While there's still room for plenty of debate about the Wii U Digital Foundry: hardware, the core fundamentals are now in place and effectively we have something approaching a full spec. It took an extraordinary effort to get this far and you may be wondering quite why it took a reverse engineering specialist using ultra-magnification photography to get this information, when we already know the equivalent data for Durango and Orbis. The answer is fairly straightforward - leaks tend to derive from development kit and SDK documentation and, as we understand it, this crucial information simply wasn't available in Nintendo's papers, with developers essentially left to their own devices to figure out the performance level of the hardware.
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"Console gamers.. Dont care about graphics"
Wii U will be fine, 4 million console gamers already bought it.
It's like Nintendo is sellin CRT TV with the price tag of OLED Tele and for some bizarre reason people are still buyin it.
Yes this, i two little nephews that really like Mario games but the price of the new console plus €60 for games, thats just too much.
I think its not the console that is expensive. I think its the tablet that came with it. I remember Nintendo mentioning that it cost about $230 just for the tablet.
I've been saying this for the longest, NIntendo has made some incredibly bamboozling decisions with the Wii-U.
Now that we officially know the GPU, there's absolutely no way Nintendo is losing money on each console sold. That's COMPLETE BS. They're losing money because software sales have not been able to recoup the cost of marketing the Wii-U, and other factors that have nothing to do with production.
That's $35 / $50 GPU at retail (4650 / 4670), and the CPU can't be no more than $50 either considering it's tech from 2000 that was used in the Gamecube.
The overall CPU + GPU + RAM combo for the Wii-U is easily under $100 which means the Wii-U actually cost about $250 to make, and that's simple thanks to the tablet controller or else it would right at $200. And the funny thing about it is the Wii-U could have easily used an AMD A8 Llano APU and have a better console for a similar price, and still had been able to get next-gen ports (albeit in 720p @ 30fps low settings). They wouldn't have a bottlenecked CPU, and they'd have a much better GPU.
It's funny how people who know nothing about tech were constantly disagreeing with me, but the ignorant would rather be ignorant, than enlightened, so hopefully NIntendo really gets some 3rd party on board, because when the PS4 and Xbox 1080 come out, it's back to the Wii days with vastly inferior ports, or flat-out no support.
"The Digital Foundry Hypothesis
SPUs: 8 blocks (N1-N8)
TMUs: 4 blocks (J1-J4)
ROPS: 2 blocks ? (no proposed location)
ARM: 1 block (no proposed location)
DSP: 1 block (no proposed location)
Video encode/decode: 1 block (no proposed location)
Total blocks explained: 17 (12 with locations)
Total blocks unexplained: 23"
Edit: I should just add the article sounds legit to me. This NeoGAF quote is just food for thought.
It's all a bit too technical for me.
Anyone fancy breaking it down for me in English?
:P
Yeah, I'm a little disappointed in Digital Foundry. The guys down at Neogaf are doing a considerably better job figuring out and explaining the exact potential of the chip. DF didn't even go into any detail on the GPUs extremely unorthodox design.
@ABizzel1
The major customizations Nintendo had made to the GPU could not have come cheap, and they may also result in superior performance in reality than on paper, not unlike the Gamecube.
I read somewhere of someone ordering a replacement wiiu gamepad for $90, not sure if that's true or not.
http://nintendoculture.file...
It's not a HD4650/4670 what a laugh that is the chip supports dx11 obviously using Opengl4.1 ?
If u read it,it says going off previous rumours RV700 ect they just found a chip in that series that has a few specs the same and they are way out Unity4 is supported on wiiu dx11 basically,Gearbox is developing a FPS using UE4 on wiiu and they had problems on their ps4 devkits,Michel ancel said no limitations we even did super hd textures and forgot to compress them and the game still ran smooth ??
U can get comparable specs across different series ect 4000,5000,6000,7000,but in the later series dx11 was supported and that's what wiiu supports going off Unity4,Ubisoft,AMD,Gearbox ect ect.
Also Xenoblade and Beyonetta wouldnt be possible on that chip ??? these guys are talking rubbish as their is an UE4 game in the works as well this is just finding out speeds and trying to couple that with the wrong line on chips ie 4000 series,when in real respect its a E6760 custom.
Nintendo fell in love with the "Apple Mentality".
Cool story bro. Directx 11? Exclusive ue4 fps? Go to anandtech and run 4650 benchmark and laugh at urself.
"Been reading some of the comments on your thread and have a few of my own to use as you wish.
1. This GPU is custom.
2. If it was based on ATI/AMD or a Radeon-like design, the chip would carry die marks to reflect that. Everybody has to recognize the licensing. It has none. Only Renesas name which is a former unit of NEC.
3. This chip is fabricated in a 40 nm advanced CMOS process at TSMC and is not low tech
4. For reference sake, the Apple A6 is fabricated in a 32 nm CMOS process and is also designed from scratch. It’s manufacturing costs, in volumes of 100k or more, about $26 - $30 a pop. Over 16 months degrade to about $15 each
a. Wii U only represents like 30M units per annum vs iPhone which is more like 100M units per annum. Put things in perspective.
5. This Wii U GPU costs more than that by about $20-$40 bucks each making it a very expensive piece of kit. Combine that with the IBM CPU and the Flash chip all on the same package and this whole thing is closer to $100 a piece when you add it all up
6. The Wii U main processor package is a very impressive piece of hardware when its said and done.
Trust me on this. It may not have water cooling and heat sinks the size of a brownie, but its one slick piece of silicon. eDRAM is not cheap to make. That is why not everybody does it. Cause its so dam expensive."
i bet JB owns all Nintendo consoles and handheld consoles.
It's like playing iOS/Android games on a large screen, oh puking god.
At the end of the day its a games console and all I want to see is new games on each console. I love the Nintendo own IP's and as long as the games Sony Microsoft Nintendo, EA, activision ect keep brining out games I want to play and that are fun to play then what is everyone's problem.
I remember being in school and the PSX and N64 came out and there was no my system is the best it was about have you played GT or Golden eye ect.
Stop going on with who has more power and ram and saying mine is better than your and press the power button on the console of your choice pickup the controller and play the game you like and tell everyone how good the game you like is, but don't site there moaning about what you don't like.
No surprise at all, the wii-u competes with outdated hardware the 360 and ps3. 720 AND PS4 will rule next gen cause wiiu its current gen. Next gen dont start until ps4 and 720 comes out, end of story.
If you are a tech head your curious if you are a fanboy then you will just go on believing what you are feed.
We will be talking about this tech for a while. It seems, gpgpus are not fully understood yet. Ms and Sony could come out with $600 machines and beat the wiiu tech wise. Yet people play games not tech.
What is also sad is we might only see a small jump graphically while pc is about to so a huge jump soon.
I think the issue is the idea that the tech gap is going to be too big for ports. All next gen consoles have a gpgpu setup. They will all strong somewhat with current gen practices. They will all have to reeducate their teams to take advantage of this setup.
So games will look like better running ps3/xbox360 games at first and I'm sure Sony will show target renders for games 2-3 years from release. That works for their fanbase and the media yet they still have not solved a key problem, games. When Sony tries to make games cloning nintendo game play they fail. First the smash/karting clones.
Ultimidely every thing will hinge on does it look and play good not on does it have graphic effects. That crown will still go to the pc since the other next gen consoles can not even run unreal 4 with out some major scaling.
Hopfully that is not the case as Apis reveal more functions and the development docs get fleshed out.
This will be a interesting gen none the less. Also there is the fact that we have reached a good enough point verses cost with many gamers and developers a like. People swinging for the fences are on pc, graphically.
Plus you can not rule out that fact that Nintendo has figured out 3d game play that is fun while Sony keep fualtering in genres that nintendo is hugly successful in.
The only problem nintendo needs to solve is getting more hd content creators. Which they are currently doing.
http://nintendoculture.file...
The hardware is fine the gpu is around £70.
The E6760 is currently around $240 retail.
http://www.videocardbenchma...
http://www.newegg.com/Produ...
http://www.ebay.ca/sch/item...
http://www.amazon.com/Visio...
sony copies and fail didnt know that sly cooper was a failure ratchet and clank uncharted and others lol.
and whats the fuzz every time a console is disclosed to be weak then right away the fans jump into the pc is this and pc is that ( while ignoring that pc games wont change that much because it would need support to have those features implemented so most of the games ( if even released on the pc in the first place ) will be dumped down to save costs first and to make a the revenue they wont out from every console ( ps3 and xbox 360 situation )
so the next jump in the pc gaming would start when next generation is about to end like what happened this gen and the gen before )
all those technological advancements and believe me when i say most of these hardware today are capable of going beyond DX11 but microsoft wont make their console look old quickly so extra power wasted already without even mentioning that most devs favor the consoles over the pc .
lets return to the wii u it will have great games nevertheless i remember when i played wind waker at my friend's place it was a great fun and beautiful game but lets not pretend that sony and microsoft have nothing in comparison cause that would be stupid and nonsense at its maximum level THANK YOU
What are you in kindergarten? Learn some grammar, I couldn't get past the first 5 words and I just gave up.
Also pc devs are shooting for the low hanging fruit. Console gamers will buy any thing hyped up enough. Now steam is a real option to consoles. Linux is any option over windows 8 and open gl can and will go beyond ms only API then you have nvidia who are developing cuda. Seriously sonic go and download a few game engine demos, buy some pc games with the full editor and dig into that.
We bring pc up because it is a reality and if you want the best then you go for the best. Unfortunately there is no nintendo on pc.
Pc, mods, level editors, steam and tons of indie friendly engines almost for free. Then you just get a wiiu for nintendo version of game play. If Nintendo made mods possible on the wiiu, true mods and or game engine access the system would compliment pc gaming even more.
It's great Sony has a following here but this better not turn into a vita or smash bro clone failure. I bet they are really frustrated to see so much hype not turn into sales. Beating up on nintendo is not going to get you any where though. I'd advise you go to the Sony fan articles and make sure they buy the hype instead of just giving it lip services.
i have to agree with sonic989 here. your post was "nonsense at its maximum level"
I'm going to go along with the majority here and disagree with your posts and heres why.
1. You say sony has not solved a key problem, games. In response to that i say THE LAST OF US. That game looks freaking amazing everyone is gushing over it.
you think the company that has dominated and i mean DOMINATED the last two generations doesn't know about games?!?!
Again, the last of us, i only refer to it as it is the most recent example. GAMERS are dying for it!
but i guess your right, sony knows nothing about games, they never sold over millions of software right, only nintendo has? lets forget for example gran turismo.
2. then in your first post you said "When Sony tries to make games cloning nintendo game play they fail. First the smash/karting clones." but in your second post you say " Ok sonic what about that kart failure? What about that smash bros clone that failed? The list goes on. "
the list goes on yet you keep harping on the same two examples??
lets say you're right and sony's karting game and all stars where failures, so what? at least they attempted something new for there customers. maybe there karting game isn't the best, but props to sony for trying to bring one to there platform so that they can have a well rounded plattform with different kind of games.
nintendo made great games, sony is trying to emulate them, good for sony fans. on sony's platform you can get an amazing simulation racer (gran turismo) and an good, not great kart racer. on nintendos platform you can get an amazing kart racer and thats it, there is no great or even okay simulation racer that nintendo puts out.
this is why overall sony has a greater appeal and dominated nintendo in the home market with ps1 and ps2. they made a mistake and made a grossly overpriced ps3 and wii benefited with its much more cheaper price and innovate control scheme that was hugely imitated by competitors.
but try not to draw all your examples from sony's failures and look at the whole picture.
3. and lastly, what nintendo games were sony cloning when they came out with ICO/Shadow, uncharted, last of us, heavy rain, gran turismo, god of war, singstar, resistance etc..
sure sony may have copied the move controller from the wii mote, but my point is there are still many types of games and experience to be had on playstation that are not on nintendos systems.
you talk about sony's problems being games, but there are more games and pieces of software sold on ps1 ps2 and ps3 than there is on n64 gamecube, and wii.
i have a ps3, cus i don't get god of war, last of us, gran turismo and all sorts of cool experimental games like journey on wii.
and i have a wii cus i don't get mario, kirby and donkey kong.
stop the fanboyism.
ps. (resistance may have been sony trying to copy microsofts success with halo. my point, nintendo is not the be all end all - they are not some gold standard that all videogame companies try to live up to, though they are a great company. there are many good companies that make great games that are massive sales success too. it's much more likely that when microsoft entered this market they were looking at sony and the success sony was having and tried to emulate sony's practices more than they did nintendos to find the success that they(microsoft) eventually did. )
Wii begs to differ.
Where I live the Wii cost nearly the same as a 360 (arcade version anyways) back when they came out.
That is outrageous, and its the same reason Im not getting a WiiU now.
Also that Wii U controller prolly aint as expensive to make as some of you think.
Rather low spec restitive plastic screen, audio jack and wireless connectivity to WiiU console, low res plastic lens camera and a wii sensor bar thingy. there is nothing really big about it although it is pretty cool.
The console hardfware it self surely is not worth much more than 100 bucks if even that, how much does that leave to the controller?
200 dollars? Lmao, there is just no way.
But Nintendo will get away with it anyways because they will have the lowest price vs the upcoming xbox and ps4.
CASUAL CONSOLE gamers most likely don't care or have any idea of what processing power is all about.
Serious gamers do care!
i concider myself a serious gamer, i look at the console im buying and ask does it meet what i want if the answer is yes then its all good.
to call people not serious gamers because they dont give to ****s about the specs is just ignorant, does it really matter what the WII U has, i own one and i find it fun and enjoyable and i find the ps3 fun and enjoyable, and thats the main focus here
Then your best bet is buying a custom built gaming PC if you love power. You will never get power from a console based on its closed architectural design.
If I'm going to go out and buy a new console it needs to blow me away. The Wii U hasn't done that as I've been seeing what the Wii U can do for 7 years on the 360 and PS3.
@TheLeapist: I don't get why your getting so many disagrees; your completely right. This fuckin site is so out of touch with reality sometimes. Why reject reality just to defend your position in an argument?
Oh and I cursed, I guess you'll have to take my last bubble...
How ironic, serious gamer.
More excited for ps4 though.
4 Million is the number they expect to ship by the end of March which is down from their previous 5.5m forecast. At the moment it is looking extremly likely they will miss their 4m forecast as well.
No, graphics aren't everything, but then again power is more than just graphics. Think about that for a second.
And all i hear is confused people talking bout the ps4 this 720 that? . Yep this years E3 is gonna blow your souLs away
Nintendo didn't make a very generational leap and even made the hardware weaker in some areas next to 7th gen systems.
Everyone knows that the "hidden power" stuff isn't worth it. Even for the slightly more impressive things PS3 did than the 360 some times, it wasn't worth all of the iffy ports it got.
It doesn't have to be a bad thing that Wii U isn't very strong considering that it launched in 2012; maybe it will perk back up and start selling well again. But for a lot of people, it's very disappointing and fanatics have to deal with that.
We've come a long way and embracing nicer graphics isn't a weakness.
Just look at how amazing and utterly beautiful the graphics in the single player campaign of Halo 4 are. And they're being pulled off on a platform less powerful than the Wii U, PS3 and of course the PC.
There will be drop dead gorgeous games on the Wii U in the years to come. They might not be as impressive as what's gonna be done on the other two 8th generation consoles, but still they will look great enough to immerse you in whatever worlds game developers design for the Wii U.
http://www.ign.com/boards/t...
sorry guys but even digital foundry said themselves 30% of wiiu gpu is unknown ? plus the 550 mhz is just 50mhz shaved off the E6760 simple,what it doesn't say is the EDRAM is alot faster than GDDR5 ect alot alot faster.
E6760 scores a higher vantage score than the HD4850 and with less power ? look it up the HD 4850 runs at 1.1 terraflops the E6760 576 gigaflops,so terraflops mean nothing.
Basically a very Memory Heavy chip design,as well as all the modern architecture for todays standards makes the WIIU NEXTGEN end of memory is what developers wanted most.
but is bottlenecked by the CPU
if that's what i'm reading
which i worse than xbox360 CPU and not even close to ps3 CPU
so we can now finally rule out any next-gen pretensions for the Wii U
What exactly is next gen these days? be careful what you wish for with graphics because it will cost you £££££ big time.
Personally, I don't even understand those figures but I love the experience right now.
Not really just subtract the tablet controller and add that money to the actual hardware of the console and you could get much better results.
I expect the PS4 and the 720 to be around 399€ at launch.
It is almost certainly slower than a desktop Radeon 4650 because of having half the TMU's and reduced clockspeeds as well as seemingly less usable memory bandwidth.
I banged on about the TDP of the machine pointing out the absolute certainty it cannot be much faster than PS3/360, it was just impossible with such a low design power consumption with current known technology.
The GPU is perfectly competitive to RSX and Xenos, but nothing mind blowing that could make up for CPU deficiences so easily as some people have claimed.
Consider that even a Radeon 7670 touted to potentially be in the next Xbox would be at least twice as fast. If Orbis is anything like 2 teraflops, that would be roughly 5 times faster conservatively.
Nintendo don't care, people buying it don't care which is fine. It is just good to see the maximum capabilities a bit better defined.
everything has fallen into place
from software drought, HD remasters fillers, third party collaborations, first party developer unification & integration... Ninty has a lot of homework to do.
"Nintendo's in-house development teams are only now coming to terms with what it takes to create software in high definition, and we can expect future release to be more visually advanced that what has already come, president Satoru Iwata has told investors.
"I may add that each game console has its own unique qualities, and developers must go through a trial and error phase to acquire the knack of taking full advantage of them," said Iwata. "This time does not come until a final version of the hardware and development tools for the version have been made available and then a base for software development has been established.
"For Wii U, such a time finally came in the latter half of last year. In this sense, we could not avoid the trial and error stage to create games which take full advantage of the hardware. I think that this is true for third-party software developers as well as Nintendo's. The home consoles of other companies are six or seven years old and software developers have sufficiently studied them and know how to take full advantage of them well. As Wii U is new to them, some developers have already acquired the knack and made good use of its features and others have not.
"You might see this gap among the games that are currently available. However, we are not much concerned about this problem because time will eventually solve it. Actually, we believe that our in-house development teams have almost reached the next stage."
Iwata added that "it is not true that we are deadlocked with a lot of trouble in our development. Otherwise, we could not aim for 100 billion yen or more in operating profit for the next fiscal year".
Shigeru Miyamoto added: "We already went through this initial learning phase and are now tackling how to take full advantage of high-definition graphics. In this sense, retraining our developers used to be a great hurdle."
The Mario creator also revealed that Nintendo's inexperience with high definition development is one of the reasons the platform holder has chosen to partner with external studios more versed in the art.
"The other point is that many of our third-party software developers have been dedicated to technologies like shaders. As Wii U is designed to bring out their real strengths, there have recently been more cases where we develop something with their help," said Miyamoto. "It has been more convenient for us to work together with them because they have been able to more smoothly utilize their know-how for development for Wii U."
They had no choice but to launch Wii U before PS4 and capitalize on multi-platform games that can be ported on PS3/360 for the next 1-2 years
and top developers like ND mastered & maxed the PS3 for 7-8 years....so....
Good Luck Nintendo.
It isnt about development cost it is about manufacturing cost. The small central processor is cheap to make.
The cpu in your pc is many times larger, faster and of course more expensive to make.
1st party games only again is prolly how itl play out with a few good 3rd party gems here n there..
& decrypt ^^^ wii u only sold around 2.5 million
And what makes this even more funny is that WiiU has games that look better that of 360/PS3 at launch, and just recently showed games that are beyond PS360(Monolith Trailer)
Then Nintendo just released statements about Wii U visuals, and has said that their devs have now seen the "Next Stage" of visuals on Wii U after working with the hardware
I pointed out the GPU logic itself couldn't be very big (i.e fast) because and I quite clearly said before that 32mb of eDRAM on the same die as the GPU will take up a huge amount of die space, leaving not that much for a particularly fast GPU.
If you look at the shot of the die http://images.nintendolife.... and see the cyan(read light blue) box as eDRAM, see how much space it takes up on the die! Its probably just shy of a third of the chip's entire area. It is just dumb memory for fast access, it does no processing like transistors used for logic which really determine the maximal performance.
Embedded memory is ridiculously easy to spot on a die shot, because it is just basic blocks of transistors like cache on a CPU. It is unmistakable.
http://www.legitreviews.com... Try this? These are CPUs, but guess where the embedded memory (cache) is on the die shots? Not exactly rocket science....
We know about the size of the die (about 155mm squared), and we know now (from that shot) that something like a 3rd of it is just eDRAM, besides the other sections there that are clearly extra embedded memory.
Therefore even if we can't precisely identify some sections of the chip, it doesn't matter. Because a GPU based on only 2/3 the size of the known die is not going to be very fast, it just isn't big enough!
"The Wii U GPU core features 320 stream processors married up with 16 texture mapping units and featuring 8 ROPs."...but that also points to almost an EXACT match to the Radeon 5550, which has the SAME clockspeed as the Wii U 550mhz and has DDR3 memory! http://www.amd.com/US/PRODU...
Based on all the "FACTS" that we know about the WiiU, and the statements from Nintendo and other Devs, it all points to the GPU being a customized radeon 5550
It doesn't actually matter hugely which it is based off, my point was only revolving around its die size and process technology as we know.
The Radeon 5550 is in many ways 'based' off the previous Radeon 4k series architecture, the stream cores are virtually the same- 5 way VLIW architecture. Evergreen was an evolution of the previous R700 design, not some quantum shift (unlike the 'Cayman' 69xx series). It is well known that the 5550 core is not really much faster than a 4650 core (much of it can be attributed to the widening of the memory bus), so its hardly a big deal which you might believe it to be.
It was as I said, mostly irrelevant to my point that there is very limited die space for the GPU logic because of the amount of embedded memory included.
This really limits how fast the GPU can possibly be. Whether it is precisely based off Evergreen or slightly older architecture (indications is it is an R700 with tweaks) matters not, you can only get so much performance from such a relatively small die space.
There is a fairly well defined limit here, this is a small GPU with relatively low clockspeeds on maybe 100mm squared of silicon (155mm minus all that space taken by embedded 'dumb' memory not incorporated in most GPU designs) if you estimate generously.
On the exact same process a Radeon 5870 is over 3 times as large with hugely superior clockspeeds and no doubt memory bandwidth, so obviously, much much faster for it.
My point was then obvious looking at it, there is not enough space for a powerhouse GPU. I figured that fairly quickly lol
I mean all the tech people on gaf knowing tech stuff, don't know that every N console had/has a separate DSP unit.
And you don't need to be a scientists to know shit like that, but still?
People just love to bash Nintendo, it's cool and trendy these days.
What the heck did people expect anyway from wiiu, to have secret wizards jizz like xbox720 :-)
WiiU is ok, still more powerful than current generation, and will have some great looking games.
Or is now everyone unsatisfied with visuals like The last of Us?!
I'm not, and I can't wait to play a open world Zelda with better visuals then ever possible on ps360.
I personally think cpu wont be a factor going forward. The polygon race is over. You dont need 1 million polygons to make a character. Texture is where its at. And that is more in line with ram and gpu performance.
With 1 gig ram and 32mb edram the gfx will be higher than ps360 no matter what you think of its cpu or gpu
Some comments from Chipwork's Jim Morrison (ie a professional who analyses photos like this for a living):
----------------------------- -------
Originally Posted by Jim Morrison, Chipworks:
Been reading some of the comments on your thread and have a few of my own to use as you wish.
1. This GPU is custom.
2. If it was based on ATI/AMD or a Radeon-like design, the chip would carry die marks to reflect that. Everybody has to recognize the licensing. It has none. Only Renesas name which is a former unit of NEC.
3. This chip is fabricated in a 40 nm advanced CMOS process at TSMC and is not low tech
4. For reference sake, the Apple A6 is fabricated in a 32 nm CMOS process and is also designed from scratch. It’s manufacturing costs, in volumes of 100k or more, about $26 - $30 a pop. Over 16 months degrade to about $15 each
a. Wii U only represents like 30M units per annum vs iPhone which is more like 100M units per annum. Put things in perspective.
5. This Wii U GPU costs more than that by about $20-$40 bucks each making it a very expensive piece of kit. Combine that with the IBM CPU and the Flash chip all on the same package and this whole thing is closer to $100 a piece when you add it all up
6. The Wii U main processor package is a very impressive piece of hardware when its said and done.
Trust me on this. It may not have water cooling and heat sinks the size of a brownie, but its one slick piece of silicon. eDRAM is not cheap to make. That is why not everybody does it. Cause its so dam expensive
----------------------------- ------
Even if they somehow managed to shrink down another 4650 / 4670 GPU to do crossfire it would gain a theoretical 90% boost in performance, but when it comes to actual games it'll gain something closer to a 50% boost in performance via crossfire.
On top of that the CPU is a huge bottleneck even if it was more powerful.
Seeing how there's no way that's it, they know to expect bare minimal performance boost from whatever the remaining 30% of the GPU hides. If you don't know how technology works then you shouldn't be commenting on articles like these.
It doesn't matter if they don't know what 30% of the GPU does, because the performance increase isn't going to be much of an improvement regardless of what it is.
It's too small of a space to be another 4650 / 4670 for crossfire and even if it was the boost would be around a 50% improvement (higher in some cases), which still wouldn't be enough to compete with low end PC's of today.
Especially considering the CPU.
And by old Civic I mean old ps360
I understand you are excited that is fine but please talk about what you know. Too much hype kills also.
If Nintendo hopes to sway 'hardcore' gamers (the strategy that failed miserably for them with the Gamecube) then they are well and truly screwed.
While we buy Nintendo platforms for Nintendo games, they need 3rd party to stay alive and to be relevant.
I think Nintendo knows they are screwed which is why they rushed the launch and HAD to release the WiiU this past holiday. They know they don't stand a chance against next gen offerings.
I really wish they would stop being so conservative.
Edit: I wouldn't worry about the competetion going anywhere. Sony and MS are going to be in gaming for a long time, these debates won't be ending for a real long time................ : / fun
Go play your Hardware, I will enjoy N software :-)
as long as they got Mario, Pokemon, Metroid, Zelda, etc. they will continue to survive XD
lol, silly rabbits.
As an example, the ati(amd) 5000 series gpus actually have more transistors than the 6000 series gpus, yet the 6000 series are more powerful(smaller, cheaper, consume less power). If one was only looking at say a 5850 and comparing it to a 6850, one might draw the conclusion that the 5850 is the stronger. This is not the case.
http://hexus.net/tech/revie...
Look at the comparison chart on wikipedia. One of the reasons for a smaller transistor count on Barts was the use of the Redwood memory controller which was smaller than on Cypress. Taking that into account, the transistor size is relative to the 5000 series.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...
Still comparing this to similar PC hardware and what that PC would be capable of is a waste of time just because its a closed environment.
Instead im saving that 350 dollars and when ps4 comes out I will put another 50 dollars with that 350 making 400 dollars and have the ps4 day one with a lot more next gen games as well as guaranteed big name multiplat titles.
Im still wondering why some who dont even have a x360, pc, or ps3 would skip over those console that are cheaper with better online and multiplats and have games like ni no kuni in order to pay premium 350 dollar price to play nsmb wii HD :/.
Control yourselfs and always think logicaly when making purchases. There is no reason to have a wii u right now. nintendo games are the only games you really dont need to play day one except smash bros. everything else is single player mostly and mario kart is just mariokart not really something you need to rush out and play.
Most people I know beat nsmbu played with nintendo land for a few minutes and are now going back to pc/ps3/x360 games like ni no kuni and multiplayer games. getting multiplayer games for the wii u at this point is the dumbest thign you can do as theres maybe 1000 people maximum in a game. use your brains people...
Logic much?
Its dumb arguments for the sake of arguing. The newest nintendo is nintendos next generation or iteration of its console, the next xbox is thiers, PS is thiers, and so on. Generation is a timing based word and i wonder when the Gaming definition of it changed. since game cube was more powerful than ps 2 was ps 2 not really the next gen for that gen and wii was less powerful than xbox360 and ps3, so wii was not in that generation but still in game cube generation while ps2 would have to be lumped somewhere between N64 and ps1 generation. Its all stupid.
But then again, it's popular with all the kids these days to hate on Nintendo. I fully believe that these kids really actually want to kill Nintendo, that's why they run all of these smear campaigns. They want Nintendo to fall and fall hard. They want Nintendo's console to be weak so they can legitimize their hate.
What happened to the gaming world!!!!????
I miss nes and snes. lol
- X Console is not powerful, we want more power
> Then buy a PC
- Nah, it's true PC has all the power we want. But no. Because it's all about the games.
> Then power shouldn't matter.
- But we want power
> But...
- Enough! If I say -insert company game here- is bad, then it's bad-
> ...
- We want it cheap, too.
I want great games with great graphics and performace, is that so bad. I keep saying, Imagine the next Zelda game in a lush FULLY DETAILED world with high definition models and serious details for both the world and characters and keep the usually great combat and gameplay style and tell me that it won't be one of the greatest things ever. Think the E3 video they showed before the WiiU launch just even better (because even that didn't have as much detail and effects as some PS3 and Xbox games).
I want great nintendo titles with proper full hd resolution and high quality graphics and its clear the WiiU and Nintendo will not do that.
:)
While I think the Wii U will probably be considerably weaker than the PS4 and Next Xbox, I also think Nintendo will blow my socks off with their next 3D Mario, Zelda and Metroid games. What they may lack in power, they will very likely make up for it in art direction, tight gameplay and a clever use of the resources available with the hardware at hand. Nintendo has always been pretty efficient at this.
Looks like another system where only Nintendo and dedicated 3rd parties will be able to exploit the full power of the system, cause that is NOT a normal GPU architecture.
But future multiplats remain to be seen.
Wii - 15.75 GFLOPs total, Broadway CPU: 2.85 GFLOPs + Hollywood GPU: 12.9 GFLOPs
If Nintendo did say the Wii U had 21-22x the processing power of the Wii that would be around 330GFLOPs. Which is right around the 360s 355GFLOPs.
Not that FLOPs are a good benchmark for real world performance.
e: so many sony fanboys here. i almost feel sorry of their stupidity.
I remember having a brand new 6800 ultra in 2004 for doom 3 and half life 2, even with that card the framerate dropped as low as 20fps in some intense sections and that is pretty rediculous.
As soon as Source engine 2 is announced i'll be getting the best single card or dual chip card to get high framerates at 1080P.
Do you follow PC tech?
Your answers clearly show you don't, because any PC enthusiast has known from the start (during the first breakdown) that the Wii-U is barely a step ahead of the current-gen.
So as a fellow CS student, you honestly believe that there's a chance that that 30% of the unknown parts of the GPU are really going to make enough difference to where it powers the GPU to be 2x as powerful as the core components are.
Come on that's ludicrous. I know you're not saying that, but even implying that the 30% unknown could push the Wii-U even more is giving false hope to people who are obviously fanboys.
I'm not bashing the Wii-U at all, far from it. I've been one of the few support the Wii-U for taking a stand on getting back to core gaming, and even suspected that they we're only going to do just enough to pass the PS360. But they didn't.
"No one expected the WiiU to be outputting 1-2Tflops of power, but chips and design have come along way to achieve a respectable performance without sucking 130watts or more for great graphics."
I completely agree with you, and look back at my history, it's what I've been saying the entire time, and what I expected, and I was fine with that. The GPU could have been better, but it's fine enough with me. It's not a powerhouse, but it's the push Nintendo needed, and it's an improvement over the PS360. I applaud them on the GPU.
My gripe with the Wii-U is the CPU. This is where I have a problem with Nintendo, and it's also the reason the Wii-U is going to struggle with 3rd party support once again. This quote sums the Wii-U up so well after knowing it's specifics:
"We're still working on dev machines but there have definitely been some issues [in porting PS3/360 games]," our source said. "It's not actually a problem getting things up and running because the architecture is pretty conventional, but there are constraints with stuff like physics and AI processing because the hardware isn't quite as capable."
The same source concluded, bluntly: "I suppose you don't need sophisticated physics to make a Mario game."
That's the problem I have with the Wii-U. Having a solid GPU means nothing if they're going to keep using updated versions of the same CPU they used in the Gamecube back in 2000 (over 13 years ago, and also why isn't there Gamecube emulation on the Wii-U since it's the same CPU).
Ugh. This is too long and I used up my bubbles. PM.
True the wiiu could have been stronger but I'm glad nintendo makes gaming affordable.
Tech wise you should know about the many conference that are going on this year about gpgpu computing. How the cache is set up is very important. So much is being ignored. Yet the other consoles are going to use very similar tech. My question to you is what hardware have you programmed on so far?
I'd suggest you learn more about arm CPUs and gpgpus as soon as you can. Most CS programs are behind the times except a few that actualy get new tech when it comes out.
Like I said tech is finally taking off again. It's time to dig deep!
People see what they want to see.
I've been reading the actual Neogaf thread that this is all supposedly based on. It tails a completely different tale than what digital foundry is, and some of the people in it are actually slamming digital slammery for their rushed write up.
These two comments I saw from 2 different contributors stand out the most.
"[But you have to admit, it took you guys hours just to get where you are and you still don't know everything. Yet they make that article in less time and makes it seem like what they don't know about isn't important at all. Seem a little suspicious if you ask me.]
What they don't know gets in the way of making a click baiting headline, so they ignore it. They are gaming journalists after all. "
madeinbeats 46 minutes ago
Why don't you, Digital Foundry, just admit you haven't got a clue what you're talking about. You know the same as us about the GPU, basically nothing because its such a custom chip. There is no way you have the abillity to get any worthy info from this image. NO WAY. This is a joke, you complete bunch of clowns. Learn how to calibrate your TV first before you start trying to offer your take on custom GPU designs.
madeinbeats
Matt
"DF article really sounds sensationalist. Why do they come with their own private lose definition of "next-gen" ? Is there a clear barrier between what is next-gen and what isn't ? They avoided to talk about the components in the bottom right of the chip that we don't still know about, and don't think it can influence (greatly) the overall output of the console ?
That's really amateurish."
Even though Digital Foundry rushed to get this article up, they are actually still uncertain about a lot of what is know. Also 30% of the chip is still completely unknown territory.
I called this already, but I'm sure some games will run at said resolution (probably F-Zero and StarFox [if Nintendo has the decency of releasing more of these]).
Monster Hunter Tri = confirmed 1080p
Rayman Legends = confirmed 1080p
Toki Tori 2 = confirmed 1080p
Might Switch Force HD = confirmed 1080p
Transformers Prime = confirmed 1080p
Skylanders Giants = confirmed 1080p
Scribblenauts Unlimited = confirmed 1080p
Puddle = confirmed 1080p
Chasing Aurora = confirmed 1080p
The Cave = 1080p
Nano Assault Neo = confirmed 1080p
Just because the PS3 can run Super Stardust HD, Monster Hunter Portable 3rd HD or Rayman Origins in 1080p doesn't mean TLoU of Beyond will.
It's just a stupid excuse when people say they don't care about graphics if that was the case you wouldn't be buying a new consoles especially Wii U users, that is all I heard forever is how much more powerful the Wii U is when I always knew it wasn't really if at all more powerful. Too many Nintendo fans always said they didn't care about graphics but as soon as they got a console that had decent graphics I never stopped hearing about it which is ironic.
It is just a shame some people have to be so in denial about things, nothing wrong with caring about both hardware and graphics, as it is a standard in all new hardware. It just comes with the package.
It really isn't anything new anyway with Nintendo, very few times had they had the most powerful devices. So it shouldn't even bother Wii U fans if they truly didn't care about graphics why even defend them?
As as I said if one wasn't interested in better graphics and improved games due to better hardware they would not be buying new consoles.