-20 they didn't, but it's still possible.

I'll say they are 80-20 in reverse.

One of us will be wrong!

 

[soulassssns]

What is anything in your post based on? People more informed than you have made claims of 600+ flops (like bgassassin) and you just denounce them based on...nothing?

This IS Neogaf.

Just saying....

 

[M°°nblade]

What do you mean by "Advanced". It's going to WAY more advanced than the PS3/360 as far as features go.

Heavy's not talking about PS3/360. He simply assumes the Wii U is a balanced system.

As in 'Nintendo, isn't going to put an advanced 1TFLOP GPU because it would only get bottlenecked by RAM shortage.'

The Wii U GPU features are a dx level more advanced, but as the rumors said performance isn't.

That's why I also expect Wii U games to look like current gen games with dx10 bells and whistles at best.

 

[nikatapi]

Taking the performance comments into consideration, i think WiiU is kinda like the 3DS vs the PSP.

It will be better than the current gen consoles, but mostly due to some effects being possible because of the more advanced GPU. Otherwise the graphics will be a moderate improvement over the current gen, especially if there is seperate 3D rendering for the gamepad.

 

[TheD]

read that post slower, YES compute graphics card is nothing new, and gpgpu functionality can be found in older cards, but unified shaders for compute was done in DX11. Tessellation was another that was moved over to unified shaders, both of these pretty much cover the change from DX10.1 and DX11, of which the Wii U uses neither.

And I didn't say it was SM5, I said it exceeded shader model 4 (via antonz), you are the one jumping the gun and declaring what that means.

You implied in your post that because the Wii U GPU can act as a GPGPU that it must be using DX 11 like direct compute shaders and thus be a DX11 part!

CUDA and OpenCL have seen much more usage than direct compute and they have been around longer (much longer in CUDAs case).

 

[Kenka]

bgassassin said priorly that WiiU will push around 600+ flops ?

Nintendo really want their big margin. With such information, I feel like I am being ripped off.

 

[Gemüsepizza]

Heck, the Wii U is the first Nintendo console to have a fully programmable GPU, Even the 3DS doesn't have that. That alone should mean that ultimately the console will not be locked out of 3rd party multiplat games like last generation.

GPU features are not the only thing that affects porting. I don't think the Wii U is powerful enough to run decent ports of nextgen games, otherwise devs would be able to run current gen games at more than 720p on the Wii U.

 

[Graphics Horse]

bgassassin said priorly that WiiU will push around 600+ flops ?

Nintendo really want their big margin. With such information, I feel like I am being ripped off.

Yeah I expected it to be around 1,000,000,000 times faster.

 

[AzaK]

bgassassin said priorly that WiiU will push around 600+ flops ?

Nintendo really want their big margin. With such information, I feel like I am being ripped off.

Why? It's amazing we are getting all these people bitching and moaning about a system being on par with old consoles (which it isn't, it is more powerful and that's a fact) and they are getting it at about the same price as current gen systems. Something does not compute.

 

[M°°nblade]

Why? It's amazing we are getting all these people bitching and moaning about a system being on par with old consoles (which it isn't, it is more powerful and that's a fact) and they are getting it at about the same price as current gen systems. Something does not compute.

You can get a current gen console for a lot cheaper than 300-350 dollar. Is euro price for the Wi U set yet?

 

[Gemüsepizza]

Why? It's amazing we are getting all these people bitching and moaning about a system being on par with old consoles (which it isn't, it is more powerful and that's a fact) and they are getting it at about the same price as current gen systems. Something does not compute.

And how do I benefit from the Wii U being a little bit more powerful than other current gen consoles? This power will probably only be used to make it easier for devs to port current gen games to Wii U (= less optimization needed), but we have to pay extra for this.

 

[lherre]

You can get a current gen console for a lot cheaper that 300-350 dollar. Is euro price for the Wi U set yet?

More or less (i'm not sure about UK at all), ir appears it's 299-349 euros

Germany
Basic - 299,00€
Premium - 349,00€

France
Basic - 299,99€
Premium - 349,99€

UK
Basic - £249.99
Premium -£299.99

Spain
Basic - 286,69€
Premium - 334,96€
ZombiU Premium - 373,47€

 

[M°°nblade]

Direct $ -> € translation as expected

Ok thanks lherre that's ... very accurate

 

[DragonSworne]

And how do I benefit from the Wii U being a little bit more powerful than other current gen consoles? This power will probably only be used to make it easier for devs to port current gen games to Wii U (= less optimization needed), but we have to pay extra for this.

WiiU is more than a little bit more powerful than current gen and WiiU will get a lot of games xbox360 and PS3 won't get...

 

[hxcmuziq]

Good news is Epic Mickey 2 is on the Wii U though

Meh, it pisses me off that it's not a launch title. The game will be out on the 360 and ps3 on the 18th. But not on Wii U. I guess it was never going to be day 1 for me anyway since I wanted to see if move functionality would be worth it or if there was online coop on the 360. Now I need to wait and see if the gamepad ads any functionality that catches my attention.

 

[Nightbringer]

Hum.

1280*720*4 (Bytes Color)*4 (MSAA)= 14.06MB
1280*720*4 (Bytes Depth)*4 (MSAA)= 14.06MB
1280*720*4 (Texture Cache) =3.88MB

TOTAL: 32MB

__________________

32MB*8 MRT*60 frames per second=15.36 GB/sec

For achieving that bandwidth using DDR3 you need 240Mhz base clock (960Mhz with the multiplier), and the number is a multiple of 120Mhz which appeared in the data filtered a few months ago by VGleaks. The 120Mhz number is nothing more than the clockspeed of the Audio DSP.

Another interesting point is that if you take the L2 Bandwidth that the PowerPC 476FP seems to have with the L2 Cache and divide for the clockspeed...

25600/800=32

... and then you make the inverse operation using the 15.36GB/sec.

15360/32=480

¡Another multiple of 120Mhz!

The clockspeed ratio in PowerPC 476 between the main clock and the L2 Cache is 2:1, this means that the clockspeed of the Wii U cores if I am right should be only of 960Mhz. The only difference between 476FP and the 750CL seems to be that the FPU unit in the 476FP supports 4 operands instead of 2, doubling the FLOPS rate per clock, but nothing more. I should say this are speculations on my part, nothing official but I am getting this numbers.

 

[Kenka]

Hum.

1280*720*4 (Bytes Color)*4 (MSAA)= 14.06MB
1280*720*4 (Bytes Depth)*4 (MSAA)= 14.06MB
1280*720*4 (Texture Cache) =3.88MB

TOTAL: 32MB

__________________

32MB*8 MRT*60 frames per second=15.36 GB/sec

For achieving that bandwidth using DDR3 you need 240Mhz base clock (960Mhz with the multiplier), and the number is a multiple of 120Mhz which appeared in the data filtered a few months ago by VGleaks. The 120Mhz number is nothing more than the clockspeed of the Audio DSP.

Another interesting point is that if you take the L2 Bandwidth that the PowerPC 476FP seems to have with the L2 Cache and divide for the clockspeed...

25600/800=32

... and then you make the inverse operation using the 15.36GB/sec.

15360/32=480

¡Another multiple of 120Mhz!

The clockspeed ratio in PowerPC 476 between the main clock and the L2 Cache is 2:1, this means that the clockspeed of the Wii U cores if I am right should be only of 960Mhz. The only difference between 476FP and the 750CL seems to be that the FPU unit in the 476FP supports 4 operands instead of 2, doubling the FLOPS rate per clock, but nothing more. I should say this are speculations on my part, nothing official but I am getting this numbers.

You assume for the bandwidth that we'll get MSAA at 60 FPS @ 720p ? Is this bandwidth use flexible, I mean, can we theoretically get MSAA @ 1080p at 24 FPS for example ?

 

[MadeInBeats]

A console usually doesn't release with such exceptionally primitive hardware.

But it will be the most advanced console in history upon release! You couldn't sound more buttdestroyed if you tried. Man alive.

 

[AzaK]

And how do I benefit from the Wii U being a little bit more powerful than other current gen consoles? This power will probably only be used to make it easier for devs to port current gen games to Wii U (= less optimization needed), but we have to pay extra for this.

Umm you'll benefit from the GamePad first off; the features it has for gaming and non gaming are great. When people start using the power then games should look quite good and you should notice some difference.

Remember, it's not an order of magnitude more powerful than current gen, and it has a touch screen controller. Its price reflects that. If you really think for what you're getting it's too expensive, just don't buy it, but I think it's pretty comparable to the current twins in price, all things like expensive gamepad considered.

No HDD which is a shame I admit, but it has flash which should be faster and you can use cheap SD cards to expand. It has 2GB of RAM, not 512. A touch screen controller with lots of bells and whistles. General graphics performance that all speculation suggests is 2-3 times as fast as current gen. More modern GPU architecture which means more/faster hardware features.

I don't see why people are complaining really. If you're complaining it's not up to the level of power you want, then that's another story. But if it was you'd be paying more than US$300 for it.

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

Using a single thread on the 360 for audio tasks seems pretty reasonable. Most games just stream audio tracks straight off the disc. Nintendo however like their audio done in real time and do everything in midi.

I don't have any sort of numbers comparing how many of their games do things in different ways, but some pretty major examples of first-party games that stream music come to mind: Smash, NSMB Wii, the Galaxy games.

So Backwards compatible, but without upconversion.

Just like every other backwards compatible console.

 

[stupidvillager]

science.

"LOL gpgpu just wont die! Not going to happen..." You said this on the 11th. So if you say less than 600, that means its surely more than 600.

 

[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.

So, High end and 4.5x the 360 power? Nice!

 

[USC-fan]

"LOL gpgpu just wont die! Not going to happen..." You said this on the 11th. So if you say less than 600, that means its surely more than 600.

GPGPU was made up after the weak cpu stuff was coming out. The gpu has compute shaders but that doesnt mean its viable as a gpgpu. The r700 line is terrible at running compute shader code.

Also the fact that havok it not even using the compute shaders features for it middleware, which would be perfect, shows that this is again made up. Because it was made up by people on this forum.

Again it going to be no where near 600 glflops. That was the best case with them moving to the latest and greatest from amd, but they are still using the r700.

 

[Lonely1]

science.

 

[stupidvillager]

GPGPU was made up after the weak cpu stuff was coming out. The gpu has compute shaders but that doesnt mean its viable as a gpgpu. The r700 line is terrible at running compute shader code.

Also the fact that havok it not even using the compute shaders features for it middleware, which would be perfect, shows that this is again made up. Because it was made up by people on this forum.

Again it going to be no where near 600 glflops. That was the best case with them moving to the latest and greatest from amd, but they are still using the r700.

So the fact that Iwata mentions that is uses a gpgpu means nothing. So theres speculation that it uses one and then confirmation. Sounds clear cut to me.

 

[snowdog1971]

2 gigs of RAM, huh? I'll have my crow medium rare please.

I still believe the reports that it's clocked low. I'm going with a 1440 Mhz processor, 480 Mhz gpu, and 720 Mhz DDR3 configuration.

The big question is that eDRAM. The console seems to rely heavily on it. What's the bandwidth to the cpu and gpu? What kinda latencies are we talking? Below 2ns?

Are we now thinking that the CPU doesn't have 3MB of eDRAM as cache and that it's sharing the 32MB of eDRAM with the GPU..? If so, that's a bit odd not to have the CPU cache on-die, isn't it..? Or are we thinking that it has 3MB of cache and is also sharing the 32MB eDRAM with the GPU..?

And has anyone got any theories about Ancel's odd comment about almost limitless memory..? I was thinking they may be using a chunk of the on-board flash for swapspace, perhaps..? If they use SLC flash instead of MLC flash that should be fast enough and accurate enough to make it feasible imo. I can't believe that Ancel was just talking about the difference between using 512MB and 1GB due to the wording he used.

 

[USC-fan]

So the fact that Iwata mentions that is uses a gpgpu means nothing. So theres speculation that it uses one and then confirmation. Sounds clear cut to me.

Its has compute shader support so yes it is a gpgpu, but again the r700 is terrible at running this code. Also the best thing to run physic on is a gpgpu but again they run this code on the cpu. Its like driving a moped and saying its can run the quarter mile, so then its a drag car....

So if they design this low power gpu to make up for the old poor performing cpu, it worst than i thought. Now we have the power at 45 watts which i said months ago... Wiiu is just poorly design. System is not balance at all and why in the world do they need 1 GB of ram for OS? Are you kidding me...

 

[Zoramon089]

GPGPU was made up after the weak cpu stuff was coming out. The gpu has compute shaders but that doesnt mean its viable as a gpgpu. The r700 line is terrible at running compute shader code.

Also the fact that havok it not even using the compute shaders features for it middleware, which would be perfect, shows that this is again made up. Because it was made up by people on this forum.

Again it going to be no where near 600 glflops. That was the best case with them moving to the latest and greatest from amd, but they are still using the r700.

So what you're saying is that when we all heard Iwata specifically say GPGPU we were all imagining it? In some sort of shared "dream"?

 

[IdeaMan]

the cpu isn't weak, period.
it's not a supercalculator, it's not weak either.