Wii U Speculation Thread of Brains Beware: Wii U Re-Unveiling At E3 2012
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NinjaTehFish
Banned
thats what ive been thinking BP 
I think it will end up with an APU type setup to minimize latency and allow for effective sharing of of the edram.
I think it will end up with an APU type setup to minimize latency and allow for effective sharing of of the edram.
Saint Gregory
Member
I'm pretty sure that it has something to do with licensing fees for optical output although it's not like I would be reaching to assume that since practically every decision Nintendo makes about its hardware is directly tied to saving costs wherever they can.TunaLover said:
Since HDMI is capable of streaming uncompressed audio Nintendo will tout that as HD audio output and leave it on everyone else to come up with the extra money to upgrade their receivers. Now while I don't condone them making that move I did get a new Marantz receiver last year that supports HDMI in/out and I can't say enough about how clean it looks having all of my sources running into the TV on one HDMI cable - sounds great too.
Saint Gregory
Member
In all seriousness a really good option depending on the type of TV you have it to run everyything into the set over HDMI and then run a single optical out from the TV back into your receiver. That's what I was doing before I bought the Marantz although you need a TV with opticial output that can carry 5.1.TunaLover said:
Saint Gregory
Member
I never understood why but until recently very few TVs supported anything higher than 2.1 for audio passthrough.TunaLover said:
One thing Nintendo could do is pretty much what they did with the lack of a wired LAN connector on the Wii - they could release an optical adapter that goes between the HDMI connector and the cable that way they're passing the cost of support for it on to those who need it. Still sucks though. . .
Aren't there cheap HDMI -> component/optical adapters on ebay or something? lol
bgassassin said:^ Exactly Ace. So sometime next year we'll have a legitimate thread about the hardware.
Only other plausible idea I can think of at this point is that the GPU is based on a Juniper like some have posed before.
Even if it was based on evergreen, or hell northern islands, I don't see why they should be having overheating problems in a giant devkit box.
AceBandage
Banned
StevieP said:
It's just that powerful.
BocoDragon
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
I guess a Nintendo console is finally getting some sort of digital audio cable through HDMI... I remember wanting that back on Cube....
bgassassin
Member
BurntPork said:
I figured that I probably bolded too much of that and should have focused on the R700 part since it could have been (and was) confusing. But I agree about the "Frankenstein" analogy and it causing an inability to draw a decent comparison to anything off the shelf. I mentioned the Juniper as a basis because in benchmarks the 5770 is equivalent to a 4850/4870. It uses OpenGL 4.1 and OpenCL 1.1 (both missing from the R700 and the latter mentioned before by wsippel). It also has better tessellation. However, and this is where some of the modifications come into play, everything I've seen indicates that if the memory is clocked at a certain level, GDDR3 will outperform GDDR5 due to it's lower latency. That latency issue would also cause problems for the CPU. I can see Nintendo going with lower clocked memory possibly for stability.
All this as of now has caused me to eliminate the idea of GDDR5 being used. When you consider factors like cost and power amongst other things, DDR3 with "lots" of eDRAM for the CPU and GPU seems like a pretty logical direction for Nintendo to take. And I would safely assume that right now current dev kits don't have the eDRAM levels to mimic what Nintendo is going for. That could have been a key influence for the comparison to a 4850 that we saw early on due to not using GDDR5. Then of course there is the clocking issues that seem to be causing more than just heat problems since the 5770 runs higher than a 4850.
StevieP said:
All I can say is that the man with the info has told us that's where the problem is at.
AceBandage
Banned
Scoops said:
Oh, that would be awesome if Nintendo was telling devs to launch games at $50.
It would really put them in a good position.
Saint Gregory
Member
The only way that could happen is if Nintendo drastically cut their third party license fees. That would actually make me believe for the first time ever that they are really serious about wanting to make inroads with third parties.AceBandage said:
bgassassin said:
First I want to know why the people think about R7XX family all the time. I'm not sure if it was press people or where this rumor comes from but I think any dev said nothing about a R7XX model or any particular model. I can't said too much about it (specific details) but in the docs exists a detail that people can interpret that is a R7XX card, but it can be anything at all. But nothing in the documentation (as I said before) speaks about any specific models, clocks speeds, etc. So at this moment is a bit premature to say one thing or another.
I'm sure my info comes from the second version of the devkits at least (third if we count internal-alpha hardware in nintendo quarters that didn't go to licensees). I'll try to gather new info (i'm curious too XD).
Sorry to be so vague.
AceBandage
Banned
The RV700 came from 01net. The French site that originally leaked the Wii U (Project Cafe).
DaSorcerer7
Member
Mr_Brit said:
Nintendo magic
This is definitely turning out as I calculated. The R700 spoken of was more of a placeholder for the early devkit than anything. In addition, devs simply don't know enough to tell us where it stands powerwise. This means that all prior speculation, including the speculation from DigitalFoundry and Beyond3D, is pretty much null, and we're back to square one.
@Mr. Brit: Everything we've heard points to it being pretty easy to develop for. I guess we just don't know much about development, huh?
@Mr. Brit: Everything we've heard points to it being pretty easy to develop for. I guess we just don't know much about development, huh?
They don't need exact specs this early on in development. Sure, I guess it would be nice, but it's not something that would be a factor until much later. As long as they have the controllers and something approximating the Wii U environment, they can get started. Besides, I doubt final specs even exist yet.Mr_Brit said:
I'm not talking about final specs but about the specs in the dev kits. Without knowing things like frequencies, number of ROPs, bandwidth, number of TMUs, latency, amount of RAM, bus width etc. it makes it very hard to develop for the console. In a sense it makes it similar to developing on PC where you have no idea about the hardware being used so have a non definite performance target which means that the games will end up looking awful/ running badly.lednerg said:
EatChildren
Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
A couple of years isn't long in the course of a generation, and Epic's vision is how I see it.
The main concern is if Nintendo can iron out the hardware issues, such as the overheating problem. If they cant, they'll be declocking that GPU.
The main concern is if Nintendo can iron out the hardware issues, such as the overheating problem. If they cant, they'll be declocking that GPU.
radioheadrule83
Banned
wsippel said:
Epic sound reasonably comfortable with the idea of it being leapfrogged in two years time, he doesn't intimate in any way that they would just up and cease development. They still sound quite interested frankly.
If Wii-U can be out a couple of years before losing its technological advantage I don't see that as a bad thing at all.
Momentum could easily be built in the first two years, and the Wii got plenty of great games - and still has a few to look forward to - despite being behind (technologically) from the very start.
What they'll really want - is to make it a machine with a good buzz about it, and where third parties can carve out a piece of their market and do good business. They want it to be win-win for everyone. Third parties won't abandon it in two years time if it still does well for them. I think its quite important they get the machine out on time and have a good, intelligent push behind it if this is all to happen according to plan. They have to have their heads clearer on the marketing than they did at E3.
Smiles and Cries
Member
If Nintendo has an edge for 2 years thats pretty huge to me, losing it will suck but to think Nintendo would be top tech for 2 years is almost hard to believe
lherre said:
I think this depends on how scalable the various middleware engines are. Something like Capcom's MT Framework is flexible and they have several versions of it. Then you have Crytek's Cry Engine. Epic's word isn't the end all. There are other players out there that I feel wouldn't limit themselves to what platform they can put their engines and games on as long as it meets a certain standard. Nintendo just has to meet that and future proof it a little. If they can do that then they should be fine even when the next PlayStation and Xbox come out. Diminishing returns is something else we have to take into account.
Well, that basically confirms that that it's closer to 2-3x the current gen. So the max is definitely 640SPs. That said, it also means that is can't be a 500MHz RV740 like Mr. Brit thinks. It has to be something more.lherre said:
Well, since that's not what's happening, you're obviously wrong.Mr_Brit said:
Or they'll make the case a bit bigger. Though, wasn't that solved with the new dev kit?EatChildren said:
I mean that:
- first 2 years: x360-ps3 ports (easy money because porting is cheap)
- ps4-Xbox next arrive: some ports but each time less frequent, 3rd party support goes to the new machines because the gap in power with Wii u is too big so port will be expensive too much compromises to downport games (Wii situation)
Is my personal bet. I can be mistaken of course.
- first 2 years: x360-ps3 ports (easy money because porting is cheap)
- ps4-Xbox next arrive: some ports but each time less frequent, 3rd party support goes to the new machines because the gap in power with Wii u is too big so port will be expensive too much compromises to downport games (Wii situation)
Is my personal bet. I can be mistaken of course.
DaSorcerer7
Member
lherre said:
In the first 2 years, there will be new games for the system.
SolarPowered
Member
That and a good online system is all it really needs. If they can put out some hardware that is a noticeable step up from what we've got now they've got me. If I can't tell the difference between WiiU games and 360 games at all then it's right back to uncertainty for me.Smiles and Cries said:
Assuming that Sony and Microsoft's next systems end up significantly more powerful than the Wii-U (and I'm not convinced this will be the case), then whether or not the Wii-U continues to receive ports will be based mainly on how core games sell on the system up to that point. If they sell well, I can't imagine a rational publisher deciding to abandon development. If they don't, well, who knows?
DaSorcerer7
Member
SolarPowered said:
I'm guessing games built from the ground up should look noticeably different.
wsippel said:
Just like Gamecube wasn't that different from N64 which wasn't that different from SNES which wasn't that different from NES.
I really don't understand this "End of History" mentality with certain people on GAF. As if technological progress has just stopped because the hive collectively decided that we have today is "Good Enough". It's never been true in the past, and there's no reason to think it's true now.
In 5 years, PS3 and 360 games will look like a jaggy mess just like PS2 games do now.
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