Wii U hardware discussion and investigation *rename

[AlNom]

Why would you have 32MB Edram and do FXAA. Well, so far no game has not shown any AA

Multiple render targets? Just because you have eDRAM doesn't mean deferred and MSAA gets any cheaper when it comes to the shading/lighting of said multisamples. There's also a fair bit of use of DOF and bloom, which would nullify MSAA pretty easily anyway.

We also don't know if the eDRAM can be used as a texture cache.

 

[kagemaru]

Should we assume post process AA is the best way to go in order to get maximum performance out of the Wii U?

I think PPAA is going to be the best way to get maximum performance out of any closed box in the future. A combo of PPAA and MSAA would be most ideal, but I highly doubt most games would do that, at least later on in the generation where sacrifices need to be made for the sake of performance.

 

[Warchild]

check this out http://www.kotaku.com.au/2012/06/two-controllers-halves-the-framerate-of-wii-u-games/

What does this mean if i chose not to use a wiipad? Will it be able to run games in at least 1080p60fps? Is it even powerful enough to achieve this based on leaked specs?

 

[Brad Grenz]

Nothing shown appears to be running 1080p, let alone 60hz at that resolution. They're talking about the limitations of the way images are transmitted to the tablets. It's designed to work at 60hz, so if you want to drive two tablets simultaneously, each is only getting half as many updates as usual.

 

[babybumb]

They are talking about their own games that usually render at 60fps on the TV.. i really doubt they would even announce such thing if it were the tablets dropping to 30fps. Because they most likely would be 30fps or lower in the first place to save GPU resources.

The games need to specially adapted to support a second tablet. Downgrade something to come up resources to render to another tablet + CPU time > drop to 30fps on main screen.

 

[Warchild]

The reason i mentioned an increase in performance is that it might be something like the 3ds, for example doa: dimensions runs 30fps with 3d on and 60fps with 3d off.

 

[liolio]

Why the secrecy? It means U-CPU can do everything Gekko could. BTW, POWER7 also has lockable & DMA-able caches.

I knew cache locking was part of the POWERPC ISA but I though it was for the L2 only.

The L2 cache hierarchy is interesting: 2 MB and x2 512KB.

It lacks flexibility but I will give credit to Nintendo and assume that it allows for lower latency that a big, shared L2 as in the 360. On top of it the amount is generous. Pretty nice overall.

I definitely wish we knew if the cores are IO or OoO. I hope Nintendo didn't ship anything that has neither SMT or OoO execution.

Now that the Cell is pretty much a known quantity for developers it would have been pretty ironic if IBM refurbished it to Nintendo. Actually I would have actually like it: SPU are cheap, low power and powerful.
We have no info about how the WiiU CPU performs but I would have been interest in seeing how a wide OoO CPU linked with a couple of SPUs would have fare.
I would suspect it would have been potent contender of its own (no matter the WiiU CPU merits) and I would not be that surprised if it ended running around Xenon happily.

 

[Strange]

Just asking to be sure, and also asking for opinions.

Assuming that the 32MB eDRAM will be used as a frame-buffer like the 360 (possibly a big assume but I think this shouldn't be far off)
Then also noting that the Wiiupad should have a 854*480 resolution, and they're supporting dual wiiupads cutting the FPS by half

1. Should we assume that both wiiupads can use the same framebuffer?

2. if so and if not so, what's everyone's take on the "default" AA and resolution for the main screen and the Wiiu pad devs will probably go for based on these preliminary specs and the experience on the 360?

 

[Rangers]

So what we've seen of early Wii U 3D games have me wondering just how Nintendo accomplished a GPU seemingly on par with PS360.

My initial guess is, extremely low clocks? *shrug*

The Wii U size is final now and indeed the same small size, so there's the heat thing.

 

[Strange]

So what we've seen of early Wii U 3D games have me wondering just how Nintendo accomplished a GPU this bad.

My initial guess is, extremely low clocks? *shrug*

The Wii U size is final now and indeed the same small size, so there's the heat thing.

Judging from the specs and the conversation about the wii pad I would guess that they probably underestimated the graphics processing requirement on the wiipad and optimistically set a rather low budget GPU to find out later that they might have hit a brick wall.

In my opinion 720p is very last gen. Not that 720p it isn't good (as this resolution is much better for streaming and recording) but hitting 1080p "should" be a breeze utilizing today's hardware. For Nintendo to still have issues rendering 720p without AA in 2012 quite baffles me.

 

[MarkoIt]

Looking at what they showed, the GPU must be at best slightly faster than the one in Xbox360. Right now, even something Redwood-based seems too much.

 

[Grall]

1. Should we assume that both wiiupads can use the same framebuffer?

Probably too much of an assumption, and it might not be practical (in case you want to keep copies of a previously rendered frame for example).
It does seem to suggest both wuupads use the same data stream from the console though, with their own respective video frames interleaved in the feed.

Oh, and I don't know why everyone's bagging so damn much on the hardware. The Wuu's a tiny box. You all knew it wasn't going to be a horsepower monster - or if you thought so anyway you're a silly person.

I think the specs look quite alright. If it'd been DX9 hardware in there as previously rumored (Radeon 4000-series based) then I would understand, I wouldn't have been happy with that either. This is quite recent stuff however. DX10 level at least. Stop being such elitist jerks people, high specs never guaranteed good games.

 

[Rangers]

Looking at what they showed, the GPU must be at best slightly faster than the one in Xbox360. Right now, even something Redwood-based seems too much.

My guess all along had been a RV730. It would have to be clocked pretty slow to equal PS360.

 

[TheWretched]

Looking at what they showed, the GPU must be at best slightly faster than the one in Xbox360. Right now, even something Redwood-based seems too much.

I am not sure if it's too much... my Laptop has a (low clocked) Redwood in it, and it plays say Dead Space 2 or Fallout 3 slightly better than the consoles, given that it has to run on a myriad of abstraction layers. Haven't tried a lot of other games on it, though. It's the mobile variant, though, meaning it's rather equal to the 5570 roundabouts. Tiny core at ~100mm² and < 30 Watts (laptop part) should fit very well into that case.

 

[Kaotik]

People seem to forget we're seeing demos of unfinished products, and which apparently have been mostly developed on lower specced devkit than the final one

 

[liolio]

Probably too much of an assumption, and it might not be practical (in case you want to keep copies of a previously rendered frame for example).
It does seem to suggest both wuupads use the same data stream from the console though, with their own respective video frames interleaved in the feed.

I guess it depends on what is displayed on the respective screens.

Oh, and I don't know why everyone's bagging so damn much on the hardware. The Wuu's a tiny box. You all knew it wasn't going to be a horsepower monster - or if you thought so anyway you're a silly person.

I think the specs look quite alright. If it'd been DX9 hardware in there as previously rumored (Radeon 4000-series based) then I would understand, I wouldn't have been happy with that either. This is quite recent stuff however. DX10 level at least. Stop being such elitist jerks people, high specs never guaranteed good games.

I did not expected a monster, I wish I would have seem more core games running on the system to better access the system capabilities.
The secrecy shrouded around the product is really core unfriendly. At 250$ (or 299$) with my wife loving Nintendo games I could have been interesting, point is I hate not knowing what I buy.

But indeed Nintendo seems to have make good choices, or choices that makes sense for what they do.
They have a pretty standard SMP CPU set-up
Nice amount of cache.
healthy amount of memory (vs the ps360)
Lot of edram
They seem to lack shading power.

Overall the system might be up to the task to render the simple Nintendo style games at native 1080p and 60FPS.

By the way the Radeon HD4xxx are direct x10 GPU. So for all we know the GPU may be a tweak R7xx as rumored early (I've no complain with this).

My issue (though ala Ranger I gave up early on that hope) is that I would have wish the system to be a bit more of a match for my need. I consider my self a target, I'm barely a core gamer. I can go with sub part graphics ( I play Diablo on a 7850GT for example) if the game is worth it.
Nintendo wanted to reclaim some core gamers, early leaked slides and the hardcore controller are a testament to that.
I'm not sure they will get me. I want to know the system specs, and so what to expect let say mid term. I don't care for CoD and BF but I wish the presentation would have been more reassuring wrt to third party support.

 

[Kaotik]

I think the specs look quite alright. If it'd been DX9 hardware in there as previously rumored (Radeon 4000-series based) then I would understand, I wouldn't have been happy with that either. This is quite recent stuff however. DX10 level at least. Stop being such elitist jerks people, high specs never guaranteed good games.

4000-series is DX10.1, and based on the current rumor it's just that, R7xx, but that could of course still change if the current API is based on earlier devkits

 

[COPS N RAPPERS]

All WII-U games will be running in 720p native.
http://wiiudaily.com/2012/06/wii-u-games-run-in-720p/

...and maybe a little less for some games i think, don't know but if tekken seems to be then...

maybe at the cost of better shadder tech?

 

[Love_In_Rio]

Games at 720p with no AA and lack of polys ( see the Lego game ) says to me Wii u has the worst GPU possible for the times, an ATI mobility X2300 or equivalent... And the problem is that the GPU could even lacks power to make FXAA or MLAA possible and the CPU surely is neither a flop monster like CELL and won´t help in that. This could make its games IQ worse than its counterparts in X360 and PS3 ( see Batman for example ).

 

[Rangers]

Games at 720p with no AA and lack of polys ( see the Lego game ) says to me Wii u has the worst GPU possible for the times, an ATI mobility X2300 or equivalent...

Yes, all the talk of early, early weak devkits etc, is fine and good, but so far all we have to go on for exclusive 3D games is Zombie U, and it looks terrible.

I am starting to fear we're back to less powerful than 360 in practice, perhaps helped by bad dev tools from nintendo.

I think a mod on GAF put it well, the best way for Wii U to show it's powerful and shut up the doubters, is to show games that show it's powerful. So far it hasn't.

I mean I could be wrong, maybe the later this year stuff (if even any) or even the stuff in two years shows what wii U can do. I'm just commenting on what we have so far.