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Wii U hardware discussion and investigation *rename
- Thread starter AlNom
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If they are shipping this year they've started manufacturing, nothing is going to change at this point.
Practically things don't change significantly even if you're a year out from launch. Parts have to be fabbed and tested, fixed and tabbed and tested, then you have to manufacture Xmillion of them. Usually the only changes you see are small downclocks to resolve yield issues.
Practically things don't change significantly even if you're a year out from launch. Parts have to be fabbed and tested, fixed and tabbed and tested, then you have to manufacture Xmillion of them. Usually the only changes you see are small downclocks to resolve yield issues.
Every design can and does suffer bottlenecks. A bottleneck is caused by the software wanting to do something beyond the hardware's capabilities, and having to limit itself. If devs want to throw in loads of physics for damage and the CPU isn't up to the job and they have to only use a few particles, that's a CPU bottleneck limiting their options. From the sounds of it, Wii U's CPU is going to offer less to work with that PS3 and XB360 - I'm yet to hear any dev saying the CPU is very capable and allows them to do all sorts of new things.
Sorry, what I mean is bottlenecks comparing current and/or next gen games.
In the end, it doesn't look like Nintendo cares about other two competitors when it comes to next gen 3rd party games, they are out of competition already. They want year ahead on their own, they want 3rd party PS360 games and they want to "hook" people up with new controller. Once Durango and PS4 arrives, ports will be impossible. There will be baseline, and that will be those two, anything considerably below that will simply be left behind.
So in that sense I feel Nintendo was right to go with CPU they went with. They will have 3rd party games for a year or so, but major focus is again on 1st party and big exclusives that revolve around controller. Why waste money and start generation with MS and Sony disadvantage of losing money (even if its little) when 3rd party doesn't care about you either way?
So in that sense I feel Nintendo was right to go with CPU they went with. They will have 3rd party games for a year or so, but major focus is again on 1st party and big exclusives that revolve around controller. Why waste money and start generation with MS and Sony disadvantage of losing money (even if its little) when 3rd party doesn't care about you either way?
Nintendo is gambling that casuals will make it a success in the west. Otherwise they are stuck to around 30M sales. Nintendo will do much better in Japan but looks like Sony is positioning PS3 against the Wii U there to serve that market saying to publishers Wii U is late and they can make money on PS3 now.
Only a few Japanese devs targetting west will care about PS4/720..
Only a few Japanese devs targetting west will care about PS4/720..
Excellent post, good to know. I think you are right, you stand out. And you are telling things how they are. I dunno... you just feel it somehow.
Anyways, I was about to write to AMD USA http://emailcustomercare.amd.com/ to ask them a couple of questions about WiiU.
Personally, I kind of like the idea of certain openness between the tech support and customers, because there are some nice, well meaning people among them. But thinking of it, it makes all the sense in the world to limit the information you give in this case, especially knowing that people could exploit this.
I can imagine the poor tech support guy or girl from ATi with more than a thousand unread emails in their inbox.
You could also have journalists -disguised as regular customers- writing you emails asking about different matters. But this would take shady techniques to a whole new level. Lowers appeal.
In the end, I would like Nintendo to tell us exactly what hardware the WiiU uses, but they have been always so secretive with these things.... And somehow I don't think we'll ever know information like that... not in my lifetime, anyway.
There is no optical audio out. It does not support Dolby Digital or DTS at all. The only surround sound option is 5.1 LPCM over HDMI.
Well I don't agree Nintendo could have gone for a league of its own. The next X-box and the PS4 are going to offer more power but if you think about developers are still unlikely to alienate plenty of PC users, quiet the contrary as off the shelves PC are getting closer and closer of offering decent 3d capabilities. Nintendo could have been "there" aka low end PC gaming and make sure to receive decent ports for quiet a few year.
I disagree ERP pointed out that our console(s) are bottlenecked more than often by the CPU, the techreport pointed out that actually even AMD high speed quad core CPU can be a significant bottleneck (if you look at Intel quad core the difference can be meaty).
It puts things in perspective, a slow tri-core CPU with limited SIMD capability isn't going to do it.
Looks like Nintendo gimped the design for the sake of BC.
To me it's likely/obvious now that the EDRAM (if it's here) is not tightly linked to the ROPs which negate a lot of its advantages for rendering.
Honestly I just no longer care, I hope they take the beating they deserve... I just read the news about the add-on for the 3ds xl and I just don't get how costumers (primarily Japanese costumers) let them go away with that kind of crap.
I could definitely have done compromise on graphics quality (significant ones) for the sake of having a system my wife and I enjoy but it just not good enough for my money.
Anyway I feel like the odds for me to stuck to PC gaming for this gen are getting higher and higher.
It is if they plan to launch in 60 days.
If Nintendo was thinking like that, they most likely would have used a CPU more similar to Xenon to prevent optimization issues with 360/PS3 ports. Instead, the system seems to be alot more GPU-centered, which is a bit closer to what the PS4/Durango will be compared to current gen.
Speaking of the other next-gen consoles, we probably need some more solid info about them to determine how difficult it would be to downport games to the Wii U. It definitely will not be as difficult as it was for the Wii, as it had a phrased-out shader architecture, over 10x weaker, and over 5x less system RAM.
Megadrive1988
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There was a existing cpu which would allowed that, the power a2. A xenon improved in every way.
As for the balance between cpu and gpu in the next genration sytem let wait for the definitive specs. For example if Sony uses fiur streamroller cores it's not exactely a light investment on cpu either in area or power.
Either way there is no need to rationalize in the matter for eon, Nintendo went for a pretty sucky cpu set up.
Well I would still expect significant downgrades. And then there is the willingness of the editors to port. How much std.console gamers the wiiu will get by providing lesser graphic than what is available in the pc realm since the evergreen era? For all we know it will take quiet some sales.and to the proper audience to convince the one as Dice to port their engine to the system.
Well the lack of AA is a really strong hint to that, either way it would deliver on the 360 premises free AA.
Megadrive1988
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What about the possibility that devs have been making games without final silicon ?
Well, 360 is already GPU centric and as some of the guys here said, alot of games are also CPU bound. Durango and PS4 will definitely have improved CPUs (PS4 probably less since Cell is weird beast) and Wii U will be left with performance lacking on CPU side.
Next generation consoles will be baseline, those baselines will be pushed to their limits like this generation and Wii U will be left behind even if it wasn't that much weaker than it actually is. If you build game for 6-7GB (Durango is rumored 8GB) than you are going to have hard time downscaling that to 1GB. Such a hard time that I assume developers won't even bother. Not to talk about serious implications that CPU is even a bit behind this generation, and GPU being no where close to what they are packing.
Durango alpha kits (if those are legit) packs 6870-6950 GPU. Considering the time those where put and when consoles will actually be out, difference between them will be huge. Thats why I doubt Wii U will get ports.
Blazkowicz
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It depends on the game, if all you're doing is "corridor shooter with triggers and custcenes" and you can use 4x smaller textures, fewer effects etc. to get a scaled down game then this reminds me when games used to came in both 16bit version and handheld / 8 bit version. (funnily the MS-DOS version was the worse)
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