WiiGeePeeYou (Hollywood) what IS it ?
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Those specs are so low I'm almost frightened for Nintendo.
Sure, having specs like that will make it really affordable at launch. They will probably even make profit on it right out of the gate.
But as far as being able to compete with PS3 and Xbox360... I have to argue it's not in even the same product catagory anymore. It's as if Sony and MS are building sports cars and Nintendo is building really nice bicycles.
Sure, having specs like that will make it really affordable at launch. They will probably even make profit on it right out of the gate.
But as far as being able to compete with PS3 and Xbox360... I have to argue it's not in even the same product catagory anymore. It's as if Sony and MS are building sports cars and Nintendo is building really nice bicycles.
Seems a slightly wierd setup to me. There's 64 MB GDDR with 4 GB/s. Broadway has 1.9 GB/s access to this. Hollywood has 24 MB internal RAM at 3.9 GB/s + 3 MB eDRAM. Hollywood can access this at 486 MHz, 3.9 GB/s. That's a 64 bit bus? eDRAM is less than a third the size of Xenos, for a screen that's a third the resolution at most. May be less than that such as PAL 640x512 or higher. Thus for the same activities as Xenos you'd need to use tiling. This would suggest no HDR or AA for the full buffer to fit in eDRAM? And the main memory MEM2 would feed into MEM1 for use by GPU and audio? So this design listed is a two pool NUMA, single direction MEM1 >> MEM2, and CPU can't read from GPU? In other words, the CPU has 64 MB available, the GPU+audio has 64+24 (excluding eDRAM workspace). Where does the 1T SRAM come in? The 24 MB GPU RAM? That'd be hardware compatible with GC for BC, no?
To me, it seems quite a complex system where in this day and age you could get faster more simply at for not much more cost, surely. What's wrong with 256 MB GDDR3 at 20+ GB/s shared or somesuch? It seems to be adding some of the PS3's memory complexity having to manage data in different locations, but without the advantages that brings in having more BW. Though if the 1T-SRAM is noticeably faster and yet costly (it wasn't an issue with GC) I guess a substantial quantity of 1T-SRAM may have been prohibitive.
Overall, it does look extremely low spec! I'm sure everyone would like more than this from a new console. I can't help but feel it's little more than someone upping the current GC specs to create something plausible, but at the other end of the scale that's almost all we've been hearing - GC+.
To me, it seems quite a complex system where in this day and age you could get faster more simply at for not much more cost, surely. What's wrong with 256 MB GDDR3 at 20+ GB/s shared or somesuch? It seems to be adding some of the PS3's memory complexity having to manage data in different locations, but without the advantages that brings in having more BW. Though if the 1T-SRAM is noticeably faster and yet costly (it wasn't an issue with GC) I guess a substantial quantity of 1T-SRAM may have been prohibitive.
Overall, it does look extremely low spec! I'm sure everyone would like more than this from a new console. I can't help but feel it's little more than someone upping the current GC specs to create something plausible, but at the other end of the scale that's almost all we've been hearing - GC+.
INKster said:
What works for one system doesn't neccesarilly work for another though. GC was about low latency and high efficiency, and Wii is supposed to follow that idea. Switching extremely low latency main memory (1T-Sram in GC) for much higher latency main memory with only slighty more bandwidth would be a terrible idea. It may even make Wii's main memory slower then GC's.. Which is just one reason why this rumour is obviously untrue.
Nightz said:
GC could do nice self shadowing, normal mapping and some pretty nice shader effects. You're not looking at the right games if you think Wii can't..
I'd guess that's a rounding error, like the 3.9 is actually 3.888 GB/s if it's a multiplier of 486 MHz clockspeed (which even then isn't right as 1 Mega in bytes is not the ame as 1 Mega in Hertz). The numbers seem to work okay, with them being multiples of each other, if you are a bit loose with fitting them together, like 486 megahertz x 8 bytes = 3.7 GB/s real value, but approximately 3.9 if you don't count bytes properly. Being loose with definitions doesn't add much by way of creditability to a technical document though!
ZiFF said:
I was under the impression that only the CPU could access the GDDR3 memory, if the GDDR3 memory is used mainly for less latency dependent tasks like graphics while the entire 24MB of 1T-Sram is used for latency dependent code then that makes more sense. Though I still have my reservations, like for instance the strange difference in bandwidth between the GDDR3 and 1T-Sram. By the way what do you mean when you say that the 3MB of eDram is different from GC?
Shifty Geezer said:
Yeah I know that rounding errors often occur in tech documents/articles and that bandwidth definitions are often used losely. But a rounding error wouldn't explain why a Nintendo document would say that the 24MB of ram has 3.9GB/s and the 64MB pool has 4GB. Both are on the same width bus and using the same memory controller, so surely both would be listed either as 3.9GB/s or 4GB/s?
I'll say one thing though, if these were the real Wii specs then Nintendo must have completely lost there marbles. Not only because the system would be underpowered in the most extreme way possible but also because they'd have paid ATI and IBM to effectively do nothing. Not only that but it would have taken them until late 2006 to manage to do nothing... remember that IBM and ATI only recently managed to finish the Broadway/Hollywood design and finally include it in a final Wii dev kit. How can it take that long to complete a 50% overclocked 90nm version of a 180nm chip you designed 6 years earlier?? I'm not even going to go into the tiny amount of money this system should cost to put together vs what Nintendo seem to be suggesting for the launch price and the fact that Nintendo themselves have said they will make a small loss on hardware at launch. Nope none of this adds up, not even Nintendo do things that bizarrely.
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Isn't the whole point of having on-chip memory to obtain some kind of ridiculous bandwidth? Why on earth would 24 MB of embedded 1T-SRAM have only 3.9 GB/s of bandwidth? That would seem to almost defeat the purpose of embedded memory.
IGN, which despite poor interpretation of the facts reports actual facts, recently confirmed that the rumble motor is single-intensity. This forum post says it's variable intensity. I'm gonna go with IGN. And how come he overlooked the speaker and the on-controller memory?
ATI and Retro have already referred to Hollywood as a new architecture; I somehow doubt this means "GC architecture with a crapload of low-bandwidth eDRAM."
IGN, which despite poor interpretation of the facts reports actual facts, recently confirmed that the rumble motor is single-intensity. This forum post says it's variable intensity. I'm gonna go with IGN. And how come he overlooked the speaker and the on-controller memory?
ATI and Retro have already referred to Hollywood as a new architecture; I somehow doubt this means "GC architecture with a crapload of low-bandwidth eDRAM."
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That to me is what makes this OC'd GC idea preposterous. Unless IBM and ATi only had one guy working on the changes in their lunch breaks!Teasy said:
This sounds bogus to me. I mean, I can't even remember how many false rumours we've been hearing about Wii / Revolution over the past 1 1/2 years. It's just ridiculous. We've heard more credible ones, we've heard incredible setups with 6 chips and more. But in the end they've had one thing in common they were completely false.
IGN is the only one who seems to have actually access to the dev documentation and all we've got from them so far is the clockspeeds. Even IGN's alledged ram configuration seems off. First it was 3 MB eDram, then 16 MB and now it's 16+3 MB eDram.
I am really sceptic. I need proof and not just a couple of posters of GAF who claim to be insiders. BTW, if there're so many insiders, how don't we know jack about Wii? How can Nintendo keep it a secret?
IGN is the only one who seems to have actually access to the dev documentation and all we've got from them so far is the clockspeeds. Even IGN's alledged ram configuration seems off. First it was 3 MB eDram, then 16 MB and now it's 16+3 MB eDram.
I am really sceptic. I need proof and not just a couple of posters of GAF who claim to be insiders. BTW, if there're so many insiders, how don't we know jack about Wii? How can Nintendo keep it a secret?
Shifty Geezer said:That to me is what makes this OC'd GC idea preposterous. Unless IBM and ATi only had one guy working on the changes in their lunch breaks!
Close! It was actually me...while I was doing my Master's in math, on the side I was trying to teach myself about computer architecture. It was hard, but ATI was giving me beer money. In the end, though, it was mostly over my head, so I told them to just stick 24 MB of RAM on the Flipper and overclock it as much as they could.
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darkblu said:
Also if you read up on IT-SRAM-R which is IIRC, the memory being implemented. Has a clockspeed of 650MHZ and has a DDR similar design for much higher bandwidth.
Posted by Gamedev on endgadget.com
http://laptops.engadget.com/2006/07/30/a-few-more-wii-details-on-the-table/#c1821493Whoops! Sorry that was meant to be 3MB of eDRAM... 2 is sooo close to 3 on the keyboard!
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