Wii U hardware discussion and investigation *rename

[Rangers]

US$405 (equivalent) 32GB console SKU and US$337 (equivalent) 8GB console SKU.

Buying a gamepad separately will cost US$173 (equivalent).


With those prices Nintendo will need to try hard to sell it on its own merits, they won't be able to just compete on cost with current generation consoles.

Nintendo doesn't do direct currency conversions. As I understand they normally divide by 100 for USA price.

In other words these align to 249 and 299 USA if Nintendo follows it's traditional pricing.

The controller expense will be problematic if say, a analog stick goes out or something normal wear and tear.

Another thought I have is that lherre once made a post that strongly hinted imo, at 2Gb in Wii U, and 2X+ that and +2GB minimum in other next gen consoles (which if Wii U was looked at as 1GB, would require a oddball 3GB PS4 at minimum to fulfill both conditions, unlikely).

Now that 2Gb in Wii U seems confirmed, I would say 4GB in PS4 might be looking like a done deal based on lherre's post, which has now proven true regards the Wii U half. Because again, he said other next gen consoles would have at least 2X the RAM in Wii U, and at least 2GB more RAM as well.

 

[Rangers]

Half the RAM for the OS in a console is insane.

It seems like a huge waste for something that has a main purpose of playing games.

It's bad enough I am left to wonder if Nintendo shunted 1GB off on a slow bus, like they did 16MB on GC, rendering it forever unusable for games.

Or maybe they figure 2GB on a 128 bus is not enough bandwidth to use more than 1GB effectively in games anyway.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

50% RAM, 1 GB, for OS?!?!? Makes the rumoured Durango memory consumption seem lightweight. Then again, it doesn't have an HDD so can't use virtual RAM/task switching with only 8 GBs flash storage on the low end. Which just sounds a waste, truth be told. They're going to use up a GB of RAM to allow background web pages. 50% resource use on what'll likely be a rare use of the system.

I'm really hoping the details on the OS reveal something amazing.

 

[XpiderMX]

Then, if Wii U is 20x wii, why games looks worse than Xbox 360 games?

 

[Rangers]

Then, if Wii U is 20x wii, why games looks worse than Xbox 360 games?

Where do you get it's 20X Wii?

We still dont have details on the all important GPU.

Some credible reasons that dont include "it's not very powerful":

-Early games

-Bad SDK (rumored to be true)

-Controller display sapping up precious system power and RAM

-Weak CPU

 

[XpiderMX]

Where do you get it's 20X Wii?

We still dont have details on the all important GPU.

Some credible reasons that dont include "it's not very powerful":

-Early games

-Bad SDK (rumored to be true)

-Controller display sapping up precious system power and RAM

-Weak CPU

Readed on a web.

 

[Kaotik]

Then, if Wii U is 20x wii, why games looks worse than Xbox 360 games?

Some games can look worse, other games look better, it's not like all xbox360 games look identical either.

Also just reading something on the web hardly qualifies as reputable source

 

[Megadrive1988]

Hopefully someone somewhere will leak all the important GPU information such as the number of SP, texture units, ROPs, bandwidth to external memory, bandwidth to (or within) the embedded memory, etc etc.

 

[XpiderMX]

Some games can look worse, other games look better, it's not like all xbox360 games look identical either.

Also just reading something on the web hardly qualifies as reputable source

I have not seen any game that looks better than Xbox 360 games. I want to see one game that looks better than Xbox 360 best games.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I have not seen any game that looks better than Xbox 360 games. I want to see one game that looks better than Xbox 360 best games.

But they're launch games. Developers will be getting lower than maximum utilisation. Compare Wii U's launch games to XB360 and PS3's launch games, and not their best games years later with masses of experience behind them.

 

[TheD]

Compare Wii U's launch games to XB360 and PS3's launch games,

That's fair

It is not like rendering techniques have changed over the years or anything.....

 

[Rodéric]

That's fair

It is not like rendering techniques have changed over the years or anything.....

You'd be surprised how little they have changed.
Besides those blur filters they dare call AA.

 

[Squilliam]

Perhaps the reason why they reserve so much RAM is simply because they don't need to release more at the moment? Wouldn't it be better to hold onto RAM that won't make a significant difference to user experience now whilst they see if they can put it to better use in other ways like for instance with an always on App ecosystem?

 

[Kaotik]

I have not seen any game that looks better than Xbox 360 games. I want to see one game that looks better than Xbox 360 best games.

And you'll no doubt will see them eventually. Currently you have to "settle" for multiplatform titles which are said to look better and/or render at higher resolution than PS3/XB360 counterparts while rendering the pads secondary screen, too (Assassin's Creed, Batman)

 

[TheD]

You'd be surprised how little they have changed.
Besides those blur filters they dare call AA.

Deferred rendering and lighting, SSAO, post AA, A2C, real time GI approximation, colour grading ect.

And lets not forget that when the 360 and PS3 came out devs came off old hardware that (other than the xbox 1) did not support powerful shaders, the Wii U on the other hand for most devs is not a major change in capabilities compared to what they already work on.

 

[ultragpu]

So guys am I missing something here, what kind of flops are we talking about for wii U?

 

[Rangers]

And you'll no doubt will see them eventually. Currently you have to "settle" for multiplatform titles which are said to look better and/or render at higher resolution than PS3/XB360 counterparts while rendering the pads secondary screen, too (Assassin's Creed, Batman)

Those games are said to look worse just as much as better that I've seen. Conflicting reports.

So guys am I missing something here, what kind of flops are we talking about for wii U?

Unknown. The rumors from bg's camp say ~500-600+ gflops GPU (apparently an early dev kit was 576 gflops), I'm skeptical it's that much.

 

[Megadrive1988]

So guys am I missing something here, what kind of flops are we talking about for wii U?

Nothing as far as flops have been released, or even rumored, as far as I'm aware. Only speculation.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

That's fair

It is not like rendering techniques have changed over the years or anything.....

It has for Nintendo's developers who have zero experience with modern GPU architectures.*

* Zero being a generalisation, because of course they have RnD departments and some experience can be brought in and a few of the devs may have read GPU Gems. But overall a significant transition of architectures severely impacts a studios ability to extract performance from an architecture.

 

[kalelovil]

Can we be certain the 1GB of 'system memory' for the OS isn't just a partitioned-off section of the flash memory?