Wii U hardware discussion and investigation *rename

[artstyledev]

Quote from nintendo on their CPU from the hardware Iwata ask.....

"So I myself have been happy to see how far game consoleshttp://rd.bizrate.com/rd?t=http://w...f_assettype_id=10&af_creative_id=6&af_id=6784 have come. I hope people will be impressed by the types of software enabled by the CPU It turned out to be a CPU without any strange habits—one that runs just the way you expect".

My mind is at ease. Nintendo isnt one to just say things for PR effect. They dont have the Im bigger than you syndrome. Im really surprised by some of the comments and general thought process of some of the members. The reality is the majority of launch games were made in a year or under. Also most of them were made on the in progress of being finalized dev-kits. You add those two things in with smaller or out sourced dev teams.... i have to ask. Why would anyone expect games on Wii U to be running so much better than on 360 where engines have been optimized for it?



no the CPU isnt going to be a super powerful one as Iwata said himself but it will be one thats VERY efficient and does exactly what it needs to do.

 

[TheLump]

Without disagreeing/agreeing with any side of the argument here, I will point out that imo its rather futile to try and derive any meaningful insight from the performance of a console game ported to a PC. "PC" isn't a static target platform like a console is. Developers are required to produce a game that will run on a scale of hardware from the miniscule to the mighty. The fact a port runs worse on a given PC could be down to myriad different reason, from the thousands of combinations of hardware you're trying to run the game on, to the developer not fully optimising their game engine to run on your particular setup.

Back OT:

At the moment, I think the fact some WiiU ports are performing well and some not so well is indication enough that some developers have afforded more time/effort into their ports. It doesn't really tell us anything else. We don't know who had what amount of time/resources, but its a fair assumption that there is a disparity in the quality of ports for some reason. If they were all rubbish or all awesome, then we might be able to draw a solid conclusion. But right now either side of the argument is jumping the gun somewhat.

The fact that traditionally CPU intensive scenes (in ME3 and Arkham City I beleive) where lots of NPCs are on screen etc seems to cause problems implies that the Espresso is not cut out for those tasks. Thats the bottom line, we can't assume any other meaningful statistic about the CPU from that other than its not as good at those things which 360 CPU excels at. It might be great for other things, it might not. But imo its wrong to assume one way or the other at this point.

 

[spacemonkeys]

At the moment, I think the fact some WiiU ports are performing well and some not so well is indication enough that some developers have afforded more time/effort into their ports. It doesn't really tell us anything else. We don't know who had what amount of time/resources, but its a fair assumption that there is a disparity in the quality of ports for some reason. If they were all rubbish or all awesome, then we might be able to draw a solid conclusion. But right now either side of the argument is jumping the gun somewhat.

The fact that traditionally CPU intensive scenes (in ME3 and Arkham City I beleive) where lots of NPCs are on screen etc seems to cause problems implies that the Espresso is not cut out for those tasks. Thats the bottom line, we can't assume any other meaningful statistic about the CPU from that other than its not as good at those things which 360 CPU excels at. It might be great for other things, it might not. But imo its wrong to assume one way or the other at this point.

Agreed, the Assassins Creed 3 devs said themselves that they didn't have much time.
I wonder if with better knowledge and time on this system they could get the wii u versions framerate up to par with the 360 and ps3.
Considering the power consumption of the wii u and clock speed, plus the fact that these are the first ports with a launch day time constraint, I don't think it's too bad at all.
I think they can make some really good first party titles with the wii u.

 

[BRiT]

no the CPU isnt going to be a super powerful one as Iwata said himself but it will be one thats VERY efficient and does exactly what it needs to do.

Careful with the blind-faith posts like that, it's not welcome here on a technical forum.

 

[artstyledev]

Careful with the blind-faith posts like that, it's not welcome here on a technical forum.

my apology

 

[TheLump]

Agreed, the Assassins Creed 3 devs said themselves that they didn't have much time.
I wonder if with better knowledge and time on this system they could get the wii u versions framerate up to par with the 360 and ps3.
Considering the power consumption of the wii u and clock speed, plus the fact that these are the first ports with a launch day time constraint, I don't think it's too bad at all.
I think they can make some really good first party titles with the wii u.

Well I think the fact that AC3 is one of the better performing ports is indicitive of the close relationship Ubisoft has with Nintendo. Ubisoft are very openly backing the WiiU to succeed, and have put alot of resources behind it. I'd suspect Nintendo offered them alot of help getting their game up to scratch in such a short space of time. Same with Activision to an extent (but for different reasons - namely Nintendo needed BLOPS2 to be succesful on WiiU, rather than Activision putting alot of resources behind the console)

A bit OT agian as we're talking about games - sorry!

 

[TheD]

Ah yes, the double standard.

If it doesn't work on the PC its the developer's fault.
If it doesn't work on a particular console, in this case the WiiU, its the console's fault.

Optimization is required when you port from environment A to environment B.
For some reason people want ported games to run on the WiiU flawlessly without optimization (even though many of the games originally were not even optimized on their intended hardware). Obviously Nintendo has created an environment to offer developers the opportunity to port their games quickly, but they still have to put the effort to optimize the game for the new hardware. Obviously for many games this has not been done or done on a limited scale.

It is not a "double standard"!

The average gaming PC is objectively many times more powerfull than the consoles!

It is the devs fault if a game running on much more powerful hardware does not perform well! (PC)
It is not the devs fault if the hardware is weaker! (which the WiiU is looking to be).

We are well aware of how a well programmed PC game can perform over the consoles (Crysis 2 comes to mind).

 

[Karamazov]

Here are new screens of this wii u exclusive game:

http://www.gamersyde.com/news_lego_city_undercover_screenshots-13674_en.html

so what is the excuse now ?

 

[spacemonkeys]

Here are new screens of this wii u exclusive game:

http://www.gamersyde.com/news_lego_city_undercover_screenshots-13674_en.html

so what is the excuse now ?

Looks pretty ugly tbh, with a lot of jaggies and horrible textures, doesn't look like theres a lot going on either.
But thats not to say the wii u can't produce good looking games, it's that the cpu acts as a bottleneck and limits it's potential somewhat.

 

[MDX]

It is not a "double standard"!

The average gaming PC is objectively many times more powerfull than the consoles!

It is the devs fault if a game running on much more powerful hardware does not perform well! (PC)
It is not the devs fault if the hardware is weaker! (which the WiiU is looking to be).

We are well aware of how a well programmed PC game can perform over the consoles (Crysis 2 comes to mind).

See, again. Double standard.
You are basing the power of the WiiU on its ports.
But if you have ports that dont even run well on powerful PCs, then
the first consideration is that its not the machine, its the developer
and the nature of porting games.

Normally, games would be rewritten for a particular hardware.
But that costs money. So whenever possible publishers try to port games.
Its a cheap solution to get software running on different machines.
It should never be used as a metric for determining if a particular hardware is capable.

Its like a tailor made suit vs a suit you buy off the rack.
You buy the suit of the rack because its cheaper and quick.
But if the suit you buy off the rack doesn't fit you good, are you going to say there is something wrong with your body?

We have three issues here:

Ported games
Launch games
Budget games

All are bad indicators to the power and potential of the hardware.
Unfortunately, Nintendo has decided not to launch with one of their franchises
that usually are show pieces for their console. They opted to go with family friendly
2D and cartoony games. And no third party is going to put a AAA exclusive title on a console starting off with zero users.

Thats why I have been saying, we have to wait and see.

 

[Rodéric]

It takes time to port an engine to a new machine, even longer if the machine is significantly different.
I'm talking about writing code that runs very well on the new machine taking advantage of its capabilities, not just changing a few API calls and using a different compiler.

It's way too early to guess how powerful the Wii U really is w/o a DevKit, and even then, there's some research to be done before finding the sweet spot.
It took years for the PS3 & 360 to get the games they have today, and engines that work well on both of them.

Don't try to look more than you can in early games of a new system, they are rarely (if ever) representative.

 

[kagemaru]

See, again. Double standard.
You are basing the power of the WiiU on its ports.
But if you have ports that dont even run well on powerful PCs, then
the first consideration is that its not the machine, its the developer
and the nature of porting games.

I don't see it as double standards when we know, for a fact, that the hardware in a typical gaming PC is much much more powerful than the ps360. The same can't be said for the Wii-U where some aspects are faster/more efficient, while other aspects lag behind the current gen platforms. It's not so much about the quality of the ports, but what we know about the hardware in the two platforms in question here.

All are bad indicators to the power and potential of the hardware.
Unfortunately, Nintendo has decided not to launch with one of their franchises
that usually are show pieces for their console. They opted to go with family friendly
2D and cartoony games. And no third party is going to put a AAA exclusive title on a console starting off with zero users.

Thats why I have been saying, we have to wait and see.

While I agree with what you're saying here, I'm not too clear on what you're saying we should be waiting for. What are your expectations as a show piece title for the platform? I expect it to look great, but by current gen standards, and I think that's the problem for many here when the Wii-U is competing against next gen systems (and the standards that will come with these new consoles).

 

[Kaotik]

I don't see it as double standards when we know, for a fact, that the hardware in a typical gaming PC is much much more powerful than the ps360. The same can't be said for the Wii-U where some aspects are faster/more efficient, while other aspects lag behind the current gen platforms. It's not so much about the quality of the ports, but what we know about the hardware in the two platforms in question here.

We don't actually know anything but the RAM amount from Wii U, everything else is just more or less reasonable assumptions based on rumours and physical appearance of the chips.

We also know that size matters only to some extent, smaller chip can in fact be faster than bigger chip and of course vice versa.

 

[kagemaru]

We don't actually know anything but the RAM amount from Wii U, everything else is just more or less reasonable assumptions based on rumours and physical appearance of the chips.

We also know that size matters only to some extent, smaller chip can in fact be faster than bigger chip and of course vice versa.

Well I was more referring to the comments made by developers, unless they were mistaken. Nothing too specific was mentioned, but I figured enough was said to form some opinions.

 

[MDX]

Looks pretty ugly tbh, with a lot of jaggies and horrible textures, doesn't look like theres a lot going on either.
But thats not to say the wii u can't produce good looking games, it's that the cpu acts as a bottleneck and limits it's potential somewhat.

I doubt this game will win any awards for good looks, but its a pretty large looking sandbox game meant for the WiiU's launch window. And again, we dont know the game's budget.

Well lets talk about this CPU.
Its not a CPU that you would need for working on a computer.
So I dont see the point of comparing it to one.

Supposedly there should be a DSP in the WiiU.
That takes care of a task normally meant for a CPU.

But I wonder how many ported games took advantage of the DSP?
If they didnt, it tells me the CPU is at least on par with current gen.
And when future games take advantage of the DSP, the CPU can work on
more tasks.

And isnt there a point, with games, in relation to budget and target resolution,
were the CPU is good enough?
Meaning, switching a modern CPU with an older one, does not have that
much of an effect if you have a modern GPU running your game?

Then you have middleware.
The WiiU will eventually get Vision Engine from HAVOK.
Meant to make environments more rich, improve AI, etc.
I suppose this is more of a software solution thats not particularly dependent
on how powerful the CPU is.

So the question is, what cant the WiiU do, because of its CPU?

Going back to the Lego game, I understand the draw distance is pretty
impressive. Would not a weak CPU be a bottleneck in that regard?

 

[TheLump]

Well I was more referring to the comments made by developers, unless they were mistaken. Nothing too specific was mentioned, but I figured enough was said to form some opinions.

Just to add to what Kaotik said, we also know the CPU clock speed is roughly 1.2Ghz, thanks to a hacker.

And afaik two developers are on record as saying the CPU clock speed is low, one sying its "horrible and slow".

 

[artstyledev]

It takes time to port an engine to a new machine, even longer if the machine is significantly different.
I'm talking about writing code that runs very well on the new machine taking advantage of its capabilities, not just changing a few API calls and using a different compiler.

It's way too early to guess how powerful the Wii U really is w/o a DevKit, and even then, there's some research to be done before finding the sweet spot.
It took years for the PS3 & 360 to get the games they have today, and engines that work well on both of them.

Don't try to look more than you can in early games of a new system, they are rarely (if ever) representative.

It would seem like this should be the thinking of the Wii U in general. Why is it the exact opposite on sites like this one and neogaf? I remember in 2010 lot of ps3 fans saying 360 was done and we have seen the best graphically from it. Now in 2012 we get halo 4 which most reviewers have stated it is the best if not not one of the best looking games this whole generation. I'm really starting to fall out of love with gaming this type of stuff takes away from what gaming is suppose to be about which is the experience.

 

[Kaotik]

Just to add to what Kaotik said, we also know the CPU clock speed is roughly 1.2Ghz, thanks to a hacker.

And afaik two developers are on record as saying the CPU clock speed is low, one sying its "horrible and slow".

Assuming of course the hacker got it right - and even if he did, just compare for example 1.4GHz P4 and P3, there's a world of difference in their performance, clockspeed as itself is irrelevant meter

 

[MDX]

Just to add to what Kaotik said, we also know the CPU clock speed is roughly 1.2Ghz, thanks to a hacker.

Ok, so how fast should the CPU be then?
How can it run 360 and PS3 games that have CPUs running at higher clocks?
And do you expect 4Ghz clocks from the 720 and PS4?

 

[ERP]

Going back to the Lego game, I understand the draw distance is pretty
impressive. Would not a weak CPU be a bottleneck in that regard?

About the only places you'd see a weak CPU exposed are physics effects, and places with a lot of characters.

Characters usually mean game logic which depending on how complicated means ray or volume tracing to determine sight lines, collision detection and usually stupidly complicated state machines often running script code, as well as animation.

You can scale animation down to some extent by simplifying the skeleton, though it's not always trivial, the rest is hard to scale.

These IME eat the majority of the CPU time outside the graphics stuff.

For drawing static geometry, all your every really going to do is walk some tree and submit some primitives, which comes down to pointer chasing and copying memory, I wouldn't think there would be a lot of difference per thread on the WiiU CPU vs anything else for work like that and most games do all of that on a single thread.