Wii U hardware discussion and investigation *rename

[Rodéric]

For a console that's arriving 7 years down the road that kind of performance increase is not acceptable...unless it's priced accordingly..(£199)

If wuu launches with a noticeable 50% performance increase to the main screen and launches at that price then I might well consider it.

I suppose you mean you don't want to purchase a console that's only 150% the PS360 performance, even though it offers a different gameplay experience.

The way you name the console is an indication that you are biased against it anyway, do you really want to continue to share your opinion then ?
(ie it doesn't seem you are trying to change your point of view by discussing just get people to not like it either.)

 

[french toast]

I suppose you mean you don't want to purchase a console that's only 150% the PS360 performance, even though it offers a different gameplay experience.

The way you name the console is an indication that you are biased against it anyway, do you really want to continue to share your opinion then ?
(ie it doesn't seem you are trying to change your point of view by discussing just get people to not like it either.)

The way I name the console has nothing to do with my thoughts of it, I actually picked up the term wuu off another member on this thread who is definitely not against wii u.
I used the term wuu in the same way you will see me copy others by calling xbox360 and playstation 3= ps360..or in other threads referring to Nokia's alliance with Microsoft = microkia. I use those terms because it's faster to type on predictive .txt...
I actually like all the companies listed.

I sold my xbox 360 because I was bored of it...I've owned all consoles except ps3 wii. So no I'm not biased as I have stated clearly I would be interested in buying a wuu if it offers me a visual upgrade over the 360 I sold and for a respectable price...

Just because I'm waiting for my desired user experience doesn't make me biased towards the wuu, but yes if they can't stump up something better than a 7 year old system in 2012 I would be disappointed..I'm not the only one.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The way I name the console has nothing to do with my thoughts of it, I actually picked up the term wuu off another member on this thread who is definitely not against wii u.

Yeah, I coined the abbreviation Wuu as an easier and more obvious name than Wii U, that's hard to say, rather silly sounding IMHO, and looks like Wii in a paragraph if you're quickly skimming. It's just a contraction like 360 or PS3.

 

[french toast]

Yeah, I coined the abbreviation Wuu as an easier and more obvious name than Wii U, that's hard to say, rather silly sounding IMHO, and looks like Wii in a paragraph if you're quickly skimming. It's just a contraction like 360 or PS3.

Thanks I don't like naming

 

[Rodéric]

Just because I'm waiting for my desired user experience doesn't make me biased towards the wuu, but yes if they can't stump up something better than a 7 year old system in 2012 I would be disappointed..I'm not the only one.

My bad then, but be aware that there's a very high likelyhood the way you name it as an impact on how you think about it.
(Yes I did some psychology and socio-psychology study once upon a day ;p)

 

[french toast]

My bad then, but be aware that there's a very high likelyhood the way you name it as an impact on how you think about it.
(Yes I did some psychology and socio-psychology study once upon a day ;p)

No worries I have been quite critical so I can see how you could make that assumption by taking a quick look.

I'll change it back to wii u

 

[Shifty Geezer]

My bad then, but be aware that there's a very high likelyhood the way you name it as an impact on how you think about it.
(Yes I did some psychology and socio-psychology study once upon a day ;p)

Nintendo called their last system the 'wee' to much public derision on reveal, and yet it had no lasting negative impact on their platform AFAICS. I shall continue to call Wii U the Wuu, and Nintendo's next-next-gen console the Waa.

 

[kalelovil]

If it is a modified hd 4570 (which I now expec) it may turn out to be more powerfull in a number of areas over time...but we will be talking about 20-50% tops....nice but hardly next generation is it?

Do you mean 4670?
The HD4550 was based on rv710, and thus has too many bottlenecks compared to Xenos/RSX to port games without a lot of difficulty.

 

[Rodéric]

Nintendo called their last system the 'wee' to much public derision on reveal, and yet it had no lasting negative impact on their platform AFAICS. I shall continue to call Wii U the Wuu, and Nintendo's next-next-gen console the Waa.

You could call is N.E.S.6... ;p

 

[french toast]

Do you mean 4670?
The HD4550 was based on rv710, and thus has too many bottlenecks compared to Xenos/RSX to port games without a lot of difficulty.

Well I thought about 4670 but it looks far too powerfull for what we have seen imo, unless they underclock it??

 

[ERP]

Random thought on the WiiU GPU, and the earlier mention of Nintendo specific functionality.
It occurred to me that what I would want to do is render the tablet screen at a different frame rate than the main display, possibly with one or the other taking priority.
It's actually somewhat difficult to do efficiently purely in software, the OS could handle it, much like a desktop OS, but there is a large overhead for doing that, since every time you change context you have to flush the pipleline.
It occurred to me that given the fixed requirement, one TV + upto 2 tablets, you could just implement multiple contexts into hardware.

 

[liolio]

I believe the doom and gloom surriunding the hardware is becoming a bit too strong.
Let's wait for proper games this fall.
I'm more.concerned about other choice made by N at this pint wrt to the tiuchscreen as well as system local storage.
One thing is clear at this point N is making a bad job at advertizing the system.

 

[Grall]

It occurred to me that given the fixed requirement, one TV + upto 2 tablets, you could just implement multiple contexts into hardware.

Yes, that would be ideal, but do you seriously think Nintendo would bother to go that far? Also, considering they waited until june this year to reveal you can in fact use two wuupads per console rather than just one (which is what they said last E3 at the big reveal), do you really think they were so forward-thinking as to put in an extra hardware context for the other wuupad right from the start - assuming there even is a second for the first pad.

I'm doubtful. Also, since frames for both wuupads seem to be interleaved in the same video stream, would you really need two hardware contexts for the pads anyway? They could simply share the same context, as the lost performance in switching context should be quite minimal compared to the halved framerate - if you even need to switch; both pads could very well show the exact same scene; just different perspectives of it... This would depend on the game title though, granted.

 

[french toast]

I'm looking forward to seeing some gaming material, this has the potential to be a great device...potential being the operative word.

 

[pjbliverpool]

That gpu at that speed is about 3 times the performance of xenos...no chance.

And the rest...

 

[HolySmoke]

Well I thought about 4670 but it looks far too powerfull for what we have seen imo, unless they underclock it??

It somewhat depends on the metric but the 4670 running at its default 750mhz would be almost exactly 2x the Xenos in terms of shader throughput / gflops. Running at 500mhz would place it smack dab in the purported 1.5x range that 'people say' we should expect from the Wii U.

It's still quite meaningless given how little we know about the chip. That same 4670 running as a 128-bit PC card, for example, would be significantly more bandwidth constrained than the supposedly eDRAM embedded chip in the Wii U. It could have less shader performance but be more powerful in other areas (say, texturing or pixel fill) while the opposite could be true as well. Saying that a GPU is x times faster than another has lost much of its meaning in recent years and I would be surprised if the additional development phase of a 4 year old chip didn't include at least a few changes in characteristics.

 

[Kaotik]

Well I thought about 4670 but it looks far too powerfull for what we have seen imo, unless they underclock it??

Again, we've seen E3-builds of games, not final products.

 

[french toast]

Again, we've seen E3-builds of games, not final products.

I know that mate but you can't keep saying the same thing else we would have to close the thread down and wait till it launches..how boring

 

[french toast]

It somewhat depends on the metric but the 4670 running at its default 750mhz would be almost exactly 2x the Xenos in terms of shader throughput / gflops. Running at 500mhz would place it smack dab in the purported 1.5x range that 'people say' we should expect from the Wii U.

It's still quite meaningless given how little we know about the chip. That same 4670 running as a 128-bit PC card, for example, would be significantly more bandwidth constrained than the supposedly eDRAM embedded chip in the Wii U. It could have less shader performance but be more powerful in other areas (say, texturing or pixel fill) while the opposite could be true as well. Saying that a GPU is x times faster than another has lost much of its meaning in recent years and I would be surprised if the additional development phase of a 4 year old chip didn't include at least a few changes in characteristics.

Well of course we don't know, but my guess is we are looking at a very low power gpu, with possibly less shaders than xenos, but much more efficient and with some specialised fixed function hardware for effects not possible on xenos, likely more bandwidth and more ram.

I also can't see how they could design a weaker cpu, xenon was awesome for its time but is horribly weak now, so you would expect that to be an improvement.

The more you go over it the more I think we're all being done up like a kipper, I can't get my head around how this can't be 2-3 times more powerfull..minimum. You would have to design it that way.

 

[Kaotik]

I know that mate but you can't keep saying the same thing else we would have to close the thread down and wait till it launches..how boring

And you can't go judge the performance solely based on those builds 'till the end