Wii U hardware discussion and investigation *rename

[Arwin]

The PPE in both the 360 and the PS3's CPUs was based on Power6 architecture, right? So I assume that if anything, it means that the Wii CPU is an evolution of that concept to Power7 architecture. It will be able to run code aimed for Power6 as well as use some Power7 enhancements, and therefore will be relatively easy to port 360 games etc. At least, that's my guess.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Remember it's "custom chip", not off-the-shelf, so why would 1-core Power7 + 2 "enhanced broadways" be out of the question?

It's not. A variation on POWER7 is definitely possible. The complication has been understanding what they mean by 'POWER7 processor' when the signals have been mixed, leading some to think a chip as featured in IBM's servers is going to appear in WiiU. If we accept a custom part based on POWER7, we are none the wiser as to features or performance because IBM will have to make some significant changes over the chip we have for comparison to produce a console part. Will it have 4 MBs eDRAM L3 per core? Will it have all the same execution units? Will it have the same buses? Will there be the same VMX units or Xenon-like enhanced units, or something new? And then if the end result is notably different, does it even count as a POWER7? TBH that doesn't really matter. Naming conventions are only of use in differentiating products. Whatever chip is made can be consider 7th generation POWER, so be called POWER7 even if it is substantially different in operation.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

EG have posted a lengthy article on the power of Wii U. Having spoken to devs with final devkits, this is what they say:

The CPU: The Wii U's IBM-made CPU is made up of three Power PC cores. We've been unable to ascertain the clock speed of the CPU (more on this later), but we know out of order execution is supported.
RAM in the final retail unit: 1GB of RAM is available to games.
GPU: The Wii U's graphics processing unit is a custom AMD 7 series GPU. Clock speed and pipelines were not disclosed, but we do know it supports DirectX 10 and shader 4 type features. We also know that eDRAM is embedded in the GPU custom chip in a similar way to the Wii.

Custom AMD 7 series. It doesn't sound like a monster, but the feature advantages should mean much better results at the same performance. Inclusion of eDRAM really wants the amount to be outed. Are they tiling like XB360? Fixed 720p framebuffer?

1 GB RAM available to games suggests either more for OS and background tasks, or no background tasks at all. As we don't know the RAM type, this could be the cheapest of the cheap wherein an extra 50% for OS doesn't cost much. Again, eDRAM points to system RAM speed not being important for rendering. Thankfully we'll get to learn all about the RAM when someone performs a teardown of this box.

Custom Power PC CPU. It think we're looking at a Xenon style custom processor, probably taking experiences from that and building around the current 2.06 Power ISA spec which includes VSX. That would fit with talk of it being a POWER7 technology processor. Continuing dev comments that the CPU isn't very potent suggest to me a small, low power part.

 

[babybumb]

Does Nintendo even tell developers specific numbers like ALUs memory bandwidth etc

No SMT?

 

[DaSorcerer]

EG have posted a lengthy article on the power of Wii U. Having spoken to devs with final devkits, this is what they say:Custom AMD 7 series. It doesn't sound like a monster, but the feature advantages should mean much better results at the same performance. Inclusion of eDRAM really wants the amount to be outed. Are they tiling like XB360? Fixed 720p framebuffer?

1 GB RAM available to games suggests either more for OS and background tasks, or no background tasks at all. As we don't know the RAM type, this could be the cheapest of the cheap wherein an extra 50% for OS doesn't cost much. Again, eDRAM points to system RAM speed not being important for rendering. Thankfully we'll get to learn all about the RAM when someone performs a teardown of this box.

Custom Power PC CPU. It think we're looking at a Xenon style custom processor, probably taking experiences from that and building around the current 2.06 Power ISA spec which includes VSX. That would fit with talk of it being a POWER7 technology processor. Continuing dev comments that the CPU isn't very potent suggest to me a small, low power part.

Was just about to come and post this.

 

[DaSorcerer]

could someone clear this up for me , if its using a AMD 7000 series card as its base, shouldn't it be capable of DX11 or equivalent?, the article says its only DX10 capable.

 

[babybumb]

I dont know. Maybe they mean R700 but they said shadermodel 4 so Dx10 wasnt typo

 

[bgassassin]

There is a 4 core P7 in IBM's BladeCentre PS700 as mentioned in Wiki. A 4 core POWER7 is still a massive, hot chip though.

I did a lot of reading on the P7 last year, and from what I understand the 4-core version is just the 8-core with four-cores disabled. And how they accomplish that is if you were looking at the chip, they disable a column for the 6-core and two for the 4-core. Unfortunately I saw in mentioned in only one .pdf and I didn't save it. I haven't found it since.

Does Nintendo even tell developers specific numbers like ALUs memory bandwidth etc

No SMT?

From what I've gathered, no they aren't. Or at least with things like ALUs.

 

[Rangers]

RAM in the final retail unit: 1GB of RAM is available to games.

Clears that up, and what I expected.

That is why we're not seeing the effects of greater RAM in the games, 1GB+tablet overhead+lazy ports=never mind. Rumors of 2GB were false as expected.

It is nice to finally have a hard number for some part of the system!

 

[bgassassin]

Clears that up, and what I expected.

That is why we're not seeing the effects of greater RAM in the games, 1GB+tablet overhead+lazy ports=never mind. Rumors of 2GB were false as expected.

It is nice to finally have a hard number for some part of the system!

How did you jump to that conclusion when it said 1GB is usable for games?

 

[Rangers]

You're claiming 1GB is reserved???!!

I suppose, it's possible, but geez. Didn't we have people in the next gen tech thread claim .5GB reserved out of 4GB of PS4 is way too much to be reasonable?

My guess as posted was 1.5GB with 512MB reserved. 1GB usable. Have confirmation now on the latter. I read some rumors of 3GB dev kits with half for retail as well, another reason for the 1/1.5 expectation.

1GB is slightly disappointing.

Best case for those hoping for a "mid gen" console imo would be, 1GB of RAM reserved (which I find completely implausible but anyway). So maybe they can eventually get 1.6 or 1.7 GB usable for games. Then the GPU best case (again, I dont believe) would be a downclocked 4850 (I'm expecting some sort of rv730 instead, guessing early dev kits may have had a 4850 before the final was done). with something akin to bg's 576 gflops. The CPU I think can be easily worked around.

Even so the sad reality is mid gen is irrelevant imo, so all this would get Wii U nowhere. Whether 1/3 or 1/2 as powerful might as well be the same thing, both not enough to matter. But I digress.

 

[Kaotik]

Or 512MB reserved, 1.5GB rumors were around for quite some time

 

[babybumb]

http://www.vgleaks.com/world-premiere-wii-u-specs/

Current features are modeled after OpenGL and the AMD r7xx series of graphics processors. Wii U’s graphics processor is referred to as GPU7.

 

[bgassassin]

You're claiming 1GB is reserved???!!

I suppose, it's possible, but geez. Didn't we have people in the next gen tech thread claim .5GB reserved out of 4GB of PS4 is way too much to be reasonable?

My guess as posted was 1.5GB with 512MB reserved. 1GB usable. Have confirmation now on the latter. I read some rumors of 3GB dev kits with half for retail as well, another reason for the 1/1.5 expectation.

1GB is slightly disappointing.

Best case for those hoping for a "mid gen" console imo would be, 1GB of RAM reserved (which I find completely implausible but anyway). So maybe they can eventually get 1.6 or 1.7 GB usable for games. Then the GPU best case (again, I dont believe) would be a downclocked 4850 (I'm expecting some sort of rv730 instead, guessing early dev kits may have had a 4850 before the final was done). with something akin to bg's 576 gflops. The CPU I think can be easily worked around.

Even so the sad reality is mid gen is irrelevant imo, so all this would get Wii U nowhere. Whether 1/3 or 1/2 as powerful might as well be the same thing, both not enough to matter. But I digress.

I think you missed my response to you.

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1662716&postcount=14108

 

[Rangers]

Nope. I just think 2GB with a only half available for games is crazy. 1/1.5 split seems eminently more reasonable. We'll see I guess.

Either way it's 1GB available for launch games.

 

[kagemaru]

Regardless if it's 512MB or 1GB for the OS, maybe Miiverse is part of the reason for the bloated OS? In the video below, Reggie mentions how you can take pictures of the game you're currently playing and post it on Miiverse, so that must mean it's running while you're gaming.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvNHxYE3jN8&feature=player_detailpage#t=1009s

 

[Grall]

http://www.vgleaks.com/world-premiere-wii-u-specs/

Those aren't specs, they're just bulletpoints. And, easily faked bulletpoints at that, most of those supposed specs are just repeating what has already been bounced around the net for months already.

1/1.5 split seems eminently more reasonable.

There's not a single thing in the universe Nintendo could reasonably spend half a gigabyte of reserved memory on in Wuu, so why on earth would they reserve that much memory. They don't even feature bluray playback in their console for frag's sake.

Expecting half a gig of reserved out of one and a half is utter MADNESS. It'd be nothing but an enormous waste.

 

[liolio]

For clarity sake.
Hum am I right to assume that what they call serie 7 relates to R/Rv7xx more than HD 7xxxx?

 

[babybumb]

Those aren't specs, they're just bulletpoints. And, easily faked bulletpoints at that, most of those supposed specs are just repeating what has already been bounced around the net for months already.

They were confirmed as not target specs but actual specs months ago by insiders

 

[Grall]

What I meant is, those specs are so imprecise as not really warranting calling them "specs". Ok, so it has a CPU, whoopee de do dah, we knew that already. A true specs sheet would state WHAT CPU it has.