WiiGeePeeYou (Hollywood) what IS it ?

[Oblivion]

Wii2 should be able to comfortably handle 1080p without comprimizes that Xbox 360 and PS3 have to make to hit that resolution.

LOL. Do you really think that? I assume Nintendo will continue with the small form factor, and it'll be difficult to get 1080p on it even 5 years from now. Seriously, I'm worried that we won't get 360 level, hell even 256 MB of RAM if the Wii has taught us anything. And if the Wii takes off, Nintendo will even further have no reason to blow too much dough on hardware.

 

[nonamer]

That's why I, frankly, think the Wii is a deadend. People are doubt whether the Wii-mote is good for 2 years not even considering 10 years. But that's how long it will have to last if they still want bad graphics going into next gen. At some point, they have to make the jump to be competitive on graphics.

 

[swaaye]

Some of you need to actually play more Cube games before talking about what crap it is.

Thems are fighting words!!!!! Hahah. Well whatever. I don't think I'm saying "Cube is worthless half assed shit". It was impressive hardware, in 2001. I think the library is rather sad, honestly, but there are some gems in there (RE4, F-Zero, Xtreme G, and (graphically) the SW F5 games). A few others..

Wii'll see about Wii though.I'm getting an icky feeling about Wii's future lineup. Cube had a much better launch selection. Ubisoft has demonstrated that they don't really give a shit. 1st party looks like it will, of course, shine. But on the 3rd party angle I'm only really interested in Biohazard I think. It just better not be a port of RE5 360.

 

[pc999]

LOL. Do you really think that? I assume Nintendo will continue with the small form factor, and it'll be difficult to get 1080p on it even 5 years from now. Seriously, I'm worried that we won't get 360 level, hell even 256 MB of RAM if the Wii has taught us anything. And if the Wii takes off, Nintendo will even further have no reason to blow too much dough on hardware.

Any low end card of the time should be able to do very decent gfx at higher rez (like todays 7300/X1300 can play Quake4 or HL2:LC at higher qualitity/fremerates/rez than XB can do HL2 or D3).

if they still want bad graphics going into next gen.

They actually said they would care with specs again in next gen.

 

[Megadrive1988]

LOL. Do you really think that? I assume Nintendo will continue with the small form factor, and it'll be difficult to get 1080p on it even 5 years from now. Seriously, I'm worried that we won't get 360 level, hell even 256 MB of RAM if the Wii has taught us anything. And if the Wii takes off, Nintendo will even further have no reason to blow too much dough on hardware.

Wii's successor does not HAVE to be as small as Wii. do I think they will have respectable graphics and CPU next time? yes. do I think it'll have more power than Xbox 360? yes. do I think it will rival Xbox3 and PS4? no. only way i could be wrong is if Wii is an overwelming massive success and takes #1 position, then Nintendo will just repeat. I think Wii2 will be an evolution of the Wii.

but the way I see it, Microsoft and Sony will go for CPUs with dozens of cores, and GPUs with a few billion transistors, and several GB of memory. i think Wii2 will be a simple dual-core console with a decent graphics chip about 1/2 or 1/3 as powerful as Microsoft and Sony, and probably 1 GB of RAM.
no reason not to. Microsoft and Sony will charge $400~$500 for their next systems again probably. while Nintendo stays in the $250 to $300 range. the Wii is more powerful than the PS2 in graphics so no reason why Wii2 cant be more powerful than PS3/Xbox360 in graphics. Wii'll see.

 

[bomlat]

Flipper has about 3 MB of embedded 1T-SRAM.
1 MB embedded texture memory, 2 MB embedded framebuffer
the total embedded 1T-SRAM memory is actually 3.12 MB


the 24 MB 1T-SRAM is external memory in GameCube.

in Wii, the 24 MB 1T-SRAM seems to be part of the Hollywood GPU package, but not actually embedded, almost certainly still external. it's not like Xbox360's 10 MB EDRAM daughter chip.

The xbox2 and the wii use the same NEC memory technology (the 10 megs of x2 mem have same embedded circuit).
S,possibly it have more bandwith than an 1.5 cube (they have to re-design the mem controller by anyway)

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Wii2 should be able to comfortably handle 1080p without comprimizes that Xbox 360 and PS3 have to make to hit that resolution. if Nintendo makes their HD games in 720p that's even better, since 3x more power will be there whatever the GPU is, since 1080p needs about 3x more performance over 720p. just give me a load of anti-aliasing and 3D motion blurr.

This is going off on a tangent and isn't discussing Wii's GPUs, so perhaps should be moved to the future consoles thread? Still, while I'm typing...

I think Nintendo have in a way backed themselves into a corner. For all their current machines, one of their big plus-points is cheapness to develop for. To go from cheap and simple to complex, powerful hardware, is going to be a major shift. That is, if Wii2 is comparable with a PS4, that's equivalent to a 2 generation leap in technology. A Wii2 couldn't be as powerful without going massively multicore for example, so Wii developers would be smacking into the problems that PS and XB developers are used to from the previous 4 years.

I wouldn't be surprised if Nintendo pitch their hardware technology to fit the software technology. If multicore development on asymmetric systems is easy by then, they may choose that route. If that route has more power but is harder, they may well pick symmetric multicore. Likewise they may well stick with older rendering tech to keep to something devs don't have to struggle to use.

I can't see a clear direction for Nintendo. I think their current choices were only for now, and they haven't a long term plan on how to develop them. They're providing simple games with different interfaces. Repeating these interfaces just with more power is adding cost of development without gains that Nintendo recognise as being important. They've said repeatedly graphics don't matter. To then release a new console that's the same as the previous, only with better graphics, they're ignoring they're own philosophy.

Okay, wouldn't be the first time

 

[theafu]

Shifty I like your point, but really what's wrong with stay with what works. Think about it. We saw how much progress in real time graphics now think about how much we are expected to have over the next few years. How many of us would agree that by 2k11 when the new systems come out we wouldn't have reached a huge saturation point in graphics. Nintendo in this case probably did the smartest thing in this eye candy whore contest and sat without something they knew would work. Nintendo is going to compete with their competitors next time, but like sony and ms have show us one can copy anothers competitors ideas. While everyone here in the now is trying to up the ante with eye candy nintendo is most likely figuring how to develop with same level or better power at a cheap price sans architectural flaws.

 

[bomlat]

I think Nintendo have in a way backed themselves into a corner. For all their current machines, one of their big plus-points is cheapness to develop for. To go from cheap and simple to complex, powerful hardware, is going to be a major shift.
Okay, wouldn't be the first time

You miss the point.
If the wii will be the same succes as the DS in that case the next gen can be something more harder to program than anything before.
If it will require from the programmers to do the job in hex to bring products for the most succesful product they will do .
So, it is not interesting.The target is to get more developer NOW.If they have developers now, they have better chances for a more complex platform 4 years later.

(interesting point:if the XBOX2/PS3 lifetime sales will be less than 25 mill what will be the quality of the products?If there is no money in it nobady will spend a money to bring out the most from a not profitable platform.As in the case of the GC)

I think the reason why we can see many dithering on the GC is that it is not as succesfull as the ps2 and the Nintendo haven't got the same amount of money to burn as the M$.

 

[Oblivion]

the Wii is more powerful than the PS2 in graphics so no reason why Wii2 cant be more powerful than PS3/Xbox360 in graphics.

See, the problem with that statement is the simple fact that GC was already more powerful than the PS2.

If NIntendo made a weaker GC, well that would be regressing, wouldn't it?

 

[Teasy]

Well I would hope that Wii isn't limited to DirectX 8-level stuff either. But it may not even be that flexible.

One thing that bothers me about Cube games (and makes them look like PS2 games) is the lack of quality texture filtering and mip mapping. The Voodoo1 could do passable mip mapping. Most Cube games don't seem to bother and you get horrible aliasing in the distance as a result. Wii Zelda is the same. So fancy texturing unit my arse! Now I don't doubt that the hardware can do this (N64 could!), but there's obviously some big bad limitation in there that's preventing them from using it.

First of all loads of GC games have good texture filtering and no mip mapping problems. I think your totally exagerating the problem which seems to only really occur in games that pack the memory with textures leaving not much space for anything else. Wii will already solve that problem with 3-4 times more memory.

Also I really don't know why your looking at Zelda to judge Wii's graphics capabilities "Wii Zelda is the same. So fancy texturing unit my arse!" is a silly comment. As well all know Zelda on Wii is simply a GC game with new control attributes added. No added features in Wii would have any effect on Zelda.

Here did you get that number, or you are already assuming significant upgrades to the TnL unit?

GameCube put out between 15-20 million PPS in game, add 50% for the extra clock speed (22.5 - 30 Million). As I said that's a minimum assuming no upgrades to the T&L pipeline.

I took a random guess on the geforce + 50% performance, and just assuming that the games would be fillrate limited.

Geforce 3 + 50% wasn't mentioned, Fearsome was talking about Rebel Strike + 50%. Probably meaning the best looking GC game plus the 50% extra clock speed (which obviously ignores the extra memory, bandwidth and the possible extra hardware).

LOL. Do you really think that? I assume Nintendo will continue with the small form factor, and it'll be difficult to get 1080p on it even 5 years from now. Seriously, I'm worried that we won't get 360 level, hell even 256 MB of RAM if the Wii has taught us anything. And if the Wii takes off, Nintendo will even further have no reason to blow too much dough on hardware.

In what way? GC had 24MB of memory, Wii has 88MB, the same increase to the next console would mean over 300MB..

 

[swaaye]

First of all loads of GC games have good texture filtering and no mip mapping problems. I think your totally exagerating the problem which seems to only really occur in games that pack the memory with textures leaving not much space for anything else. Wii will already solve that problem with 3-4 times more memory.

Also I really don't know why your looking at Zelda to judge Wii's graphics capabilities "Wii Zelda is the same. So fancy texturing unit my arse!" is a silly comment. As well all know Zelda on Wii is simply a GC game with new control attributes added. No added features in Wii would have any effect on Zelda.

Yeah it was a silly comment.

I was actually trying to refer to Cube, not insult Wii. Wii Zelda (yes, a Cube game) and RE4 both have icky filtering. Those are two I'm sure about. So, the mip mapping limitation is an effect caused by the Cube only having the same amount of texture RAM as a Voodoo1 (2MB)? It's sorta scary when you realize that Flipper has less framebuffer RAM than Voodoo Graphics. Both run the same resolution. Apparently streaming from the external SRAM isn't an option to relieve size pressure.

 

[Megadrive1988]

This is going off on a tangent and isn't discussing Wii's GPUs, so perhaps should be moved to the future consoles thread? Still, while I'm typing...

I think Nintendo have in a way backed themselves into a corner. For all their current machines, one of their big plus-points is cheapness to develop for. To go from cheap and simple to complex, powerful hardware, is going to be a major shift. That is, if Wii2 is comparable with a PS4, that's equivalent to a 2 generation leap in technology. A Wii2 couldn't be as powerful without going massively multicore for example, so Wii developers would be smacking into the problems that PS and XB developers are used to from the previous 4 years.

I don't think Wii2 will be as powerful as PS4, and certainly not nearly as complicated to develop for. I'm sure Nintendo will go for a fairly simple design and programming environment. by 2011, programming on a powerful dual-core CPU should be trivial for any developer since they will have had to have gotten used to triple core, quad core, and 8 core programming. Also, powerful GPUs are not hard to use at all. I think Nintendo Wii2 and PS4 could parallal Gamecube and PS2. Nintendo had a simple but powerful CPU for Gamecube and a simple put powerful and high quality GPU. Sony went for a complex CPU for PS2 and a complex and powerful but flawed graphics chip for PS2. I think Sony will stay well ahead of Nintendo in the CPU race, but they could have comparable GPUs, even if Wii2 GPU is less powerful than PS4 GPU. Nintendo will keep things simple for developers, they will keep manufacturing costs down, and development costs down, while offering a reasonable console in terms of CPU, graphics and memory. the key thing will be a further improvement of the "Revolutionary" aspect, the Wii Remote, or something that is another leap in gameplay/control.

I wouldn't be surprised if Nintendo pitch their hardware technology to fit the software technology. If multicore development on asymmetric systems is easy by then, they may choose that route. If that route has more power but is harder, they may well pick symmetric multicore. Likewise they may well stick with older rendering tech to keep to something devs don't have to struggle to use.

they've always gone with hardware that suites the needs of the games that they develop anyway, so it will be much the same with Wii2 or whatever they call their next console. they could ask to ATI come up with new rendering technologies that are easy to use. typically new GPUs are very easy to use. so easy they that get maxxed out rather quickly. it's the CPUs that are difficult and that's where I see Nintendo keeping things simple, not crazy with dozens of cores and different types of cores. as I said, a nice powerful dual-core G6 or Power6 derived CPU should be just fine, while providing a tremendous leap from bith Gekko and Broadway.

I can't see a clear direction for Nintendo. I think their current choices were only for now, and they haven't a long term plan on how to develop them. They're providing simple games with different interfaces. Repeating these interfaces just with more power is adding cost of development without gains that Nintendo recognise as being important. They've said repeatedly graphics don't matter. To then release a new console that's the same as the previous, only with better graphics, they're ignoring they're own philosophy.

Okay, wouldn't be the first time

graphics do matter to Nintendo, just not having the graphics as the #1 thing. if graphics didn't matter to Nintendo they would've released Wii with the exact same GPU, Flipper, as was in Gamecube. graphics won't be the main focus of Wii2 just like it wasnt with Wii, but at the same time, they can do a huge upgrade in graphics from Wii, without having a state-of-the-art multi-billion transistor GPU in 2011. Nintendo will continue to make both simple and epic games. brancing out to capture as much of the gamers and non-gamers as they can. that's their goal. if they fell too radically far behind in graphics, nobody would even concider buying Nintendo stuff anymore because a large percentage of the population still bases their gaming purchases on graphics / the initial visual wow factor.

 

[Teasy]

Yeah it was a silly comment.

I was actually trying to refer to Cube, not insult Wii. Wii Zelda (yes, a Cube game) and RE4 both have icky filtering. Those are two I'm sure about. So, the mip mapping limitation is an effect caused by the Cube only having the same amount of texture RAM as a Voodoo1 (2MB)? It's sorta scary when you realize that Flipper has less framebuffer RAM than Voodoo Graphics. Both run the same resolution. Apparently streaming from the external SRAM isn't an option to relieve size pressure.

Of course you can hold and stream textures from system memory.. Who says any mip map problem you've seen in certain games has anything to do with embedded memory?

Also Voodoo1 had 2MB of memory for everything, frame/Z and textures. Flipper has 3MB embedded memory plus fast system memory.

 

[swaaye]

Of course you can hold and stream textures from system memory.. Who says any mip map problem you've seen in certain games has anything to do with embedded memory?

Also Voodoo1 had 2MB of memory for everything, frame/Z and textures. Flipper has 3MB embedded memory plus fast system memory.

So the problem is the game devs stuffed all of the machine's RAM so full that mip mapping wasn't an option anymore. I guess that means mip mapping / texture filtering is low on the visual fidelity priority list.

 

[Teasy]

So the problem is the game devs stuffed all of the machine's RAM so full that mip mapping wasn't an option anymore. I guess that means mip mapping / texture filtering is low on the visual fidelity priority list.

Well I suppose sacrifices always have to be made in game design, but especially so when you only have 27MB of ram to work with.

 

[pc999]

GameCube put out between 15-20 million PPS in game, add 50% for the extra clock speed (22.5 - 30 Million). As I said that's a minimum assuming no upgrades to the T&L pipeline.

I always heard GC as capable of 6-12M in game.

Geforce 3 + 50% wasn't mentioned, Fearsome was talking about Rebel Strike + 50%. Probably meaning the best looking GC game plus the 50% extra clock speed (which obviously ignores the extra memory, bandwidth and the possible extra hardware).

I think this is almost a certain thing given that how big is the hoolywood (given the 90nm) to flipper, even g71 from g70 had became smaller with a smaller jump.

Broadway is also a bit bigger than the 750CL (the "90nm gekko" that already had some minor additions).

 

[fearsomepirate]

So the problem is the game devs stuffed all of the machine's RAM so full that mip mapping wasn't an option anymore. I guess that means mip mapping / texture filtering is low on the visual fidelity priority list.

It's low on the priority list in a few certain instances. It was cleraly high on the priority list for Retro, Factor 5, and most of the 3rd parties. The number of games I've seen where it was a problem is in the single digits.

And yes, I did in fact mean take Rebel Strike, up its quality (texture resolution, effects, # of bad guys onscreen and detail of terrain) by however much is possible with an additional 64 MB of RAM and 50% clockspeeds (incl bandwidth gains--that means ~30 GB/s to the eDRAM on Hollywood), and that's not going to be something a Geforce 3 could handle. The effects play entirely to Flipper's strengths and would really crap out nvidia's first DX8 chipset. For one thing, the self-shadowing is basically being done with the TMU, meaning the geometry engine isn't getting tied up futzing around with shadow volumes. For another, many of the effects take advantage of the high bandwidth, which Flipper just has more to play around with than GF3. Design to a machine's strengths, and you'll do things that another machine that isn't as strong in those areas can't do. I mean, that's pretty basic, isn't it?

 

[bomlat]

Of course you can hold and stream textures from system memory.. Who says any mip map problem you've seen in certain games has anything to do with embedded memory?

Also Voodoo1 had 2MB of memory for everything, frame/Z and textures. Flipper has 3MB embedded memory plus fast system memory.

C'mon!

Voodoo 1:
4 megs EDO RAM on 66 MHZ.(2*32bit data bus)
It was divided into two pieces: one for texture mem and on for frame buffer.
The two logic was on diferent chip.(the texel and the pxiel unit).
Other big diference is the V1 has to do the double buffering in the mem,that mean the V' was able to do 640*480*16bit, the GC is able to do 640*480*24bit.(bit difference because the multi texturing)

 

[Oblivion]

In what way? GC had 24MB of memory, Wii has 88MB, the same increase to the next console would mean over 300MB..

Didn't GC have 40 MB RAM? That would make it slightly more than doubled. Which would make Wii2 a little over 160 MB.