Wii U hardware discussion and investigation *rename

[COPS N RAPPERS]

This. Doesn't look like the PS3 version at all to me. Digital Foundry article also says that WiiU version looks better.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-vs-wiiu-e3-2012

Also most interesting sentence IMO:

Well, according to these shots of the Wii-U it's fare enough it say it's almost identical to the 360 and ps3, with seemingly slightly sharper textures.....maybe it's do to the extra memory i heard about?

The Wii-U seems to be made up of cheap and efficient parts, which also leads me to my other rumor of the Wii-U having a $249.99 (US) price at launch. seeing these shots it seems all the more possible.

 

[bgassassin]

Well, according to these shots of the Wii-U it's fare enough it say it's almost identical to the 360 and ps3, with seemingly slightly sharper textures.....maybe it's do to the extra memory i heard about?

The Wii-U seems to be made up of cheap and efficient parts, which also leads me to my other rumor of the Wii-U having a $249.99 (US) price at launch. seeing these shots it seems all the more possible.

But why make a judgement call on launch titles, especially when there is a good chance most of them were on v4 dev kits? The final didn't give a big performance boost, but the point is why make that type of conclusion right now?

 

[AnarchX]

Sony "calculated" 1.8 TFLOPs for RSX. How much FLOPs could Nintendo "calculate" for a 320-400SPs D3D10.1+ GPU?

 

[COPS N RAPPERS]

But why make a judgement call on launch titles, especially when there is a good chance most of them were on v4 dev kits? The final didn't give a big performance boost, but the point is why make that type of conclusion right now?

hmmm, i see. Bigger exclusives should be the next to measure. However looking at this latest rumor of a "1.5 times" as strong GPU, I've been thinking about how it would equate to in the overall visual impact. (just taking Arkham City into account.)

http://images.eurogamer.net/2012/articles//a/1/4/9/1/3/3/9/WiiU_001.png
http://images.eurogamer.net/2012/articles//a/1/4/9/1/3/3/9/360_001.png
http://images.eurogamer.net/2012/articles//a/1/4/9/1/3/3/9/PS3_001.png

The shots do indicate of slightly sharper textures but a weaker drawing distance on the Wii-U's behalf. which fuels the rumor of the possible more memory but less GPU power.

 

[bgassassin]

hmmm, i see. Bigger exclusives should be the next to measure. However looking at this latest rumor of a "1.5 times" as strong GPU, I've been thinking about how it would equate to in the overall visual impact. (just taking Arkham City into account.)

http://images.eurogamer.net/2012/articles//a/1/4/9/1/3/3/9/WiiU_001.png
http://images.eurogamer.net/2012/articles//a/1/4/9/1/3/3/9/360_001.png
http://images.eurogamer.net/2012/articles//a/1/4/9/1/3/3/9/PS3_001.png

The shots do indicate of slightly sharper textures but a weaker drawing distance on the Wii-U's behalf. which fuels the rumor of the possible more memory but less GPU power.

No you missed the point of my question. I don't know how much clearer it can be.

 

[Espresso]

Every rumor and/or interpretation of info point to it. The core parts are also relatively small a it does not use much power too, seems like good fit.

That is why I think it would be very interesting to compare both, according to wikipedia at 3 Ghz each core would be able to get ~25 Gflops, if tricore would put it around Xenon (77 Gflops IIRC).

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?p=1571368#post1571368

It isn't power7. it isn't SPU or cell. it isn't a 4xx. It is the same core as Wii, with 3 of them and larger L2's, clocked a little bit faster.

"Write gatherer per core. Locked (L1d) cache DMA per core." are features straight from the Wii and GC PPC.

3MB of edram on the CPU for the 512/512/2048 L2 caches listed a few pages ago.

 

[bgassassin]

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?p=1571368#post1571368

It isn't power7. it isn't SPU or cell. it isn't a 4xx. It is the same core as Wii, with 3 of them and larger L2's, clocked a little bit faster.

"Write gatherer per core. Locked (L1d) cache DMA per core." are features straight from the Wii and GC PPC.

3MB of edram on the CPU for the 512/512/2048 L2 caches listed a few pages ago.

Been a long time. Others have said those cores have "2 threads per core". Are you able to confirm that?

 

[Grall]

It isn't power7. it isn't SPU or cell. it isn't a 4xx. It is the same core as Wii, with 3 of them and larger L2's, clocked a little bit faster.

That'd be silly. The PPC CPU in Wii is the same as used in the GC, it's a design that's like ten years old PLUS by now. That anyone would use it as a base for new designs is laughable at best. Even at 90nm as used by the launch Wii it only ate like 16 sqmm of silicon; ludicrous to consider for a new design, even if there's three of them now. Shrunken down to a today rather coarse 40nm that tri-core CPU would be so small it couldn't fit the pads it needed for I/O...

 

[DeadlyNinja]

This is just by me eyeing the screen shots, but I really don't see the concern over the Wii U GPU being underpowered during this stage in time.

This is an Xbox 360 launch game. I picked this screen shot because it was one of the first screens unveiled. The game incomplete to say the least. The game also was first developed on the original Xbox before being moved to the 360.
http://assets2.ignimgs.com/2005/05/19/perfect-dark-zero-20050518075210520-1130136_640w.jpg

This is a Wii U launch game. This game is incomplete at this stage. The game was originally developed on the Wii and moved to the Wii U.
http://s.pro-gmedia.com/videogamer/media/images/wiiu/pikmin_3/screens/pikmin_3_5.jpg

Now, am I crazy or am I the only one who thinks Pikimin 3 in its incomplete form looks amazing compared to Perfect Dark Zero in its incomplete form? Not only that, but Pikimin 3 is made by Nintendo, who up until this point hasn't developed HD games or used modern shaders.

This is I THINK a screen shot from PDZ in the final version. I picked this one because they both have green trees. I tried to find better screens, but the only other 1 had a giant bazooka taking up most of the screen.
http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2005/276/516508_20051004_screen004.jpg

This is probably very unscientific, but I have a hard time believing the Wii U is on-par or worst than the 360 by comparing launch games' screen during their incomplete stage. Let's not forget this game is running at 720p with 60fps. Something I believe most launch 360 games couldn't achieve.

Remember when the 360 was first unveiled, PS3 fans mocked it by calling it Xbox 1.5? Eventually, the 360 showed its true colors. How many systems with a healthy lifespan actually saw games being pushed more and more visually as developers get to know the system? All of them. Hell, even the Wii got pushed and that really is a Gamecube 1.5. Games like NintendoLand follow the same philosophy as Wii Sports in that they're not meant to be technical showcases. I don't think anyone on this forum will say Wii Sports is the very best graphics the Wii can offer, right?

I don't know how powerful the Wii U is, but just from simple screens, I'm just not seeing too big of an issue.

 

[Espresso]

Others have said those cores have "2 threads per core". Are you able to confirm that?

False.

That'd be silly. The PPC CPU in Wii is the same as used in the GC, it's a design that's like ten years old PLUS by now. That anyone would use it as a base for new designs is laughable at best. Even at 90nm as used by the launch Wii it only ate like 16 sqmm of silicon; ludicrous to consider for a new design, even if there's three of them now. Shrunken down to a today rather coarse 40nm that tri-core CPU would be so small it couldn't fit the pads it needed for I/O...

You may consider it silly, but that won't change it. It is a very small chip. I am sure you will see it after they start shipping and someone tears one down.

IBM does not use peripheral-io, they use area-io (google it). The number of pads it requires is not a limitation.

 

[Ika]

The shots do indicate of slightly sharper textures but a weaker drawing distance on the Wii-U's behalf. which fuels the rumor of the possible more memory but less GPU power.

if those screenshots are real, they are telling that the Wii-U has a more powerfull GPU, but a less powerful CPU compared to the other two systems.

@DeadlyNinja: I think most of us here are hoping that the Wii-U will turn out to be a great system. Being critical doesn't mean we are being unfair to the big N. It would be great to know that the Wii-U is (at least) powerful enough to run all the current xb360, ps3 and PC titles because it would give the system some chance on the long run.
Also: Batman already exist on other systems, you can't compare it to xb360 launch titles, because MS were building up his next gen sh** from scratch that time. 3D programming techniques, engines and assets/content creation tools are advanced a lot since 2005, if the xbox360 would come out today, launch titles would look much better on it imho.

 

[Brad Grenz]

You'd think that since this is supposed to be a forum with some of the most knowledge-able techies on the net, this wouldn't need to be pointed out.

B3D isn't much different to any other gaming forums, it seems.

Except in the case of previous console generations there was no way to closely simulate the final hardware a shipping 360 or PS3 was going to have until actual silicon was ready. Nor were most developers prepared for the programming paradigms they would enforce. Nintendo's current strategy doesn't pose the same challenge for prerelease hardware. Developers today have tons of experience with multithreading PPC chips and AMD unified shader GPUs. They should have had access to proxy hardware that not only matched, but easily exceeded the actual WiiU specifications. It would be foolish to expect a development curve like the 360 or PS3 experienced. Those designs broke new ground. Nintendo is venturing on to some well trod territory, by contrast. The curve will be closer to what the Wii experienced. That is to say, relatively flat.

 

[bgassassin]

False.

Definitely a conflict of info as two others I know of have said it does. At the same time it would make more sense considering the "problems" some have been facing with the CPU.

Have you gotten the fifth kit yet?

 

[forumaccount]

Reports continue to emerge from sources suggesting that Wii U is significantly more powerful than the current batch of titles may lead us to believe - the obvious inference being that these games have been created on incomplete hardware, perhaps with development tools that are still evolving, by studios unfamiliar with the hardware.

You can't play the "unfamiliar with the hardware" card with every machine. Titles get better as generations progress because people have more time to iterate on tech and improve tools and content generation techniques, not because they magically discover things about the hardware they didn't know.

If WiiU is on par with current gen machines all those tools and techniques are in place already, and the tech won't be different enough to matter.

This reminds me of Wii where for two or three years people were insisting that it was on par with 360 and that it was some massive 3rd party developer conspiracy that made the games look worse. If the launch titles look bad it doesn't mean that the console is actually "significantly more powerful" and developers are just incompetent... the fact that people believe these things really astounds me sometimes.

 

[Ruskie]

I agree. I think that notion of Wii U "having to prove itself over the time" is misleading one and not comparable to beginning of this gen simply because developers now know tech inside and out.

Engines and tools are mature, that wasn't the case in 2005 when we went from SD to HD development. From PS360 to Wii U should be pretty straightforward and simple, and I bet 3rd party will visually get it going better than Nintendo in first couple years.

Saying that we will have to wait couple of years for Wii U to distance it self from HD twins won't be the case me thinks.

 

[DeadlyNinja]

if those screenshots are real, they are telling that the Wii-U has a more powerfull GPU, but a less powerful CPU compared to the other two systems.

@DeadlyNinja: I think most of us here are hoping that the Wii-U will turn out to be a great system. Being critical doesn't mean we are being unfair to the big N. It would be great to know that the Wii-U is (at least) powerful enough to run all the current xb360, ps3 and PC titles because it would give the system some chance on the long run.
Also: Batman already exist on other systems, you can't compare it to xb360 launch titles, because MS were building up his next gen sh** from scratch that time. 3D programming techniques, engines and assets/content creation tools are advanced a lot since 2005, if the xbox360 would come out today, launch titles would look much better on it imho.

That argument makes zero sense. People weren't exactly unfamiliar with 3D graphics by the time the 360 came out. We already had 2 previous generations of 3D polygonal graphics. You act like the jump from N64/PSX to GC/PS2 didn't come with hurdles; or even it's own experience from the previous generation to draw upon. Batman isn't even made on final hardware.

You claim MS was building from scratch from transitioning from SD to HD. But Nintendo isn't doing the same with THEIR OWN title? What has Nintendo themselves built up from the Wii that'll allow them to seamlessly transition into HD? You think Nintendo would be licensing engines from 3rd party developers?

that it was some massive 3rd party developer conspiracy that made the games look worse. If the launch titles look bad it doesn't mean that the console is actually "significantly more powerful" and developers are just incompetent... the fact that people believe these things really astounds me sometimes.

This is a Wii game from 3rd party.

I'm not saying there's conspiracy, but this is a lazy Wii game from 3rd parties. I don't know who told you people believed the Wii was capable of 360 graphics, but at the very least, the Wii has more to offer in the hands of developers that care.

 

[AlNom]

That argument makes zero sense. People weren't exactly unfamiliar with 3D graphics by the time the 360 came out. We already had 2 previous generations of 3D polygonal graphics.

Multicore and Shader Model 3.0+... And certainly the tools weren't all there - there shouldn't be surprise at UE3's uptake, for example.

 

[forumaccount]

We didn't have two previous generations of normal mapping being standard tech, artists had to learn to deal with that and all pipelines had to change. The tech wasn't well known either. Even two days ago Carmack was talking about mistakes he made in Doom 3's normal mapping implementation on Twitter.

Multicore was big too but a number of developers could afford to ignore it that first year until PS3 came out.

 

[bgassassin]

We didn't have two previous generations of normal mapping being standard tech, artists had to learn to deal with that and all pipelines had to change. The tech wasn't well known either. Even two days ago Carmack was talking about mistakes he made in Doom 3's normal mapping implementation on Twitter.

Multicore was big too but a number of developers could afford to ignore it that first year until PS3 came out.

Based on that logic everything from here on will just plateau. Why even bother making new consoles?

 

[function]

Based on that logic everything from here on will just plateau. Why even bother making new consoles?

How do you reach that position from what forumaccount has stated?

Just because the WiiU is new doesn't mean that developers will un-learn everything they've learned developing on the PS360, or that they'll have to go back to Unreal Engine 2, or that artists will go back to PS2 era experience and tools.

If the WiiU is in the same ballpark as PS360 in terms of capability then the huge bump in graphics that came over several years (with developers learning how to use that level of capability and getting the tools to allow it) will already have happened. The WiiU will be much closer to the best it will ever do than the PS360 were at launch.