WiiGeePeeYou (Hollywood) what IS it ?

[Megadrive1988]

Nice to know Gecko had better efficiency than a Coppermine cripple (aka Celeron). Really gets the warm fuzzies purring Remember when Xbox was supposed to ship with an Athlon?

yes. in 1999, the Xbox, before it was announced officially, was reported to be an Athlon 450 or 500 MHz
and an NV10 GeForce256 (GeForce1). alternatives for CPU/graphics were a Pentium III and Voodoo3.


then came speculation that Xbox GPU would be NV15 (GeForce2 GTS) or NV11 (GeForce 2 MX), as well as Gigapixel GP4. then it was assumed Xbox GPU would be NV25.

Microsoft announced Xbox with a custom Nvidia X-Chip, did not say it was NV25. later revealed that X-Chip was NV2A, something like an "NV27.5" which in some ways was true, but performance wise, NV2A was sub-NV25 but well beyond NV20.


ahh the stuff I remember.


as for Wii, even though we don't know exactly how Hollywood is constructed, at least we can know that, at least in terms of graphics (not CPU, memory or data-shifting ability) it is on par with one of these fridge-sized babies from 10 years ago.

at least in terms of raw polygon and pixel pushing power

 

[bomlat]

The original gf3 was 144 sqmm, the gekko was 120 sqmmm.

 

[pc999]

If you think it's worth getting hopeful/excited about a CPU with performance, at best, around a Athlon 800 or so I'd say. That might be an overestimation too.

I dont expect it to show a great improvment in physics (or whatever it is) over last gen but I do expect it to make better than XB, how better it would depend on what is inside the console (ie if there is something like VS, I would expect a significant (even if not big) jump in all CPU related tasks). IMO that is easy to suposse because in things like RS it seems to make a better use of physics/particles/destructible environements... than any other UE2/UE2X game, others games had also show better particle fxs (eg smoke) than what we are used to see.

The original gf3 was 144 sqmm, the gekko was 120 sqmmm.

Gekko is 43mm^.

 

[MDX]

I was just another forum where the OP was commenting how he has noticed that Wii games seems to be utilizing "Rim Lighting" more than the other new systems (I dont claim this is true).

My question is, how advanced is this technique, and what if anything can it say about the GPU?

from Jade Empire for the Xbox whats considered one of its most advanced games:
Not only were we wowed by Jade Empire's ground breaking game play, but we were also wowed by its great graphics. To put it simply, Jade Empire is one hell of a beautiful game. On the technical side of things they are using some advanced effects such as overbrighten, rim lighting and bump-mapping. The rim lighting really stood out the most to me, as it creates a soft glowing silhouette around the edges of the character models. This effect really makes the characters in the game feel and look more human.
http://209.85.135.104/search?q=cach...rim+lighting&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=8&client=safari

BTW, here is a new elebits domino video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gj22bfwFNqI

 

[bomlat]

Gekko is 43mm^.

I mean flipper.

 

[pc999]

BTW, here is a new elebits domino video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gj22bfwFNqI

That video is quite good in some parts (eg the falling bottles), I wonder how much time till we see someone pushing the machine with the heavier objects all at the same time so we see how many object we can get till the fremerate suffer.

A bit like a Elebits duck demo.

now that Wii is released in every territory, I was hoping some completely anonymous developer could post the inner workings of both Hollywood & Broadway (and the entire Wii for that matter), as long as he does not risk his job at all, if that's possible. I would've thought there would be a leak by now.

would it not suck if we NEVER found out the inner-workings of Hollywood ? I don't expect them from Nintendo, but from somewhere.... sigh.

It is about time, it had been much faster with the others consoles .

 

[Farid]

I was just another forum where the OP was commenting how he has noticed that Wii games seems to be utilizing "Rim Lighting" more than the other new systems (I dont claim this is true).

My question is, how advanced is this technique, and what if anything can it say about the GPU?

It's just vertex lighting, nothing more. It's also called back lighting.
It's an effect that the numerous EA studios used already in their last gen games (PS2/Xbox/GC).

It's a commonplace lighting effect, in 3D rendering, but also in video/films, often part of the three-point lighting technique.

 

[pc999]

Wii Manufacturing Cost

Graphics chip: $29.60
CPU: $13.00
DRAM: $7.80
Optical disk drive: $31.00
Power supply: $11.30
Manufacturing cost: $19.50
Cost total: $158.30
Wholesale price: $195.99

http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/wii/wii-autopsy-discovers-manufacturing-cost-221736.php

 

[Fox5]

http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/wii/wii-autopsy-discovers-manufacturing-cost-221736.php

Nintendo is getting ripped off on the graphics chip if that cost is true. You can buy agp add in cards with 32MB of ram and a roughly equivalent graphics chip for around that price off of newegg.
Oh, and they forgot the cost of the wiimote, sensor, flash ram, etc.

 

[Magnum PI]

i think the optical disk drive must be a lot cheaper than 31 $

 

[[maven]]

i think the optical disk drive must be a lot cheaper than 31 $

It does have to be somewhat special to be able to eat small and large discs, as well as reading the rather odd Gamecube (and probably Wii) discs. Also, it's a small form factor.

 

[nonamer]

Given the poor design of the 1t-SRAM setup on the GPU, it could very well cost that much.

 

[fearsomepirate]

Nintendo is getting ripped off on the graphics chip if that cost is true. You can buy agp add in cards with 32MB of ram and a roughly equivalent graphics chip for around that price off of newegg.

Clearance prices generally don't reflect production costs. Nintendo's paying NEC to manufacture new chips for them; they aren't scrounging around pricewatch and newegg looking for old inventory that retailers divested themselves of years ago.

 

[Fox5]

Clearance prices generally don't reflect production costs. Nintendo's paying NEC to manufacture new chips for them; they aren't scrounging around pricewatch and newegg looking for old inventory that retailers divested themselves of years ago.

Ok then, well there's no shortage of x300 and 6200 cards on newegg, pci express, with 64MB to 128MB of ram in that price range. They're not that old. And if you really want something recent, 7100 gpu cards are not that much more expensive, and have 128MB of ram on board. That takes care of the gpu, vram, and system ram, all at once and at retail costs (I doubt 7100 gpus are clearance items since they seem to be relatively recently introductions) for about the same as what Nintendo is paying (according to that analysis) for chips that don't even come with a PCB.

Now, it appears that the 7100 is actually geforce 6 based, but it's only been available since this fall so it's a recent product introduction. It appears to be about 50% better than a geforce 3 performance wise and has a better feature set. Of course, Nintendo didn't use PC hardware in its console (outside of the system ram) so it doesn't get to benefit from the low prices that mass production of pc hardware brings. The 7100 is based off technology and manufacturing processes that have been long paid for, not to mention produced in volume. The Wii is a custom gpu that still needs to have its R&D paid for. That said, I still don't think it should be that expensive as Nintendo licensed the design and is not buying the chips outright, unless NEC is just a very expensive company to have fab your chips and Nintendo uses them because of some esoteric reason. For instance, maybe Nintendo has long since grown wary of knock off pirate products and feels their IP will be more secure if they keep things in Japan.

 

[fearsomepirate]

Ok then, well there's no shortage of x300 and 6200 cards on newegg, pci express, with 64MB to 128MB of ram in that price range. They're not that old.

Nintendo's just put out around 600,000 Wiis. What's the bulk of the manufacturing cost in one of those 7100's? They retail for around $70, and supposedly, GPU + RAM is costing Nintendo ~$37. And it's not backward compatible with Flipper (and you said it performs only 50% better than a GF3? Ouch!).

And if you really want something recent, 7100 gpu cards are not that much more expensive, and have 128MB of ram on board. That takes care of the gpu, vram, and system ram, all at once and at retail costs (I doubt 7100 gpus are clearance items since they seem to be relatively recently introductions) for about the same as what Nintendo is paying (according to that analysis) for chips that don't even come with a PCB.

This speculation is pretty useless, IMO, unless you're privy to chip fab costs at NEC. The price they're giving is probably based on die size and process, and if that's so, the price is probably pretty fair.

 

[Fox5]

Nintendo's just put out around 600,000 Wiis. What's the bulk of the manufacturing cost in one of those 7100's? They retail for around $70, and supposedly, GPU + RAM is costing Nintendo ~$37. And it's not backward compatible with Flipper (and you said it performs only 50% better than a GF3? Ouch!).

And if you really want something recent, 7100 gpu cards are not that much more expensive, and have 128MB of ram on board. That takes care of the gpu, vram, and system ram, all at once and at retail costs (I doubt 7100 gpus are clearance items since they seem to be relatively recently introductions) for about the same as what Nintendo is paying (according to that analysis) for chips that don't even come with a PCB.

This speculation is pretty useless, IMO, unless you're privy to chip fab costs at NEC. The price they're giving is probably based on die size and process, and if that's so, the price is probably pretty fair.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814141049
7100s start at $44 on newegg, and that's with 128MB of ram.
As for only 50% better, well that's like 75% better than the Wii gpu is currently showing. It's an extreme low end chip, but so is the wii gpu.

 

[pc999]

I agree that making a direct comparition to a gfx card price isnt a good thing to do, but I remember that somone post a table with aproximated price given a die size and such and from what I recal those prices fits in, or at least it isnt much cheaper (of curse there as been a long time since I saw it for the last time so I may b just plain wrong).

Anyway I still find ridiculus that they couldnt double the RAM and and add a second CPU (or some other more specialized processor of the same (or even less) size/cost in it, eg a VMX array, a SPE like...) and subtantially boost the performance and competitivity while still making a big proffit per console sold and making everybody happy.

I hope that what is boosting up the CPU and specially the GPU (the one with a bigger addition of silicon) is really good.

BTW one more Wii game that wants state of the art physics.

And GCV reviewn

Wii is theoretically more powerful than Xbox, but it doesn't have the pixel shading [ ] benefits of Microsoft's first generation hardware. Despite the fact that it has released more than a year after Instincts, Vengeance doesn't even look half as good -- and we're not exaggerating.

 

[sfried]

Do these really just look like buffer captures?:
http://dengekionline.com/news/200611/30/pbr/pbrhtml/n20061130_pbr_19.html

Based on the cables and the display given by the Wii, I don't think it's unfeasable.

 

[pc999]

Do these really just look like buffer captures?:
http://dengekionline.com/news/200611/30/pbr/pbrhtml/n20061130_pbr_19.html

Based on the cables and the display given by the Wii, I don't think it's unfeasable.

I hope they still have the same "talent" with HW that they showed in GC , anyway that is good looking if they can suport a good number of those in a more complex scene it will be mcuh better than must are expecting.

 

[fearsomepirate]

As for only 50% better, well that's like 75% better than the Wii gpu is currently showing. It's an extreme low end chip, but so is the wii gpu.

GF3 might have the flexibility edge, but Rebel Strike + 50% on a Geforce 3? Yeah right.

What's the size of the 7100 die, how much bigger would it be with 3 MB of 1T-SRAM, and how does its manufacturing process compare to Hollywood's? How well would it run if it were emulating a Flipper? Also, the memory on that video card you showed me is GDDR2. Wii uses 64 MB GDDR3 and 24 MB 1T-SRAM, both of which are more expensive than GDDR2.