[Rangers]

It looks like that article/website isn't very credible.

[homerdog]

Originally Posted by Rangers

It looks like that article/website isn't very credible.

Maybe, but it doesn't take much to be "much more powerful" than the X360 or PS3. Even lowish end modern hardware would slam those consoles. It just wouldn't be hard for Nintendo to make the Wu twice that, and the benefits would be huge for Nintendo if multiplat titles looked way better on their console.

So I do expect the Wu to be the most powerful console for a while. And if it's more powerful than my GTX260 I won't be able to show my face in public, though I don't think that's likely.

[ToTTenTranz]

I agree that some things in the article sound a bit off, and the website doesn't inspire much confidence.

The "content" talk seems like something actually coming from someone in the industry, but then there's something like this:

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.

"On the PC"? What PC? The run-of-the-mill laptop with a 2GHz Core i5 + HD5650M? 6-core SandyBridge-E + three GTX580 in SLI?

It's an awfully generic statement.

[MDX]

Originally Posted by ToTTenTranz

I agree that some things in the article sound a bit off, and the website doesn't inspire much confidence.

The "content" talk seems like something actually coming from someone in the industry, but then there's something like this:




"On the PC"? What PC? The run-of-the-mill laptop with a 2GHz Core i5 + HD5650M? 6-core SandyBridge-E + three GTX580 in SLI?

It's an awfully generic statement.

True, but nots like we just heard audio. Someone transcribed an interview to words. Who knows how accurate he or she was in the process. This is after all for a website dedicated to wrestling info.

The interviewer happened to get more info from the source simply because their angle was different- caught the 'THQ rep' off-guard. But nothing that was said was contrary to what other developers have been saying. Those who have said anything about the WiiU have basically said positive things about its capabilities.

Im sure the WiiU will have some graphical surprises in store, and will hold its own against anything that MS or Sony will offer. Each one of these guys will have to look for a USP this time around. Sony doesn't have Blu-ray as a selling point, MS wont be able to rely only on its online, and neither can make a big deal about being HD because their last consoles were HD.

I would like to know how much $$$ R&D Sony and MS have been putting into their future consoles.

[bgassassin]

Originally Posted by homerdog

And if it's more powerful than my GTX260 I won't be able to show my face in public, though I don't think that's likely.

I can see it being more powerful. Not saying you're one of them, but somehow some people are acting like the specs we heard for the first dev kit all of a sudden means that will be the final final version. I don't recall any alpha kits looking exactly like the final or else Xbox 360 owners would be gaming on Apple G5s.

[Megadrive1988]

I finally saw the B3D article. Great work guys. I'm so interested in what's inside the Wii U, this thread will be great to read over the course of the next coupple days.

[homerdog]

Originally Posted by bgassassin

I can see it being more powerful. Not saying you're one of them, but somehow some people are acting like the specs we heard for the first dev kit all of a sudden means that will be the final final version. I don't recall any alpha kits looking exactly like the final or else Xbox 360 owners would be gaming on Apple G5s.

Really? That doesn't seem very likely but we shall see, and all kidding aside I'd be super happy if it outpaces my PC.

[pjbliverpool]

Originally Posted by homerdog

Really? That doesn't seem very likely but we shall see, and all kidding aside I'd be super happy if it outpaces my PC.

That would put it above 4850 level performance with most seem to thing is the absolute highest it's going to get, albeit pretty unlikely. So I don't think it will match your GPU. It won't come close on RAM. CPU will be interesting.

[bgassassin]

Originally Posted by homerdog

Really? That doesn't seem very likely but we shall see, and all kidding aside I'd be super happy if it outpaces my PC.

As long as you don't stick with what we heard back in April, it makes sense. After all, we heard what the first dev kit had and later on we heard they were underclocked due to heat yet we still saw some decent demos considering those factors.

Originally Posted by pjbliverpool

That would put it above 4850 level performance with most seem to thing is the absolute highest it's going to get, albeit pretty unlikely. So I don't think it will match your GPU. It won't come close on RAM. CPU will be interesting.

The first dev kit already had at least 1.5GB of memory so there's really no reason to doubt the final won't have more than a GTX260. You're doing what I mentioned before. Taking the first dev kit specs and treating them like that's going to be the final. We've already seen them taking from post-R700 cards. lherre said there was maybe one thing on the specs given to them that resembled an R700. To me that would probably be the ALU count since he said they didn't have clocks at that time. I also seriously doubt they would stick with an R700 tessellator. That wouldn't make much sense considering how picky Nintendo is about how their games look on top of how they play.

[pjbliverpool]

Originally Posted by bgassassin

The first dev kit already had at least 1.5GB of memory so there's really no reason to doubt the final won't have more than a GTX260. You're doing what I mentioned before. Taking the first dev kit specs and treating them like that's going to be the final.

Dev kits usually have more memory than the final hardware, not less. Besides, that 1.5GB is split between system and graphics. I'm guessing homerdog has 896MB dedicated to graphcs alone and then I believe anothr 4GB of system memory. WiiU isn't going to come close to that - although the end results will probably be largely similar thanks to the console environment.

I certainly won't be suprised if the WiiU GPU borrows elements from R8xx and even R9xx but in overall throughput the signs seem to point to something more modest than a 4850 both in cores and in clockspeed.

So again, raw power wise I don't expect it to match a GTX 260 but the end results will likely be comparable or maybe even better due to the console environment.

[bgassassin]

Originally Posted by pjbliverpool

Dev kits usually have more memory than the final hardware, not less. Besides, that 1.5GB is split between system and graphics. I'm guessing homerdog has 896MB dedicated to graphcs alone and then I believe anothr 4GB of system memory. WiiU isn't going to come close to that - although the end results will probably be largely similar thanks to the console environment.

I certainly won't be suprised if the WiiU GPU borrows elements from R8xx and even R9xx but in overall throughput the signs seem to point to something more modest than a 4850 both in cores and in clockspeed.

So again, raw power wise I don't expect it to match a GTX 260 but the end results will likely be comparable or maybe even better due to the console environment.

It sounds like we are debating two different things. I took him to referring to the card only and you sound like you're referring to his whole pc. I know dev kits have more memory so they can have the overhead before optimization, even though still that was the first kit and we (most of us at least) don't know if that might have changed since then. I also was looking at it from a perspective of Wii U going UMA and that being more than what the 260 by itself would have.

I think we are probably the same on the expected amounts of ALUs and clockspeed. I just think that after optimizations it should pass that level. But when I say that I'm also not saying it will blow it away.

[ToTTenTranz]

Looking back at the topic.. B3D's article pretty much dismisses the chances of a 800sp GPU.

[bgassassin]

According to info given to a poster awhile back (he posts here too), the R700 in the first dev kit was a 4830 so I've believed 640 might be the minimum target. My current hypothesis is the final GPU could be considered a "Cayman Jr" in that it uses VLIW4, AMD's 8th gen. tessellator, maybe two front end engines, etc., but has a clock and ALU count that's similar to an R700. That's something you can't properly simulate with an off-the-shelf part.

[AlexV]

Originally Posted by bgassassin

My current hypothesis is the final GPU could be considered a "Cayman Jr" in that it uses VLIW4, AMD's 8th gen. tessellator, maybe two front end engines,

For Freud's Sake, it is no such thing. What we wrote may well be speculative in places, but it's not speculative to the extent that makes it horribly wrong by about two hardware generations, architecture and pretty much everything.

[bgassassin]

What's that supposed to mean? If we're looking at it from that perspective then Xbox 360 made about two gens worth of jumps from its alpha kit to the final hardware. At the same time how many commercially available cards had a unified shading architecture when the 360 was released? Nothing wrong with the idea IMO since it's based on already available tech (just from release date alone Cayman will be at least 1.5 years old when Wii U releases). It's plausible considering Cayman's development time would have been concurrent, if not before Wii U's gpu development. And the supposed benefits of VLIW4 sounds like something you'd want for a console gpu. I base this idea on what AMD said in their press release. It's not like I'm saying they are going to be putting a 6950-like gpu in the console. Like I said you can't replicate that with an off the shelf card. You couldn't replicate Xenos with off the shelf parts for similar reasons either.

We're all speculating so I don't see how you can take mine as saying yours is wrong. In fact looking back at the article (which I did enjoy reading), I don't really see the premise for you feeling that way.

[Heinrich4]

Originally Posted by bgassassin

What's that supposed to mean? If we're looking at it from that perspective then Xbox 360 made about two gens worth of jumps from its alpha kit to the final hardware. At the same time how many commercially available cards had a unified shading architecture when the 360 was released? Nothing wrong with the idea IMO since it's based on already available tech (just from release date alone Cayman will be at least 1.5 years old when Wii U releases). It's plausible considering Cayman's development time would have been concurrent, if not before Wii U's gpu development. And the supposed benefits of VLIW4 sounds like something you'd want for a console gpu. I base this idea on what AMD said in their press release. It's not like I'm saying they are going to be putting a 6950-like gpu in the console. Like I said you can't replicate that with an off the shelf card. You couldn't replicate Xenos with off the shelf parts for similar reasons either.

We're all speculating so I don't see how you can take mine as saying yours is wrong. In fact looking back at the article (which I did enjoy reading), I don't really see the premise for you feeling that way.

Good post.

I thought his statements feasible, but the conservatism of nintendo and constant desire to maintain Bill of materials if possible below the selling price, i don't believe happened same xbox360 aproach, but nevertheless i believe in possibility they working or customise a something like 4850 in aspect tesselation process.

[pjbliverpool]

Originally Posted by bgassassin

What's that supposed to mean? If we're looking at it from that perspective then Xbox 360 made about two gens worth of jumps from its alpha kit to the final hardware.

It's probably more like 1.5 from a technical perspective and 1 from a raw power perspective.

Not that I'm being picky or anything

[function]

I think the first 360 kits were using a 9800 Pro, weren't they?

Wu dev kits may be more representative of the final chip(s) than the 9800 was of Xenos.

[BRiT]

Originally Posted by bgassassin

We're all speculating so I don't see how you can take mine as saying yours is wrong.

Simple, look at their thermal envelope for such a tiny device.

[AlStrong]

Originally Posted by function

I think the first 360 kits were using a 9800 Pro, weren't they?

X800/850 IIRC.

[ToTTenTranz]

Originally Posted by BRiT

Simple, look at their thermal envelope for such a tiny device.

And why would the thermal envelope dictate either the GPU has a current-gen tesselator and VLIW4 shaders or not?

AFAIK, the only performance figures he gave were the GTX260. That's about the performance level of a Juniper, which already exists in 15" laptops.
Wii U's thermal envelope could withstand a Juniper, that's for sure.

[function]

Originally Posted by AlStrong

X800/850 IIRC.

I've just done a a quick search and found this references to 9800s (it's The Inquirer so a pinch of salt and all that):

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/...-power-mac-g5s

DeanoC also makes reference to a 9800 Pro in early Heavenly Sword development, but that's running in a Pentium 4 PC so I don't know if that was a "dev kit" as such:

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.p...&postcount=130

I'm going off topic here, but I'm really just thinking how early 360 kits had big differences to final kits (even from the X800/850), but for Nintendo's WiiU the differences may not be quite so large. For the GC, Wii and the N64 the hardware was ready some time before the release date while MS cut things kind of close.

[function]

Originally Posted by ToTTenTranz

Wii U's thermal envelope could withstand a Juniper, that's for sure.

Not with the kind of cooling in the GC or Wii, or without making the kind of noise that's totally unacceptable for a cute little games console. A 24 W GPU would use more power than the GC/Wii drew at the wall, and dissipate more heat than the entire contents of the Wii or GC case.

Mobile parts aren't a good comparison anyway, as console vendors can't put all the rest of their working parts in desktop or OEM parts. Any working chip you throw away because it won't fit in your low-power envelope raises the cost of making your consoles.

[BRiT]

Originally Posted by ToTTenTranz

And why would the thermal envelope dictate either the GPU has a current-gen tesselator and VLIW4 shaders or not?

AFAIK, the only performance figures he gave were the GTX260. That's about the performance level of a Juniper, which already exists in 15" laptops.
Wii U's thermal envelope could withstand a Juniper, that's for sure.

Here's what he said:

Originally Posted by bgassassin

it uses VLIW4, AMD's 8th gen. tessellator, maybe two front end engines, etc., but has a clock and ALU count that's similar to an R700.

There's simply no way to get that within the form factor, thermal, and acoustic constraints of a WiiU system. Seriously, 800 SPUs at 625 Mhz? I cant imagine with that much dreaming in his post that he meant the lower end spectrum of 80 SPUs at 600MHz.

[bgassassin]

Heinrich - Thanks. However Nintendo said they didn't want go head up with Sony and MS after the GC and chose to go underpowered with Wii. That worked out great for them most of this gen, but it caught up with them in the end. Conservatism won't be an issue especially since they already said Wii U would cost more. Wii's underpowered direction forcing them to move now is what will be the main problem that affects any hardware goals for Wii U. The comparison to the 360 was made to support my idea.

pj/function - Everything I had seen awhile back indicated the G5 used as the alpha kit had a Radeon x800 (XT). In reviewing your "nitpickiness" pj, what I'm proposing is similar.

BRiT - I tell you about your "base power strictly by size" viewpoint. It's flawed IMO, yet you continue to run with it (on GAF as well for those who don't know). I don't think the size is that relevant since first I'm not saying it's going to have something equivalent to a 150W+ GPU. Using VLIW4 would also help reduce transistors (I focused on 640 by the way). With the current case design it's bigger than the Wii, the second vent is bigger and two smaller ones were added. It isn't compensating for an internal HD. The optical drive is more than likely not bulky just like Wii's.

Separately there is also the possibility, again looking strictly at press releases since that's the only official comments we have from IBM and AMD, of an SoP design happening as MDX pointed that out awhile back. And then you have the rumor about the 28nm GPU which would most likely come from NEC, not TSMC, so there is the possibility that could happen as well.