Wii U hardware discussion and investigation *rename

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(((interference))) said:
Yeah, I'm actually amazed by the wholesale Kool-aid drinking, in fact the Nintendo fanboys are worse than the SDF and their beloved PS3.

At least the latter have an on paper advantage and exotic hardware to point to - as someone else said in the thread, the expectations of Nintendo fans are continually let down by Nintendo and their relentless penny pinching (or what, in many cases, certainly seems like incompetence) and yet they remain as loyal and optimistic as ever (contrast this with the vitriolic response to the recent news hinting that the PS4 might only have an APU).

I have no idea how MDX and others think that an 8 core x86 CPU, with 8GB RAM and at least a 2TF Sea Islands based GPU is going to be only 'slightly better' than a 0.5 TF HD6670 (or similar), with 2GB of RAM and a three overclocked Broadway cores.

There's will definitely be a significant visual difference between games produced for the two.

Sure, it won't be as big a gap as last gen to this gen, but (from the BF4 leak) it'll at least be the difference between Battlefield 3 running at 1080p,60fps on Ultra with 64 players and the current versions of BF3 on consoles, running at 720p, 30 fps, with the PC equivalent of low settings.
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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.
 
SargonHamurabi said:
Because they probably don't believe that's what the hardware in those systems will be. If it were, then yeah it would be much more powerful.
But I don't see any of the next gen consoles with an 8-core x86 CPU (I'm betting on a 6-core something or other) or 8GB's of RAM, considering that playing most PC games on high right now don't use up more than 1-2GB's RAM. 4GB would be much more likely.
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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.
 
SargonHamurabi said:
...considering that playing most PC games on high right now don't use up more than 1-2GB's RAM. 4GB would be much more likely.
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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.
 
Last E3's showing of Watch Dogs, Star Wars 1313 and Agni's Philosophy publically demonstrate pretty concretely 3rd parties are already deep into next gen development
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I wonder how A10 APU (+ may be 6670) can bring that level of gfx stuff to my TV, even on 720p
 
GuestLV said:
I wonder how A10 APU (+ may be 6670) can bring that level of gfx stuff to my TV, even on 720p
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msia2k75 said:
:LOL:

None!
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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.
 
MDX said:
when I hear developers focusing on, for example, 720p regardless how powerful a console is next gen. Thats what they are telling us. You can ignore all that at your own peril.
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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)
 
babybumb said:
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
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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 ;)
 
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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?
 
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 :D 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.
 
bomlat said:
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 :D and that is more by one magnitude than the x360.
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:???: 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.
 
SedentaryJourney said:
There are no publicly released specs for either PS4 or Xbox720.
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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.


XpiderMX said:
Max rumoured is 12GB for Durango.
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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.
 
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