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[Gahiggidy]

Hmm I think P-100 uses the clicks for zooming. It works, I don't really like clicky sticks, but they work. Hmm it migh be visible didn't even think about it. They don't let you take photos of the hardware unless you're holding it, so maybe they'll let me... hold the brick? lol

Another idea is to go outside and locate the power meter that feeds the building and then divide the rate of killowatt hours by the number if wii u units running (remembering to subtract the power used by televisions, lights, etc.).

 

[blu]

http://mynintendonews.com/2012/06/25/treyarch-says-wii-u-could-advance-call-of-duty-series/

“When you talk about any technology that can enhance the Call of Duty experience, that’s a technology that is worth considering. There’s that core Call of Duty experience and that is what fans expects, so anything that helps advance that is worth considering.”

Touch-gesture magazine swapping could be something quite fresh to the genre.

What are games?

Miserable piles of bugs.

 

[The Boat]

Another idea is to go outside and locate the power meter that feeds the building and then divide the rate of killowatt hours by the number if wii u units running (remembering to subtract the power used by televisions, lights, etc.).

I'm an electrical engineer (well, will be), so it should be easy.

 

[Donnie]

So that's the real reason why we talk about the hardware? Get outta here. That's nonsensical.



Are we sure about that last part? He only said it gets interesting over 1TFLOP. It could be 2-3TFLOPs needed for a game using the full effects for all we know right now.

Well I looked back to get the real quote and this is it:

"Unreal Engine 4’s next-generation renderer targets DirectX 11 GPU’s and really starts to become interesting on hardware with 1+ TFLOPS of graphics performance, where it delivers some truly unprecedented capabilities. However, UE4 also includes a mainstream renderer targeting mass-market devices with a feature set that is appropriate there."

Even less specific than I remembered it.

 

[bgassassin]

Miserable piles of bugs.

XD

Well I looked back to get the real quote and this is it:

"Unreal Engine 4’s next-generation renderer targets DirectX 11 GPU’s and really starts to become interesting on hardware with 1+ TFLOPS of graphics performance, where it delivers some truly unprecedented capabilities. However, UE4 also includes a mainstream renderer targeting mass-market devices with a feature set that is appropriate there."

Even less specific than I remembered it.

Like I've said I blame Nirolak and that thread title he made. >_>

Spoiler

You're still cool with me Nirolak. ^_^

But it essentially confirms what we've been saying that as long as the GPU has the necessary features it could run UE4 with reduced effects.

 

[JordanN]

Woo! My Gaf account came through.

Anyways, I came in contact with a Wii U insider on another forum and would like to share this information.

-Nintendo network will have an account system for the Wii U.Friend codes are out the door for good.Will it happen for the 3DS?Can't say anything about that except wait till around November then that info will be divulged. XD

-The Wii U will Definitely support 2,i repeat,2 tablet controllers,so you won't have to worry about this.Say you're playing a game on the Wii U with one controller,and someone else wants to read an E-book(because their will in fact be E-books on the Wii U) on the other controller,they can log in to their account on the Wii U controller and read the E-book and play with the other controller features without interrupting your game experience on the TV.

-It will also allow the other person to play their games they purchased through the eShop, log on to the net,or games that are already on the controller on the controller without interrupting the person playing on the TV.

-Purchase full retails games through Nintendo Network(for the Wii U and 3DS).It will also support DLC.

-The security is going to be top notch for the Nintendo Network.

-Will have Parental controls for features like video chatting/calling and taking pictures,etc.\

-And lastly...Later on in the Wii U life cycle,theirs going to be a patented External HDD peripheral for the Wii U.

This was from April by the way.

 

[Agent Unknown]

My thoughts on the Totilo article from schuelma's thread. Sorry for reposting from another thread, but I can't think of any other way I'd wanna put it:

Good, insightful article overall. Pretty discouraging if a lot of this true. How incredibly stupid of them to weaken the CPU speed just for some pointless form aesthetic on what is a bland looking console anyways, a console they've even said themselves that they deliberately made somewhat generic in appearance in order not to "detract attention" from the Gamepad (which outside of PR imagery is an odd concept in and of itself, who stares at their entertainment shelf while playing a game?). All it would have taken was a simple fan and a slightly bigger case, Nintendo but no, as usual that was just too hard for you to figure out. Gotta keep to that insanely rigid SMALL living room concept in each and every millimeter of the design, right guys?

Yes, if this is the case, it's very stupid.

It's like they almost had it but there was that one little mental hurdle Iwata and the hardware guys back in Japan juuuuuust stubbornly couldn't bring themselves to jump over. SMH.

Very thankful someone more interested in legitimate discussion made it.

Agreed but he couldn't have made the thread if he wanted to. Bannedbrook is bestbrook.

 

[ASIS]

Difference in what way?

Visually, yes.
Difficulty of ports, yes.
Optimisation and coding of engines, yes.

Sales, maybe, for better or worse.

Damn it. Nintendo knows very well what 3rd parties want, just give it to them for the love of god!

 

[Apophis2036]

So the article says that Nintendo is worried about the heat of the CPU and for that reason
has clocked it down? We know they like to make solid consoles and seems to be an important factor in making the console. Which I am glad about.

But for some reason, even after the ihnfamous RROD, people expect for MS and Sony to make leagues better performing consoles, under $400, and have the first launches next year? What am I missing here? What type of cooling technology does MS and Sony have that Nintendo cant seem to get their hands on?

Sorry for the late reply, im always at least a day behind .

I think a lot of people are going to be let down when they see PS4 / 720 games in action, what they have seen so far of 'next gen' is Star Wars 1313 (latest version of UE3), the UE4 demo, the Final Fantasy demo and to an extent Crysis 3 gameplay (using the latest version of CE3).

All of that footage is taken from bleeding edge, high end PC hardware (were talking over $1000 worth of hardware grunt).

People that think they are going to get that sort of performance out of $400 consoles that are prone to overheating are mad imo.

Even if Wii U's CPU was a complete clone of the 360's CPU, if you add 2GB's of Ram instead of 512 MB's and a GPU that is two to three times as powerful as the 360's then we will see some amazing things on the system, esp from Nintendo.

Keep in mind the Zelda and Bird demo footage from E3 2011, those were created in under two months and that hardware should have been upgraded at least a few times, now imagine what they can achieve with two years of development time on the more powerful devkits.

After calming down after E3 i just think they are holding the big boys back for maybe TGS 2012 but more probably E3 2013 to fight off the PS4 / 720.

If you look at the release schedule for the original Wii it took them 12 months after launch to release Mario Galaxy, 16 months for Smash Bros, 17 months for Mario Kart and 5 years for Zelda !.

Have patience, NSMB U and esp Nintendo Land are to get the casuals to buy it in huge numbers this Xmas, i actually think it will have an amazing launch sales wise and be close to 10 million consoles sold by the end of the current financial year.

When the third parties are making the next batch of games they will not be able to ignore a console with a 10 million install base.

Wii U will get the majority of 2013's multi platform games imo.

Stay postitive, Nintendo's in house developers are at this very time preparing games that will blow your socks off and really make a mockery of the term 'on par with PS360' ! .

 

[Hoodbury]

This is all I have the patience to write about now, I'm hoping to play the rest this week, especially Pikmin, but if you have any specific questions, go ahead.

Thanks for the details.

One thing I'm still unclear about with Nintendo Land is how much of each mini game are they really showing? I understand there are still 6 other games they haven't revealed yet, but the ones they did show, is that all there is to them or is there more?

For instance, the Luigi ghost game, is that the only level or are there multiple levels to play? Same for the other ones; I can't imagine that one DK level could harness any ones attention more than an hour total.

What about scaling, or ai companions if you don't have enough players? I can't imagine Luigi's ghost game would be anywhere near as fun with say only 2 or 3 actual people playing. It would be totally lopsided toward the ghost controller. So are there AI players that would fill in?

Can you also ask if there is a possibility for 3rd party "attractions"? I heard a tiny rumor that there is the possibility that 3rd parties could have some DLC for Nintendo Land and kinda have their own little park with mini games. Maybe if you could probe one of the Nintendo reps and see if they react like that is totally insane, or see if they give a little wink and say they can't say anything.

 

[japtor]

My thoughts on the Totilo article from schuelma's thread. Sorry for reposting from another thread, but I can't think of any other way I'd wanna put it:

Well with increased clockspeeds, other than more heat there's generally less consistent yields (thus less output), which means higher costs. If the CPU is based on the 476, the original design isn't meant to clock super high to begin with afaik, like actual announced SoCs with it seem to top out around 1.8ghz. There's probably a lot more to it than just heat.

When the third parties are making the next batch of games they will not be able to ignore a console with a 10 million install base.

Wii U will get the majority of 2013's multi platform games imo.

Stay postitive, Nintendo's in house developers are at this very time preparing games that will blow your socks off and really make a mockery of the term 'on par with PS360' ! .

My positive logic for now is that getting in at launch is risky cause the size of the user base, particularly if ports are going to be difficult (whether cause the hardware or early cycle dev difficulties). For better or worse it makes more sense to wait until 2013-14, Wii U will have a larger base while the other consoles will be launching/out for a bit, and ideally devs will be prepared for all of them with middleware more tailored to them rather than the previous gen systems.

One thing I'm still unclear about with Nintendo Land is how much of each mini game are they really showing? I understand there are still 6 other games they haven't revealed yet, but the ones they did show, is that all there is to them or is there more?

For instance, the Luigi ghost game, is that the only level or are there multiple levels to play? Same for the other ones; I can't imagine that one DK level could harness any ones attention more than an hour total.

What about scaling, or ai companions if you don't have enough players? I can't imagine Luigi's ghost game would be anywhere near as fun with say only 2 or 3 actual people playing. It would be totally lopsided toward the ghost controller. So are there AI players that would fill in?

No clue about Luigi but I vaguely remembered them saying Zelda had more levels and bosses, DK I think is supposed to have a lot of levels, in general iirc the games are supposed to be fuller games (if simple to grasp in gameplay) rather than be really short minigame tech demo type things. They also said something about scaling to the number of players, but I don't know if that applies to every game (I think they were talking about Zelda there too).

 

[The Boat]

Thanks for the details.

One thing I'm still unclear about with Nintendo Land is how much of each mini game are they really showing? I understand there are still 6 other games they haven't revealed yet, but the ones they did show, is that all there is to them or is there more?
For instance, the Luigi ghost game, is that the only level or are there multiple levels to play? Same for the other ones; I can't imagine that one DK level could harness any ones attention more than an hour total.

I think even the mini games shown have more to them. Zelda for example has multiple levels, the one shown is a mix of several I think.

What about scaling, or ai companions if you don't have enough players? I can't imagine Luigi's ghost game would be anywhere near as fun with say only 2 or 3 actual people playing. It would be totally lopsided toward the ghost controller. So are there AI players that would fill in?

Hmm I don't think there was AI, I played Luigi from the get-go with 5 players, so I don't know. But yes, playing with less people won't be as fun. Played Zelda with just 3 and it was a blast, I think it allows 4?

Can you also ask if there is a possibility for 3rd party "attractions"? I heard a tiny rumor that there is the possibility that 3rd parties could have some DLC for Nintendo Land and kinda have their own little park with mini games. Maybe if you could probe one of the Nintendo reps and see if they react like that is totally insane, or see if they give a little wink and say they can't say anything.

I can ask, but honestly? They don't know anything about it. I love the guys and girls from Nintendo over here, they're great, but they aren't privvy to that kind of stuff and neither is any mouth piece other than devs involved or big shots like Iwata or Miyamoto.

 

[snowdog1971]

Then you add left for dead.

Left 4 Dead is more of an action game than a survival horror game imo. Same goes for Resident Evils 4, 5 and 6 by the looks of it. Haven't played DayZ so I can't comment on it.

 

[USC-fan]

I think it's very possible. Even Sony's CTO said as much.

How is that possible? What Fab could handle a chip this size at 28nm? Even at 22nm it is not possible.

 

[Donnie]

How is that possible? What Fab could handle a chip this size at 28nm? Even at 22nm it is not possible.

What die area would an as yet unknown 1.8Tflop GPU and 4 Jaguar cores take up then?..

 

[Agent Unknown]

Well with increased clockspeeds, other than more heat there's generally less consistent yields (thus less output), which means higher costs. If the CPU is based on the 476, the original design isn't meant to clock super high to begin with afaik, like actual announced SoCs with it seem to top out around 1.8ghz. There's probably a lot more to it than just heat.

Thanks for the clarification, I guess we'll see. Still seems like a typical crazy Nintendo decision though.

 

[japtor]

How is that possible? What Fab could handle a chip this size at 28nm? Even at 22nm it is not possible.

Isn't the bigger issue just paying for it? Kind of thinking of Apple paying for the huge ass SoC in the current iPad...of course they have the money to actually pull that off safely, barring Sony just taking a huge loss or going with an expensive ass system again.

Thanks for the clarification, I guess we'll see. Still seems like a typical crazy Nintendo decision.

Oh I'm sure there's some Nintendo craziness involved (like a novel ideal of balance that doesn't necessarily work for everyone), but just saying there's probably other technical cost restraints too.

 

[bgassassin]

How is that possible? What Fab could handle a chip this size at 28nm? Even at 22nm it is not possible.

Well he said it's an SoC. And that's what I used to say. But so many people, primarily after the specs were leaked from another site that called it an APU, started saying APU as well that I stopped bothering. So because it came from the CTO himself I still in the back of my mind expect it to be an SoC.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=458527

Update 2 : A best shot at the relevant bits, a summary:

Bits probably relevant to PS4

- 'the company is working on a system-on-chip (SoC) to underpin the product for "seven to 10 years".'
- 'He describes the architecture in broad terms: "You are talking about powerful CPU and GPU with extra DSP and programmable logic."' (Alternative quote in another article: ' “We are looking at an architecture where the bulk of processing will still sit on the main board, with CPU and graphics added to by more digital signal processing and some configurable logic.”)
- 'Tsuruta-san picked out emerging ‘through silicon via’ designs. These stack chips with interconnects running vertically through them to reduce length, raise performance and reduce power consumption.'
- 'Tsuruta-san has noted the difficulties in achieving viable yields at 28nm, though he believes that these problems are now moving towards a resolution.'
- Tsuruta: "We are confident that we can now see a way and that we can use some of these advanced methods to create a new kind of system-on-chip. We think that there are the technologies today that can be taken to this project.”
- Tsuruta: "We understand that for this, we will need to offer a very strong SDK. We will retain our own OS for the main games and support that with a development environment that is viable. For online and other features, we are also thinking of a simpler approach to a Linux-type environment than on the PlayStation 3,"
- Seems to be a consciousness to try and accommodate potential future peripherals with high bandwidth needs
- '[Vita] features a nine-axis accelerometer (3 accelerometers, 3 gyroscopes and 3 magnetometers), but we could soon see a tenth added to sense pressure and increase environmental feedback still further.'

 

[Gahiggidy]

Good, insightful article overall. Pretty discouraging if a lot of this true. How incredibly stupid of them to weaken the CPU speed just for some pointless form aesthetic on what is a bland looking console anyways, a console they've even said themselves that they deliberately made somewhat generic in appearance in order not to "detract attention" from the Gamepad (which outside of PR imagery is an odd concept in and of itself, who stares at their entertainment shelf while playing a game?). All it would have taken was a simple fan and a slightly bigger case, Nintendo but no, as usual that was just too hard for you to figure out. Gotta keep to that insanely rigid SMALL living room concept in each and every millimeter of the design, right guys?

I think the bit from the article about clocking it slow to reduce heat and noise is only speculation by a developer. We have no idea that is the reason for the CPU performance. It could very well be that the chip's design/architecture doesn't allow for significantly higher speeds than what Nintendo has set the clock to. Perhaps Nintendo made the trade off for speed on thiis chip because they thought its feature set and characteristics were important to the overall plans for the system. If the CPU runs cool I'll bet the GPU runs hot as there appears to be considerable volume above the mobo for a set of fans and a heat sink. The case is long enough to keep the disc drive entirely separate from the space the mobo and cooling system occupies.

The footprint is not that much smaller than a 360 slim.

 

[Donnie]

Any idea of PowerPC 476FP's real world IPC? (instructions per clock).

I don't suppose anyone's going to have that info but I thought I'd ask just in case.

I seem to remember that while Xenon's peak instructions per clock per core was 2 in real world use in games it was more like an average of 0.2 per core.

 

[bgassassin]

Any idea of PowerPC 476FP's real world IPC? (instructions per clock).

I don't suppose anyone's going to have that info but I thought I'd ask just in case.

I seem to remember that while Xenon's peak instructions per clock per core was 2 in real world use in games it was more like an average of 0.2 per core.

This says up to five.

http://www.design-reuse.com/articles/22839/embedded-symmetric-multiprocessing.html

Instruction Path

The PowerPC 476FP processor is a high performance core with capability to issue up to 5-instructions per cycle. These instructions can feed in parallel the following five fixed point units as well as the separate floating-point (FP) pipeline:

Branch pipeline
Load and Store operations
Simple arithmetic and logical operations
Simple and complex instruction pipeline,
Multiplication and division pipeline

 

[Donnie]

This says up to five.

http://www.design-reuse.com/articles/22839/embedded-symmetric-multiprocessing.html

Interesting, a peak of 5 instructions per clock vs a peak 2 for Xenon. Plus more efficient due to out of order execution and bigger caches should mean it reaches a higher percentage of that peak performance. IF this is what WiiU's CPU is based on then even a low clocked version could be quite a bit faster than Xenon in many ways (while still being quite a bit weaker in floating point performance which is why developers may be having some problems with direct porting from 360/PS3).

 

[JordanN]

This says up to five.

http://www.design-reuse.com/articles/22839/embedded-symmetric-multiprocessing.html

Hmmm. Last year, I dug up a rumor saying Wii U could do 4 instructions. Very close.

It was also the earliest rumor talking about the potential the CPU was weaker than Xenon. There was no multithreading or VMX unit, instead OoO.

It's a very sketchy rumor but it did look to contain some truths. It mention Nintendo put in a dedicated sound processor and that the system can do 720p with free 4xAA.

Of course, I assumed this was an early early dev kit. Like, older than V1.

Oh, and it also said it was based on DX11. But it was a very, very low end card. Like worse than the rumored HD 4830.

 

[Gahiggidy]

Wait, is the number of "instructions" a different thing than e number of "threads"?

 

[Donnie]

Hmmm. Last year, I dug up a rumor saying Wii U could do 4 instructions. Very close.

It was also the earliest rumor talking about the potential the CPU was weaker than Xenon. There was no multithreading or VMX unit, instead OoO.

It's a very sketchy rumor but it did look to contain some truths. It mention Nintendo put in a dedicated sound processor and that the system can do 720p with free 4xAA.

Of course, I assumed this was an early early dev kit. Like, older than V1.

Oh, and it also said it was based on DX11. But it was a very, very low end card. Like worse than the rumored HD 4830.

To be honest below a 4830 still fits in with the kind of performance we're expecting from WiiU's GPU. I mean the 4830 is 740Gflops, that's lowish end for PC's but still quite a few times faster than Xenos or RSX.

Just out of interest did the rumour say anything specific about GPU performance or just "under HD4830"?

 

[jmizzal]

Everybody should just invest in a PC alongside one console to finally appreciate and understand gaming nirvana.

As much as a lot of people act like they care so much about power I hope they all are high end PC gamers. If not they need to stop the crying and enjoy a game for it being good and not for the graphics being the best.

 

[Donnie]

Wait, is the number of "instructions" a different thing than e number of "threads"?

Threads are a way to split the core to help spread the work load for multi tasking on a single core. They don't give you more raw performance, but can increase efficiency if you want to run two tasks or more on a single core.

Instructions per clock are the number of things the core can do at once (every clock cycle, Multiplication/Division, load and store operations ect). So more about raw performance.

 

[JordanN]

To be honest below a 4830 still fits in with the kind of performance we're expecting from WiiU's GPU. I mean the 4830 is 740Gflops, that's lowish end for PC's but still quite a few times faster than Xenos or RSX.

Just out of interest did they rumour say anything specific about GPU performance or just "under HD4830"?

Edit: Yeah, it says it uses the HD 6550D as a base. There's 400 SPU's, 16 TMU's and 8 ROPs. There's also alot of fast ram attached to it (suppose to be the EDRAM?). 24mb 1T-SRAM-Q that's divided in 2. The first 8mb for the image buffer and then 16mb texture cache also used for "shader programs".

The person couldn't provide bandwidth or clock speed information of the GPU.

 

[Donnie]

Yeah, it says it uses the HD 6550D as a base. There's 400 SPU's, 16 TMU's and 8 ROPs. There's also alot of fast ram attached to it (suppose to be the EDRAM?). 24mb 1T-SRAM-Q, another 8mb for the image buffer and 16mb texture cache also used for "shader programs".

The person couldn't provide bandwidth or clock speed information of the GPU.

Ah, doesn't sound right then since Nintendo's own documents say 32MB of eDram for the GPU.

 

[JordanN]

I read the edram part wrong. The 24mb is the edram divided in 2 parts (the 8mb and 16mb are apart of that). My mistake.

 

[Donnie]

I read the edram part wrong. The 24mb is the edram divided in 2 parts. My mistake.

You mean 24MB eDram split into two pools of 8MB and 16MB?

 

[JordanN]

You mean 24MB eDram split into two pools of 8MB and 16MB?

Yes.

 

[Donnie]

Yes.

Ah well sounds like its a fake then since 32MB eDram is basically confirmed. Still, keep up the digging

 

[lwilliams3]

Threads are a way to split the core to help spread the work load for multi tasking on a single core. They don't give you more raw performance, but can increase efficiency if you want to run two tasks or more on a single core.

Instructions per clock are the number of things the core can do at once (every clock cycle, Multiplication/Division, load and store operations ect). So more about raw performance.

On that subject, a source in that article stated that the CPU has less threads than Xenon. That appears to be in conflict with what other sources including Lherre stating that it has 3 cores, and 2 threads each. Wish he was available to comment, though I suppose it is possible that he was talking about the cpu of an eariler kit. A mixture of power 7/476F/A2 artitecture does seem to fit in better to what we have been recently hearing.

 

[JordanN]

One more thing, the memory appears to be all over the place. There's 24mb GPU edram, 6mb CPU edram, 1GB of what appears to be VRAM and then 96mb of this "mysterious" ram (devs can't use it).

 

[bgassassin]

Interesting, a peak of 5 instructions per clock vs a peak 2 for Xenon. Plus more efficient due to out of order execution and bigger caches should mean it reaches a higher percentage of that peak performance. IF this is what WiiU's CPU is based on then even a low clocked version could be quite a bit faster than Xenon in many ways (while still being quite a bit weaker in floating point performance which is why developers may be having some problems with direct porting from 360/PS3).

Nintendo obviously went with one.

Hmmm. Last year, I dug up a rumor saying Wii U could do 4 instructions. Very close.

It was also the earliest rumor talking about the potential the CPU was weaker than Xenon. There was no multithreading or VMX unit, instead OoO.

It's a very sketchy rumor but it did look to contain some truths. It mention Nintendo put in a dedicated sound processor and that the system can do 720p with free 4xAA.

Of course, I assumed this was an early early dev kit. Like, older than V1.

Oh, and it also said it was based on DX11. But it was a very, very low end card. Like worse than the rumored HD 4830.

Edit: Yeah, it says it uses the HD 6550D as a base. There's 400 SPU's, 16 TMU's and 8 ROPs. There's also alot of fast ram attached to it (suppose to be the EDRAM?). 24mb 1T-SRAM-Q that's divided in 2. The first 8mb for the image buffer and then 16mb texture cache also used for "shader programs".

The person couldn't provide bandwidth or clock speed information of the GPU.

Before seeing your other posts I was going to say it sounded like they took what was possibly known at the time and started filling in the gaps to what wasn't known. After seeing your other posts, you can write that one off as false.

 

[JordanN]

Before seeing your other posts I was going to say it sounded like they took what was possibly known at the time and started filling in the gaps to what wasn't known. After seeing your other posts, you can write that one off as false.

Yeah, again, it was very sketchy. For example, it mentions 1T SRAM. However, someone here said Nintendo stopped using MoSys ram (I believe it was Rosti?).

 

[USC-fan]

Oh, and it also said it was based on DX11. But it was a very, very low end card. Like worse than the rumored HD 4830.

Looks like someone been feeding you bad info. The 4830 is 95watt card. No way the wuu whole console uses 95w or anywhere close to that.

 

[Gahiggidy]

...".

The person couldn't provide bandwidth or clock speed information of the GPU.

That seems to be a common detail of all these wii U rumors, the lack if any info about clock speeds. Could it be that Nintendo did not reveal the clock speeds in any of the documentation provided to developers? Does that make sense? Can they program for the system without those details?

 

[Effect]

That seems to be a common detail of all these wii U rumors, the lack if any info about clock speeds. Could it be that Nintendo did not reveal the clock speeds in any of the documentation provided to developers? Does that make sense? Can they program for the system without those details?

I've been curious about that. How do you properly develop a game for the system without knowing that information? Or would developers have to make a build and then see if it just runs on the system and then change things after that? Trail and error? That seems very inefficient and wasteful. Developers would have to know but that it hasn't leaked yet is surprising. Maybe they don't and if not that seems crazy.

 

[StevieP]

Ah well sounds like its a fake then since 32MB eDram is basically confirmed. Still, keep up the digging

It may not be 100% bunk, since the wii u does have a bunch of memory pools. Maybe some obfuscation and guesstimating based on digging up those patent diagrams?

 

[bgassassin]

Yeah, again, it was very sketchy. For example, it mentions 1T SRAM. However, someone here said Nintendo stopped using MoSys ram (I believe it was Rosti?).

Yes that was Rosti.

Looks like someone been feeding you bad info. The 4830 is 95watt card. No way the wuu whole console uses 95w or anywhere close to that.

That's also a 55nm part.

That seems to be a common detail of all these wii U rumors, the lack if any info about clock speeds. Could it be that Nintendo did not reveal the clock speeds in any of the documentation provided to developers? Does that make sense? Can they program for the system without those details?

Yes. No. They don't have much of a choice.



Also while looking up some things I revisited the E6760 Fourth Storm brought up and this was an interesting tidbit from AMD's site.

http://www.amd.com/us/products/embedded/graphics-processors/Pages/radeon-e6760-discrete-gpu.aspx

In addition, the AMD Radeon™ E6760 GPU is an ideal solution for embedded applications requiring compute intensive general purpose graphics processing unit (GPGPU) capabilities. With 480 processing elements, the AMD Radeon™ E6760 GPU delivers up to 576 GLOPs peak single precision floating point performance for ultrasound, radar and video imaging applications. The AMD Radeon™ E6760 GPGPU capabilities are enabled by AMD Accelerated Processing (APP)2 technology, the industry standard OpenCL™ programming language and the AMD APP Software Development Kit (SDK).

 

[Agent Unknown]

I think the bit from the article about clocking it slow to reduce heat and noise is only speculation by a developer. We have no idea that is the reason for the CPU performance. It could very well be that the chip's design/architecture doesn't allow for significantly higher speeds than what Nintendo has set the clock to. Perhaps Nintendo made the trade off for speed on thiis chip because they thought its feature set and characteristics were important to the overall plans for the system. If the CPU runs cool I'll bet the GPU runs hot as there appears to be considerable volume above the mobo for a set of fans and a heat sink. The case is long enough to keep the disc drive entirely separate from the space the mobo and cooling system occupies.

The footprint is not that much smaller than a 360 slim.

Thanks, that all makes sense too. You and japtor talked some sense into me, I'll cool it and take a wait and see approach. 8)

 

[JordanN]

That seems to be a common detail of all these wii U rumors, the lack if any info about clock speeds. Could it be that Nintendo did not reveal the clock speeds in any of the documentation provided to developers? Does that make sense? Can they program for the system without those details?

Whether it makes sense, vitals like GPU clock speed and bandwidth are officially withheld. Well, at least according to AMD.

"In addition, according to AMD, such as bus width core clock, shader unit number of general-purpose, of video memory that is currently privately held and, at a later date thing, and that may give further news shortly."

http://translate.google.com/transla...s.co.jp/docs/series/3dcg/20110611_452478.html

 

[lwilliams3]

Yes that was Rosti.



That's also a 55nm part.



Yes. No. They don't have much of a choice.



Also while looking up some things I revisited the E6760 Fourth Storm brought up and this was an interesting tidbit from AMD's site.

http://www.amd.com/us/products/embedded/graphics-processors/Pages/radeon-e6760-discrete-gpu.aspx

Interesting find. Seems to be a coincidence that it clocked in at 576Gflops, which is the same as a 4830 underclocked @ 450MHz. Fourth Storm, Antonz, and you were discussing how this appeared to be a good base for the GPU for what we know.. and now it seem that it matches up even more to the latest statements.

Saying that, I'm not sure how the GPU could began with the base of 4830, then mutates to a chip like the E6760 as time went on..

 

[disap.ed]

Also while looking up some things I revisited the E6760 Fourth Storm brought up and this was an interesting tidbit from AMD's site.

http://www.amd.com/us/products/embedded/graphics-processors/Pages/radeon-e6760-discrete-gpu.aspx

IIRC the possibility of the E6760 has been discussed in one of the first WUSTs.

I think it would fit really well as a base, with better GPGPU capabilites and eDRAM added it could be really powerful. I don't know if the basic architecture (VLIW) would even allow better GPGPU capabilities though.

 

[donny2112]

Everybody should just invest in a PC alongside one console to finally appreciate and understand gaming nirvana.

I've seriously thought about it. I got a what should be a very capable computer at Christmas (i5 quad core with 8 GBs of RAM), so it, in theory, would just be a matter of buying a bigger power supply and capable graphics card. Then I remember that I don't really care enough to spend $300 on those two items for PC gaming, and I stop thinking that way for a while. :lol

May be an option if there were a few games on PS480 that I really wanted to play, but not enough to buy a separate system for. Seems unlikely, but if anything pushed me over, it'd probably be that.

Really like Steam, though. Just haven't been buying much in the way of graphically intensive games on there.

 

[bomma_man]

Maybe they're underclocking it so they can reuse it in the Wii V slightly beefed up, GCN to Wii style

 

[MDX]

-It will also allow the other person to play their games they purchased through the eShop, log on to the net,or games that are already on the controller on the controller without interrupting the person playing on the TV.

So I'm trying to wrap my head around this...

What you heard is that if person A is playing a game like AvP on the TV & Gamepad, person B can still log on to their account and play another game, like TRINE2, on a second Gamepad simultaneously? And what if both games were downloaded?

Well that might explain why the WiiU has 512MB for its OS, but that also sounds like you need a very capable CPU & GPU to pull that off, or, an extra CPU/Core just for that functionality.

But we are hearing, unless things changed in the last devkit, that the CPU is weak. Or is it only weak in relation to the GPU? Or is that developers porting their games have to rework their codes for OOE?

 

[JordanN]

So I'm trying to wrap my head around this...

What you heard is that if person A is playing a game like AvP on the TV & Gamepad, person B can still log on to their account and play another game, like TRINE2, on a second Gamepad simultaneously? And what if both games were downloaded?

Well that might explain why the WiiU has 512MB for its OS, but that also sounds like you need a very capable CPU & GPU to pull that off, or, an extra CPU/Core just for that functionality.

But we are hearing, unless things changed in the last devkit, that the CPU is weak. Or is it only weak in relation to the GPU? Or is that developers porting their games have to rework their codes for OOE?

He never went into detail about what kind of games can be played (besides being eshop or on the controller) but yeah, you can play two games simultaneously.

And the CPU thing is still rumor by the way. I haven't seen any dev complain about it. In fact, one dev has praised it (although processor could refer to either CPU or GPU).
http://www.officialnintendomagazine...very-sexy-says-aliens-colonial-marines-chief/