in my first post i was impling that the cheap wii uses solid state memory to store data, the rumor about the ssd maybe imply that they will still use solid state memory instead of rotating platters
ssd has become a generic term
Fact: Nintendo to release HD console + controllers with built-in screen late 2012
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in my first post i was impling that the cheap wii uses solid state memory to store data, the rumor about the ssd maybe imply that they will still use solid state memory instead of rotating platters
ssd has become a generic term
Megadrive1988
Veteran
So, an RV740 would offer roughly 4x the performance of Xenos, right ?
Well, FWIW:
rv740
640SPs, i.e. 16x8xVLIW5
750MHz core clock
16 ROPs, 4 samples per cycle, 4x z-only rate
8 texture units, 4x texture addressing -> 32 texels per clock
Xenos
effectively "240SPs", i.e. 16x3x(vec4+1) issue (less efficient than VLIW5 AFAIK)
500MHz core clock
8 ROPs, 4 samples per cycle, 2x z-only rate
16 TMUs ~~ 16 texels per clock
It's kind of difficult to compare exactly, so these are just rough comparisons... there are a lot of changes with texture caches and surface formats that need to be accountable, but ok, a naive approximation would put RV740 at more than 4x the power.
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Regarding the RAM issue, GDDR5 chips can be 16-bit or 32-bit, so 8x2Gb or 4x4Gb chips for 128-bit bus & 2GB memory. One might want to consider that DDR3 would be significantly cheaper, but @ half-bandwidth per cycle than GDDR5... It certainly won't have much bandwidth in the latter scenario. High-end GDDR5 isn't inexpensive.
Megadrive1988
Veteran
Thanks for the quick reply AlStrong!
It is less efficient, unless the code is always fittable to Vec4 + Scalar instructions, which it won't be. Oh, and it has 48 interpolators too, IIRC, which do all the shader interpolation calculations instead of the "shader units"
Megadrive1988
Veteran
Anyone remember MixCore's 'Rebirth' from SpaceWorld 2000?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QPaBCthCDc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rr5Ex5nyI-4
Most of it was pre-rendered CG although a portion was realtime on GameCube.
Now if only a Zelda HD game could look like that
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QPaBCthCDc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rr5Ex5nyI-4
Most of it was pre-rendered CG although a portion was realtime on GameCube.
Now if only a Zelda HD game could look like that
Well let me climb down from my earlier post a little. I just took a quick scan of the games and most of them seemed to make sense to be on their way at some point.
But I wasn't really thinking about each game specifically .
My point really was that it wouldn't seem far fetched to think that those types of big AAA third party games would end up on a Wii2 if in fact the system ends up being equal to or even more powerful than PS360.
Konami, Rockstar, Capcom and EA just to name a few have already shown support for Nintendo platforms. Some of those partnerships have worked out really well,some not so great.
I see no reason why if those big games are being made anyway for other platforms,that a Wii2 wouldn't get it's own version.
As to whether those games are a Nintendo fans "wet dream".Well I would think that those games would a wet dream for most gamers regardless of what platform they end up on.
Those are some great third party games listed.r740 had fixed function interpolation as well. Shader based interpolation didn't come about until 8xx.
Megadrive1988
Veteran
what kind of tessellation does the R7xx/RV740 have ?
So I started looking up the actually RV700 line
I'm going to say there's a clear candidate there, given the equivalent 240 SP's of the Xenos. That is, the HD 4600 series with 320 SP's.
According to wiki 4600 series packs 514 million transistors. that's still a lot for Nintendo to bite off. That's close to double Xenos and RSX, or at least 166%.
also:
Sounds right for Nintendo as well. And still hefty.
Breaking down the line it's, as best I understand:
RV770, the big dog. What the 4890, 4870, etc is based on. 956m trans.
RV740 128 bit, GDDR5 version of the RV770. 826m transistors. Essentially still RV770 based.
RV730, an actual smaller chip by design, 514m transistors.
Here's another chart that helps:
Like I say, I would strongly suspect you're looking at RV730. Probably clocked at 600+ mhz. A Xenon based tri-core, and 512mb or 1GB of GDDR3, sadly probably the former, but the latter is also possible. I think you always need to shoot low on hardware when you're dealing with Nintendo. 3DS underwhelming (imo) specs just being the latest example.
If you are "lucky", the "best case scenario" imo, not likely knowing Nintendo, you're getting an RV740. That way they can use a 128 bit bus and GDDR5. I have to wonder if that's overkill for the triple core CPU though, rendering it even less likely. That would be a pretty beefy chip though.
Question I have, would the 32 GB/s of bandwidth be enough? Seems in league with PS3 and 360, but a bit low. I'm guessing PS3 can muster 40+GB/s between it's two busses. Could GDDR3 be clocked higher?
I'm going to say there's a clear candidate there, given the equivalent 240 SP's of the Xenos. That is, the HD 4600 series with 320 SP's.
According to wiki 4600 series packs 514 million transistors. that's still a lot for Nintendo to bite off. That's close to double Xenos and RSX, or at least 166%.
also:
Sounds right for Nintendo as well. And still hefty.
Breaking down the line it's, as best I understand:
RV770, the big dog. What the 4890, 4870, etc is based on. 956m trans.
RV740 128 bit, GDDR5 version of the RV770. 826m transistors. Essentially still RV770 based.
RV730, an actual smaller chip by design, 514m transistors.
Here's another chart that helps:
Like I say, I would strongly suspect you're looking at RV730. Probably clocked at 600+ mhz. A Xenon based tri-core, and 512mb or 1GB of GDDR3, sadly probably the former, but the latter is also possible. I think you always need to shoot low on hardware when you're dealing with Nintendo. 3DS underwhelming (imo) specs just being the latest example.
If you are "lucky", the "best case scenario" imo, not likely knowing Nintendo, you're getting an RV740. That way they can use a 128 bit bus and GDDR5. I have to wonder if that's overkill for the triple core CPU though, rendering it even less likely. That would be a pretty beefy chip though.
Question I have, would the 32 GB/s of bandwidth be enough? Seems in league with PS3 and 360, but a bit low. I'm guessing PS3 can muster 40+GB/s between it's two busses. Could GDDR3 be clocked higher?
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ltcommander.data
Regular
I believe its the same tessellation unit as in the XBox 360. Just that in desktop cards accessing the unit is more difficult because of the limitations of standardized APIs like DX9 and DX10, whereas the 360 has an API designed around the tessellation unit which makes things easier. No doubt Nintendo would do the same if they it's available.
There's a whitepaper here:
http://developer.amd.com/gpu_assets/Real-Time_Tessellation_on_GPU.pdf
I'm pretty sure all R700 cores are capable of handling GDDR5 even if the standard configurations didn't use it probably for cost reasons since it was new at the time. So if Nintendo based it on the HD46xx they aren't limited to GDDR3 if bandwidth is a concern.
Assuming IGN's sources are correct, we're probably looking at an overall power consumption of ~150W. The chipset is supposedly heavily modified, so Nintendo might as well go for 28nm - if you have to modify the designs anyway, you might as well shrink them while you're at it. Maybe you should take that into account. You might also take into account that Wii was an exception, not the rule (it was also an experiment). More often than not, Nintendo's home consoles were highly competitive.
I think you're making the assumption that they aren't going to clock the chips on a laptop model, I.E. they will design them to a particular tighter thermal envelope. They aren't going to take a desktop GPU design, they'll take something akin to a laptop design or something custom in between a laptop and desktop design. So with this in mind the RV740 makes a lot more sense as it's the closest R700 series chip to the likely design spec seing as it would be compatible off the bat with GDDR5 or DDR3 and the power it uses will be more akin to a 25W laptop part than a 80W+ desktop part.
DuckThor Evil
Legend
exception in performance compared to others, but not expeption in some other things like low power draw and efficiency, back then it was easier to be competitive in performance unlike in the current high powerdraw "arms race" generation.
in any case I find Nintendo's strategy solid, they are getting a nice headstart it seems and I think this is the best they can do now and it can work well. If they can provide a visual leap, have the best 3rd party versions, their favourite 1st party offerings and further toned motion controls and some cool things we don't know yet, this thing can do really well.
I might buy it just for someone finally coming up with a new system
Megadrive1988
Veteran
Any examples of PC games running off of an RV740 ?
RV740 was the HD4770 correct?
if I remember correctly, this card was slower or equivalent to a 8800GTX (originally released in 2006) at the time, it was the first 40nm GPU I think, slower than the older 4850, competing against the aging 8800/9800GT
so to compare with something of the current line, it would probably be slower than a GTS 450, slightly faster than a HD6670 (in DX9/10.1)
it's a card that can probably run most game really well at 720p +- on a PC, but will struggle at 1080p or even in 720p with higher details/filtering, but then, in a console I think you could extract a lot more from that,
if I remember correctly, this card was slower or equivalent to a 8800GTX (originally released in 2006) at the time, it was the first 40nm GPU I think, slower than the older 4850, competing against the aging 8800/9800GT
so to compare with something of the current line, it would probably be slower than a GTS 450, slightly faster than a HD6670 (in DX9/10.1)
it's a card that can probably run most game really well at 720p +- on a PC, but will struggle at 1080p or even in 720p with higher details/filtering, but then, in a console I think you could extract a lot more from that,
D
Deleted member 13524
Guest
The kind that no PC developer ever used, except for some snowy mountains in a Ruby demo.
Still not understanding why people think N would ever use an offthe shelf old PC chip. It will be a custom gpu that they can control the IP of and not be directly comparable to anything. If AMD designs it it will probably be a new generation of Hollywood and Xenos eDRAM philosophy. And all of the hardware will likely be designed to fit in a new housing the size of an external dvdrom like the wii so low power.
Hell if they use a PCIe PC design why not a 6500/6600? 4770 makes no sense at all.
Hell if they use a PCIe PC design why not a 6500/6600? 4770 makes no sense at all.
ltcommander.data
Regular
Given that Nintendo is partial to giving up programmability in favour of fixed function efficiency, like the 3DS, there may be merit to the extended Hollywood idea. It'll probably still need a total redesign, but the philosophy could still be taking all the most common shader effects that developers use and could use in the future and implementing them in fixed function. That could allow Nintendo to target 1080p with a lower power consumption chip than would be possible by just throwing SP units at the problem.
I believe someone mentioned before that the last time Nintendo used an all new GPU in Flipper for Gamecube, it was designed throughout 1999, finalized/put to manufacturing in 2000, and launched in 2001. If the Wii2 is launching in 2012, 2009 would be the heavy design phase perhaps even earlier in 2008 if increased complexity of modern GPUs require more design time. At this time, the HD6000 series design was still in flux, so it would make sense that Nitendo doesn't choose that to base its design on. That leaves the HD5000 series.
The question then becomes does Nintendo really need a GPU that is DX11 compliant? Two big new things in DX11 inclufde GPGPU and tessellation, but that's just because they were added to the API then. Previous hardware already supported these features, albeit in less capable forms, ie. the HD4000 supports OpenCL 1.1 and tessellation. The major limitation was that they weren't easily accessible through DirectX. Nintendo developing their own API can allow easy developer access to GPGPU and tessellation in the HD4000 series. Admittedly GPGPU and tessellation capabilities were expanded in the HD5000 series compared the the HD4000. But this doesn't come without cost. I believe clock for clock comparisons between the HD5000 and HD4000 in fact showed the HD5000 architecture is slower for non-DX11 requiring titles. By expanding all the execution units to add DX11 compliance, the HD5000 series lost a bit of processing efficiency. So if Nintendo does not view expanded GPGPU and tessellation functionality as critical, then the HD4000 isn't a bad choice.
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