Wii U hardware discussion and investigation *rename

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AlNets said:
The article needs updating.
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I beg to differ. The Wii U was released in Q4 2012. That is the actual hardware they pulled it out from. At the very least provide something to prove it has 160 stream processors. None of the Radeon HD 4xxx or 5xxx cards even have 160 sm. Further more it wouldn't explain why developers praise the GPU and the possibility of porting titles with higher quality.
 
AlNets said:
The article needs updating.
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Indeed wasn't 55nm "confirmed' (though nothing official) and by extension the number of SIMD when we heard of Renesas entering financial turmoil and how it could affect Nintendo? The story gets old I do not remember well :(
 
Neighborhoodcroak said:
None of the Radeon HD 4xxx or 5xxx cards even have 160 sm.
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That doesn't actually mean anything since the shader arrays are configurable, and rv7xx SIMDs generally were in strips of 80:4 ALU:tex, and actually, the Llano APUs were configured with 160:8.

Brazos may have been the only exception with 80:8 ratio.

liolio said:
Indeed wasn't 55nm "confirmed' (though nothing official) and by extension the number of SIMD when we heard of Renesas entering financial turmoil and how it could affect Nintendo? The story gets old I do not remember well :(
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I think Chipworks eventually mentioned 45nm after the initial 55nm, but it's a bit misleading since we don't know how their processes compare to other fabs.

I can't remember the Renesas financial announcement either. :p
 
Neighborhoodcroak said:
I beg to differ. The Wii U was released in Q4 2012. That is the actual hardware they pulled it out from. At the very least provide something to prove it has 160 stream processors. None of the Radeon HD 4xxx or 5xxx cards even have 160 sm. Further more it wouldn't explain why developers praise the GPU and the possibility of porting titles with higher quality.
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I wouldnt get to caught up with this, its either 160 shaders that outperform the 240 shaders in the Xenos, or 320 shaders that perform as expected. It doesnt really matter which is is, the fact is developers are seeing a GPU that has roughly 50% more performance than the Xenos and has a much better feature set. Even if its 320, the 352 Glfop is still a long ways off the 1.2 Tflop GPU that powers the X1, or the 1.8 Tflop gpu that powers the PS4. In outright performance, its much closer to current gen than next gen.
 
Yeah. Renesas was bought by Sony recently I think.

Either way I'm willing to defend 320 stream processors because 172 GFLOPS is not enough.

Xbox One has slightly higher clocks so it's actually 1.31 TFLOP.

1310 - 352 = 958. 1840 - 1310 = 530. Yes, there is an obvious gap in performance and the fact the latter uses more modern GPU architecture would set it roughly a 2x gap from the X1 to PS4. Personally I'm not concerned with how close it is to "last gen" since I already consider it [Wii U] next gen. My issue is how far the visual disparity between all 3 consoles will be.

Quite frankly the X1 and PS4 is lumped together but the PS4 has much more power behind it and is architecturally easier to design. Their actual hardware architecture is so close that the comparison is more like apple to apple as opposed to the 360 vs. PS3 where it was like Oranges to broccoli.
 
Neighborhoodcroak said:
Yeah. Renesas was bought by Sony recently I think.

Either way I'm willing to defend 320 stream processors because 172 GFLOPS is not enough.

Xbox One has slightly higher clocks so it's actually 1.31 TFLOP.

1310 - 352 = 958. 1840 - 1310 = 530. Yes, there is an obvious gap in performance and the fact the latter uses more modern GPU architecture would set it roughly a 2x gap from the X1 to PS4. Personally I'm not concerned with how close it is to "last gen" since I already consider it [Wii U] next gen. My issue is how far the visual disparity between all 3 consoles will be.

Quite frankly the X1 and PS4 is lumped together but the PS4 has much more power behind it and is architecturally easier to design. Their actual hardware architecture is so close that the comparison is more like apple to apple as opposed to the 360 vs. PS3 where it was like Oranges to broccoli.
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I agree, the X1 has been lumped together with the PS4 for a long time now, and its about time that changes. The X1 is struggling to really separate itself from the Wii U in the same way the PS4 is. The PS4 can not only surpass the graphical fidelity of the Wii U by a large margin, but also do it in 1080p native. The X1, as it stands, seems like it would struggle to run a top tier 720p 30fps Wii U game in 1080p 60fps, where as the PS4 could easily do that. In my opinion, the PS4 is the only console that has made the full leap to next gen, the other two are making far to many compromises to be considered next gen, in terms of graphics anyway.
 
Goodtwin said:
In my opinion, the PS4 is the only console that has made the full leap to next gen, the other two are making far to many compromises to be considered next gen, in terms of graphics anyway.
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I strongly agree with what you're saying however the issue is defining "next gen." Your standards are probably higher than mines so I consider all the consoles "next gen". The issue is that the graphical fidelity between all 3 is greater than other 3D console generations (ignoring the Wii.)

Take the N64 for example. 480p at that (for the consoles) is analogous to 1080p today. 480p was considered high definition and in the next gen 480p was the bare minimum/standard resolution.

So today 1080p IMO should have been standard but it does go with what you're saying about both consoles struggling for 1080p (there are games 1080p for them, but nowhere near what we should be seeing.)
Hopefully this will be SOMEWHAT resolved as developers get used to the hardware. At least we're not getting AFAIK sub-par resolutions x<720.
 
Wii U is not a power house as Xbox One or PlayStation 4 in comparison and I think that it does not matter as much as before really. Wii U has enough to do what it is suppose to do and we see games on Wii U that exceed potential of 7th generation, it is not a leap when comparing it with Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 yet it is a leap when comparing it to Wii.

Next generation or Next Gen as a term should not be used in a sense of specifications of consoles and its computational performance as it is a marketing gimmick which is used for dummies that don't have basic technical knowledge/experience and anyone with basic technical knowledge/experience using these terms is degrading for himself as he is unintentionally low balling his personal knowledge...

Generations are not defined by solely by visuals and specifications, but rather by games... Specifications were important when came to bits and by end of 90is/early 2000is it started to be less important. PlayStation won, PlayStation 2 won and Wii won... Guess what, they were weakest consoles(okay Dreamcast weakest)...

Gameboy was POC and it dominated over vastly superior competition, GBA ruled the market by its self and DS suprised everyone with a knock-out against its main and only competitor and 3DS is not dominating its main rival and survives well against its gaijin competition the smartphone/tablets thanks to its games that it has that are way better in quality.

Anyway we already see that Wii U is above competition, Super Smash Bros U gives a smack down to PlayStation All-Star Battle Royale and Mario Kart 8 ran over Little Big Planet Kart from footage that Nintendo has released... Let alone Monolith Soft's X that is visually more impressive than probably any RPG available when we consider the scale and draw distance.

Wii at first get a lot of games that were ported from PlayStation 2 that ran badly on Wii's hardware thus Wii should have been looked as inferior machine because of sloppy ports? No and I don't remember anybody saying that about Wii and when I see what people say about Wii U... I am like... That double standard... *facepalm*

For god sake... Doom 3 ran like POS on Xbox 360 versus on original Xbox, yes Xbox 360 version was superior in resolution and detail, but that was about it.

If you people keep pushing 160 SPU theory then you will continue to be proven wrong by games that are on Wii U, a damn simple 2D indie game with water physics on Xbox 360 ran at 720P30FPS and when it came out on Wii U it ran at 1080P60FPS.
 
This is a technical discussion. Appeals for people to stop using the term 'generation' as everyone does (without confusion) doesn't help with that, nor does mention of market performance (really doesn't matter whether the lowest power console 'wins' or not).

Let alone Monolith Soft's X that is visually more impressive than probably any RPG available when we consider the scale and draw distance.
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First image I clicked -
http://uk.ign.com/images/games/x-monolith-wii-u-112162/52fe6756005b12b2801e0bc7

720p and horizontally upscaled. Compared to a PS3 title that looks similar, White Knight Chronicles (http://www.playstationwallpapers.co...chronicles_62159_whiteknightchronicles-14.jpg), we have a similar look at 720p native on PS3, on an early title. Of course, resolution isn't everything, but your attempt at a slam-dunk comparison is clearly inadequate proof of Wii U's superior performance over the PS360.
 
backgroundpersona said:
If you people keep pushing 160 SPU theory then you will continue to be proven wrong by games that are on Wii U, a damn simple 2D indie game with water physics on Xbox 360 ran at 720P30FPS and when it came out on Wii U it ran at 1080P60FPS.
Click to expand...

I'm pushing the 320 SPU theory quite frankly. And I'm not even inclined to call the Xbox One a powerhouse with all the issues developers are having. The X1 just "get's the job done." PS4 is a different story however.

Shfty Geezer said:
Of course, resolution isn't everything, but your attempt at a slam-dunk comparison is clearly inadequate proof of Wii U's superior performance over the PS360
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I'm going to have to agree here. Monolith Soft's X looks good but IMO is at best late gen PS3/X360 graphics. If it ran at 60 fps or 1080p that'd be a different story.
 
Honestly though I think Mario Kart 8 is on the top 10 in best looking Wii U titles. (1080p60).

That goes to say the character designs and environments don't contain many fancy layers of materials or normal maps (AFAIK) and overall can be described as simple. However even for its design some tracks look exceptionally well done. I heard that they're also aiming for 60 fps 4-player split screen. If they manage it then truly the console has some power behind its back.
 
Neighborhoodcroak said:
Either way I'm willing to defend 320 stream processors because 172 GFLOPS is not enough.
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But that's just your feels.

You can actually look at the chip and count the register banks in each SIMD block. Plus 320 doesn't fit in the space on the die, even on TSMC 40 nm. And it wasn't made at TSMC, it was made at Renesas on a less dense process. And the chip was laid out without AMD's TSMC optimised high density layout tools and shit.

Even on the PC a BW crippled 320 shader part can bring all kinds of hurt down on the 360. Where as the Wii U ... doesn't.

(WiiU only appears to have 8 TMUs too - which once again fits with 160 shaders and not an int core more).

In shader limited stuff Xbone will be very roughly ten times faster than Wii U, and far more than that in terms of compute. PS4 is about 50% faster than Xbone. Taken across all three platforms, 4Bone are close together while Wii U is trailing off so far behind that PS360 are holding its hands.
 
Shifty Geezer said:
This is a technical discussion. Appeals for people to stop using the term 'generation' as everyone does (without confusion) doesn't help with that, nor does mention of market performance (really doesn't matter whether the lowest power console 'wins' or not).

First image I clicked -
http://uk.ign.com/images/games/x-monolith-wii-u-112162/52fe6756005b12b2801e0bc7

720p and horizontally upscaled. Compared to a PS3 title that looks similar, White Knight Chronicles (http://www.playstationwallpapers.co...chronicles_62159_whiteknightchronicles-14.jpg), we have a similar look at 720p native on PS3, on an early title. Of course, resolution isn't everything, but your attempt at a slam-dunk comparison is clearly inadequate proof of Wii U's superior performance over the PS360.
Click to expand...

Don't mistake compression blocks/artifacts with filtering/resolution and you can't guess exact resolution of a game without official screenshots released by either the developer and/or its publisher... I just downloaded a couple of these screencaps and there is presence of compression blocks/artifacts and we all know that Youtube's compression is atrocious and seriously lowers picture quality...

Now lets compare White Knight Chronicles with Monolith Soft's X...

white-knight-chronicles_62159_whiteknightchronicles-14.jpg


monolith-x-02-2014-004jpg-1e0bcb.jpg


monolith-x-02-2014-001jpg-dc3b87.jpg


monolith-x-02-2014-007jpg-1e0bc7.jpg


First of all White Knight Chronicles has far less vegetation, draw distance is laughable and much smaller proximity, much larger amount(presence), much smaller distance of when fog is start to appear and its intensity is really shocking in comparison to X.

X has monsters that are overall more detailed in every way, character models looks more detailed with shadow details also compared to White Knight Chronicles then we can see that Dolls(X's name for Mecha's) are obviously substantially more detailed than White Knight's "mecha"... I am also amused at the detail of X's HUD in comparison.

Design of White Knight Chronicles compared to X's shows the difference in detail and design of maps in which latter has a much larger scale, draw distance, level of detail and looks to be an open-world game compared to White Knight Chronicles that is comparable to either Xenoblade Chronicles or Monster Hunter series which is pick a location/map and do the mission/job or explore(something like that)...

To be honest... White Knight Chronicles in detail is comparable in between Xenoblade Chronicles on Wii and Monster Hunter Tri Ultimate on Wii U... It looks like a game that could have been ran on Wii without much sacrifices... It would have looked like Xenoblade Chronicles. :smile:

If White Knight Chronicles was ported and fully optimized for Wii U then I would't be surprised if it performance would have been rock solid 1080P60FPS and for example Capcom's Monster Hunter Tri Ultimate which is a very basic/crude/simple straight port of 3DS version rendered at native 1080P that runs mostly at 60FPS and with some drops as low as 38FPS in combat with couple of players and one large/multiple monsters as I heard/read...

Anyway I am curious why letters in X are considerably smaller than White Knight Chronicles which would give some issues for some gamer's when reading text thus what if X is going to be displayed at 1080P 30FPS which is a possibility since Monster Hunter Tri Ultimate ran well for a very basic/crude/simple straight port of 3DS version...
 
BGassassins leaked developer info also supported the 160SPU count, and the mods at Neogaf backed it up. It doesnt matter, the 176 Gflop GPU powering Wii U outperforms the 252Gflop GPU powering the 360, developers are backing that up. How can that be? Smarter people than me would have to do the explaining.
 
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