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[MadOdorMachine]

I know you aren't trolling so it's not an issue. It's just that with the nature of this thread you have to be ready to have a view like that debated against.

One of the other things to remember with IGN's build (other than the other issues) is that it's based off the first dev kit.

Sometimes when I listen to what the guys at Epic say, it feels like they haven't been too pleased with what they've heard and have tried to "talk them up" in some of their articles. And by that I mean nudge them to add more to whatever it is they feel is lacking.

I'm not saying I expect some huge jump, but Ancel was working off of incomplete specs at the time (and probably still is). When Beyond3D did their article in late July (and I don't know when they got their info), the GPU for Wii U hadn't even been taped out. Going by that even Nintendo hadn't decided how capable it will be.

When it comes to defining the next generation, we won't know how much of a "stop gap" Wii U is till the others come out.

Well, what I was really referring to was BurntPorks apparent shock from the link you posted about Team Ninja a few pages back.

I understand the research you're doing, but I think he may have taken it out of context and gotten a little over hyped. It's easy to do and to be honest I've done it myself before every Nintendo launch until now.

Do I think IGNs analysis under states what Wii U will be capable of? Yes, without a doubt. But I don't think they're completely unrealistic either. My guess is that it's the minimum of what can expect and the fact that it displays those games at 1080p makes me happy. Hopefully Epic and others are able to talk them up on tech. It sounds like that might have been the case with ram as well as the processors in the tablet itself.

 

[fernoca]

One Upad and one CCPro were used in the KF demo.

GAF continues ruining my dreams..



But still cool..and expected. Wii Remote + Nunchuck guess is another possible "combo".

Wii U games are only going to look as good as the effort developers put in to it.

We'll get the occasional "THAT IS SOME FUCKING POWERFUL DUCT TAPE" and the probably depressingly common "That would not have been acceptable on the 360."

Yeah, that's what I've been expecting since day one. There's going to be the occasional "OMG" game, the usual "Nice" ports...along whatever Nintendo games.

 

[guek]

Well, what I was really referring to was BurntPorks apparent shock from the link you posted about Team Ninja a few pages back.

Dude, burntpork is crazy.

 

[bgassassin]

I have a new amendment to the controller comment above. His sources say that if one of the 3rd parties demand it, they would sell the controllers sooner than that. I'm expecting EA to do that before anyone else.

Well, what I was really referring to was BurntPorks apparent shock from the link you posted about Team Ninja a few pages back.

I understand the research you're doing, but I think he may have taken it out of context and gotten a little over hyped. It's easy to do and to be honest I've done it myself before every Nintendo launch until now.

Do I think IGNs analysis under states what Wii U will be capable of? Yes, without a doubt. But I don't think they're completely unrealistic either. My guess is that it's the minimum of what can expect and the fact that it displays those games at 1080p makes me happy. Hopefully Epic and others are able to talk them up on tech. It sounds like that might have been the case with ram as well as the processors in the tablet itself.

I can't recall the last time he took something in context.

Not being completely unrealistic in this case is kinda vague. I don't even think it properly simulated a minimum. But in the end it's like Alberto said, it's up to the devs. Vigil is currently planning on keeping Darksiders 2 the same as PS360, while Team Ninja is developing NG3 separately and are going to do as much as they can.

Actually when I mentioned Epic I was referring to them talking up MS and Sony, not Nintendo.

 

[guek]

I have a new amendment to the controller comment above. His sources say that if one of the 3rd parties demand it, they would sell the controllers sooner than that. I'm expecting EA to do that before anyone else.

If true, wouldn't that be a great sign of nintendo's newfound openness to 3rd parties? Who knows, maybe they'll say "i can haz moar ramz?" using cat pictures and nintendo will oblige

 

[Penguin]

If true, wouldn't that be a great sign of nintendo's newfound openness to 3rd parties? Who knows, maybe they'll say "i can haz moar ramz?" using cat pictures and nintendo will oblige

I thought the Franken-stick was a sign of Nintendo's openness to 3rd parties.

 

[Dalthien]

I have a new amendment to the controller comment above. His sources say that if one of the 3rd parties demand it, they would sell the controllers sooner than that. I'm expecting EA to do that before anyone else.

I've always believed the focus on a single U-mote has always been due to price and logistics. I suspect the WiiU is perfectly capable of handling more than one U-mote at a time (at least two, quite possibly four). But the realities of producing and selling stand-alone controllers has caused Nintendo to push the whole idea to the back burner until the economics of it become more feasible.

The U-mote is undoubtedly a big step up from traditional controllers in terms of cost. N/S/M can all sell extra controllers at a reasonable price and still have a nice profit margin on each unit. That just won't be possible with the U-mote. It will be a high-price item which will have to be sold at a ridiculous price for Nintendo to keep the profit margin in place, or else Nintendo will have to sell at break-even or even at a loss in order to try to keep the final price at a semi-reasonable tab for the consumer. There is absolutely no way Nintendo wants to go down that route for an accessory. Spending all that money on millions of accessories for something which won't bring any kind of return (or even worse, which may actually lose money)? Not happening.

And then there's the logistics of it all. The WiiU boxes will all need a U-mote already. That's already 10+ million U-motes in the first year if the WiiU ends up being a success. Adding in a whole pile of stand-alone U-motes early on just complicates the manufacturing process considerably during the first year of production.

I'm sure Nintendo noticed the realities of price/logistics early on, and just pushed the whole idea to the side for the launch period. The U-mote really is a different sort of economic accessory beast from traditional gaming pads.

My guess would be that Nintendo would probably only release a separate U-mote once they had a specific piece of software available to bundle (along the lines of Wii Fit and the balance board). It would have to be a game that was specifically built around the concept of requiring 2 U-motes together. Then they could bundle the U-mote and justify the higher price point. But even then, that would probably only happen once the manufacturing process was well under way (a year or two) and the cost had come down to more reasonable levels per unit. I think the whole idea of eventually selling stand-alone U-motes was always in Nintendo's mind (they LOVE selling accessories), but there has to be a way to do it profitably before it even becomes worth serious consideration.

Of course, as your source commented, 3rd-parties may also be able to speed up the process if they feel that the extra U-mote(s) would really add something unique and worthwhile to the WiiU version. But it would have to be a significant opportunity that would really help to push overall software sales in big numbers. Something like the definitive version of GTA5 or Madden, where the publisher promises that the WiiU is the lead platform for both development and marketing. Or something like an exclusive Epic Mickey 2 from Disney or exclusive Star Wars game from LucasArts, where again, the game is built around the necessity of more than one U-mote, and where the publisher commits to their top development teams and marketing budgets. Or something along the lines of what just happened with MH3G and MH4 and the Frankenstick for Capcom.

If the 3rd-party payoff was big enough, then Nintendo may be willing to bite the bullet and push ahead prematurely with a stand-alone U-mote even though the economics wouldn't really make sense for an accessory. But I couldn't see them doing it just for vague requests and half-hearted commitments from 3rd-parties.

 

[blu]

When it comes to defining the next generation, we won't know how much of a "stop gap" Wii U is till the others come out.

This needs to be put in the goddamned thread title.

 

[MDX]

MGS4 turned out closer than KillZone 2 and Uncharted but they were all very close benchmarks in what to expect. The benchmarks we've seen for Wii U are probably underscoring what the system can do, but regardless, it's not a drastic jump over 360/PS3 based off of what we've seen.

Well for one thing, Nintendo will not be selling a $600 console.
But being able to play PS360 games at 1080p and 60fps is a big deal.

 

[MDX]

I've always believed the focus on a single U-mote has always been due to price and logistics. I suspect the WiiU is perfectly capable of handling more than one U-mote at a time (at least two, quite possibly four). But the realities of producing and selling stand-alone controllers has caused Nintendo to push the whole idea to the back burner until the economics of it become more feasible.

Nintendo also experienced, first hand how scarcity bred popularity.
As long as its scarce, they can keep the price of the controller high.
And they could make a similar move with the WMP and sell it bundled with games down the road.

However, the point of not selling the Upad separately for the first year, or six months,
is a good idea in establishing the migration of the Wiimote to the WiiU.
This would technically give them room to not bundle the Wiimote in the box if price is a issue and they dont plan a redesign.

Imagine the heated debates @ Nintendo HQ about this whole launch.

 

[AzaK]

Imagine the heated debates @ Nintendo HQ about this whole launch.

I imagine next time we see Iwata, he'll be grey haired.

 

[BurntPork]

Wii U games are only going to look as good as the effort developers put in to it.

We'll get the occasional "THAT IS SOME FUCKING POWERFUL DUCT TAPE" and the probably depressingly common "That would not have been acceptable on the 360."

And the best looking Wii U game of the time will always result in "That's still WAAAAAAAAY below Uncharted 1!" on GAF.

 

[Rolf NB]

Well for one thing, Nintendo will not be selling a $600 console.
But being able to play PS360 games at 1080p and 60fps is a big deal.

High expectations much?

 

[Luckyman]

High expectations much?

Deja vu.

E3 should have been a wake up call but it wasnt. They refuse to believe the reality. The same devkit talk as with the Wii is the reason Zelda was 720p 30fps No AA.

 

[specialguy]

Are you guys seriously discussing the IGN article where they built a PC to mimic Wii U?

Cause that was seriously one of the stupidest articles IGN has posted.

The HD4850 is a minimum FOUR TIMES as powerful as the GPU's in PS360. To suggest as IGN did that it'll just add a little AA, maybe up the res a bit, because hey we ran these console games on a 4850 and observed that, is a joke, and just shows what technical idiots IGN are.

Look, Xenos (xbox 360 GPU) parent die in Xbox 360 is 232 million transistors (there's also a "daughter die" of 105 million transistors, but most of the daughter die transistors is EDRAM and not actual execution units that do any work). HD 4850 is 956 million. That should give you an idea the disparity in raw power there. That's 4.12X as many trans. Now you cant directly of course say "4X transistors = 4X as powerful!", but frankly it's probably the best rough guide to performance there is.

You have to understand PC power isn't even 1/10 tapped. Something built ground up for a 4850 based console, would utterly vaporize anything PS360 are capable of.

That's why I'm so skeptical a RV770 is actually in Wii U. Because none of you realize just how powerful that is.

Certainly, the Zelda demo, or that Ubisoft shooter, or the Nintendo graphics demo, did not look anything like what a 4850 could do. Now, it's possible the demo were just early crap that seriously undersold the Wii U, but unlikely.

I'll stake it down right here if we're staking anything down, Wii U will not have a RV770 imo. It will have an RV730-like (aka 320 SP's). I'll bookmark my own post to bump when I'm right, LOL.

 

[BurntPork]

Are you guys seriously discussing the IGN article where they built a PC to mimic Wii U?

Cause that was seriously one of the stupidest articles IGN has posted.

The HD4850 is a minimum FOUR TIMES as powerful as the GPU's in PS360. To suggest as IGN did that it'll just add a little AA, maybe up the res a bit, because hey we ran these console games on a 4850 and observed that, is a joke, and just shows what technical idiots IGN are.

Look, Xenos (xbox 360 GPU) parent die in Xbox 360 is 232 million transistors (there's also a "daughter die" of 105 million transistors, but most of the daughter die transistors is EDRAM and not actual execution units that do any work). HD 4850 is 956 million. That should give you an idea the disparity in raw power there. That's 4.12X as many trans. Now you cant directly of course say "4X transistors = 4X as powerful!", but frankly it's probably the best rough guide to performance there is.

You have to understand PC power isn't even 1/10 tapped. Something built ground up for a 4850 based console, would utterly vaporize anything PS360 are capable of.

That's why I'm so skeptical a RV770 is actually in Wii U. Because none of you realize just how powerful that is.

So what are you thinking? Underclocked RV730?

 

[specialguy]

So what are you thinking? Underclocked RV730?

Probably. That would give it a decent (20-50%) boost over 360/PS3 without being out of their league, which is what we've seen so far. Combine that with more RAM than PS360.

I dont even know about the "underclocked" part. Nintendo could probably run such a chip at 600 mhz+ pretty cool-y. On top of the fact it already has more execution resources than current console GPU's.

The question is whether Nintendo care enough about hardware superiority to bother leaving it at decent clocks though, or instead just clock it to 500 or something for max power/heat savings. I hate to be debbie downer but my opinion is they do not.

 

[bgassassin]

Are you guys seriously discussing the IGN article where they built a PC to mimic Wii U?

Cause that was seriously one of the stupidest articles IGN has posted.

The HD4850 is a minimum FOUR TIMES as powerful as the GPU's in PS360. To suggest as IGN did that it'll just add a little AA, maybe up the res a bit, because hey we ran these console games on a 4850 and observed that, is a joke, and just shows what technical idiots IGN are.

Look, Xenos (xbox 360 GPU) parent die in Xbox 360 is 232 million transistors (there's also a "daughter die" of 105 million transistors, but most of the daughter die transistors is EDRAM and not actual execution units that do any work). HD 4850 is 956 million. That should give you an idea the disparity in raw power there. That's 4.12X as many trans. Now you cant directly of course say "4X transistors = 4X as powerful!", but frankly it's probably the best rough guide to performance there is.

You have to understand PC power isn't even 1/10 tapped. Something built ground up for a 4850 based console, would utterly vaporize anything PS360 are capable of.

That's why I'm so skeptical a RV770 is actually in Wii U. Because none of you realize just how powerful that is.

Certainly, the Zelda demo, or that Ubisoft shooter, or the Nintendo graphics demo, did not look anything like what a 4850 could do. Now, it's possible the demo were just early crap that seriously undersold the Wii U, but unlikely.

I'll stake it down right here if we're staking anything down, Wii U will not have a RV770 imo. It will have an RV730-like (aka 320 SP's). I'll bookmark my own post to bump when I'm right, LOL.

I LOL'd. That's down right asinine to sit there and accuse people of not knowing anything. There are people here that I bet would run circles around you, so you shouldn't be making such comments freely. I like how you say the final GPU will have half the SPs of the one in the alpha dev kit. WHO IN THE WORLD TAKES A STEP BACKWARDS LIKE THAT?!

And talking about transistors is not really relevant when you have AMD saying a VLIW4 card can give the same performance as an equivalent VLIW5 card with fewer transistors.

I also like how you talk about the "raw, untapped power" of a PC and conveniently ignore the fact that that's what the alpha kits essentially were (and underclocked no less) and that nothing was anywhere near final by the time E3 came. Like I mentioned earlier even in the B3D article they said the GPU hadn't been taped out. Since you're very knowledgeable please explain to those who don't have a clue here what tape-out means. So don't go talking about how a console built from the ground up using a 4850 would run circles around PS360 when they weren't (and probably still aren't as far as we know) even close to that step.

In fact this "intelligent" rant of yours doesn't even give any support to what you are saying. All you're saying is "Wii U's GPU won't have the power equivalent to an RV770 because of how demos made in a short time on underclocked alpha kits looked." If anyone doesn't know what they are talking about it's you.

Let me ask you a tough question since you are highly intelligent. Do you know what an alpha dev kit is? Do you understand what underclocking means? I think your high acumen in this area can deduce what us peons apparently don't understand when it comes to these questions.

 

[bgassassin]

I've always believed the focus on a single U-mote has always been due to price and logistics. I suspect the WiiU is perfectly capable of handling more than one U-mote at a time (at least two, quite possibly four). But the realities of producing and selling stand-alone controllers has caused Nintendo to push the whole idea to the back burner until the economics of it become more feasible.

The U-mote is undoubtedly a big step up from traditional controllers in terms of cost. N/S/M can all sell extra controllers at a reasonable price and still have a nice profit margin on each unit. That just won't be possible with the U-mote. It will be a high-price item which will have to be sold at a ridiculous price for Nintendo to keep the profit margin in place, or else Nintendo will have to sell at break-even or even at a loss in order to try to keep the final price at a semi-reasonable tab for the consumer. There is absolutely no way Nintendo wants to go down that route for an accessory. Spending all that money on millions of accessories for something which won't bring any kind of return (or even worse, which may actually lose money)? Not happening.

And then there's the logistics of it all. The WiiU boxes will all need a U-mote already. That's already 10+ million U-motes in the first year if the WiiU ends up being a success. Adding in a whole pile of stand-alone U-motes early on just complicates the manufacturing process considerably during the first year of production.

I'm sure Nintendo noticed the realities of price/logistics early on, and just pushed the whole idea to the side for the launch period. The U-mote really is a different sort of economic accessory beast from traditional gaming pads.

My guess would be that Nintendo would probably only release a separate U-mote once they had a specific piece of software available to bundle (along the lines of Wii Fit and the balance board). It would have to be a game that was specifically built around the concept of requiring 2 U-motes together. Then they could bundle the U-mote and justify the higher price point. But even then, that would probably only happen once the manufacturing process was well under way (a year or two) and the cost had come down to more reasonable levels per unit. I think the whole idea of eventually selling stand-alone U-motes was always in Nintendo's mind (they LOVE selling accessories), but there has to be a way to do it profitably before it even becomes worth serious consideration.

Of course, as your source commented, 3rd-parties may also be able to speed up the process if they feel that the extra U-mote(s) would really add something unique and worthwhile to the WiiU version. But it would have to be a significant opportunity that would really help to push overall software sales in big numbers. Something like the definitive version of GTA5 or Madden, where the publisher promises that the WiiU is the lead platform for both development and marketing. Or something like an exclusive Epic Mickey 2 from Disney or exclusive Star Wars game from LucasArts, where again, the game is built around the necessity of more than one U-mote, and where the publisher commits to their top development teams and marketing budgets. Or something along the lines of what just happened with MH3G and MH4 and the Frankenstick for Capcom.

If the 3rd-party payoff was big enough, then Nintendo may be willing to bite the bullet and push ahead prematurely with a stand-alone U-mote even though the economics wouldn't really make sense for an accessory. But I couldn't see them doing it just for vague requests and half-hearted commitments from 3rd-parties.

I totally agree with this post. I began to gain a new respect for the possible cost(s) of the controller once I began to read the patent. I have nothing to add to your post and will say that Madden is the game I believe that would do this. That's why I mentioned EA. Two-player Madden where players can select their plays from their own screen would be a system mover IMO.

 

[Rolf NB]

Why would Nintendo underclock dev kits? Are they using huge chips at extreme clocks that are hard to come by? No.

RV730 is spot on. That's a 60W part on 55nm. Maybe 35~40W on whatever process Nintendo will launch with. Add another 30ish watts for some CPU and you're already pushing it. We've seen the pictures of the case. Its power budget is less than the current PS3slim, and that's already all 45nm chips.

 

[bgassassin]

Why would Nintendo underclock dev kits? Are they using huge chips at extreme clocks that are hard to come by? No.

RV730 is spot on. That's a 60W part on 55nm. Maybe 35~40W on whatever process Nintendo will launch with. Add another 30ish watts for some CPU and you're already pushing it. We've seen the pictures of the case. Its power budget is less than the current PS3slim, and that's already all 45nm chips.

I like how you say the first part so "matter of factly".

And from there it's amazing how the confirmation of what chip was used in the alpha kit and that they were underclocked came from actual third parties, but you're saying they are wrong.

And are we really going to get into the size vs. power thing again? That's a horse that been beaten to death, resurrected, and beaten to death again. There are enough factors that people who believe you can't do much with that case don't consider that make it a worthless one to have.

 

[MadOdorMachine]

I was under the impression that the IGN video wasn't indicative what the actual components were of the Wii U but rather what we can expect performance wise. In other words, based on the information they had, they built a machine as close as they could to match the performance of what they thought the Wii U was and it was capable running every game they threw at it in full 1080p and with slightly higher effects.

 

[Boney]

I imagine next time we see Iwata, he'll be grey haired.

that's what I expected at the 3DS conferece the other month

 

[walking fiend]

I was under the impression that the IGN video wasn't indicative what the actual components were of the Wii U but rather what we can expect performance wise. In other words, based on the information they had, they built a machine as close as they could to match the performance of what they thought the Wii U was and it was capable running every game they threw at it in full 1080p and with slightly higher effects.

You are wrong. Just read their article, it is filled with ignorance.

 

[bgassassin]

I was under the impression that the IGN video wasn't indicative what the actual components were of the Wii U but rather what we can expect performance wise. In other words, based on the information they had, they built a machine as close as they could to match the performance of what they thought the Wii U was and it was capable running every game they threw at it in full 1080p and with slightly higher effects.

I know you meant well, but it's best just to sweep that article under the rug and act like it didn't happen. As you can see regardless of your view on Wii U, the comments on the article are the same.

There are just way too many flaws with it that the only thing to take from it is confirmation of what was in the alpha kits.

 

[Rolf NB]

Now I remember why I unsubscribed from this thread.

 

[bgassassin]

Now I remember why I unsubscribed from this thread.

Bye then.

 

[MadOdorMachine]

You are wrong. Just read their article, it is filled with ignorance.

Going off their article (linked below) I would like to discuss it because a lot of people seem to have a problem with it. Feel free to correct me. Here's my take -

We know the Wii U will be built off of PPC and not X86. The higher clock rate of the AMD cpu used by IGN may or may not have been to compensate for performance of a lower clocked PPC cpu. In lamens terms, the 3.2 GHz X86 cpu would equal roughly the same power as a 2 GHz PPC cpu. I know this goes against IGN stating the system will likely use a clock speed of higher than 3.2 GHz but I don't think that's very realistic. If it were, we would likely see a massive jump in performance. What is realistic are their sources telling them off the shelf components that were comparable in performance to what Wii U offers.

We know that Nintendo will be basing it off of R700 but with customized bus speeds, memory allocation, etc. Once again, the 4850 may have been used as a best guess to what could be expected performance wise.

The same applies to ram.

The result is that the system is capable of producing PS3/360 at a higher resolution and slightly better effects. Perhaps we could see a framerate increase as well. This to me seems to be in line with the information we've heard thru the rumor mill. When you couple this with bgassassin finding that they may be going with a smaller die size, using SoP and taking into consideration the physical size of the console itself, I don't think the results of what IGN came up with were unrealistic. In fact, I will be pleased if that is what we get and disappointed if we don't. Perhaps my expectations are too low and perhaps they are too high. So please, I humbly request people with more technical expertise than myself to shed some light on this.

http://gear.ign.com/articles/116/1168222p1.html

 

[Snakeyes]

Means nothing. He could just be responding to a fan who asked him whether or not he'd be involved in the Wii U Zelda game.

Sounds like meaning is being lost in translation to me.

Nah. The guy who went to the concert understands Japanese, and I'm French. The literal meaning of the sentence in the article is "I will personally take care of Zelda Wii U."

How much care he'll take remains to be seen but it seems that he'll be much more involved than he has been lately.

 

[guek]

The result is that the system is capable of producing PS3/360 at a higher resolution and slightly better effects.

No, you see, herein lies the problem. IGN used rumored off the shelf parts on really early dev kits to run 360/PS3/cross platform games to show what a wiii U might be capable of.

The reality is if the wii U was in the ballpark of the parts they used in that "estimate," it would be orders of magnitude more powerful than ps3/360. You're leaping to the conclusion that such a system would be capable of producing slightly better ps3/360 games based off of...nothing. Well, a bullshit article that's basing the same conclusion off of nothing.

The wii U might very well be capable of nothing more than ps3/360 enhanced graphics, but it wont be due to any reasons suggested by that IGN article.

edit: Just taking a look at the settings they use for current gen games should show you how much more powerful such a machine would be.

8x Anti Aliasing
Trilinear Texture Filtering
Maximum Aniostropic Filtering
"Extra" Level Textures
Shadows Enabled
Bullet Impacts Enabled
Medium Number of Corpses
1080p Output

Current gen games could never dream of running a game like black ops on these settings. That's using a current gen game too built specifically to scale down to 360/ps3. I don't think this implies a system only marginally more powerful than the current gen. If IGN's rumored parts were true, I think almost everyone would be immensely impressed and happy with the Wii U specs.

 

[MadOdorMachine]

No, you see, herein lies the problem. IGN used rumored off the shelf parts on really early dev kits to run 360/PS3/cross platform games to show what a wiii U might be capable of.

The reality is if the wii U was in the ballpark of the parts they used in that "estimate," it would be orders of magnitude more powerful than ps3/360. You're leaping to the conclusion that such a system would be capable of producing slightly better ps3/360 games based off of...nothing. Well, a bullshit article that's basing the same conclusion off of nothing.

The wii U might very well be capable of nothing more than ps3/360 enhanced graphics, but it wont be due to any reasons suggested by that IGN article.

Okay, let me rephrase this another way because somehow, I'm not communicating clearly. Is the system IGN built comparable performance wise (ignore the actual components - they're irrelevant) to what you think the Wii U will be capable of?

 

[Übermatik]

I imagine next time we see Iwata, he'll be grey haired.

Iwata's hair is glorious. It will never go grey.

Also, taking a step backwards from a first generation development kit? Nah.

 

[guek]

Okay, let me rephrase this another way because somehow, I'm not communicating clearly. Is the system IGN built comparable performance wise (ignore the actual components - they're irrelevant) to what you think the Wii U will be capable of?

Based off of rumored specs? 1-1.5gb of ram, rv770 equivalent, 2.3-2.5 tri core PPC (i think, can't remember exactly what the rumored clock speed is)?

I'm no expert, but I think that'd be capable of much much more than just higher res current gen games.

edit: the ign article also builds their wii u using what they think are equivalent parts, not in an attempt to model equivalent performance

Based on the information we received and with help from our sources, we found retail PC components comparable to the ones Nintendo is expected to use in their new system and built a mock console of our own.

 

[Kenka]

Can someone educate me please. What is the bare minimum modification needed in, say, a 360 to run games at 1080p instead of 720p at the exact frame rate ? What would be beefed up ? What physical property would change in what component ?

I know some specifications of some parts in a console so please indicate me what changes fundametally between the 360 and the theoretical console:

GPU :

bus width
clock rate
type of memory (RAM) used to stock images in
(something else important ?)

CPU :

clock rate
amount of RAM (cache ?) inside
(something else important ?)

RAM :

clock rate
(something else important ?)


Thanks a lot, it would unbelievably deepen my unerstanding of all the technical talk going around in this thread.

 

[BurntPork]

Why would Nintendo underclock dev kits? Are they using huge chips at extreme clocks that are hard to come by? No.

RV730 is spot on. That's a 60W part on 55nm. Maybe 35~40W on whatever process Nintendo will launch with. Add another 30ish watts for some CPU and you're already pushing it. We've seen the pictures of the case. Its power budget is less than the current PS3slim, and that's already all 45nm chips.

Sorry, what? For all my arguing about the effect of size, even I know that it should have an equal or slightly greater power budget than that due to the larger HDD, more efficient modern parts, and the fact that the PS3 Slim probably doesn't take full advantage of what's available to it anyway.

 

[MadOdorMachine]

Based off of rumored specs? 1-1.5gb of ram, rv770 equivalent, 2.3-2.5 tri core PPC (i think, can't remember exactly what the rumored clock speed is)?

I'm no expert, but I think that'd be capable of much much more than just higher res current gen games.

edit: the ign article also builds their wii u using what they think are equivalent parts, not in an attempt to model equivalent performance

You and I (and apparently others) are interpreting the IGN article differently. I take it as they were given a list of off the shelf parts that were closest in comparison to what the Wii U will be capable of performing, not actual components themselves.

 

[bgassassin]

Going off their article (linked below) I would like to discuss it because a lot of people seem to have a problem with it. Feel free to correct me. Here's my take -

We know the Wii U will be built off of PPC and not X86. The higher clock rate of the AMD cpu used by IGN may or may not have been to compensate for performance of a lower clocked PPC cpu. In lamens terms, the 3.2 GHz X86 cpu would equal roughly the same power as a 2 GHz PPC cpu. I know this goes against IGN stating the system will likely use a clock speed of higher than 3.2 GHz but I don't think that's very realistic. If it were, we would likely see a massive jump in performance. What is realistic are their sources telling them off the shelf components that were comparable in performance to what Wii U offers.

We know that Nintendo will be basing it off of R700 but with customized bus speeds, memory allocation, etc. Once again, the 4850 may have been used as a best guess to what could be expected performance wise.

The same applies to ram.

The result is that the system is capable of producing PS3/360 at a higher resolution and slightly better effects. Perhaps we could see a framerate increase as well. This to me seems to be in line with the information we've heard thru the rumor mill. When you couple this with bgassassin finding that they may be going with a smaller die size, using SoP and taking into consideration the physical size of the console itself, I don't think the results of what IGN came up with were unrealistic. In fact, I will be pleased if that is what we get and disappointed if we don't. Perhaps my expectations are too low and perhaps they are too high. So please, I humbly request people with more technical expertise than myself to shed some light on this.

http://gear.ign.com/articles/116/1168222p1.html

Just from my perspective and off the top of my head:

1. It was based off the first dev kit. This can't be stated enough.

2. Those PC parts aren't optimized for gaming.
- None of the parts are integrated.
- The Northbridge on the motherboard is a totally separate chip.
- It used 3GB memory. (Didn't realize till now the card had 1GB, not 512MB)
- The DDR3 memory, based on motherboard specs, is very likely clocked lower than what Nintendo would have it they used it.
- The same memory would have a smaller bandwidth than what Nintendo would use.
- Used an x86 CPU with "limited" cache.
- Makes no usage of eDRAM for the GPU.
- Uses an internal HDD.
- Uses severely bloated OS. (Which made them skew the memory amount.)

3. PC games aren't optimized for those parts.
- They used games that are designed to accommodate for various parts in a PC.
- They are designed to have to deal with different card drivers. *See Carmack and his complaints about that (most recently Rage)*
- They are designed to accommodate varying APIs. (OpenGL 3, OpenGL 4, DX9, DX10, DX11)

What IGN should have done was state the info they had and stopped. Trying to simulate it was where it went wrong. Acknowledging some of the differences should have told them that it was a bad idea to build it.

As for the SoP talk. Like I said after reading the patent, I'm leaving that alone. I'll wait for concrete info. And the die size rumor came from a poster at B3D, not me.

EDIT: Kenka I think the main issue with the 360 in that area was the amount of available memory. I don't think there's too much else that would need to be change.

I also forgot about the PS3's power supply being internal. I wasn't even considering that when I made that other post.

 

[Koren]

We've seen the pictures of the case. Its power budget is less than the current PS3slim

WiiU has an external power supply, while PS3 Slim is internal, no? That makes a pretty notable difference in the power budget...

 

[MadOdorMachine]

Just from my perspective and off the top of my head:

1. It was based off the first dev kit. This can't be stated enough.

2. Those PC parts aren't optimized for gaming.
- None of the parts are integrated.
- The Northbridge on the motherboard is a totally separate chip.
- It used 3GB memory. (Didn't realize till now the card had 1GB, not 512MB)
- The DDR3 memory, based on motherboard specs, is very likely clocked lower than what Nintendo would have it they used it.
- The same memory would have a smaller bandwidth than what Nintendo would use.
- Used an x86 CPU with "limited" cache.
- Makes no usage of eDRAM for the GPU.
- Uses an internal HDD.
- Uses severely bloated OS. (Which made them skew the memory amount.)

3. PC games aren't optimized for those parts.
- They used games that are designed to accommodate for various parts in a PC.
- They are designed to have to deal with different card drivers. *See Carmack and his complaints about that (most recently Rage)*
- They are designed to accommodate varying APIs. (OpenGL 3, OpenGL 4, DX9, DX10, DX11)

What IGN should have done was state the info they had and stopped. Trying to simulate it was where it went wrong. Acknowledging some of the differences should have told them that it was a bad idea to build it.

As for the SoP talk. Like I said after reading the patent, I'm leaving that alone. I'll wait for concrete info. And the die size rumor came from a poster at B3D, not me.

Yikes. I'm not trying to put words in your mouth. I hope you didn't take it that way. It's a thread of speculation after all and I took it as just a guess on your part. I think the tech of SoP and SoC are very interesting though and I could see Nintendo doing something like that. I haven't read the patents you're referring to though. They're a bit of a tough read imo.

As far as the specs go. I know IGNs build was completely un-optimized and that none of those parts would be in Wii U. I agree that it would have been nice if IGN gave us clock speeds. That's still an area we haven't heard anything about correct? I imagine the Nintendo ninjas would really be pissed if that info got leaked.

Anyway, what I'm mainly interested in are the results of what the system can do. I'm just trying to look at all the info given and formulate an opinion. It still hasn't changed much as far as what I think the system will be capable of. We have seen the bird tech demo and the Zelda one in particular impressed me the most. I thought the lighting and particle effects in it were very nice. I'd really be happy if that was all running in 1080p which is what IGN concluded. Here is a snippit of info from a THQ employee. Take this with a grain of salt, but it's not much different from what everyone else is saying.

http://www.zeldainformer.com/2011/09/wii-u-developer-quote-of-the-day-thq-on-power-and-graphics.html

Question: In what ways would the Wii U version be superior over the 360/PS3 versions?
THQ Employee: Well the Wii U is full of potential as far as specs go. I know that Metro: Last Light is running at a good 50-60 fps on the PC, so I'm not sure how the Wii U version will compare to that. But the Wii U version of games from ALL developers and publishers, have potential for much smoother framerates, improved textures, and additional bonus content that the 360/PS3 version's won't have. In a way, buying the Wii U version over the 360/PS3 versions, will be like buying the Blu-ray version of a movie instead of the standard dvd version. You get better visuals, and more additional content with the Wii U version of any game compared to the other console version. But this will only happen as long as a developer or publisher puts in the time and effort instead of doing a straight port.

Question: I noticed a lot of games for 360 and PS3 don't take advantage of TRUE 1080p. Could we see more games on Wii U taking advantage of true 1080p resolution?
THQ Employee: The Wii U is much more powerful than the other HD consoles, so Wii U doesn't have a huge problem doing 1080p for the majority of its games. Will Darksiders 2 and Metro: Last Light be in 1080p on Wii U? I can't speak for the teams behind those games. I don't work on those specific teams so I can't say what they plan to do with the Wii U versions of their games as far as graphics or content go. I do know based on the specs I've seen, the console is more than capable of graphics that surpass current consoles. It's like I said before. Expect majority of third party Wii U games from most publishers to have true 1080p, additional content, and smoother framrates than what the PS3/360 versions offer. If you want the DEFINITIVE version of any game in your library, I would suggest either the PC version or the Wii U version...at least for now. This is not a knock against the 360/PS3 versions of any games either. Fans of the 360 and PS3 are the majority of the gamers who game...period. So publishers have to give them the best product we can.

 

[JJConrad]

Yikes. I'm not trying to put words in your mouth. I hope you didn't take it that way. It's a thread of speculation after all and I took it as just a guess on your part. I think the tech of SoP and SoC are very interesting though and I could see Nintendo doing something like that. I haven't read the patents you're referring to though. They're a bit of a tough read imo.

As far as the specs go. I know IGNs build was completely un-optimized and that none of those parts would be in Wii U. I agree that it would have been nice if IGN gave us clock speeds. That's still an area we haven't heard anything about correct? I imagine the Nintendo ninjas would really be pissed if that info got leaked.

Anyway, what I'm mainly interested in are the results of what the system can do. I'm just trying to look at all the info given and formulate an opinion. It still hasn't changed much as far as what I think the system will be capable of. We have seen the bird tech demo and the Zelda one in particular impressed me the most. I thought the lighting and particle effects in it were very nice. I'd really be happy if that was all running in 1080p which is what IGN concluded. Here is a snippit of info from a THQ employee. Take this with a grain of salt, but it's not much different from what everyone else is saying.

http://www.zeldainformer.com/2011/09/wii-u-developer-quote-of-the-day-thq-on-power-and-graphics.html

So you agree that the math is all wrong but insist the answer is correct?

 

[MadOdorMachine]

So you agree that the math is all wrong but insist the answer is correct?

I think IGN were given an educated guess by their sources of off the shelf parts to show what third party ports of a handful of games would potentially look like on Wii U. I don't think any of the components used in their build will be present in the Wii U but I think the results are a rough ball park of what we can expect.

 

[JJConrad]

I think IGN were given an educated guess by their sources of off the shelf parts to show what third party ports of a handful of games would potentially look like on Wii U. I don't think any of the components used in their build will be present in the Wii U but I think the results are a rough ball park of what we can expect.

You have too much faith in IGN. Their own conclusion to that article shows that they didn't know what they were talking about.

If you're saying that games that don't take advantage of the hardware, won't take advantage of the hardware... no one would disagree with you. But using that logic to estimate the power of the final machine is foolish.

 

[Rolf NB]

WiiU has an external power supply, while PS3 Slim is internal, no? That makes a pretty notable difference in the power budget...

It's half the volume and has a single 40mm fan.

 

[Daschysta]

Could madden possibly be the game that comes bundled with a second U-tab? Peter Moore seemed pretty amped about that controller specifically for their sports games, I doubt they'd be as optimistic if there were no possibility that each player would have the privacy to call their plays/ draw hotroutes etc...

EA/Ubisoft/Capcom and other 3rd parties seems to have alot of pull at nintendo lately. If nintendo are listening to their liscencee's they'll put out a nice piece of kit. It isn't like they can't put out a reasonably priced system that runs laps around ps360 in 2012... Nintendo is targeting the core moreso than casuals this time around, you can already see it in the way they are approaching the 3DS, and last time they put out a "hardcore" system it was a little beastly marvel of engineering.

People act like nintendo is somehow incompetent at hardware, or that they aren't capable financially of releasing a powerful machine... They are more capable at this moment of releasing anything they want than they were after the n64, or even after the sNES. Their games are selling better than they ever have before, the wii/ds gen was their most profitable ever, and they seem to realize that they can't rely on the casual gamer, evidenced both by their statements about sales/ wii-u, and their earnest attempt to secure high profile "hardcore" games for the 3DS. The approach is night and day different, and more in line with the gamecubes marketing. Th
is isn't the same nintendo that dedicates entire e3's to wii-fit and wii-relax, they just had a conference that was dedicated to their new business model expected to turn the 3DS around, and they didn't announce a single "blue ocean" title, focusing entirely on core games and zelda wii...

Wii know that at the very least these alpha dev kits are capable of higher resolutions and greater texture detail from gearbox, as well as graphic centric studios like crytek, who wanted nothing to do with the wii, and epic among others praising the strength of the hardware. I have no doubt that the wii-u will be at least substantially stronger than either the ps3 or 360 by the time hardware is finalized and optimized. Keep in mind all the devs talking about the system are working with unoptimized alpha kits and are under NDA's preventing them from talking about details of final hardware. I believe that it will have an RV770 or close analogue, just as was rumoured, and it certainly won't be severely downgraded by the time of release, especially given nintendo's history of upping system specs at the 11th hour (3DS).

Simple as this

NES- Core system. competitive visually
SNES- Core system. more powerful than genesis
N64- Core system. Kicked the shit out of the playstation in the raw power department
Gamecube- Core system. A marvel of engineering, kicked the poop out of the PS2 and could compete with x-box in many ways despite being tiny
Wii- Blue Ocean System- PURPOSEFUL marginal upgrade over the gamecube, caught lightning in a bottle that nintendo appears to be aware has moved on to cheap/throwaway gaming, an area in which nintendo has no intention or desire to compete in.
3DS- Core System- Drastically less focus on blue ocean, seems intent on choking the life out of vita the old fashioned way, with games. System sellers include A zelda game, A 3D mario, Luigi's Mansion, Smash Bros eventually, Railshooter style Kid Icarus, Mario Kart, as well as spending (presumably) alot of money on 3rd party exclusives designed to win the enthusiast audience, including the single biggest 3rd party game in japan today not named Dragon Quest.

The 3DS is most indicative of nintendo's newest approach, notice the lack of brain trainings, Nintendogs has been marginalized, they are releasing multiple colors and bundles again instead of focusing on the sterile clean image of the wii/dslitexli, basically everything about the 3DS is aimed squarely at people who play lots of videogames, as opposed to the blue ocean market that nintendo no longer can reel in at 40$ a pop. If anything the approach is most similar to gamecube, except this time nintendo doesn't have to be nearly as conservative in securing software, and their relationship with 3rd parties have taken a 180 with Iwata-san in charge as opposed to old man yamauchi. Coincidentally the 3DS is also pretty much the largest jump nintendo has ever made graphically on the handheld front (just because vita is superlative in that regard doesn't change the fact that 3DS is a quantum leap over DS in that sense).

How is it that when observing nintendo's approach to the successor to a system that was every bit as blue ocean as the wii (DS) that people come to the conclusion that nintendo will once again release an underpowered piece of kit, that 3rd parties will abandon due to not being able to painlessly scale their engines, that is more or less comparable to last gen, and will rely on a market that has left the wii DOA for over a year now because they are fickle and don't buy very much software? Basically the argument is that in response to the wii crashing in terms of sales and being a barren wasteland for an entire fiscal year nintendo will release another... wii? Doesn't seem likely listening to Iwata talk about how important 3rd party support is. If some 3rd parties have a rough idea of what to expect from PS4720 then you have to assume nintendo also has some idea of what benchmarks they are shooting for. Nintendo will assure that whatever they release will at the very least be able to easily handle down-ports from the other two (Unless MS goes for a more cost effective-kinect centric console). Nintendo is actually trying to compete for the core market this time around in both in the handheld space and in the console market, the wii being weak when nintendo had no intention whatsoever of being in direct competition with the other two is not grounds to assume nintendo is dumb enough to release a gimped console when they are actually interested in the gamer market.

I'd imagine that nintendo's approach will be similar to what they have done for the 3DS. The very concept of it is very japan centric, where multiple televisions in the home are less common and the economy of space is a greater concern. Nintendo will likely push for exclusive japanese support (at least for the japanese releases of said games) by moneyhatting some games important to the PS4, and count on the uniqueness of tablet control (until someone inevitably copies it) to add value to their western multiplats, which will only work if the wii-u is powerful enough not to be a massive visual downgrade from the PSXBOX versions of the games. Dual Tablet Madden could be a system seller to a massive degree, and really playcalling, hotroutes, coaching strategy could be absolutely huge for any sports games in a way motion control wasn't sophisticated enough to be, also air strikes in call of duty and classic strategy mode in battlefield... Basically all the cool things the DS could do but couldn't support due to n64+ hardware and traditional control support suggests AAA teams may actually bother with it. Nintendo won't shoot itself in the foot by releasing a gimped console, i'm more concerned with online, because unlike powerful hardware (nintendo has obviously been working with HD for ages in RnD) they don't have experience with a competent online. Honestly I wouldn't mind a wild-westy scenario if it actually works well and secures 3rd party support indefinitely, but alot of people value a unifed system, so we'll see. I'm not worried about the visuals though, it will have some damn handsome games. IMO nintendo will, despite the name, try to position the system as a more Japan-Centric PS2. Sure they will still come out with a Wii-Fit,

 

[ElFly]

Console launch pattern analysis is not really worth the time, because it couldn't have predicted the Wii or DS.

 

[MadOdorMachine]

You have too much faith in IGN. Their own conclusion to that article shows that they didn't know what they were talking about.

If you're saying that games that don't take advantage of the hardware, won't take advantage of the hardware... no one would disagree with you. But using that logic to estimate the power of the final machine is foolish.

I don't understand what you're getting at with games not taking advantage of the hardware. To me what they did was simple. They built a PC that would have approximately the same performance as Wii U. This means that the PC would on paper, have higher specs than Wii U. The results were that every game displayed at native 1080p and featured better effects than PS3/360. I'm going to leave the IGN article alone now. I wasn't expecting so much back lash about it, but perhaps I approached it from the wrong angle.

At the end of the day, my point is that the Wii U should be able to display the same graphics as PS3/360 but at a higher resolution, framerate and more effects.

 

[blu]

WiiU has an external power supply, while PS3 Slim is internal, no? That makes a pretty notable difference in the power budget...

You'd think people would know this, somehow, after years of watching these things. And yet..

Can someone educate me please. What is the bare minimum modification needed in, say, a 360 to run games at 1080p instead of 720p at the exact frame rate ? What would be beefed up ? What physical property would change in what component ?

I know some specifications of some parts in a console so please indicate me what changes fundametally between the 360 and the theoretical console:

GPU :

bus width
clock rate
type of memory (RAM) used to stock images in
(something else important ?)

All of the above. The rest from the list are irrelevant to the fb resolution. Basically xb360 would need to have triple or quadruple the edram and double the fillrate. The latter is a function of shader units, rops, texture samplers and bandwidth to feed those.

 

[blu]

dp

 

[BlackNMild2k1]

I think IGN were given an educated guess by their sources of off the shelf parts to show what third party ports of a handful of games would potentially look like on Wii U. I don't think any of the components used in their build will be present in the Wii U but I think the results are a rough ball park of what we can expect.

I think the error here is that you are interpreting what IGN said to be something different than what they actually said

Based on the information we received and with help from our sources, we found retail PC components comparable to the ones Nintendo is expected to use in their new system and built a mock console of our own.

They didn't say that they were looking for components that would provide comparable performance to what we can expect from the Wii U
they actually said that they are picking up parts comparable to the ones Nintendo is expected to USE in the Wii U.

So they bought a 4850
They over did the RAM to compensate for Windows 7
and they used games that are "optimized" on PS360, but not optimized for that 4850
It's like trying to compare performance of a Porsche on a small but empty special built track to the performance of that same Porche on busy Highway.

 

[Log4Girlz]

I think the error here is that you are interpreting what IGN said to be something different than what they actually said


They didn't say that they were looking for components that would provide comparable performance to what we can expect from the Wii U
they actually said that they are picking up parts comparable to the ones Nintendo is expected to USE in the Wii U.

So they bought a 4850
They over did the RAM to compensate for Windows 7
and they used games that are "optimized" on PS360, but not optimized for that 4850
It's like trying to compare performance of a Porsche on a small but empty special built track to the performance of that same Porche on busy Highway.

Well there is one point made in that article. You can expect PS3/360 level graphics with better framerates and IQ. It will be a while before we start seeing engines flex their muscles on the thing. Not really any different from the previous generation.