Head2Head: Call Of Duty Black Ops II Analysis Wii U/PS3/Xbox 360

Lens of Truth writes "Welcome back for another exciting Heads Up! Lately The Internet has been filled with speculation on the speed and power of Nintendo’s Wii U CPU. And without Nintendo releasing the official CPU stats most of the speculation out there is “he said she said”. Honestly, all that really matters is how does the Wii U perform when playing these games."

[Neonridr]

Interesting. The Wii U had a slightly lower FPS overall, but zero screen tearing.

I understand that this is CoD and it's an old engine. But nice to know that you can at least throw something at the Wii U that isn't optimized for it (since it's built on the 360 platform) and it still puts out respectable numbers.

Will be nice to see a side by side comparison of a game where the developer actually takes the time to optimize it for the internal workings of the Wii U. Perhaps a game like Aliens will show more.

But not bad for a first effort.

[Shaman]

Really? Slightly lower frame rate? It has 8 FPS less on AVERAGE than 360 version and 3 FPS less than PS3 version. Thats far from slightly. It does not tear, yes, but 360 has 1.34% teared frames, and its soft sync so its practically nothing.

[RudeSole Devil]

I disagree, again this game is not a port. Image if the Wii U was the lead SKU, PS3 and 360 wouldn't have a chance. Wii U looking good so far.

[Shaman]

Yea, sure. It all sunshine and rainbows. Console coming out 7 years after the competition and not even ONE game looks/runs better on it. Achievement it is, but not a good one.

[Neonridr]

Again, no games are built for the Wii U ground up. You don't just hit copy-paste and recompile it for the Wii U to run. Plus the Wii U version was developed in about half the time the 360's was. Believe me, I do expect more out of the Wii U version, but launch titles are never a good indication of what to expect. If that was the case, then we'd be stuck with Call of Duty 2 or Madden 06 as the basis of all Xbox 360 games. Could you imagine?

Also, one other note, I noticed it mentions that the Xbox 360 and Wii U versions are being upscaled to 1080p while the PS3 version shows only 720p. So the Wii U is 3 fps slower than the PS3 when upscaling the resolution to 1080p while the PS3 is doing that at only 720p?

Am I missing something there?

[Qrphe]

>3-8 frames of difference
>0-1.34% teared frames
>one is much better than the other!!!

Do you ALL realize how stupid these debates are?
But go on keep on arguing guys.

[Computersaysno]

"Again, no games are built for the Wii U ground up. You don't just hit copy-paste and recompile it for the Wii U to run"

You do mainly hit copy paste and recompile it actually.

On multiplatform game engines once you have ported the engine over then typically it'll use the same scripting or code, and then once the main basis of the game is over you can tweak it for individual platforms. PS3 was difficult because there were no really good compilers for the CELL so a lot was done individually (there is now) but like xbox 360 which has great toolset Wii U is much simpler and has a custom compiler. http://wiiudaily.com/wii-u-...

This is what other multiplat engines do. UE3/Cryengine3 etc. Unrealscript is the same across all its platforms. You can add stuff to Cryengine3 and see it all in realtime, every version at once. http://www.youtube.com/watc...

Such is the advancement now of multiformat development. This isn't the dark ages.

Wii U just isnt very much faster than PS3/360. Aint that obvious to everyone yet? So dont know that you might expect. Games that look as good as uncharted 3 720p in 2-3 years maybe.

Woo. As everyone else sits around playing the likes of this: http://www.youtube.com/watc... in 1080p on their new consoles.

[Skate-AK]

Well to be fair before the Wii U was even named they talked about how easy it was to port from 360 and PC.

[Tempjf]

Considering the Wii U just entered the scene and developers obviously haven’t had much dev time with the console compared to PS3 and Xbox, it's doing quite well...

[Schawk]

looking forward to playing this ont he wiiU with no screen tear.. hmmmm

[chukamachine]

WII U FAIL.

It's close all round, but cod needs some cpu juice. Wii does not have enough.

[Schawk]

look it isent bad it looks decent
http://www.youtube.com/watc...

[for we are many]

If that's true, genius, then how come that Ps3 with a "Superior" CPU always gets the worst looking and performing versions of CoD, hell, they have been working on the Ps3 for six years and still can't achieve 60 fps or get rid of that dizzying frame tearing.

In reality it's a very quickly done port to the Wii U with very respectable results like Zero torn frames and better texture resolution than the Ps3 version, also, don't forget that the Wii U is constantly pumping the game to the GamePad in single player, co-op and multiplayer, GPGPU is there for a purpose.

CoD developers focus their resources and optimization on the 360 version(mind you with a "weaker" CPU than Ps3) that's why it's always getting better CoDs over the Ps3. You are just desperately trying to attack the Wii U and that makes you look pathetic.

[Norrison]

It uses a GPGPU, that means the GPU takes care of the CPU effects or most of them. It's just a port anyways.

Also the Xbox 360 is running at 880x720 the Wii U is at 720p which means it must render 1/3 more pixels than the 360 and also it has to render better effects at a higher res, with that being said if the Wii U was running at the same quality as the X360 version I'm certain it would be running at solid 60fps.

[jmc8888]

Says who? Oh people that haven't spent one day creating a game for it? Someone who creates a CPU bound game (as opposed to the vast majority that lean on the GPU) that struggles on a GTX 680?

Seriously turn up the DX11 features on Metro 2033 and watch great PC graphics cards whimper. He's the guy that designed the engine that runs the Metro games. To him, it seems anything not from Back to the Future Part II is a crappy, slow CPU. Because he sure designed those games for PC's that aren't out yet. He also hasn't even tried to code for the Wii U, so he's speaking from quite an ignorant stance, and it's why THQ stepped in most likely. Because one of their guys was pulling something out of his butt.

Or people that do rudimentary examinations of the Wii U by tearing it down, that in essence don't find out very much.

Here's a hint, you can't take the sku off the ram chip and google it to find PC specifications and then say....'and that's what the Wii U' is capable of.

Especially since that, besides being done wrongly, is only one part of the equation. The overall bandwidth of the Wii U simply hasn't been outed, and everything is bad guesses.

But hey, we live in America, where journalists pass off fiction for fact all the time, so I guess gamers are used to it.

This in no way means the Wii U is vastly more powerful than what we suspect, but it could easily be far better than what the naysayers are quoting untruths as facts.

Also remember when hyperthreading and multicore computers came around, even though they were more powerful, people had to LEARN to use those features. Because the first editions weren't very powerful in single thread, but when devs started making use of the 'other' power in the system, suddenly those chips started performing a whole lot better.

Instead of raw power, the Wii U seems to have modest raw power CPU power, with more threads that will give it more TOTAL power. Devs just have to tap that.

But I'm glad there isn't any tearing, because me, I HATE screen tearing. Also why I love vsync, or with my GTX 670, adaptive vsync.

[Baron79]

I was waiting for this. Very nice!

[FinalomegaS]

ah LOT, well it's without a doubt which system was the lead platform.

I would like them to port or upgrade Street Fighter on the WiiU, I have a D-pad I can use besides the PS3 DS finally.

[YoungPlex]

PS3
Global percent of torn frames: 3.15
Global average FPS: 51.72

Xbox 360
Global percent of torn frames: 1.34
Global average FPS: 56.49

Wii U
Global percent of torn frames: 0.0
Global average FPS: 48.39

Xbox 360 is the clear winner here (ON CONSOLES), but that's expected as the game was lead designed on it and ported to the rest. It's actually great to see the Wii U version have 0% of torn frames, maintaining a steady frame-rate, and doing this while;
a) Not being fully optimized for it and
B) Being able to render the same image twice at the same time, once on the TV and the other on the Gamepad, doing so in 1/60th of a frame per-second, or being able to display a a second image for a second player on the Gamepad, while the main player uses the the Pro Controller on the main TV, as the other screen (asymmetrical gameplay), without effecting the overall performance of the game.

It's going to be nice when a great developer actually designs a game on the Wii U, from the ground up, and really shows us what it's truly capable of. I love the fact that I am able to play my games on my bed before I go to sleep, while my Wii U is downstairs, without there being any lag on the Gamepad; this feature was designed for me, ha-ha! ;)

[firefly69]

Indeed people are forgeting that the game is been rendering in two screens on the Wii U,and the code was not been optimize directly to the Wii u from ground up!Its running good has it is right now ,almost a straight port just imagine what it will be able to do if the game was hard coded simply for the pro controler and just the TVHD SCREEN!IT most likely will beat the other consoles very quickly.Frankly i think all this talk about the CPU been very weak is not all thruth,the game was rendering does parts in the COD game with all does enemies on screen and was handle the stress on the engine most cpu inbound fine,for a release self port!People with the WII U will start to see better looking games on this system faster than what happen on the PS3 and 360 has long dev teams make the engines optimize for the wii u and dont get lazy with ports just for cash in!Still nintendo Ips are the ones that gone show what the WII U will be able to do and for me thats what matter more..exclusives!