Wii U hardware discussion and investigation *rename

[forumaccount]

I'm not sure I get what you mean, I'm just an ex-AAA senior rendering programmer now working on GPU R&D after all...

Perhaps you can explain how a game "written for PS360" differs from a game written for WiiU, then. And perhaps the parts of the WiiU that aren't being utilized by "5 minute ports" (although you'd have no way to know this and probably shouldn't have commented about it to start with as such.)

 

[DRS]

NFS:MW better on Wii U

A bunch of other multiplats: Better on PS360

I fail to see how that proves any Wii U superiority. In fact the bulk of the multiplatform evidence supports inferiority.

The devs that confirmed to have put some effort in it (Criterion: when we first ported it, it ran crap) actually produced improved games.

And I totally agree with Shifty, from what I've seen Pikmin 3 is another Wii U game that looks to do nothing not possible on PS360. If it did, there would be more excitement around it's graphics.

That's okay. You mean possible as in identical looks and framerate without ignoring Wii U optimized ports?

There is excitement. Not because of the gameplay renders but because of the photo mode:

You don't appear to understand the similarities and differences between PS360 and WiiU nor how they relate to performance and development time.

Funny, I saw your comment to Roderic but I was thinking the same about your owen statement, perhaps you can name some of these similarities. Because IMO it won't be in memory access strategy, eDram usage for GPU or CPU's cache usage.

 

[SedentaryJourney]

I fail to see why people can't stomach the Wii U being better than the PS360, it's hardly a technical feat given today's tech really...

That was the sentiment before Wii U launched, but now it's pretty clear Nintendo didn't go that route. 45nm process and HD 4xxx series design coupled with low power consumption have given people reason to doubt.

 

[Rangers]

I fail to see why people can't stomach the Wii U being better than the PS360, it's hardly a technical feat given today's tech really...

I'd love to stomach it if it was true. just not seeing it.

Wii U does have one inarguable advantage over PS360, 1GB RAM. So I guess eventually we should see some advantages based on that, if absolutely nothing else. Presuming of course it's not too bandwidth crippled even then at 12.6 GB/s over the main bus.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I fail to see why people can't stomach the Wii U being better than the PS360, it's hardly a technical feat given today's tech really...

It's not a case of 'can't stomach' but trying to understand where Wii U sits in the performance (in terms of what can be achieved on screen) curve relative to the older consoles. The advance of technology that natural would lead to a later console being better is balanced by the size of the components. As mentioned earlier in this thread, Nintendo are achieving in 30 watts what it takes PS360 70 watts to achieve at the same process nodes. That's twice the performance per watt already. Any graphical superiority that requires even more performance gains. There are certainly some there in the improved GPU architecture, but the CPU does sound pretty minimal, and the RAM BW is anaemic.

So it's not about just flagging Wii U as 'better/same/worse', but trying to understand how much so in which directions. I would expect some improvements over PS360 in shaders, but the rest is fairly up in the air. We have to look at the library of games to see how they compare and what they show about the hardware. Of course a single cross-platform comparison isn't going to show the whole picture by any stretch, but it's one legitimate piece of the puzzle. If there was a stand-out title clearly superior to any PS360 game, that be wonderfully informative! But there isn't, so we have to sort through the evidence to work out what the HW under the hood can really do.

 

[DRS]

If there was a stand-out title clearly superior to any PS360 game, that be wonderfully informative! But there isn't, so we have to sort through the evidence to work out what the HW under the hood can really do.

Its hard to stand out when you're in the same ballpark. And pointers that do indicate an upward direction compared to PS360 aren't valued much.

 

[Kaotik]

That was the sentiment before Wii U launched, but now it's pretty clear Nintendo didn't go that route. 45nm process and HD 4xxx series design coupled with low power consumption have given people reason to doubt.

Is it also OK to completely ignore the devs saying Wii U is clearly more powerful than PS3 or XB360?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Can we please stop with the polarised more/less arguments and actually debate the points, neither ignoring anyone nor placing any untoward emphasis on any single point?

 

[wario]

Is it also OK to completely ignore the devs saying Wii U is clearly more powerful than PS3 or XB360?

some devs have said its on par, some have said its even weaker.

 

[dagamer]

Is it also OK to completely ignore the devs saying Wii U is clearly more powerful than PS3 or XB360?

Systems are ignored because of their sales numbers, not their performance. The Wii wasn't ignored, though it certainly didn't convince developers to port their 360/PS3 titles over. At the peak of the Call of Duty franchise, the 360/PS3 version each outsold the Wii version by 10x, and 20x in 2011 (because Wii sales dropped).

 

[Esrever]

Is it also OK to completely ignore the devs saying Wii U is clearly more powerful than PS3 or XB360?

the wii-u is clearly more powerful in some aspect to the ps3 and 360. Its just overall, there doesn't seem to be any real gap between them. Having dx10.1 hardware is a huge step up as well as having the ram capacity it does. Its other features however are either on par or seem weaker than what the current gen consoles can do.

Anyways, upping the ram should be a pretty good improvement by itself. Current gen games are severely ram constrain. Being able to essentially double the assets can probably improve how the games look by a decent percent.

 

[SedentaryJourney]

Is it also OK to completely ignore the devs saying Wii U is clearly more powerful than PS3 or XB360?

Maybe it does have an overall performance advantage, I'm certainly not ruling it out. If it does it appears to be marginal though.

With today's technology it should have been simple and inexpensive to exceed PS360 by a noticeable amount. I just find it hard to ignore how Nintendo made a series of choices contrary to this approach.

 

[Urian]

Ant information about eDRAM bandwidth?

 

[see colon]

Maybe it does have an overall performance advantage, I'm certainly not ruling it out. If it does it appears to be marginal though.

With today's technology it should have been simple and inexpensive to exceed PS360 by a noticeable amount. I just find it hard to ignore how Nintendo made a series of choices contrary to this approach.

Regardless of WiiU's hardware capabilities, it takes a huge increase in computational power to be noticeable in pixels, especially when the baseline is the feature set that PS360 has. This has always been true, but as hardware becomes more capable, the advances will be less "noticeable". Think back to Dreamcast and PS2, where PS2 is clearly the more powerful machine by a large margin, but many gamers couldn't notice the differences, and many still claim the DC looked noticeably better. Now compare PS2 to XB, and you have a similar situation, where XB is ahead everywhere with big advantages on paper, and little advantages on the screen.

I think an obvious example would be in rendering resolution. Many PS360 games are rendered internally below 720P, dropping 20% of the fill rate requirement in the process. If a WiiU game is rendered at 720, and by extension is doing 25% more work than PS360, how noticeable would that be?

 

[Rangers]

Think back to Dreamcast and PS2, where PS2 is clearly the more powerful machine by a large margin, but many gamers couldn't notice the differences, and many still claim the DC looked noticeably better.

debatable...dc games looked often on par with ps2 ones, to me that proved dc was as powerful as ps2, or more likely almost.

Now compare PS2 to XB, and you have a similar situation, where XB is ahead everywhere with big advantages on paper, and little advantages on the screen.

well too be fair, because most games were simple ps2 ports. a few games that really maximized xbox (like one of the later splinter cells) really showed a major gap. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkHoDEh0FWc . also halo always struck me as an example of a game that simply couldn't have been done on other console hardware of the time.

xbox was probably like 2x as powerful as ps2 at least though. i'm not sure people think wii u has that kind of gap.

plus, we microanalyze much more now. we pinpoint even the smallest differences. back in xbox/ps2 games it didn't seem to be the case as much. there was no digital foundry, even youtube!

i remember ign had a thing called "head2head" that compared games. Xbox invariably won faceoffs, but I agree most ports didn't show a major difference. Also you had to have an insider sub to even read it (naturally the juicy stuff was behind paywall)

Overall I kinda agree with your point. A 2x hardware difference is probably going to get lost in the scheme of things, now, because we'll all move on from PS3/360. If it was 2X over a 7 year generation, it wont get lost I think. If Wii U is 25% more powerful it will get lost.

 

[willardjuice]

I fail to see why people can't stomach the Wii U being better than the PS360, it's hardly a technical feat given today's tech really...

I'd love to stomach it if it was true. just not seeing it.

well too be fair, because most games were simple ps2 ports. a few games that really maximized xbox...

I love it.

[edit] Okay perhaps that is slightly too trollish, but why can't ps2->xbox logic be applied to 360/ps3->wiiu logic? I understand the magnitude of the transitions are different, but I don't think that changes the underlining point.

 

[psychogmv]

I've been reading this thread and the NeoGAFs one for a while, and I believe that some points might be missing on some of the GPU die shot analysis. While I'm no expert on determining GPU logics only by looking at die shots, there are some rumors and facts that do not fit on those analysis.

First, there were several rumors and leaks last year, before Wii U launch saying that it was R700 based. Then, there was an AMD representative interview saying that Nintendo did not customize their design, and just licensed it. Latest, there was an developer who said that it had tesselation capabilities. Well, if you look at R700 and R800 options, there is no 160SP part available. It is 80 or 320SP. And in my point of view, changin SPU count is a customization, and this was ruled off by the AMD rep. The only customization that I believe Nintendo did was adding the Renesas eDram to the GPU logic. For me, its either a vanila HD4650 or HD5550, with no Nintendo secret sauce at all. And the tesselation abilities points more to the later option.

 

[willardjuice]

Just to let you know, all R7xx parts had tessellators (not quite d3d 11 spec though). If you're hoping that the WiiU secretly contains a R8xx part, prepare to be disappointed...

 

[Urian]

Mobility Radeon HD 4650 is the more accurate one.

 

[psychogmv]

Just to let you know, all R7xx parts had tessellators (not quite d3d 11 spec though). If you're hoping that the WiiU secretly contains a R8xx part, prepare to be disappointed...

Didn't know about that. Thanks for the info!