Wii U hardware discussion and investigation *rename

[function]

But thats not what they were trying to achieve. They wanted to make the package small. Adding the Wii components wouldn't allow that. The smaller the package, the less heat, the more performance they could get out of the console.

In the proposed scenario the tiny Wii CPU wouldn't be generating heat outside of Wii mode, where the normal CPU would be gated.

What I dont get is that porting games between consoles and PC's have always been a problem. Yet for the WiiU everyone expects it to magically take code from a differently designed machine and run it wonderfully. And when that doesn't happen it must be because the hardware sucks. I dont understand this jumping to conclusions based on launch games. When 360 games dont run well on PC's is it because the PC's are inferior?

You're choosing to look at one thing in isolation - "launch ports" - and ignore the bigger picture.

- The CPU is absolutely tiny
- The CPU is manufactured using a "big" and dated process
- The CPU draws very little power and is very slow
- The Wii U has a "horrible, slow CPU" according to at least one lead programmer who should know

Then there's the 'probably's
- The CPU is a re-heat of a very old CPU core with no secrets to yield
- The OoOE isn't even that good
- The SIMD functionality is as weak as heck

And the 360 is 7 years old. It's ancient. It's mummified. Even if the Wii U somehow starts to crawl past the 360 in terms of performance, it's not like that means it'll have ascended to it's rightful place amongst the stars where it can handle "next-gen" ports just fine.

The idea that launch ports exceeding (or even matching) the 360 at this point would require some major act of "brute force" CPU powah is just .... it's just .... weird. Like, man.

 

[function]

If you tilt and rotate the controller 45 degrees however there is a pronounced contrast shift. Darker greys go light, etc. Not that this is likely to occur during regular gameplay though as you need to tilt it a lot for this to show up. The screen is barely viewable as it is at such angles and no game would rely on such extremes of motion.

The panel might possibly be some form of higher-end VA, or possibly a simpler IPS variety. The contrast shift doesn't appear on my iPhone, which uses a high-end IPS panel of course.

Sounds like PVA, like my (rather wonderful) older monitor. I recently bought an e-IPS to go with it and the old ccfl PVA monitor knocks it into a cocked hat.

 

[MDX]

In the proposed scenario the tiny Wii CPU wouldn't be generating heat outside of Wii mode, where the normal CPU would be gated.



You're choosing to look at one thing in isolation - "launch ports" - and ignore the bigger picture.

- The CPU is absolutely tiny
- The CPU is manufactured using a "big" and dated process
- The CPU draws very little power and is very slow
- The Wii U has a "horrible, slow CPU" according to at least one lead programmer who should know

But what about the fact the CPU is for a game console, not a PC, or not for a server,
Its custom made for that purpose. And Im not sure what the definition of "slow" is from that programmer. Who was he again? Did he elaborate why he considered it slow? Or was it simply based on clock speeds in comparison to the current HD consoles? And what dev kit was he looking at?

But still, until we see what Nintendo can do with their own machine, like Sony has with the PS3. If we had to judge the PS3 from its ports, it would be stigmatized as an over-priced machine not being able to best the 360.

 

[Ruskie]

But what about the fact the CPU is for a game console, not a PC, or not for a server,
Its custom made for that purpose. And Im not sure what the definition of "slow" is from that programmer. Who was he again? Did he elaborate why he considered it slow? Or was it simply based on clock speeds in comparison to the current HD consoles? And what dev kit was he looking at?

But still, until we see what Nintendo can do with their own machine, like Sony has with the PS3. If we had to judge the PS3 from its ports, it would be stigmatized as an over-priced machine not being able to best the 360.

So if Nintendo develops their 1st party games intentionally avoiding heavy CPU work you will say "Here, you see the console is not limited"? A lot of 1st party games on PS3 specifically aim to use system strengths, while intentionally avoiding things it doesn't do well. 3rd party games have to find middle ground and can't just leave features or game designs aside to cater specific console.

3rd party developers like Ubisoft, Treyarch, EA etc. have big experience in HD development, much bigger than Nintendo and I'm pretty sure they know what they are doing and that their impressions of Wii U are pretty much on point. I'm also sure Nintendo never really cared about 3rd party support for Wii U aside from some late PS360 games and they concentrated on delivering machine that will benefit their pocket and 1st party development.

 

[MDX]

On the one side this is not the PS3 we are talking about. There are no paradigm shift or anything on how you treat your code or anything like that.

On the other hand, I do agree that we should not jump to premature conclusions either. It most likely has some particular weaknesses that could be overcome if the software was better targeted to the platform.

I feel the general consensus though is that one should expect the WiiU to be powerful enough that even less elegant code should be able to run well just because of brute force...

Well thats my point. Why do we have ports from the 360 to the PC running like crap?

For example, “Dark Souls”, developed by From Software and published by Namco Bandai, was released for the PC Aug. 24, over 10 months after the versions for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 were released.

The port to PC was not in development the entire time, however; due to a petition sent to From Software, the port was officially confirmed by Eurogamer.net April 11. That gave the developers at least four months to make the conversion, though possibly significantly longer since it was likely in development before the announcement.

That development time leaves absolutely no excuse as to why the “Dark Souls” port is as terrible as it is. The performance issues which were somewhat prevalent in the console versions, such as an erratic frame-rate, are even more pronounced in the PC version.

Sounds like whats happening with the WiiU
So, this problem must be because the PCs are using smaller CPUs.
No, that excuse will never be stated.

If the fix doesn’t lie in the amount of time or money a developer has, then it must be in how the money is allocated to those responsible for the ports based on how high of a priority ports are for that game. Placing ports too low on that priority list will just alienate the portion of the developer’s consumer base that uses the platform in question, usually the PC. If the porting departments were actually given the money they needed, bad ports like “Dark Souls” would not continue to be made.

So which developer has ported a WiiU launch game with proper financing and time?

 

[function]

But what about the fact the CPU is for a game console, not a PC, or not for a server,
Its custom made for that purpose. And Im not sure what the definition of "slow" is from that programmer. Who was he again? Did he elaborate why he considered it slow? Or was it simply based on clock speeds in comparison to the current HD consoles? And what dev kit was he looking at?

The CPU is small and low power consumption compared to what's in the PS360, never mind a current PC or server! And it's using an ancient 45nm process that the 360 moved on to more than two years ago, never mind the current 32nm stuff from AMD and 22nm from Intel.

And so what if it was custom made for that purpose (more likely modified slightly from something that wasn't)?

And do you really expect the Metro programmer to break an NDA by saying exactly why the Wii CPU is the horrible and slow chip we (almost) all seem to know it is? Do you really think he's an idiot who can't understand anything beyond clock speed?

You're clinging on white-knuckle style to the hope that everyone and everything that we know is wrong and that the Wii U CPU isn't extremely low performance by asking us to consider increasingly unlikely scenarios and drawing attention to increasingly meaningless thought exercises (e.g. "what about it not being a server!?!").

But still, until we see what Nintendo can do with their own machine, like Sony has with the PS3. If we had to judge the PS3 from its ports, it would be stigmatized as an over-priced machine not being able to best the 360.

No, we don't need to look at what Nintendo can do with their own machine as that won't tell us anything useful. We're looking at how it runs the multiplaform games that Nintendo claimed it would excel at, and listening to people who have to work with the machine.

All first party games do is drop FUD bombs because they:
a) Can't be compared fairly to anything on another platform
b) Always win against anything on the other guy's platform in the eyes of the bewitched

We already know that the Wii U will be able to run Nintendo games fine, and that they'll be in roughly the same ballpark as PS360 games, and that fanboys will declare them to be beautiful.

 

[function]

Well thats my point. Why do we have ports from the 360 to the PC running like crap?

Why do most run a shit load better?

Sounds like whats happening with the WiiU
So, this problem must be because the PCs are using smaller CPUs.
No, that excuse will never be stated.

The Wii U isn't a PC and BO, Assassins creed and Arkham city weren't made by From Software.

So which developer has ported a WiiU launch game with proper financing and time?

Well 4A Games won't be one of them.

 

[Rodéric]

Why do most run a shit load better?

A shitload better ? Which titles are you thinking about ?

 

[function]

A shitload better ? Which titles are you thinking about ?

Well ... Skyrim, Oblivion, Portal, Left For Dead, Doom 3, Crysis 2, Bioshock .... almost anything basically. Anything that's not a a solid 60 fps on console tends to run a shit load better on PC, assuming the CPU is half recent.

Although there are those annoying stutter issues which occur more often PC, which PC gamers seem to be oblivious to but that can really end up bugging the hell out of me ...

 

[pjbliverpool]

Well ... Skyrim, Oblivion, Portal, Left For Dead, Doom 3, Crysis 2, Bioshock .... almost anything basically. Anything that's not a a solid 60 fps on console tends to run a shit load better on PC, assuming the CPU is half recent.

Although there are those annoying stutter issues which occur more often PC, which PC gamers seem to be oblivious to but that can really end up bugging the hell out of me ...

I'm not sure I'd even use the 'almost' qualifier. I'm betting that review of Dark Souls wasn't taking into account resolution and quality settings differences between the two versions. I'd be extremely surprised if there is any game out there at all that wouldn't run a "shit load" better on my PC than the original console version. That's assuming a shit load better can be defined as higher/smoother frame rate at the same settings/resolution rather than the traditional expectations that seem to be layed upon the PC of needing to play everything at maximum / 1080p and still exceed console performance (which is certainly possible in well ported games).

I think there are situations where games perform worse on PC's that have much better CPU's than the consoles but those situations are obviously attributable to poorly ported games since we know for a fact that the PC CPU's are better. To compare that to the current WiiU situation is a bit absurd though given that we already strongly suspect the Wii CPU to be slower then Xenon/Cell and thus the far more obvious explanation is that the game runs worse on the WiiU because the CPU is slower, not because it's a bad port as in the case of the PC.

 

[MDX]

So if Nintendo develops their 1st party games intentionally avoiding heavy CPU work you will say "Here, you see the console is not limited"?

If Nintendo makes games not possible on current consoles, does it matter how they did it?

A lot of 1st party games on PS3 specifically aim to use system strengths, while intentionally avoiding things it doesn't do well. 3rd party games have to find middle ground and can't just leave features or game designs aside to cater specific console.

Thats their problem. They are third parties.
First party games drive sales. Third parties are along for the ride.
If they want to put effort and money in making games rivaling first party games, more power to them. They know that each console manufacturer will produce their own architecture for their own needs. Thats the risk they take making games for consoles.

 

[function]

I'm not sure I'd even use the 'almost' qualifier. I'm betting that review of Dark Souls wasn't taking into account resolution and quality settings differences between the two versions. I'd be extremely surprised if there is any game out there at all that wouldn't run a "shit load" better on my PC than the original console version. That's assuming a shit load better can be defined as higher/smoother frame rate at the same settings/resolution rather than the traditional expectations that seem to be layed upon the PC of needing to play everything at maximum / 1080p and still exceed console performance (which is certainly possible in well ported games).

I was meaning framerate when I was talking about running "a shit load better" - and I think there are some situations where the PC doesn't run any more more smoothly, and there are certainly situations where it doesn't run "a shit load" more smoothly (not that "shit load" is a particularly objective quantifier).

Stuff like Street Fighter, 60 fps arcade ports, etc. They'll certainly look at lot better on PC though. This is ignoring those with 120 fps displays of course.

One really big issue on the PC can be stutter though, where despite a higher average frame rate there's a higher degree of variance. A lot of PC gamers don't seem to see it - it's possibly a conditioning thing, like not caring about 60 fps. This is the kind of thing I'm talking about (though normally it's nowhere near as pronounced as it is on the Radeon here):

http://techreport.com/review/24051/geforce-versus-radeon-captured-on-high-speed-video

It affects the PC an awful of a lot more than it affects consoles, regardless of the hardware you throw at a game. If you could get console consistency with PC power that would be the ideal IMO. But this is OT, and it's certainly not the issue that the Wii U has. The Wii U is simply under performing relative to its competition.

I think there are situations where games perform worse on PC's that have much better CPU's than the consoles but those situations are obviously attributable to poorly ported games since we know for a fact that the PC CPU's are better. To compare that to the current WiiU situation is a bit absurd though given that we already strongly suspect the Wii CPU to be slower then Xenon/Cell and thus the far more obvious explanation is that the game runs worse on the WiiU because the CPU is slower, not because it's a bad port as in the case of the PC.

Yeah, that's how I see it. We know that basically anything above an Atom (and lower clocked Bobcat) has effectively more CPU capability than the Xbox 360, so you can "blame" the port or some driver issue. The Wii U on the other hand a far more likely candidate for the cause.

 

[MDX]

I think there are situations where games perform worse on PC's that have much better CPU's than the consoles but those situations are obviously attributable to poorly ported games since we know for a fact that the PC CPU's are better. To compare that to the current WiiU situation is a bit absurd though given that we already strongly suspect the Wii CPU to be slower then Xenon/Cell and thus the far more obvious explanation is that the game runs worse on the WiiU because the CPU is slower, not because it's a bad port as in the case of the PC.

Ah yes, the double standard.

If it doesn't work on the PC its the developer's fault.
If it doesn't work on a particular console, in this case the WiiU, its the console's fault.

Optimization is required when you port from environment A to environment B.
For some reason people want ported games to run on the WiiU flawlessly without optimization (even though many of the games originally were not even optimized on their intended hardware). Obviously Nintendo has created an environment to offer developers the opportunity to port their games quickly, but they still have to put the effort to optimize the game for the new hardware. Obviously for many games this has not been done or done on a limited scale.

 

[function]

If Nintendo makes games not possible on current consoles, does it matter how they did it?

You will have no way of knowing whether Nintendo have done things that are not possible on other consoles, particularly on the CPU side.

Thats their problem. They are third parties.

No, it's also a consumers problem if their platform doesn't get a game they might enjoy, and it's definitely Nintendo's problem if customers stay away from the Wi U because it's getting inferior ports (or not getting those ports at all).

First party games drive sales. Third parties are along for the ride.

PS360 this generation?

If they want to put effort and money in making games rivaling first party games, more power to them. They know that each console manufacturer will produce their own architecture for their own needs. Thats the risk they take making games for consoles.

It's quite possible that a third party game on Wii U could run worse than it does on the 360 while also being "better" (in one or several ways) than a first party game.

 

[pjbliverpool]

Stuff like Street Fighter, 60 fps arcade ports, etc. They'll certainly look at lot better on PC though. This is ignoring those with 120 fps displays of course.

Even with 120hz display some games are limited to 60fps anyway (like Street Figter and Rage). So you're correct the framerate won't be any better at all in those cases. I'd still say the game runs better though given you can then run at the same framerate with higher resolutions etc... as you say.

I'm not sure how big an issue the stutter is, I don't seem to get any at all (apart from when the framerate gets to low of course) with my 670 but it could be that Radeons are effected more, or just a general performance thing, i.e. people running games at too high settings for the systems to handle. There's obviously the problem of vsync as well which will cause stutter if the framerate drops below 60/30 fps which comes back to the general performance thing. I'm running a 120hz monitor so just leave vsync turned off all the time since there's not much risk of going over 120fps at the settings I play at. Maybe that's why I don't see stutter. Or maybe it's a combination of all of the above, i.e. NV hardware + plenty of performance + no vsync.

 

[pjbliverpool]

Ah yes, the double standard.

If it doesn't work on the PC its the developer's fault.
If it doesn't work on a particular console, in this case the WiiU, its the console's fault.

How is that a double standard? It's a well documented fact that some (most) PC CPU's are significantly more powerful than Xenon. Therefore if a port performs badly it can only be down to a poor optimisation job or a driver bug which would soon be patched. Obviously I'm ignoring the GPU here on the assumption that said PC also has a significantly faster GPU than Xenos.

With the WiiU, yes sure you still have the poor optimisation possibility. But you also have a CPU that from what we know so far, is at best as powerful as Xenon and probably weaker. Therefore you clearly have a second option of the WiiU simply being unable to match the CPU performance of current consoles.

Now given that we at least suspect the WiiU CPU to be weaker than Xenon and given that the WiiU is struggling to keep up with the current consoles n CPU limited scenarios, isn't it at least as likely to be down to the CPU's capability as it is to be with the port job? So why make the assumption that all these games must be bad ports when there is another possiblity that is at least as likely.

 

[spacemonkeys]

The performance dips with the wii u version of multiplats don't seem to be as big as I would have expected given how low the clock is and how weak people say it is.
I very much doubt that these dev teams had the time or experience to make the most of what the cpu has to offer, so I think the wii u's cpu could reach parity with the 360's in terms of performance.
Next gen consoles however is another matter.

 

[Rodéric]

I've never been impressed with a PC port of a console game in any area (Neither image quality, performance or UI/Controls), so it's hard to consider them running a "shitload" better, except if they run awfuly on consoles, obviously.

I really want to go back making games to see what I can do with a Wii U now...

 

[pjbliverpool]

I've never been impressed with a PC port of a console game in any area (Neither image quality, performance or UI/Controls), so it's hard to consider them running a "shitload" better, except if they run awfuly on consoles, obviously.

I really want to go back making games to see what I can do with a Wii U now...

Well that just comes down to personal preference. Most console games run a sub 720p and 30fps. If you keep graphics quality settings the same then most decent pcs will handle that same game at 1080p and 60fps. That would certainly be a big benefit to some people but I guess it depends on the size of your display and sensitivity to framerate and image quality. Objectively speaking though, I don't see how pushing 2-3x the pixels at 2x the framerate cant be considered running 'a lot' better even if high res and high framerate aren't all that big a deal to you. There certainly a big deal to a lot of console gamers when you look at the attention the likes of digital foundries face off articles get. Or for that matter, the recent talk in this thread of the wiiu's technical worth being measured in exactly those metrics.

 

[Arwin]

I've never been impressed with a PC port of a console game in any area (Neither image quality, performance or UI/Controls), so it's hard to consider them running a "shitload" better, except if they run awfuly on consoles, obviously.

I really want to go back making games to see what I can do with a Wii U now...

Well on a technical level it's never particularly impressive that they managed to get a 720p 30fps console game running in 1080p at 60fps on a high-end PC, sometimes only with higher textures and better AA, but it's still nice when you happen to have a high-end enough PC .