Wii U hardware discussion and investigation *rename

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Brad Grenz said:
Your preferred outcome being something more powerful than is supported by the evidence...
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Then you aren't labeling it correctly. Preferred doesn't work for your argument. Expected /= preferred.

And I don't see how what I'm saying is more powerful than what the evidence supports when I'm trying to project what the final might resemble, not the performance level of the early kit.
 
Ultimately, it's just guesswork based on what we know of tendencies for silicon processes, die sizes, and focusing mostly on the ALUs (which themselves are attached to a specific number of TMUs). The early vague rumours (+50%, x-times perf etc) had a hand in it as well, but that's why we mention a range.
 
Understandable



Wanted to add a comment on the ongoing idea abotu eDRAM thingy, however im still 3 pages back so still reading to get here so i'll be short:
I think that might actually be a CPU thing and might not have anything to do with the GPU's discrete(?) memory. Anyway it goes, i would be disappointed if the console will have only 1 GB of whatever memory, just won't compete in long-term. Memory is so much more important just makes all that hardware useless if you peak the mem out you can't make games better, no matter how fast the CPU, GPU is, this is exactly what Carmack from ID Software points about in many interviews.
 
I thought this was very interesting:

Gearbox President on Aliens: Colonial Marines for 'Intriguing' Wii U
Posted by: Rocco DeMaro | 02/23/2012 at 01:00pm



“The controller of the Wii U is obviously where there is new opportunity for innovation in interactivity. Meanwhile, our hope at Gearbox is that the final specification for the hardware is much more powerful than the current competitive consoles so that studios like ours can bring a better standard of high definition image not only to television, but to the controller’s screen at the same time.”

Those are the words of Gearbox Software President Randy Pitchford. He and his company are hard at work on a Wii U build of Aliens: Colonial Marines, a version of the game that, based on the system's (alleged) horsepower and potential for innovation, could very well end up as the definitive edition of A:CM.

“We’ve been developing a number of interesting features using the unique capabilities of the controller and the hardware. We’ll talk about these details in due time as the work is still very much an R&D project and things may change. Clever people that are familiar with the brand can imagine some of the more obvious, interesting things we can do.”

Nintendo Gamer landed some time with Mr. Pitchford, who had this to say on the Wii U's much-discussed and still very much in-flux final hardware specs.

“Out of respect for our friends and partners at Nintendo, I think specific technical details regarding the hardware should come from them,” he said, adding, “we’ve been intrigued by what we’ve seen so far and are encouraging Nintendo to go as aggressively as they can afford with the performance specifications. We imagine that performance specifications are within affordable reach that would provide undeniable performance advantages over competitive platforms. Nintendo have a lot more experience than we do in managing the balance between performance and cost with their hardware, of course, so I do not want to be presumptuous.”

On Gearbox's preference for more power:

It’s natural for us to wish for the most power possible. I imagine that the extent to which the Wii U outperforms the PS3 and 360 is the extent to which Nintendo have an opportunity to motivate hardcore gamers to prefer their new platform over the existing ones. I believe that Nintendo are aware of this and it’s clear from certain aspects of the design that have already been made public that attracting the interest of the kinds of gamers that currently prefer the PS3 or 360 is likely part of their objective.

On the Wii U's opportunity to make a splash with third-party developers, a notorious weak spot for Nintendo:

I think Nintendo’s biggest opportunity with this console, though, lies in having third-party game makers that can turn out to reliably be as successful or more successful making games for their system as they can be through making games for Sony or Microsoft’s hardware. I think Nintendo can do something to encourage that, but it requires them using their resources to promote the third-party games as strongly as they promote their own. I imagine that would be a cultural challenge, but if they can achieve that they can have the power of the entire creative industry on their team.
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http://www.gametrailers.com/side-mi...aliens-colonial-marines-for-intriguing-wii-u/
 
This guy is right, as were the share drops in the stock market when they refused to disclose tech specs about the console (implying it would be kinda weak for a 2012->2017 gaming console).

Take the hint, Nintendo.. take the hint..
 
function said:
Maybe that's why Nintendo feel comfortable putting their money into it? :eek:
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lmao

Really though, I wonder about the length of that thing. My tv stand is a bit on the shallow side, which is fine because the Wii is so small. But if the Wii U is as long as it looks, I'm going to have to find a different place for it.
 
Rangers said:
I dont understand why the RAM thing confuses people, for the millionth time lherre's RAM info was in the context of Wii U dev kits having 2X the ram as retail (and he said as much in the post, since it was people questioning him about the RAM). Therefore lherre's "2GB+" info does not contradict 1GB of ram in the Wii U. The only thing it offers is the "+" means Nintendo could conceivably end up at 1.5GB or something like that. Basically "2GB+" dev kit means "1GB+" in the final.

Now with Arkam specifically stating 1GB though that's my guess. That's already a sufficient amount over the competitors if the rest of the system is in PS360 ballpark..
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The "RAM thing" is confusing you not me. Take a moment to look at Arkams posts, he specifically says he's talking about the dev kit, not the system itself. Therefore he's claiming the dev kit has 1GB of RAM, where as lherre insinuated his had 3GB*

*Lherre said that Nintendo had a range or memory they were looking at starting at 1GB in the final system (2GB in the corresponding dev kit) but that his current dev kit was using the higher end of that range. So I'm assuming that was 1.5GB (3GB in the dev kit). Could have been higher I suppose but I won't make that assumption.
 
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Maybe he meant that regardless how much was in the system, it was known that 1GB would be in the final.

If you had a dev system with 2GB of RAM and 1GB was basically extra/scratch pad/debug, you might refer to it as a 1GB system, since the extra RAM was just to enable ease of working with the 1GB you were actually limited too in games you were working on.
 
Rangers said:
Maybe he meant that regardless how much was in the system, it was known that 1GB would be in the final.

If you had a dev system with 2GB of RAM and 1GB was basically extra/scratch pad/debug, you might refer to it as a 1GB system, since the extra RAM was just to enable ease of working with the 1GB you were actually limited too in games you were working on.
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He didn't mean that. He was very clear about everything he said. I believe him and I believe his company still had the earlier kit.
 
Rangers said:
Maybe he meant that regardless how much was in the system, it was known that 1GB would be in the final.

If you had a dev system with 2GB of RAM and 1GB was basically extra/scratch pad/debug, you might refer to it as a 1GB system, since the extra RAM was just to enable ease of working with the 1GB you were actually limited too in games you were working on.
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You really are special, i mean, you bring up these ridiculus ideas that devs would KNOW before nintedo them selfs even finalized their position.

Your argument about 1 GB being enough is very weird, what on earth would you be sufficed with this. 1 GB WILL not be enough to be competitive in the long run, heck the RAM is the most important and quite probably the BIGGEST BOTTLENECK, they will NOT be able to produce games that really push some big stuff. Im talking about the console's cycle, that's the long-term, and 1GB for long term, is a suicide, with 1.5 GB they would be just fine.

Because the power of the device is useless if they can't fit all their intended textures on, eDRAM doesn't help, eDRAM is not for storing, it gets filled from the main ram , so it won't help with the bottleneck issue.

I hope that they are all talking about the main memory, while nobody mentioned GPU RAM ... but i don't know really.

It's not how it works, and for the record, it has been noted that it might be AN OLD REPORT from the old dev kits.

I think your an imposter in this forums and please stop diluting this thread. Everything that's presented you keep downplaying it.

I won't speculate much further, your personal right is to say whatever you want no matter what, but for sake of morale keep it down a notch.

The reason we don't take seriously the negative is simply because they seem have no idea what they are talking about, these "devs" that came in the forums and said it's "slower than X360" without providing any specific information that could indicate and prove that, all those that were negative didn't say which kind of RAM and didn't said the supposable model of the GPU ... nothing.

And also, some of the devlopers who migh slip out aren't necessairly the most experienced geeks to know these things enough, what if that was some QA guy or maybe some whoever person at the company who heard things over the counter and didn't remember it well enough.

One thing is for sure, those that aren't really familiar wouldn't be making up any very high predictions just because of the moral reason a normal person wouldn't be making stuff up, they might be some guys who were lurking around the company, don't know the hardware but maybe have seen the internal demo or whatever and they saw the FPS maybe, and that made them think, but that's just the possibilities.

Little understanding of the technology could tell you this cannot happen with a R700 chip that's supposedly 40nm and a 45nm CPU.

However this is all based on what we currently have. If it turns out to be less powerful then nintendo did obviously blew it and the system will probably be a massive disappointment to me personally as well as others who expected more since expectations were set by these very rumors.
 
I can already say that this come from European big studios which have logically the latest dev kits available to third parties. To be clear, these are not small studios that could have remained at earlier dev kits because they are not important enough to receive Nintendo's latest updates quickly.

So, from what my sources saw on their screens, they clearly stated that they experienced superior capabilities in comparison to the Xbox360. This is the positive aspect of my info: you can be sure that the Wii U is not on par with current gen HD. You can remove this idea from your heads, and stop speculating about it, it will not happen. The point more negative now: On the power scale, they told me that it’s closer to 2x Xbox360 than 5x. On paper, some components (you can guess which) are mathematically 4 or 5 times more powerful, more in quantity/number, than in the xbox360, but it does not translate for the moment in 5x prettier images, with 5 more complex and finest scenes, etc.

Further details: These impressions are from a time when studios used revision 4 of the dev kits. Lately, 4.2 kits shipped from Singapore. I don’t know if there is a significant power gain with “.X” type of revisions, I guess it’s the case, but not as important as a change of revision number (from Rev 3 to 4 for example). I’ve heard that V5 kits may exist. It is likely, as for many other consoles before, that Nintendo and first-party have more advanced and therefore more powerful/optimized dev kits. However, these v4 kits are apparently from the end of the year / beginning of 2012, and they are those which have benefited from the hardware boost reported on the net. For people who hoped that this upgrade would make the Wii U 5 times stronger and 5 times more capable of displaying beautiful stuff on screen, from what I know, this is not the case for now, but there are several variables that can explain this, I'll come back to this subject in other posts, but can say that this “not 5x Xbox360” is only valid in the context from which I gathered my informations (third-party, second-hand, subjectivity, news given at a certain time knowing that the console will come out maybe 10 months later so will receive more upgrades, etc.). But again, I put the emphasis on the fact that it’s clearly not on par with the xbox360, it’s at least 2x.

Furthermore, but read that with a grain of salt, many graphical effects are applied near the “end” of the visual development of a game. I guess some parameters that cause what is rendered on the screen to be more or less clean, complex, for example the type of shadow, the AA applied, and new effects that the Wii U GPU is probably capable of fall into this category (the shiny stuff that developers adds at the end, once the engine is running well), and therefore the final result will feel more like a 3 or 4 or even the famous 5x than 2x Xbox360 to the eyes of my sources, I keep in touch with them to know if it will be the case.

That is all I can say for now, there will be other posts to come. Do not expect revelations from each of my interventions though. This in not the main purpose of my decision to post on NeoGAF. As my nickname implies it, I want to share my ideas (of game design, background, etc.) confront them, do theorycrafting which I love. I’ll participate on topics that interest me, and of course this one, by writing “normal” and light messages with some funny things, gifs, images, and above all, ideas !

From GAF.
 
GAF still dosent seem to get what this guy is saying.

He says components are basically 2x360 overall system performance not that the images are 2x prettier.
 
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