Wii U hardware discussion and investigation *rename

Status
Not open for further replies.
Yes, I imagine the optical drives can eat a good amount of power as they spin up.

Assuming the Xbox 360 S transformer is able to output 135W, it would have to draw 145W if you assumed 94% efficiency, which is probably high. It's probably between 80 and 90%. In any case, your 360S is not going to draw 145W from the wall, at any point, period.

Like Al said, the Wii uses about 20W during gameplay, and the output on the supply is rated at 40W or something like that.

Edit:
Another thing to consider is that they're not designing these supplies. They're just rebranded off-the-shelf supplies. They're likely to look at quite a few supplies with different ratings depending on what's available. They may end up with one that has a ton of headroom, if it is abundant, cheap and of good quality.
 
I see, so you're comparing it to bad PC PSUs.

But no, 80% isn't the "upper limit". Even in PCs, only "bad" PSUs won't be able to handle the rated wattage.

Some PSUs (Corsair, Seasonic, BeQuiet) can even handle sustained wattages well above their rated output, and all the good ones will handle some 5W above its rated specification just fine.


Yes, many uninformed people use the "up to 70%" rule for buying PSUs, without even knowing why.. That's mainly because there's practically no quality regulation for PSUs and their rated maximum output and they'd risk buying a "800W PSU" from "LCPower" or something that won't even do 600W and damage some components due to unstable voltages.
NO one designing a mass market computer produce product would do anything you say. I don't even you believe this non sense. Do you believe they will use more than 60watts?

We are all just uninformed. Even if every other console ever made follows these rules. Lol I mean really if you needed more than 50 w get a bigger power brick. Its not built into the system just get a bigger one....

While in theory you made be correct that they could do this. It is so unlikely it not worth talking about.

That's the phat model, right?
Why won't you check the power usage in an AAA game from 2012 and see if it's still 200W?
as the other has posted. This is not true at all.

Xbox 360
Slim System .06W
Off Idle 70.4W
Halo 3 87.0W
Rockband 2 82.7W
Gears of War 2 88.0W
Red Dead Redemption 90.4W



Funny.
So when you turn on your 600W microwave at maximum power, you think the output is actually 300W?
so this microwave will be using 1100 watts to make 600 watts. Not sure how is backs up what you posted.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Someone measure the power draw running a known AAA title (Uncharted 2 or 3 should be accepted as taxing the system) and it can be proven one way or the other, and someone fed crow.
It's been shown that current consoles use almost as much power at idle as they do at full load, and therefore the power draw in a "single-A" game should therefore be pretty much the same as a triple-A game...

There are also the power spikes from spinning up the optical drive & random accesses.
This is immaterial. Hitachi Deskstars at 7.5k RPM using five metal platters and a phat metal hub spindle spin up to full speed using only 15W, when standby power is in the 8-10W range. A single, low-RPM carbonate disc isn't going to need a whole lot to spin up. The stepper motor controlling the optical block way, way, WAY less. Seeking is likely in the milliwatt range, IE rounding error pretty much.
 
A single, low-RPM carbonate disc isn't going to need a whole lot to spin up. The stepper motor controlling the optical block way, way, WAY less. Seeking is likely in the milliwatt range, IE rounding error pretty much.

No? There are some spec lists for BD drives on google listing up to 22W for said cases while nominal operation was much lower.

http://www.pioneer.eu/eur/products/archive/BDC-202/index.html
http://www.pioneer.eu/eur/products/archive/BDR-203BK/index.html

*shrug* Guess I misinterpreted then. :p
 
Sure, there could be BR drives using a crapton of power to spin up, but it doesn't HAVE to be that way. A few years ago, Seagate drives regularly guzzled upwards of 50 (!) watts during spinup for example, while at the same time Hitachi drives were much more frugal (as mentioned in previous posts.)

So it would be a design issue, not anything inherent to getting a light platter spinning.
 
75W max total system power draw, including optical drives, wireless radios and so on. That's some seriously weak-ass hardware then! Oh well, not as if it's really any news I guess.

4cm case fan. It was always going to be this way!

Think the WiiU has 4 USB 2 ports, right? So that's 10W allocation iirc (or maybe more if they want fast charge over USB). And yeah, not just Wifi but video streaming to two pads.

Side-note: 15V DC seems a bit unusual. :p

Running the 4 cm fan at 12v couldn't keep the system cool enough!
 
Last edited by a moderator:
4cm case fan. It was always going to be this way!

Think the WiiU has 4 USB 2 ports, right? So that's 10W allocation iirc (or maybe more if they want fast charge over USB). And yeah, not just Wifi but video streaming to two pads.
Just a note: the number of pads that video is being streamed to is irrelevant - apparently it's all multiplexed in the same stream. We can conclude as much based on the '1x pad @ 60 fps, 2x pads @ 30 fps' info we got some time ago.
 
Just a note: the number of pads that video is being streamed to is irrelevant - apparently it's all multiplexed in the same stream. We can conclude as much based on the '1x pad @ 60 fps, 2x pads @ 30 fps' info we got some time ago.

Yeah, I'd worked out that there was some limit on the WiiU meaning 1 x 60 went to 2 x 30. I didn't know what it was, but using the same wireless channel seems entirely reasonable and I guess it's cheaper in terms of hardware.
 
I guess it's cheaper in terms of hardware.
Yes, but probably only incidentally, as wireless video is probably not trivial to get working reliably, and having two parallel streams would be (at least) twice the engineering headache, risk of interference etc. Plus, as mentioned, power use as well... Damn that tiny little metal tin can! :LOL:
 
I was thinking a bit more about the CPU setup, trying to reconcile the initial announcements about the Power7 relation, the asymmetric L2, the Wii HW BC, and the supposed ease of 360 portability.

How about a Power7 main core derivitive + 2 "enhanced" Broadways? :p i.e 4-way SMT + 2 cores -> 6 threads *ahem*

Sounds ridiculous, I know (45nm Broadway would be lol). >_>
 
I was thinking a bit more about the CPU setup, trying to reconcile the initial announcements about the Power7 relation, the asymmetric L2, the Wii HW BC, and the supposed ease of 360 portability.

How about a Power7 main core derivitive + 2 "enhanced" Broadways? :p i.e 4-way SMT + 2 cores -> 6 threads *ahem*

Sounds ridiculous, I know (45nm Broadway would be lol). >_>

Don't worry. You're not the only crazy person around here.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=32881643&postcount=12624

LOL. I said that part in bold. And my stupid, crazy idea kinda sounds like this except with one modified POWER7 core and two modified 476FP cores.
 
I need to go back making games, I'm bored of even considering to try to guess, I want to know :p
 
Still seems a bit to high on the power draw for the WiiU.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top