Wii U hardware discussion and investigation *rename

I might be wrong here, but maybe - just maybe - not everyone agrees with you on this. Maybe they dont see 'exotic hardware' or on paper advantages as something to base their enthusiasm for a peice of hardware on. Maybe their optimistic because they know for a fact there'll be some beautiful games on the system based on what we know is in there and what we know games developers can do with this range of hardware.

It's unfair to call it "Kool-Aid drinking" when some people have a different opinion than you on a subject. Sure some people are just huge Nintendo fans and wont let anybody diss "their" system - just like with any other console. But not all.

 

Not to mention that even at the max rumoured to be in devkits (8GB) only about half of that will likely be in the final system. And what is actually available for games would still be unknown from that estimate.

 

Considering most of them are just console ports made for 512 Mb of memory and 32 bits O.S. it is no so extrange. I just hope real next gen consoles have at least 4Gb just for games and 6 or 8 cores CPUs, so we can see a jump in games, and not only in graphics.

 

I wonder how A10 APU (+ may be 6670) can bring that level of gfx stuff to my TV, even on 720p

 

None!

 

Well dont forget its a closed system we're talking about here. And seeing what developers have managed to squeeze out of 7 year old tech (take a bow Halo 4, Uncharted 3) I'd say an A10 couple with a e6670 would be a pretty capable systme for the next few years. Remember with console gaming games are developed right to the very edges of the hardwares limits, with very few overheads sucking power away. The equivalent PC system isnt directly comparable.

 

Yeah take a look at what the better developers did with Wii. Wii isn't even DirectX 8-class and yet we had them scraping together visuals like those in Super Mario Galaxy. Crafty programmers and good artists are what really matter. The jump to modern features and 720p+ support will make a gigantic difference compared to Wii. And really I wonder if Wii-U will be primarily judged against Wii because of how separate Wii was from PS360.

Although it is of course clear that it is fully possible to blow Wii-U away. Just judging by power consumption alone, if PS4 and Xbox 3 are ~150W systems again they will be well beyond the specifications of Wii-U. But I don't think the differences will be as staggering as against Wii, a 480p console with seriously obsolete hardware.

 

err, this dosent make much sense. Resolution is just resolution and nothing more. They could do 1080p every game on current consoles. They would just be less pretty but cleaner. You can do a more compex stuff at lower resolution no matter how powerful the hardware is which actually increases costs

Publishers are treating Wii U like a five year too late current-gen system mainly because the specs are below a low end gaming PC. With no installed base. Its dead last in terms of importance looking at 2013 announcements. Not a good place to be at this stage unless target is casuals and minimal 3rd party core support

 

Third parties may wait out so they can reap the profits when the console has established itself, or they wish for their human knowledge and maturity of software tools to build up so the porting is cheaper (less costly bugs and framerate issues)

 

This means nothing. Its a closed system, ie not comparable to the equivalent 'on paper' PC specs. You should know this from the last gen: Do you really think if you had a PC with XBox360 specs you'd be able to acheive the graphics of Halo 4 or Uncharted 3**??

For what its worth, PS4 specs on paper are equivalent to a low end gaming PC aswell. Doesn't mean squat though.


**Edit: i realise these games being console exclusives means thats not really test-able on PC. Try it with BF3 instead. See how far you get with a 360-spec matching PC

 

There are no publicly released specs for either PS4 or Xbox720.

 

Max rumoured is 12GB for Durango.

 

ArsTechnica has a preview of WiiU on their site. I was so surprise to read that WiiU comes with a 15W power supply. Is that true or a typo?

 

75W IIRC.

 

I just spent same time to calculate a few interesting data about the WII U gpu
The ARTX GPU in the gamecube had 10 GB/sec bandwidth,the WII has something like 15 GB/sec
For comparison:the X360 has 32 GB/sec bandwidth to the edram.

So possibly the WII U edram has to have at least 450 GB/sec bandwidth and that is more by one magnitude than the x360.

Simply to be able to be able to play the WII games.

Possibly one of the strongest point of the WII U has to be the gpu.Simply just to be fully compatible with the original ARTX GPU.

 

You're aware that's an utter nonsense comparison, right? The eDRAM<>main RAM bus isn't the equivalent of the working BW of Wii U. That'd be about 250 GB/s or whatever it was internal BW in the eDRAM on Xenos. Wii's main BW is presumably low ~20 GB/s DDR3 connection to the eDRAM.

 

I didn't say there were. I'm just going by the same figures others were referring to when making the assumption WiiU will end up far weaker: the "leaked" dev kit rumours.

I was talking specifically about ps4 rumoured to be having 8GB in devkits, i thought that's what was being referred to (although reading back I maybe be mistaken there)

 

bomlat ... Wow. Just wow. So much wrong and utter bullshit.

 

ok,how the ATI can emulate the Hollywood 1 megs texture cache?

 

The WII came with a 45 Watt, still havent found a picture of the WII U PSU