Wii U hardware discussion and investigation *rename

ARM has been confirmed?

 

Has any resolutions for 3rd party titles been confirmed yet?

 

The Wii U was said to use around 40W at load, the 75W figure is the rating of the PSU.

 

It's been GAF confirmed by blu. Can't find a source right now though. Anyone?

Benn confimed for a while I think. Almost all 720p, the odd one at 1080p?

 

But no sub-hd's at all?

edit:
And is there a list?

 

Actually according to Nintendo (Iwata, i think pre e3 ND) the console uses 40w average, 75w max. he didnt say that was it's rating.

There were many discussion (arguments) over whether the 75w figure was the max draw for the PSU or the max draw for the console:

On one side 75w draw for PSU (@ 70%** efficiency) would mean about 50w can be pumped to the console. The argument was that Iwata wouldn't have quoted the console draw, as people are only concerned with what its draw forom the wall socket is.

On the other side 75w draw for the console means the psu (at 70%** efficiency) would have to be drawing a minimum of about 110w to provide 75w to the console. The argument was that he was talking about the consoles hardware at the time and said "the console will use 75w of power at maximum usage". Why would he quote the rating of the psu? It'll never reach its rating in safe usage. Plus, if you buy a 600w psu for your PC, thats what it outputs - you dont care what it draws from the wall, right?

Looking at the idle power usage from Anand and the in game usage (30-40w) - I'm inclined to believe the first scenario is probably correct though.


**I'm using 70% as some argued that psu's are 60% efficient, while other said a minimum of 80% was standard nowadays as per the 80+ standard in PC psu's.

 

Not that I've seen/heard no. Even COD BLOPS 2 is not sub HD and thats usually the main culprit for sneaky sub-HD rendering

There was a pretty handy chart on GAF showing all games and resolutions/framerates. I'm at work though so can't find it...

 

Especially with BLOPS 2 I'd wait for DF's indepth analysis. ME3, ZombieU and the Nintendo titles seem to run at 720p but I have doubts that it could manage a COD game at full 720p if it already has framerate problems with nearly every other multiplatform game.

Then again a user wrote at GAF about BLOPS falling into sub-30fps in certain areas so it might be 1280*720 instead of the X360's 880*720... or maybe there's no MSAA? Anyway, we need DF's captures and graphs to be certain and now that they have a Wii U it's only a matter of time.

 

Nope.

According to AnandTech who did the tear down...

"The system is powered by a 75W external power supply..."

When you consider that and the fact that NSMBU is using 33.0W its pretty obvious that 75W isn't the power draw at load.

 

Depends on your definition of HD. At a first glance I don't think too many people could tell the difference between 880*720 and 1280*720. So let's wait until the pixels are counted.

I mean there was a guy whom I had to tell that his PS3 version of BLOPS is not only not 1080p but only 960*540 instead. He was really surprised to learn that, he believed every game runs at 1080 on the PS3.

 

Aren't the other versions confirmed 720p this time aswell though? I thought this was their first COD in actual HD or something?

The comparison video on YouTube didnt show any slow down, but thats only of one small section I suppose. In many places it actually looks much crisper and with less blurring going on. The lighting also looks a bit more natural to me. I believe its being compared to the PS3 version though...


Edit: Sorry, didnt catch your edit! There is only one defenition of HD

 

No, neither version is running in 720p.

 

No, all the BLOPS2 console versions are sub-HD, but the X360 version looks a little bit better than before, because it only scales the image vertically. PS3 seems to have dynamic resolution adjustment to improve framerate (somewhat).

Check DF's article for details and some nice images comparing the console versions to 'normal' HD res PC screenshots.

 

Would have been real sweet to see NSMBU run at 1080P on my nice 40" flatscreen TV... Oh well. 720P is quite nice too compared to cruddy old 480P of the Wii.

 

If the Wii U really is weaker than the consoles of the 7th generation at 300$, then the console was designed incompetently. I don't care how large the R&D department is, these are 7 year old consoles they are going against (with the only caveat being that they launched for a higher price). Even if you consider the money spent manufacturing the gamepad, where is the rest of that budget going? It can't be for a large profit margin, because they are selling at a loss. It would have to be plain bad selection of hardware at a good usefulness/cost ratio.

Although, it is a bit too early to make this judgement.

 

It's hard to imagine how they are selling at a loss.

 

Well, I would guess that if they take in account all the launch expanses, it is pretty easy to understand.
For the company pov, financially, the launch expanses are part of the costs there are no reason to discard them.
Say they are in the grey, add the marketing campaign, new online infrastructure, etc. you got there fast. You got to tell the investors that you might loss some money.

 

Maybe not. The case design is limiting power and heat output. Performance per dollar is badly compromised here for this casing. The gamepad IS much more complex than a $50 chinese android tablet

Also there is a huge difference in supply chain deals with companies and Wii U is using some custom stuff.

Apple has the best deals bar none for a company that is not Samsung . I think Nintendo is way behind Sony for example because they source so many components for electronics

 

If the controller costs them more than $50 - $60 to make then even that was designed incompetently.

 

Iwata confirmed they are selling at a loss. I don't think the game pad would cost too much to produce either. They are some cheap sub £50.00 7" Android tablets out there with inbuilt gyros, cameras, WIfi and onboard CPU/GPU. I wonder where Nintendo spent most of their budget it's definitely not on Memory or the CPU. It might have gone on the O/S side because they are really behind Microsoft and Sony on that front. It may have been cheaper to go with a custom version of Linux or Android than the in house solution they have?

I also think the packaging and paper work is excessive compared to Apple products. They could have saved a few dollars there and ploughed it into RAM sticks.