Nintendo, like many hardware manufacturers, was cagey about the final specs for the Wii U, choosing not to reveal the system's overall memory prior to release.
Now that the Wii U is out, though, it hasn't taken long for someone to tear one apart and do the detective work themselves
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360: 22.4 GB/s + eDRAM for framebuffer
PS3: 25.6 GB/s main memory BW + 22.4 GB/s graphics memory BW, no eDRAM
GTX 680: 192.2 GB/s
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I can see we are going to get bits and pieces of data about the internal specs, it still won't be 100% accurate...
Nintendo aren't in an arms race with Microsoft and Sony, so it doesn't really matter how it looks on screen, just as long as the family fun factor is there.
Not a performance issue here.
More ram also has little to do with graphics quality past around 1-2gb. Unless you're talking video ram.
Decent my A**, my 2 year old PC has 16GB of ram... And a 7 YEAR old system has nearly the same as the WII U- This is not nextgen tech, its not next gen console tech and its nothing amazing in the hardware world.
Whats funny is my 3 year laptop featuring a 5870M has better specs than the Wii U lol.
5870M comes with 70GB/s bandwidth.
Hell a 5 year old PC GPU like 8800GTX came with 90GB/s bandwidth. Technically Nintendo is still behind a 8800GTX lol.
I find it funny people are actually willing to pay 300usd for such old tech. Spend 200usd more and for 500usd you could build a PC with much great specs.
A 500usd PC could easily be fitted with a GPU that could pump 150gb/s memory bandwidth. Its almost embarrassing what console makers are charging people. Consoles are supposed to be cheap and cost effective, yet it looks the other way around now. With consoles coming with gimped specs, charging more per game and offering no BC to the previous models.
PC gaming looks amazing.
Edit:
Heres what a 500usd PC would have gotten u in August: http://www.tomshardware.com...
The GPU on this one pushes 130GB/s dont think even the next Playstation or Xbox will be featuring those numbers.
It's pretty telling that the biggest games of next year such as MGS: Ground Zeroes, Tomb Raider and GTAV won't see the light of day on the Wii U for the foreseeable future. I don't feel as though many publishers are that bothered about the system
Shame on Nintendo for being so lazy with how they put the hardware together. I hoped this thing would succeed, and I'll sure as hell be buying mine next week when it launches in Europe but damn, between these hardware revelations and the 2004 level online service, Nintendo has shown their ineptitude to embrace what the industry has grown into technology wise since 2005 is aggravating.
Neogaf updated the post after ACTUAL test results. The 17GB/s BUS speed was a guess based on the nature and manufacturer of the RAM.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum...
Nintendo fans will be glad to hear that it is not 17GB/s. It is actually...
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ONLY 12GB/s!!!! LOL!!!!
One of the chips on the substrate (the tiny one) is probably a specialized eDRAM or similar memory chip which will be able to perform ~instant calculations on sets of data (the 360 can do this too) which when used correctly can take a lot of vector processing work away from the graphics chip, it is probably also incredibly fast too for use storing the framebuffer during deferred rendering (again, like the 360). Using that chip correctly probably takes a lot of smart engine design, so don't expect much in the early days. In fact the architecture seems like a refined version of the 360's, it can probably do AA far faster among other things as the graphical feature set is newer (and more efficient).
Also, memory bandwidth doesn't correlate directly to better performance - don't get hung up on it being slower than the 360 and PS3's. Is it shared or is that just main memory? Only graphical memory needs to be extremely fast (lots of PCs capable of maxing games out have RAM which is far slower than the consoles).
edit: might have my sources for the memory mixed up, what does it have 16BG of 1066MHz main memory and 2GB of vMEM? I'm confused!
Give it some time and there will be some games that show off a lot more than anything that'll run on the PS3 or 360 (not just graphically, a lot of things are impossible with only 512MB of RAM). It should survive well into the next gen but it won't compete with Sony and MS's offerings (of course, and this was never Nintendo's intention)
The bottleneck as far as on-screen graphics quality goes will be down to fragment shader performance, just like PS3, 360 and PC. Simply due to the fact it is 2012, the shaders should be a lot more capable than the PS3 and 360.
EDIT: I just hope real next generation will provide us bigger leap forward than this!
680 cards are about $500 alone with zero other components. Horrible comparison, even for a hardcore pc fanboy to use. Must be an act of desperation to grasp at such straws.
High end GPUs have diminishing returns on increasing performance. However if you took a 150usd GPU of today even that will be doing about 130-150GB/s
Which is still 5-7 times ahead of current consoles. Id say it still makes consoles look pretty bad.
360: 22.4 GB/s + eDRAM for framebuffer
360: 22.4 GB/s + eDRAM for framebuffer
Your tripping @ FinalomegaS
It is the Nintendo fans who started the specs war even though WiiU was clearly underpowered. But they were hoping against hope. I just did not like their attitude and wanted them to see and accept reality.
The Specs War is the war to end all wars. It's the big one, it's gonna be apocalyptic.
Not many people are going to walk away from this one, this is bigger than World War 2. This is the real deal.
I can only hope and pray that I can get me and my family through this alive.
God help us all.
That's what I got from what you said.
I hope ninty doesn't drag down ps4 & xbox 720.
I don't know If wiiU could have this type of graphics.
http://www.youtube.com/watc...
True, very true. Hopefully nintendo can pull of something that makes my jaw drop....hopefully
Nintendo would know that they could get away with cheapo DDR3 memory. It wouldn't be mind blowing but then it is quickly becoming apparent Wii U is not at all significantly faster than 360 and PS3.
I am sure it will still turn out somewhat faster than them, but not so much that it has enough raw performance to easily beat them without very good programming.
This does mean however the 360 and PS3 is more powerful than WiiU in real terms. Let me put it like this whats the point of being able to fill that extra space if you do it slower than your rivals? The speed bottlenecks the RAM for gaming in a sense and thus is the reason why we are seeing inferior versions of WiiU launch titles when it comes to multi-platform games. Of course you could offset this with longer loading times etc.. But we all know that wouldn't go down well and is seen as papering over the cracks.
The graphical bottlenecks on current consoles are mostly in the shaders, but also in RAM quantity. I have no doubts that the shaders in the wii-u are vastly faster than the 360's simply because of tech improving (PS3's shaders are not so good, so programmers have to do a lot of things on the SPUs).
People are right to recognize that the slow memory could be an issue, but it really isn't - instancing and deferred rendering make great use of the eDRAM so textures are not loaded from the slow memory too often. On PC, if you have slow vide memory then it will certainly be a bottleneck - because there are no quirks such as eDRAM.
Wii U = 2 GB
How is that less ?
The NES got around the shortage of memory using bank switching which is what im guessing the xbox/ps3 used a variant of. Just swapping things that the game needed in/out of memory as and when it was required.
I wouldn't write the Wii U off just yet though, no dev has drawn the capabilities from a console in its first month, even its first year would be a push.
Is this really kotaku?
O.o;
Kotaku is a douchebag site but they aren't doing much wrong here.
The site that did the actual teardown is here: http://www.pcper.com/review... Kotaku sourced the website.
It basically just shows what the inside looks like. They didn't actually test anything.
The forum user, AlStrong, made an assumption based on partial information. Opening up the console and reading a line on the memory does not give enough information to make an estimation. That's why I'll wait until actual testing is done.
well whatever the case, devs are managing to put out superior versions of multi-platform games. ie fifa is already confirmed to be visually superior to ps3/360 versions.
so if the wiiu hardware is so 'shit' how come devs are able to produce better results on wiiu on release date?
i smell shit. and its coming from the mouths of the people who wrote these articles.
in any case, it is quite apparent the wiiu isn't a massive leap in graphical capability.. i hope a price drop comes soon. black premium wiiu, 250pounds. then i will buy.
but 300 for a console with graphics tech 'comparable' to tech that came out half a decade ago... thats taking the piss!
If games will suffer graphically on wiiu, i think it will be due to the controller. ie, the extra processing power and resources it take on the computer. I can quite easily see the controller becoming a hindrance for wiiu.
I mean, just imagine how much smoother a game would run, and how much more detail could be put into graphics, if the game wasn't being rendered essentially twice. Remember split screen gaming on consoles, and how much graphical quality was lost in split screen in comparison to single player? Maybe wiiu will suffer similarly.
http://www.twitch.tv/pcper/...
I don't think the Wii u is much more powerful than current consoles, but if it can port games that look just as good if not better in its early stages games will only continue to look better.
If I had to guess I'd say the wiiu is like an xbox360 on creatine
this link contains a full blown 7inch tablet with a 5 point multitouch ips screen 100x600 res that puts wii u's vga 480p screen to shame bear with me it also contains 1gb og ddr3 (same class as wii U), dual core soc with quad core mali, 16gb flash, front camera, hdmi, sd card slot, 3700mah battery sell all for less than 100$ so imagine how much it is to manufacture these tablets under 65-75$ in bulk maybe lower
the only thing wii u gampad has is a vga screen, bluetooth, small battery etc. when you go toe to toe and compare the gamepad with the similar components of the tablet (forget the ram soc, sd card slot, flash etc) compare the screen and battery, camera you will see the gamepad is not as expensive as nintendo want us to believe I gurantee theres huge markups on the wii u gamepad
Definitely, i just wonder if Wii U will be succesful with this strategy, then Sony and MS will adopt this strategy and we can give farewell to gaming as you know it, since Nintendo isnt going for anything else but shovelware and causals. But as long as its only Nintendo i dont care. But honestly its first Nintendo console i am super non-interested in.
Why wouldn't the developers not be happy with tech that was not leaps and bounds over the last gen?
1. Less learning curve, check.
2. Less cost in developing, check.
3. Being able to port games easier, check.
Developers were happy to have the Wii U at current specs because it would be less cost on their bottom line, period. SO yeah, less impressive specs equals a happier developer who can just take their 360/PS3 knowledge and port it to Wii U with little cost associated.
So the fact that developers were pleased with the system does not hold water with me.
Yes, do expect way better-looking Wii U games that will show how it's more powerful than the PS360, but that's about it.
The 2nd screen doesn't have to be utilized...they can make games that use it as just a controller (obviously), so don't worry about losing resources on 2nd screen rendering.
I hope Nintendo fans get everything they want out of Wii U, and i'm sure the fans get Nintendo products for Nintendo's own 1st party games.
As for the rest of us....?
I fear only Nintendo will provide the gaming goodness...and the 3rd Party developers will (eventually) flock to whatever Sony or MS bring to the table....
Does not this all feel very familiar? ....Wii have been here before!
YES! >Pun intended
It's marginally better but also has to stream to that screen, that takes processes away from the main display.
Result?
Marginally better graphics than we currently have. Why are people accepting this? This is the same company that said people don't want HD.
I honestly still have yet to see these improvements in graphics, the only comparisons anyone makes are with redeveloped ports. Of course those ports are going to look better on the Wii U, than older ones on the PS3 and 360.
That is common sense.
I will see the real proof when PS3, 360 and Wii U all the get a game at the same time, then people can start comparing them which hasn't really happened.
You cannot compare newer redeveloped ports to that of older ones, that had plenty of time to make a lot of changes from the last. It just isn't enough for me to believe this system is that much more powerful or even graphically.
So as of yet their truly hasn't been any proof to actually say the system does indeed have better graphics.
Also any systems true power comes from it's processor, always.. which we still know very little about. If I know Nintendo or hell even IBM.. it won't be pretty but who knows.. I am just basing it off history and Nintendo seems to repeat theirs a lot.
So to do this either you create a system that has close to cutting edge specs and charge a high retail price or you create a system that has below average specifications based on current technology and sell it for market prices.
Nintendo does the latter.
You wont see too much of a difference in graphical looks from the WiiU over the Xbox360 or PS3.
You will see better frame rates and a few more graphical effects. However nothing mind blowing.
Once again however, $600+ PC's will still look better.
This is where I am disappointed in Nintendo. I expected a little bit more from them.
We opened up your new baby and saw its current/last gen tech!
Your wish didnt come true :(
lol
The Wii sold a lot of units, but most of those units are collecting dust for a reason. And I doubt people would invest in a Wii U after that initial experience.
360: 22.4 GB/s + eDRAM for framebuffer
PS3: 25.6 GB/s main memory BW + 22.4 GB/s graphics memory BW, no eDRAM
I don't think the wii u is 17gb/s
I think it's more in the region of 28-30gb/s.
As I said before, You'll see more 720p games run at 720p and smooth, Probably some better shadows/textures. But won't be massive difference from ps3/360.
For all the naysayers out there look to the portable space. The Vita is leaps and bounds more powerful than the 3DS, yet it is getting smoked at retail. It is ALL about the software, and quite honestly Nintendo has NEVER let us down there.
Will it be as successful as Wii, no, but it will be fun.
e.g. Mobile gaming
A resistive is more "hardcore" for lack of a better term.
Seriously?
There are no updates or any update than can magically update the gpu to that or greater of a gtx 680. This is like going back to the late 90's and asking people where to download ram.
Another example of how stupid you sound. I'll update my ps3's firmware so I can make it into a ps4.
There is no facepalm big enough for your moronicy.
http://site.gamingallthetim...
Yes let's use Batman a completely new version at that which was re-worked specifically for the Wii U as an example.
Am I the only person who notices how retarded that is? Of course the newer version of Batman will have more detail and of course more features than the old ass ones that were on PS3 and 360.
If they release the Wii U's Batman now on PS3 and 360 I can promise you it would look exactly the same.
Just a really bad comparison.. true shot comparison my ass.. it's a redeveloped port, of course it will look better than older versions of the game, doesn't take a nuclear physicists to figure that out.