A Summary of the Huge Wii Thread
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If MaxconsoleNet specs are to be believe - and so far there's zero reason to doubt them - Broadway is definitely not a 750GX. 750 GX has 1MB L2 cache for starters. It's either a customized 750CXe or a slightly customized 750CL.
Megadrive1988
Veteran
hehe, blame me for starting the biggest thread of my B3D career, and one of the longest threads here in recent times i think
Goto said the same (check the summary).
That's precisely the reason why I didn't trust the maxconsolenet specs at first, I think they are old in all honesty. I spoke my piece on the broadway even had a thread on these boards spilling some of the stuff I've know which I've discussed with at least one dev here about. Info I got was pretty accurate and considering matt used him for the price point as well have no reason not to trust him. Main reason was the cache size and tweaks I heard that were done to cpu. Shame no big dev in an interview has spewed actual numbers as I can guess there are quite a few people who know what hollywood is.
Matt C is really a big tool. I'm surprised for the shot he had at julian that he didn't bother to ask anything meaningful. I know people are going to say insane fillrates but the last time Julian spoke of Wii he said it was formidable, in this case same rhetoeric some power is there but what. At the very least you figure Matt would ask Konami to spew some clearer details of Wii. The physics thing is annoying as it looks like a hardware question and then the answer is ambigous on implementation of it. At the very least they showed him up on the issue of normal mapping, still has yet to eat the big bowl crow people said he had coming.
It is possible to reduce the cache since it is a customized cpu, just like they did with the R4300. So i wouldn't rule out the 970's yet.
The Gekko is 43 mm², They Broadway is 18.9mm² . Wouldn't the Broadway be closer to 10 mm² if it was fabricated in 90nm?
The 750CL is 16 mm² @90nm the Broadway is 2.9 mm² larger.
To be honest i think we are going round in circles, the Gekko is in the G3 family but it is not a G3, im starting to think this broadway chip is in a similar situation.
Doesn't work like that
Then how does it work?
DuckThor Evil
Legend
If the production process shrinks from 180nm to 90nm, the 90nm chip will be 1/4 of the 180nm chip, in theory atleast, but it will be pretty close to that, anyway you probably knew that already, but ATI-liens doesn't know that you know... Or then you didn't know.
How would it be transparently compatible with Gamecube then, especially at such a low clockspeed? I think the CPU is almost certainly nearly identical to the Cube CPU. They shrunk it, and then went as high in clock as such an old architecture could comfortably go.
i think this is very telling. where are the BC issues with Wii? i've heard some people say some games run smoother (and i wouldn't call that an issue, not have i experieced it myself), and i've heard that unofficial devices (like the unofficial GBA adapter) run at an odd speed (faster?), but seriously. sony had issues with different models of the PS2 (and even the PS1, and sega with different models of the Saturn) being fully comptable with native games, not to mention a few BC titles were lost with each revsion.
for me, this pretty much rules out any "new" hardware designes for me. hollywood and broadway have to be (at best) supersets of flipper and gekko.
I've played a few Cube games: Rebel Strike, RE4, and XG3 offhand. They played absolutely the same as on Cube. Rebel Strike still had all its slowdowns, too. Some have said the Wii will run the games better, but I've definitely not seen that at all. If it does, it's in a way that's almost not worth mentioning.
Going on the size, i can comfortably say it's not the same chip as the Gekko. If anything it's an advanced 750CL or 750FX (Made a mistake before 970GX i mean the 750GX) I will think next time before i submit.
So if the:
Gekko @90nm would be roughly 10mm², The Gekko is an advanced version of the PowerPC 750CXe which (despite the improvements) are both exactly the same size.
The 750FX (39million transistors) and 750CL (20 Million) are both 16mm² @90nm slightly smaller then the Broadway.
Looking at the die size of the 750GX i can see now it's not what's used in the Wii. (I know im slow)
this has been my experience a well. someone in the other thread stated that there were some compatabilty issues, but i've yet to see any first hand, or see any news about issues online (short of a "news" entry on kotaku where someone states Mario Golf doesn't work, and a slew of people responding that it does).
Nintendo made all the SNES games on the Wii in Europe play just as slow as the originals (50hz, slight boarder). (If you don't know the PAL versions of the N64 and SNES are much slower then the NTSC.
It's likely the Broadway's clock is reduced to give it the same effect of the Gekko. And addictioal GPU pipelines are not used.
I think i read something saying they want to preserve the experience of previous consoles when playing old games.
Things don't shrink linearly for a whole host of reasons especially if you intend a significant clock increase.
backwards compatability doesn't mean virtual console. we're talking about Wii's ability to play GC games, the lack of issues experienced while playing GC games on Wii, and what that might mean Wii's hardware (specificaly the GPU) is or isn't. it's natural that PAL regeons would have PAL releases of PAL games (50hz and all), anyway. do you expect all of those people to have to buy a new TV just to play snes games on the Wii VC? and yes, i'm aware that some TVs sold in pal territories accept 60hz or NTSC signals, but it doesn't mean they all do
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