WiiGeePeeYou (Hollywood) what IS it ?

[Teasy]

Afaik the other 64MB is GDDR (and with a bit more bandwith then the 24MB pool to boot).

Are you talking about that rumour posted on this forum a while back (which apparenrly originating from "an unknown developer"..) or something from your own experience? Because if its the rumour posted here I wouldn't put much stock in it.

 

[Megadrive1988]

oh, Mega, a couple of questions:



the above list confuses me a bit - flipper's memory pools are on the die, whereas xenos' daughter die is, well, separate. which did you mean?

what I meant was, even though Xenos daughter-die EDRAM is not on the main parent GPU shader die, it is a seperate die, and therefore it is still another processing chip with embedded RAM.

I don't believe Hollywood will have a seperate EDRAM die with 24 MB embedded 1T-SRAM.

I believe the only embedded GPU RAM for Hollywood will be the 3.12 MB
(seperated into embedded framebuffer and texture cache) that Flipper had, or a slightly larger amount, but nothing that approaches 24 MB, and not even 10 MB.

a 2MB embedded texture cache would be nice (Flipper's is 1 MB) combined with better texture-compression hardware that allows 8:1 compression. if i'm not mistaken, Flipper's S3TC was capable of 6:1 but developers usually opted for 4:1 compression.

 

[Megadrive1988]

Thanks.

Anyone knows what they mean with this "Overall the Wii is more powerful than an Xbox, even if the Xbox can do some stuff that the Wii can't."? I guess that it can do more polys/lights/s and other things also possible on the GC (eg self shading and the ones presented on gamasutra article) faster than XB would do, but not some advanced shading methods possible on XB (eg vertex shading based, "fast" normal mapping ...).

it's all about strengths vs weaknesses. I'm sure there are a few things that the NV2A can do that Hollywood can't even though Hollywood should be more powerful in practice, overall, and since Wii as a whole should be somewhat more powerful than original Xbox. the Wii also (apparently) does not have hardware the equivalent of Xbox's MCPX which could process Dolby Digital 5.1 audio in realtime gameplay.

 

[Megadrive1988]

IGN Wii: Will the game run at 60 frames per second?


Fabrice Cuny: Like the previous titles, Far Cry Vengeance will be running at 30 frames per second to ensure stability.

that's disappointing. it sounds to me like FCV is capable of running at 60fps on Wii, but they don't want to take the time & effort to optimize it so that it runs at a stable 60fps

 

[Ooh-videogames]

it's all about strengths vs weaknesses. I'm sure there are a few things that the NV2A can do that Hollywood can't even though Hollywood should be more powerful in practice, overall, and since Wii as a whole should be somewhat more powerful than original Xbox. the Wii also (apparently) does not have hardware the equivalent of Xbox's MCPX which could process Dolby Digital 5.1 audio in realtime gameplay.

Devs are just looking for DX, Factor 5 still have one title that is far from matched when it comes to shader use on GC. Having DX, majority of devs don't have to do much work to use shader effects. The libraries are available in documentation, for 360 and PS3, PC as well.

Nintendo needs shader algorithms for the Wii, they obviously are done differently.

Personally, I think its a R300 equivalent, although lacking in available memory.

 

[Farid]

I'm sure there are a few things that the NV2A can do that Hollywood can't

Hmm, if Hollywood is a Flipper@~240MHz on a 90nm process, then NV2A would not only have more hardwired features but also it should have better performances, in numerous cases, than Hollywood.

 

[Corwin_B]

Personally, I think its a R300 equivalent, although lacking in available memory.

R300 had (among other things) superior gamma-corrected AA, excellent filtering, no visible dithering in most cases, and fast-performing SM2.0 shaders. I'm at a loss as to why you think Hollywood is R300-level tech...

All you have to show so far are a couple of PR quotes, a couple of games that couldn't be done on NGC (but still display NGC-like tech exemplified by games like Rogue Leader and RE4) and a weird theory based on the fact that if Wii was indeed an overclocked NGC then it could be priced at $150.

Edit : oh, and this flies in the face of the FC interview, where the guy says that there are some graphicals effects an XBox (NV2A, basically PS1.1 IIRC) can do that the Wii can't (although the Wii has more raw power).

 

[pc999]

I wonder why Factor5 didnt sell their engine/librarys by cheap (they already made proffit from it, so this would be cheap proffit) that would probably give a good boost to Wii gfx. A win-win situation IMO.

 

[Fox5]

Who's this No-one character?

edit: Wow those Far Cry shots really do look like ass. I don't remember my Xbox Far Cry Instincts looking like that.... These shots look very blurry with quite poor textures. The forest up the mountains has been culled down a ton too. What? Couldn't it handle the 2D trees!?!?!

http://media.wii.ign.com/media/846/846381/img_3931987.html
I mean YIKES! There's some horrible dithering going on in the smoked area. OMG or is that DRAW IN?!? The gun looks like something out of Project IGI (heh!!). The ground texture is appealing to the judges for a worst-ever award. The tail of the Heli has some beautiful heavy aliasing going on. But! Wait! There is bloom! This game's running 480p and looks like that!?

Let me just say that I played Far Cry on a Radeon 9600 with 64MB RAM. A Mobility Radeon 9600. And, it looked a hell of a lot nicer than this.

Looks kind of like the pc version turned to DX7 mode.

 

[ban25]

Thanks.

Anyone knows what they mean with this "Overall the Wii is more powerful than an Xbox, even if the Xbox can do some stuff that the Wii can't."? I guess that it can do more polys/lights/s and other things also possible on the GC (eg self shading and the ones presented on gamasutra article) faster than XB would do, but not some advanced shading methods possible on XB (eg vertex shading based, "fast" normal mapping ...).

Well, consistent with the Wii being a Gamecube running at moderately higher clockspeeds, it will be faster, but will lack the features of the NV2a like vertex and pixel shading.

 

[darkblu]

Hmm, if Hollywood is a Flipper@~240MHz on a 90nm process, then NV2A would not only have more hardwired features but also it should have better performances, in numerous cases, than Hollywood.

oh, quite possibly.. if it was sitting in a different architecture .. say, one with a dedicated frame buffer ; )

nv2a is a very potent part (very expensive too at the time, though that was of no concern to certain console vendors), but it is not that omni-potent that it could remain unaffected by the architecture surrounding it.

oh, and of course, i have no doubts that even as it is, nv2a would cream a flipper@240MHz at dot products : )

 

[theafu]

Well, consistent with the Wii being a Gamecube running at moderately higher clockspeeds, it will be faster, but will lack the features of the NV2a like vertex and pixel shading.

Honestly what info are you people reading?

Matt whose has been the only source out there with an real hardware info has never once called it gc hardware, because he knows it not. Infact in his own specs he doesn't call the kits of gcn kits rather gcn based which is a much different tune than actual GCN hardware.

lets ignore matt and really think about what your saying

Sorry but a 80mhz speed increase is suppose to get the kind of performance gains ati insinuated with the top of the iceberg comment. Same could be said for the CPU. I've overclocked machines for my friend, last one was xp2500 to a 3200 and even with that I wasn't seeing the kind of performance increase people think would be possible by overclocking something from 485mhz or to 729mhz here, I know it's a bad comparison but people need to think how about stupid the OC argument is compared to what devs have said about wii (that are actually making games) and how hardware works in general.

 

[ban25]

Honestly what info are you people reading?

Matt whose has been the only source out there with an real hardware info has never once called it gc hardware, because he knows it not. Infact in his own specs he doesn't call the kits of gcn kits rather gcn based which is a much different tune than actual GCN hardware.

lets ignore matt and really think about what your saying

Sorry but a 80mhz speed increase is suppose to get the kind of performance gains ati insinuated with the top of the iceberg comment. Same could be said for the CPU. I've overclocked machines for my friend, last one was xp2500 to a 3200 and even with that I wasn't seeing the kind of performance increase people think would be possible by overclocking something from 485mhz or to 729mhz here, I know it's a bad comparison but people need to think how about stupid the OC argument is compared to what devs have said about wii (that are actually making games) and how hardware works in general.

I didn't say overclocked, I said running at higher frequencies. I have already stated what I feel the hardware to be in this thread and frankly I don't expect to be proven wrong.

 

[Ooh-videogames]

R300 had (among other things) superior gamma-corrected AA, excellent filtering, no visible dithering in most cases, and fast-performing SM2.0 shaders. I'm at a loss as to why you think Hollywood is R300-level tech...

All you have to show so far are a couple of PR quotes, a couple of games that couldn't be done on NGC (but still display NGC-like tech exemplified by games like Rogue Leader and RE4) and a weird theory based on the fact that if Wii was indeed an overclocked NGC then it could be priced at $150.

Edit : oh, and this flies in the face of the FC interview, where the guy says that there are some graphicals effects an XBox (NV2A, basically PS1.1 IIRC) can do that the Wii can't (although the Wii has more raw power).

One, Flipper nor Hollywood are based on PC tech. Both are architecturaly designed differently to PC tech. Thing is, some of Flippers capabilities are requirements in DX 8.1. Although Flipper surpassed it. Example, 6 textures a single pass, were a DX 8.1 requirement, Flipper is capable of 8. Also, Flipper is a Floating Point based GPU, DX7/8 were integer based. It wasn't until DX9, GPUs were required to be Floating Point based.

It wasn't until DX9 that 16 texture passes became a requirement. So how much do you think it would cost Nintendo to have a R300 equivalent GPU, although not sharing any overall architectural similarities.

Many devs thought Flipper was incapable of performing fur shading, Rare proved them wrong. Why, because they made the effort. If Factor 5 had not put, per-pixel light scattering in Rebel Strike, it would have been believe to be impossible, at an unstable 60fps. I wondering what they could have acheived if they had cut the frame-rate in half.

R300

A 8 pixel-pipeline GPU
16 textures in a single pass

Not surprising since, ArtX after being acquired by ATI is behind R300. By all means continue to judge, Wii capabilities on GC ports and lazy devs.

 

[pc999]

Many devs thought Flipper was incapable of performing fur shading, Rare proved them wrong [now even EA with Madden proved that]. Why, because they made the effort. If Factor 5 had not put, per-pixel light scattering in Rebel Strike, it would have been believe to be impossible, at an unstable 60fps. I wondering what they could have acheived if they had cut the frame-rate in half.

Besides offloading a bit more the CPU (some vertex shaders ops and such) I dont think that the feature set is bad at all, if you see the rebirth demo it is made with the flipper feature set and still is it one great looking demo even by todays standards of demos made on 360/PS3.

All it needs is a offloading a bit more the CPU and lots of raw power, like the Factor5 guy said all it needs is 100x more of the same.

 

[Fox5]

Besides offloading a bit more the CPU (some vertex shaders ops and such) I dont think that the feature set is bad at all, if you see the rebirth demo it is made with the flipper feature set and still is it one great looking demo even by todays standards of demos made on 360/PS3.

All it needs is a offloading a bit more the CPU and lots of raw power, like the Factor5 guy said all it needs is 100x more of the same.

If wii could make its games look like the nature demo from 3dmark2001, I'd be happy. I'd consider that at least a full generation beyond dreamcast.

 

[Corwin_B]

One, Flipper nor Hollywood are based on PC tech. Both are architecturaly designed differently to PC tech. Thing is, some of Flippers capabilities are requirements in DX 8.1. Although Flipper surpassed it. Example, 6 textures a single pass, were a DX 8.1 requirement, Flipper is capable of 8. Also, Flipper is a Floating Point based GPU, DX7/8 were integer based. It wasn't until DX9, GPUs were required to be Floating Point based.

Actually, you are the one who made the direct comparison to R300 in the first place, not me. After that, only one thing I mentioned (SM2.0) is DX specific. Gamma-corrected FSAA, impressive filtering... are not DX-exclusive features, yet all currently shown Wii-games seem to lack those (apart from a couple of high-res bullshots).

And Flipper isn't floating point based, it features 24bit Int color (8/8/8RGB or 6/6/6/6 RGBA, IIRC), which explains the dithering seen in many games.

It wasn't until DX9 that 16 texture passes became a requirement. So how much do you think it would cost Nintendo to have a R300 equivalent GPU, although not sharing any overall architectural similarities.

I'm pretty sure Nintendo could have a GPU with R300-like featureset, optimized for SD rendering, in the Wii and still make a profit at the launch price. I'm not sure they could do that and include 100% perfect NGC backward compatibility at the same time, while staying in the Wii form-factor, though.

But anyway you are taking this entirely backward : on a given process, an O/C Flipper will be less expensive than a R300-class GPU. If Nintendo thinks that the graphics produced by such a chip are not detrimental to Wii sales (outside of the HC gamers ranks, which they seem to have given up anyway), then including the less expensive GPU they can get away with makes perfect sense considering they want to be profitable from day one.

Many devs thought Flipper was incapable of performing fur shading, Rare proved them wrong. Why, because they made the effort. If Factor 5 had not put, per-pixel light scattering in Rebel Strike, it would have been believe to be impossible, at an unstable 60fps. I wondering what they could have acheived if they had cut the frame-rate in half.

The thing is that Flipper, while a nice architecture, lacked many things that appeared in R300-class GPUs, especially IQ-wise. Judging by everything we have seen up to now, Hollywood seems to be in exactly the same class, feature-wise and IQ-wise, as Flipper (dithering still apparent in many screenshots, lack of high-quality filtering and AA...). Will we see nice-looking games on the Wii ? Of course. But we had some nice-looking games on the GC too.

Actually, your list of Flipper achievements goes counter to the idea that Hollywood is a generational leap away from Flipper...

R300

A 8 pixel-pipeline GPU
16 textures in a single pass

Not surprising since, ArtX after being acquired by ATI is behind R300.

The R300 was actually a lot more than that, and had many features that Flipper lacked, and that Hollywood seems to lack too.

By all means continue to judge, Wii capabilities on GC ports and lazy devs.

Even the best-looking Wii games revealed up to now (SMG and MP3) don't show much improvement IQ-wise over NGC best games. Look, I want nothing more than being wrong here, and to witness the super duper power of the Wii unleashed later (especially since I'm getting one at launch). But right now, to the best of everything shown so far, including the very best-looking Wii games, Hollywood looks like nothing more and nothing less than a faster Flipper. That won't prevent me from getting a Wii, but I don't have to go delusional either about its graphical capabilities.

What about pointing us to actual information (dev quotes, untouched screenshots...) that would help your theory instead of relying on the "NGC dev kits" and "lazy devs" excuses and making flawed calculations about the price of the Wii (since retail price does little to inform us of the actual HW included) ? I mean, unless we get actual specs, in 4 years we could still have graphics in the same league, and you would still be screaming "wait for the real power to be shown !". The onus of proof is on you on this one...

 

[Ooh-videogames]

Actually, you are the one who made the direct comparison to R300 in the first place, not me. After that, only one thing I mentioned (SM2.0) is DX specific. Gamma-corrected FSAA, impressive filtering... are not DX-exclusive features, yet all currently shown Wii-games seem to lack those (apart from a couple of high-res bullshots).



I'm pretty sure Nintendo could have a GPU with R300-like featureset, optimized for SD rendering, in the Wii and still make a profit at the launch price. I'm not sure they could do that and include 100% perfect NGC backward compatibility at the same time, while staying in the Wii form-factor, though.

But anyway you are taking this entirely backward : on a given process, an O/C Flipper will be less expensive than a R300-class GPU. If Nintendo thinks that the graphics produced by such a chip are not detrimental to Wii sales (outside of the HC gamers ranks, which they seem to have given up anyway), then including the less expensive GPU they can get away with makes perfect sense considering they want to be profitable from day one.



The thing is that Flipper, while a nice architecture, lacked many things that appeared in R300-class GPUs, especially IQ-wise. Judging by everything we have seen up to now, Hollywood seems to be in exactly the same class, feature-wise and IQ-wise, as Flipper (dithering still apparent in many screenshots, lack of high-quality filtering and AA...). Will we see nice-looking games on the Wii ? Of course. But we had some nice-looking games on the GC too.

Actually, your list of Flipper achievements goes counter to the idea that Hollywood is a generational leap away from Flipper...



The R300 was actually a lot more than that, and had many features that Flipper lacked, and that Hollywood seems to lack too.



Even the best-looking Wii games revealed up to now (SMG and MP3) don't show much improvement IQ-wise over NGC best games. Look, I want nothing more than being wrong here, and to witness the super duper power of the Wii unleashed later (especially since I'm getting one at launch). But right now, to the best of everything shown so far, including the very best-looking Wii games, Hollywood looks like nothing more and nothing less than a faster Flipper. That won't prevent me from getting a Wii, but I don't have to go delusional either about its graphical capabilities.

What about pointing us to actual information (dev quotes, untouched screenshots...) that would help your theory instead of relying on the "NGC dev kits" and "lazy devs" excuses and making flawed calculations about the price of the Wii (since retail price does little to inform us of the actual HW included) ? I mean, unless we get actual specs, in 4 years we could still have graphics in the same league, and you would still be screaming "wait for the real power to be shown !". The onus of proof is on you on this one...

I wouldn't say that after 4 yrs of no visual changes. Through the life of a console, the development evironment changes. Nintendo, MS, Sony, provide devs with updated documentation. Hollywood doesn't have DX as an API with libraries dedicated to software rendering, providing devs with algorithms necessary to perform many shader based effects , particularly at the beginning of development on a new console.

Basically what I'm saying, is any effect created on Wii will have to come by way of dev effort or Nintendo providing the documentation on how to perform whatever effects are possible. Also, I don't expect Hollywood to match R300 in every feature, I didn't mean a carbon copy.

The devkits should have included Hollywood from the start, if there weren't architectural changes. I'll see if I can find a link to the article where, Retro comments saying the CPU/GPU are new architectures.

 

[theafu]

On the graphics:
HCG: In terms of graphics, I know the Wii isn’t trying to push the boundaries of the next generation with visuals, but how would you compare it to the previous titles on GameCube. Are you guys adding new technical bells and whistles?
Mark Pacini, Director: The graphics have been upgraded considerably. We have more memory, and with the new CPU/GPU architecture, you’re going to see a very noticeable improvement in the quality of the visuals.
Michael Kelbaugh, President: One of the nice things about working on the Wii is that the transition from GameCube has been very smooth. There hasn’t been a lot of downtime. Just from a development standpoint, it’s been a blessing not to have to spend months and months just learning a new system. It’s been very cost effective and a very nice transition.
On Wii dev-kits:
HCG: Are you working with the final Wii hardware yet or is it still a work in progress?
Michael Kelbaugh, President: No, we’re constantly getting tweaks and upgrades. I don’t know if hardware is ever really final from a developer’s perspective. There’s always new things being discovered and taken advantage of throughout a system’s life, but we’re very comfortable with the way things are going."

Source

Considering next to SMG no Wii game looks superior to MP3 it's easy to tend the.

MP3 offers a big step up from echoes

Retro has stated that they are now able to bump up the animation, environments, and lighting up from and it shows. Look at the HD vids or the full walkthrough matt at ign did the lighting and reflections on the gun is a clear generation leap from the old. Same could be said for lighting in general in that game.

Ubisoft gives mixed bag opinions on the system. Ancel and Poix love it while I hear comments like this from the company from other devs doing crappy ports.

"Fabrice Cuny: Overall the Wii is more powerful than an Xbox, even if the Xbox can do some stuff that the Wii can't. But remember the Wii is more focused on its unique gameplay using the Wii controller and not on power. We can expect a game as beautiful as what we used to see on Xbox. "

Another developer on the RS team said a similar comment. Though to be honest Rayman is the best looking title on Wii from ubisoft, and these ports can't even match their original games in look despite the improved specs.

VIDGAMEPLAYA: Hello, Mr. Harrison! I live in an area where most kids play shoot em up games, and buy consoles based on graphics. I was wondering how you might plan to advertise to this group of consumers.
NOA_GEORGE_HARRISON: First, the Wii will be able to deliver dramatically improved graphics over the GameCube. But, if all the player is concerned about is graphics, we may not win them over. Our best chance is to show them the sheer fun of our games.

Source


IGN Wii: Obviously, Wii is not going to have the graphic horsepower of competing next generation consoles. Some developers have called it a "GameCube 1.5." Would you agree with that estimate and how are you maximizing on the graphic capabilities of the machine?
John Schappert: I don't think I would agree with the GameCube 1.5 estimate. I would say that I think the Wii should be evaluated by itself. I think it's a unique device and I think what makes it unique is the controller. As for graphics, we'll be showing Madden in 480p and 16:9 widescreen mode running at 60 frames per second. I think it looks great. I think it looks really good. It's also kind of hard for me to judge any of these machines before they're final. We get updates to all kinds of hardware quite often as the stuff is being revved and it's always getting better. I can tell you that we had a couple of guys from Tiburon come by and they hadn't gotten hands-on with the controller, aside from some demos. They thought Madden for Wii looked stunning and played great. So my answer is that it's a unique system and we're going to maximize our power for it. I think the games are going to look really good.

Source http://wii.ign.com/articles/703/703727p3.html

And lastly the tip of the iceberg comment wasn't vague. The interviewer asked him a the usual crap about graphics and Wii he responded with a very distinct answer to me. After all if I worked ATI and was pressure constantly about Wii graphics but can't give specific details, but instead refer to an object 8 times or more in mass undenerath yeah that's real vague about the power or visual abilities the hollywood could do compared to flipper. Please give me a break, plenty has been said about this system technically from developer actually working on it and most it bodes well.

 

[Ooh-videogames]

Found this pic posted on GAF, its a image from a magazine scan. Its BWii showcasing bump mapped vehicles or what is called "normal mapping", or polybump mapping. Its obviously comes from what should be considered an updated build. I would presume if anybody has documentation right now on how to perform this effect is Nintendo at the moment.

http://www.cubed3.com/media/2006/September/jb/scanonm9.JPG

I hope its not a violation.