The system can't really access any more textures than what an X360 can do because of the low memory bandwidth... This statement would only be true if the memory speed would increase in parallel with the memory size.
Wii U hardware discussion and investigation *rename
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The system can't really access any more textures than what an X360 can do because of the low memory bandwidth... This statement would only be true if the memory speed would increase in parallel with the memory size.
Which makes you wonder what the point was? 2GBs RAM, of which a half is usable. Why not even just have the game RAM larger to fit larger worlds rather than better assets. Procedural content could be made at load-time to populate the RAM, for example.
Inuhanyou
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Well, you know how Nintendo's software side is. Most of the time they have really learned nothing but to have a basic menu from where to launch games from. Its kind of amazing they even got this far.
In comparison to Microsoft for example which uses only 32mb for virtually everything the 360 has to do outside of games, they are very amateurish. But Microsoft is a software company, so they better be good at that.
It also has me confused as to where the rumors of the huge OS footprint for nextbox comes from at the same time though. Scaling that up in multiples should still only necessitate a small fraction of OS resources if we're talking 4gb to 8gb in total.
In comparison to Microsoft for example which uses only 32mb for virtually everything the 360 has to do outside of games, they are very amateurish. But Microsoft is a software company, so they better be good at that.
It also has me confused as to where the rumors of the huge OS footprint for nextbox comes from at the same time though. Scaling that up in multiples should still only necessitate a small fraction of OS resources if we're talking 4gb to 8gb in total.
Which it would if you, say, added another four RAM chips and widened the interface correspondingly. This would actually be my favourite enhancement of the WiiU design. Three times the RAM space for games, twice the memory bandwidth, at the cost of four more DRAMs, maybe another PCB layer, and a larger pinout for the MCM (and the on-chip circuitry to drive them). Total cost is difficult to estimate, but should be in the neighbourhood of $10. Power draw should be largely unaffected. Add 25mm2 of ALUs (160 or so at 40nm) for good measure.
But that's not the WiiU anymore.
That wouldn't solve the problem, they could just as well load more stuff from the disc to populate RAM (okay, maybe the load times would feel like forever)
The problem is actually making use of whatever is already there in the memory. The slow bus really cripples the entire system, making it very hard to imagine why they did not deal with such an obvious bottleneck...
I think they chose 2GBs just because the RAM was cheapest at that density. Doubt they considered the gameplay possibilities that much.
Because it's likely Microsoft's priorities have changed. In order to turn Durango into the set top box they wish, they need a lot more RAM. It'll be built from the ground with heavy set top box considerations, very unlike 360.
Besides, if the rumors are true of 8GB RAM, then they'll have it to spare so to speak. Anyways the last digital foundry article put the Durango OS reserve at 2GB rather than 3, which is a little better.
Lets say the PS4 competition comes in at 2-4GB RAM, then 6GB+2GB OS should be more than fine by comparison. Besides the fact if the RAM is slow as expected their may be limited benefit to more game RAM.
Knowing Nintendo that was probably exactly it. They seem to care about little but cheap nowdays.
It woudn't solve the issue of BW for textures and stuff, but it would add more variety to a world where streaming is an issue. You could have twice the variety of buildings and textures in a Fable/Elder Scrolls game as the same on PS360, still only showing the same amount of content at any given moment.
But why then lock devs out of half of it?? That's the really confusing part. "Let's put in 2 GBs because it's cheap. But the system BW can only make use 500 MBs at a time, so let's create an arbitrary limit to what games can access." I understand putting in a decent amount of RAM just because it's cheap, but I don't understand the limitation. Devs could still find a way to make use of extra RAM, even if its not anything particularly exciting.
Inuhanyou
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Is DDR4 really so slow as to be an issue? I had heard it was inherently twice as fast as DDR3 memory. Would that not help depending on the clocks and amount/speed of EDRAM?
Hybrid Memory Cube?
Besides using what's in the memory, consider that you have to get data into memory from somewhere whether it be from the disk (horribly slow) or from the HDD/flash (also slow compared to memory), then you realize that having more memory even if it's not faster, will improve situations where you have larger datasets, even if it's not all "used" at the same time.
If you had 600MB's of data for a level, of which 300MB's is used at any given point, on WiiU the whole dataset could be held in memory, but on the otherhand on the Xbox360 you would have to do a transfer from the slow media to memory before being used (mid level loads)
So yeah, Wii U won't be able to use more of that memory at a given time due to bandwidth, but that doesn't mean there isn't an advantage of having more memory.
Don't forget that Microsoft might include the next gen Kinect with every box, it would make sense that they would just make that an OS level function, so developers would just use the API and it wouldn't take any resources away from the games allotment of ram/cpu.
Also, MS (smartly) limited themselves to 32MB's of ram with the Xbox360, which was great for developers, but was a PITA for themselves as they needed to squeeze all these changes they've done with the new iterations into that measly footprint. I would be that the dashboard would not have been so laggy if it could use more memory. They may want to "reserve" more for themselves this time around, for futurerpoofing.
Overall, it seems that Console OS's are getting more complex, offering more services than they did at the beginning of the previous generation. Though, if MS/Sony don't do true multi-tasking like the Wii U does (it has to to really make use of the secondary screen for the web browser and such), they might not need as much. It wouldn't surprise me if they nabbed 512-1024MB's for OS
Inuhanyou
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJi4DAbS4AY
Take a look at lego city undercover, a game supposedly built ground up for the wii u for years. (go for 720p) and fill up the screen)
Low resolution textures, very blurry backrounds(probably to hide pop in), framerate hits, as well as doze jaggies. Its a mess! That can't all be the CPU and ram's fault right?
Take a look at lego city undercover, a game supposedly built ground up for the wii u for years. (go for 720p) and fill up the screen)
Low resolution textures, very blurry backrounds(probably to hide pop in), framerate hits, as well as doze jaggies. Its a mess! That can't all be the CPU and ram's fault right?
It's a lego game. Nuff said. Looking for technical accomplishments in such a title isn't going to get you very far. It's more a question of, "is the game fun?"
From what I've seen of it, the answer is "yes". Of course, what I've seen is just the E3 presentation, but I'm still very curious about it.
*Edit: I watched your link. Yeah, game looks fun. Loved the Shawshank Redemption spoof... Also, don't trust youtube to gauge framerates correctly. The 720P encoding is sharp enough however to show that the game doesn't seem to use any antialiasing.
Looking for technical accomplishments in such a title isn't going to get you very far. It's more a question of, "is the game fun?"From what I've seen of it, the answer is "yes".
Of course, what I've seen is just the E3 presentation, but I'm still very curious about it.*Edit: I watched your link. Yeah, game looks fun. Loved the Shawshank Redemption spoof...
Also, don't trust youtube to gauge framerates correctly. The 720P encoding is sharp enough however to show that the game doesn't seem to use any antialiasing.
The opening SW games from Travellers Tales were pretty impressive 60fps titles on PS2. Lego:LOTR released last year scored a >80% Metacritic and certainly doesn't have the technical shortcomings of this Wuu game. Googling reveals TT Fusion developed both Lego:LOTR and Lego City Undercover, so they aren't completely green regards Wii's GPU architecture, but this also looks like an open environment which is a different set of requirements to prior games.It's a lego game. Nuff said.
Inuhanyou
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Trine 2 isn't a technically intensive game to begin with in any real fashion. Considering that the wii u version is coming out after the other versions, it makes sense to improve it in some ways. Of course if your working only on optimizing the Wii U sku, the strengths of the platform will be seen as well.
Under the right conditions(aka avoiding any super huge CPU tasks and bandwidth hogs, i'm certain that the console has the potential to surpass 360's visuals. By how much is the question.
It has a more mature graphical feature set and shader model, much more EDRAM and even if the most likely scenario is that the GPU is an extremely low end RV730, the general grunt of the GPU's in that family are still beyond Xenos and even more so beyond the RSX.
On the other hand, we do have the other components of the console to think about such as the low bandwidth for the main memory and apparently limp CPU.
Don't know what Nintendo was thinking, assuming that a large amount of EDRAM bandwidth would actually make up for all the other bottlenecks in the console, but people like Shifty may have the knowledge to give that answer. Only things i can think of is form factor, cost, heating issues or an extremely strict power draw requirement.
Under the right conditions(aka avoiding any super huge CPU tasks and bandwidth hogs, i'm certain that the console has the potential to surpass 360's visuals. By how much is the question.
It has a more mature graphical feature set and shader model, much more EDRAM and even if the most likely scenario is that the GPU is an extremely low end RV730, the general grunt of the GPU's in that family are still beyond Xenos and even more so beyond the RSX.
On the other hand, we do have the other components of the console to think about such as the low bandwidth for the main memory and apparently limp CPU.
Don't know what Nintendo was thinking, assuming that a large amount of EDRAM bandwidth would actually make up for all the other bottlenecks in the console, but people like Shifty may have the knowledge to give that answer. Only things i can think of is form factor, cost, heating issues or an extremely strict power draw requirement.
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