Hardware Rep says "Wii U 19x more powerful than PS3"

[Rydian]

I seem to have missed the part where actual benchmarks were posted in this thread.

Like, actual benchmarks. Scientific testing method, results in a numerical form of a common base unit.

 

[Eerpow]

He means that the Wii U isn't running any titles with next gen in mind yet. ... but it's designed like a current gen game

Nothing is designed like a "current gen" game. A game either runs on a piece of hardware, or it doesn't.

How is Zombii U designed like a current generation game when it clearly uses the gamepad very well (which is next generation techology)? What qualifies as a "next gen" game? A game with hyper-photo-realistic graphics?

In that post I was using the term Next Gen as a synonym for the natural evolution of console game visuals. Not what hardware or game is next gen or not.
What qualifies as next gen game is when the game is released and on what platform, not how good it looks.

I'm not saying it's not a next gen game, it is, what I mean is that it isn't designed completely around the Wii U hardware other than the controller, ZombiU should be able to run on PS3/360 ( - game pad functionality) while later Wii U games probably won't run as easily.

There still isn't something we've seen that has taken advantage of what the Wii U has to offer yet and I don't think we'll see it until Sony/MS releases their new hardware, one of the reasons being that it's much easier for developers to make visually better multiplatform games if all three are using new hardware.

 

[Deleted-185407]

He means that the Wii U isn't running any titles with next gen in mind yet. ... but it's designed like a current gen game

Nothing is designed like a "current gen" game. A game either runs on a piece of hardware, or it doesn't.

How is Zombii U designed like a current generation game when it clearly uses the gamepad very well (which is next generation techology)? What qualifies as a "next gen" game? A game with hyper-photo-realistic graphics?

In that post I was using the term Next Gen as a synonym for the natural evolution of console game visuals. Not what hardware or game is next gen or not.
What qualifies as next gen game is when the game is released and on what platform, not how good it looks.

I'm not saying it's not a next gen game, it is, what I mean is that it isn't designed completely around the Wii U hardware other than the controller, ZombiU should be able to run on PS3/360 ( - game pad functionality) while later Wii U games probably won't run as easily.

There still isn't something we've seen that has taken advantage of what the Wii U has to offer yet and I don't think we'll see it until Sony/MS releases their new hardware, one of the reasons being that it's much easier for developers to make visually better multiplatform games if all three are using new hardware.

PS4/Xbox720 games will look very similar to PS3/Xbox360 games for the first couple of years of launch, and will likely be very easily ported to the PS3/360.

 

[Eerpow]

PS4/Xbox720 games will look very similar to PS3/Xbox360 games for the first couple of years of launch, and will likely be very easily ported to the PS3/360.

That's exactly what I'm thinking too, new hardware takes time man. Just look at what the 360 first offered compared to now.

 

[Alexrose]

1) My argument isn't based off one point at all. If you think that, well you're wrong. Product releases is the real supporting evidence, which you don't seem to appreciate. Moore's Law is merely one explanation as to why's hardware is growing in power. It's not the only thing that can be said obviously.

You're missing the point again. Moore's "Law" isn't an "explanation" to ANYTHING on the consumer market: it's a fallacy. You're now saying "Okay, you've shown that Moore's 'Law' isn't valid for the modern consumer market, but the effects of Moore's 'Law' are, regardless of why they occur". I was never debating the cause of it; Moore's "Law" states no cause, it observes an effect. Hardware ISN'T growing in power in the way you think it is. That's the bottom line. I'm not saying "The reason hardware is growing in power is not because of Moore's 'Law'", I'm saying "You have a gross overestimation of how much consumer hardware has expanded in the past 6 years, because it hasn't in the way you think it has".

2) I haven't been debating about Moore's law at all. I merely just referenced it, that's all. You're the one who started making a whole argument on it. I'm not arguing about that at all, I'm talking about the fact that hardware improves at exponential rate.

So point 2 is point 1. Which is still wrong. "I'm not arguing about that at all, I'm talking about the fact that hardware improves at an exponential rate". An exponential rate just means that something increases by a constant percentage per unit time. Moore's "Law" states that the number of transistors that can be printed on an integrated circuit doubles every 2 years.

In other words: That hardware increases at an exponential rate. What you said in bold is EXACTLY what Moore's "Law" says. So you ARE arguing Moore's "Law", but now that I've shown it's wrong you're trying to act like you're not.

Why's that so hard to understand?

Because I repeatedly showed it isn't true and you ignored it.

You clearly haven't bothered to look back at older product releases at all either.

I don't have to; I did a benchmark comparison of both of the pieces of hardware we've looked at rather than trying to extrapolate modern data from 6 year old data from a "law", which is neither applicable to the consumer market or actually a law at all when we already have the data. It's like you're trying to guess the GDP of America from 2006 from the fact that the graph appears to be polynomial, even though we have the modern data and we saw it took a drop. You're completely ignoring that and working off assumptions which turned out to be invalid. (Graph to illustrate the point: http://www.google.co...=gdp+of+america ; if you tried to find the GDP today from the line in 2006 you'd get an entirely different result than actually looking at what happened).

Smartphones did actually exist over 6 years ago depending on your definition of what a smartphone is

.. We're comparing the hardware from the PS3, which came out 6 years ago, and was focused on being the most powerful of that generation, to a console that's going to be released soon which isn't focused on raw power at all.

So logically, if we're comparing hardware from 6 years ago, and you're trying to make the smartphone analogy, we'd compare current smartphones to ones that came out 6 years ago, so we'd be looking at how hardware evolved over the 6 year period not the very first ones.

So obviously we use 6 years. But, again, it's retarded to compare smartphones when we're comparing PC hardware, which, I don't know if you realised, EXISTS.

Your whole argument seems to be on the basis that these are all uncalculateable values that we have to extrapolate from what we knew in 2006. But they're not. It's 2012. Wake up. We already have the hardware. Just because you know nothing about hardware and you're probably still playing on your Wii and have no idea how much or how little gaming computers have developed in the past 6 years doesn't mean the rest of us are in the dark about the hardware that already exists. We don't have to estimate ANYTHING, we HAVE the hardware.

Even if you were to take consoles as a basis

Which we obviously would in an argument about consoles.

as I explained earlier, there's a huge difference in performance between the PS1 and PS2 over the space of a few years.

Which is completely irrelevant because that's not how technology is nowadays because Moore's Law doesn't apply to the consumer market, as I've repeatedly stated, and we don't have to compare old consoles because, again, as I have repeatedly stated, WE HAVE THE MODERN DAY HARDWARE AND WE DON'T NEED TO ESTIMATE OR EXTRAPOLATE FROM THINGS WE OBSERVED 12 YEARS AGO.

Look at other points in history, same thing.

And, again, we have modern data which shows that Moore's Law is broken in the modern day consumer market and looking at history is no longer a basis for approximation, and again we have modern hardware we can look at instead of guesstimating from pre-2000 hardware.

Again, you're talking a single point

Yes, I'm talking a single point. My point is: We have modern day hardware, so we don't need to approximate from flawed historical observations.
Likewise you're talking about a single point, your point is: "We should approximate from flawed historical observations because I refuse to actually listen to anything you're saying"

and going wildly off-topic

Except that I'm not, meanwhile you've gone the most off topic by trying to bring smartphones into the mix, which as I've already discussed, are pretty irrelevant to the console market.

and missing the larger picture that the argument is presenting.

People who don't have any points love to throw around this one "missing the larger picture", rather than admit that you're missing any formal knowledge about computer hardware whatsoever and have no idea what you're talking about, so are trying to blindly argue something off assumptions when you haven't learnt about hardware, been using modern hardware for the past 6 years that we've been talking about, or been avidly following it.

3) We don't know what the Wii U has inside it. Therefore you cannot provide benchmarks.

Yes we do, it has a modified Radeon E6760 (which has been benchmarked) (this information has been provided by an AMD rep and confirmed by 2 others via email, and Nintendo have confirmed it is "based on the Radeon HD 5000 series", which the E6760 is, and is a pretty weak line. I built a pretty shitty midrange PC with a 5850 (one of the best 5xxx cards) back in 2008. It has 2GB RAM (we know from E3) and we know that it has a weaker processor than the PS3 (from several developers. It's discussed in another thread on here).

In the post where I analysed by benchmarks, I even overestimated the power of the Wii's GPU for you by a factor of 2, just because it's a ridiculous number that clearly isn't true to show you that even if you fudge the numbers and make them unrealistically high, it's still weak. This takes care of the uncertainty on which GPU it is.

But here's the main point: Even if the Wii U had the best GPU available in the consumer market, which costs more than the premium version of the console on its own, it would only be 10x as powerful as the card in the PS3. And, again, you don't multiply these values together. If you double the amount of RAM in a PC, it doesn't became twice as good. If you made all the components twice as good, your PC would be twice as powerful. You don't double the power for every component you upgrade.

So essentially, the Wii U would have to have a GPU in it that is twice as good as the most powerful graphics card in the known universe (or you could crossfire 3 of them, since crossfiring 1 gives 50% performance loss in the second, so you'd need 3, not 2 to get double the performance), have over 8GB RAM and between 2 and 4 i7-3940XMs (which each cost over 3x what the Wii U costs) in it to be 19x as powerful as the PS3.

Protip: It's not.

You appear to be someone who really cares about numbers and facts, so don't be a hypocrite, and provide me with facts.

Done.

Again.

 

[Rydian]

Yeah, older transitions like NES-SNES saw a huge boost because they were working under extremely strict limits previously, whereas the jump from consoles to modern hardware is much less jarring (easy to judge from the people who still think consoles compare to PCs in graphics and such).

EDIT: Woah, got a huge post between this one and Eerpow's.

 

[Rydian]

Last I checked the PS3's GPU was about a GeForce 7500... what's your info on it?

 

[Deleted-185407]

Please don't do that "quote, a few lines of a response, quote, more lines, quote, more lines, quote, more lines" thing. It destroys the flow of conversation and splits a debate into numerous topics which diverges from the point we're trying to discuss. Seriously, it's very annoying and really makes me not want to waste time responding.

You claim I'm not listening to you, but you're not going to accept my word that I'm not referring to Moore's Law in my arguments. If you insist on bringing it back into the discussion constantly when it's a dead argument, then we're not going to get anywhere in trying to understand where each other is coming from. You're trying to connect it to a similar sounding argument when in fact, they're not connected at all. You're not even understanding the bigger picture I'm trying to present or the comparisons I'm making when referring to other domains. Consider it your victory if you must, but if you want to continue genuine discussion and are genuinely interested in trying to understand where the other person is coming from, then try repeat that post again without referring to Moore's Law at all.

You're trying to debate a very subjective value and trying to apply very strict mathematics to it, while all I'm doing is explaining that it's perfectly feasible considering that it's been several years since the previous generation, and depends on your definition of power. That's all.

 

[Coto]

Alexrose, do you have any ideas of how hardware works from the inside? No more criptic tales from Moore if possible pl0x. That's bullshit from the point some tempers are trying to explain here.

I mean it's not funny to read anymore terribly long posts referring to a vague perception of someone, and you.

edit: sorry, but you just can't compare gaming on PC and consoles, they're completely different and every side has their differences. And minds of developers too, some prefer to go easier and do PC ports, and some others prefer to release games on consoles. (programming on gaming on consoles is trickier, but it doesn't require that much hardware unlike today gaming pc's standards)

And when I mean gaming consoles, I mean even differences between one each other. They're DIFFERENT WORLDS. When some chip developer improves something, it's based off the same silicon, then adds stuff over it. The only way to do a fair comparison would be like someone said, doing a real benchmark. IE: C code under 2 different SDK's compiled for both machines. And start from there

 

[the_randomizer]

(The Wii U) has a modified Radeon E6760 (which has been benchmarked) (this information has been provided by an AMD rep and confirmed by 2 others via email, and Nintendo has confirmed it is "based on the Radeon HD 5000 series", which the E6760 is, and is a pretty weak line. I built a pretty shitty midrange PC with a 5850 (one of the best 5xxx cards) back in 2008. It has 2GB RAM (we know from E3) and we know that it has a weaker processor than the PS3 (from several non-reputable "developers". It's discussed in another thread on here).

In the post where I analysed by benchmarks, I even overestimated the power of the Wii's GPU for you by a factor of 2, just because it's a ridiculous number that clearly isn't true to show you that even if you fudge the numbers and make them unrealistically high, it's still weak. This takes care of the uncertainty on which GPU it is.

But here's the main point: Even if the Wii U had the best GPU available in the consumer market, which costs more than the premium version of the console on its own, it would only be 10x as powerful as the card in the PS3. And, again, you don't multiply these values together. If you double the amount of RAM in a PC, it doesn't became twice as good. If you made all the components twice as good, your PC would be twice as powerful. You don't double the power for every component you upgrade.

So essentially, the Wii U would have to have a GPU in it that is twice as good as the most powerful graphics card in the known universe (or you could crossfire 3 of them, since crossfiring 1 gives 50% performance loss in the second, so you'd need 3, not 2 to get double the performance), have over 8GB RAM and between 2 and 4 i7-3940XMs (which each cost over 3x what the Wii U costs) in it to be 19x as powerful as the PS3.

Protip: It's not.

Wow. Not only does your argument state that the CPU is weaker, you don't even have a source to back up such an asinine claim. Those so-called "developers", which you claim to have made that statement, are a bunch of pussies who don't have the testes to admit anything. And about the GPU, the one from which it's based off of has been benchmarked, but this is a MODIFIED GPU, which means *gasp* there has been modifications made to it since it's a being used on a console. Simply put, a PC cannot be compared to a console and vice-versa; anyone who tries to compare the two in hopes of succeeding needs a swift hard kick to the balls. Either shut the hell up, or cease your tenacity at trying to discredit a system you have little knowledge about. Good day. The PS3 CPU doesn't even use all the SPEs or whatever they're called when games are played, heck, I wouldn't go as far as calling them "cores". Without them, the CPU is on par with the Wii's Broadway CPU. The arguments over which console has what hardware are getting ridiculous as it is, but it's people like you who like to look for trouble and bitch about everything you don't agree with.

 

[Alexrose]

Last I checked the PS3's GPU was about a GeForce 7500... what's your info on it?

It's equivalent to a GeForce GTX 7800, which I used for comparison.

Please don't do that "quote, a few lines of a response, quote, more lines, quote, more lines, quote, more lines" thing. It destroys the flow of conversation and splits a debate into numerous topics which diverges from the point we're trying to discuss. Seriously, it's very annoying and really makes me not want to waste time responding.

You acted as though I wasn't reading your posts properly, so I addressed every single point individually. You argued that I only had one point, now you say I'm discussing numerous topics.

You claim I'm not listening to you, but you're not going to accept my word that I'm not referring to Moore's Law in my arguments. If you insist on bringing it back into the discussion constantly when it's a dead argument, then we're not going to get anywhere in trying to understand where each other is coming from. You're trying to connect it to a similar sounding argument when in fact, they're not connected at all. You're not even understanding the bigger picture I'm trying to present or the comparisons I'm making when referring to other domains. Consider it your victory if you must, but if you want to continue genuine discussion and are genuinely interested in trying to understand where the other person is coming from, then try repeat that post again without referring to Moore's Law at all.

Okay, since you last time were trying to say you weren't referring to it, instead reread my post, but every time you read "Moore's Law", instead read "The belief that electronics improve exponentially", since the two are interchangeable.

But either way, my argument wasn't that your argument was badly founded (although it was), it was that the manufacturing cost per console would be in the thousands to make something 19x more powerful than the PS3.

You're trying to debate a very subjective value and trying to apply very strict mathematics to it, while all I'm doing is explaining that it's perfectly feasible considering that it's been several years since the previous generation, and depends on your definition of power. That's all.

We're talking in terms of a performance of a PC. As in FLOPS. Which isn't subjective.

We're trying to obtain a numerical answer here. You're saying 19x is feasible, so this is entirely mathematical, and when the best GPU in the world, costing twice the Wii U, is only 10x as powerful as the PS3, you're never going to get 19x. It's a ridiculous number and I'm really surprised that anyone read this thread and didn't just chuckle. Like.. some of you think this is possible. It's not even close to possible.

Alexrose, do you have any ideas of how hardware works from the inside? No more criptic tales from Moore if possible pl0x. That's bullshit from the point some tempers are trying to explain here.

I mean it's not funny to read anymore terribly long posts referring to a vague perception of someone, and you.

I was saying that Moore was bullshit, and that it has no relevance to the conversation. I then went on to show logically why the statement is ridiculous. For the second time. Yes, I understand how hardware works, I've been massively into hardware since I was 16, I've built 6 rigs and I've taken several computing courses in my physics degree.

edit: sorry, but you just can't compare gaming on PC and consoles, they're completely different and every side has their differences. And minds of developers too, some prefer to go easier and do PC ports, and some others prefer to release games on consoles. (programming on gaming on consoles is trickier, but it doesn't require that much hardware unlike today gaming pc's standards)

And when I mean gaming consoles, I mean even differences between one each other. They're DIFFERENT WORLDS. When some chip developer improves something, it's based off the same silicon, then adds stuff over it. The only way to do a fair comparison would be like someone said, doing a real benchmark. IE: C code under 2 different SDK's compiled for both machines. And start from there

We're not comparing gaming on PC and consoles. We're comparing the individual components within the consoles, from benchmarks, which obviously have to be taken on a PC, but that's irrelevant. If gpu A benches 2x higher on a specific rig than gpu B, then it doesn't matter what you plug that gpu into, a PC or a console; it still has the potential to produce roughly double the FLOPS.

Wow. Not only does your argument state that the CPU is weaker, you don't even have a source to back up such an asinine claim. Those so-called "developers", which you claim to have made that statement, are a bunch of pussies who don't have the testes to admit anything.

Here's a source:
http://www.eurogamer...-u-launch-title

So the gist of it is that you don't believe what the lead developer of Dynasty Warriors said to the press but you're happy to believe the off hand comment that the Wii U is 19 TIMES MORE POWERFUL than the PS3 from a booth babe to some guy. What a reputable source.

And even if the CPU is fantastic, which we have no reason to believe or disbelieve right now, as long as the GPU is only 2x as powerful as the PS3's, you could never get 19x more power out of the Wii U. It's a ridiculous assertion.

And about the GPU, the one from which it's based off of has been benchmarked, but this is a MODIFIED GPU, which means *gasp* there has been modifications made to it since it's a being used on a console.

And that's why I DOUBLED the power of the Wii U's GPU benchmark for the hypothetical calculation, which is a ridiculous overcompensation, just so you couldn't complain about that, and it still came up massively short.

Not only that, but I based the benchmark off of the 7800 GTX, which was MODIFIED for the PS3, and I didn't make any alteration to that result at all, even though the one in the PS3 would've been better than the benched one.

In essence, I biased the calculation completely in favour of the Wii U to prove a point, and it still didn't come anywhere near 19x as powerful.

Simply put, a PC cannot be compared to a console and vice-versa

I'm not comparing a PC to a console, I'm comparing the hardware in the PS3 to the hardware in the Wii U.

it's people like you who like to look for trouble and bitch about everything you don't agree with.

By comparing stats to discredit a ridiculous claim that the Wii U is "19x more powerful" than the PS3, which in reality would cost thousands per unit by using numerical values and logic, I am totally looking for trouble and bitching at people. Totally.

Meanwhile you're "bitching" to me because you don't agree with me. On a subject which is essentially non-subjective.

 

[Deleted_171835]

Was the series of the GPU and CPU not confirmed a while back? If not then I take back that point of my argument, I was under the assumption we did know the series.

However, as a consumer, I'd still be expecting a fair significant improvement in the product, which still makes the 19x fairly irrelevant and pretty obvious. Take the PS2 vs the PS1, the former released in 2000 and the latter released in 1994. Taking Moore's Law, we'd expect roughly a 8-16x increase in power, and you know what, that's pretty much what we got. The CPU not only has vast technical improvements, but also is clocked at 9x the rate of the PS1 clock. We can argue due to the new technical improvements, that it pretty much reaches that 16x threshold. Same story for the GPU and RAM, and as a consumer, that's what I would be expecting.

Same with the likes of smartphones, I'd be expecting modern smartphones to be ridiculously more powerful than smartphones released 10 years ago. That's not news, that's common sense. It's pretty much what Nintendo have been telling us for ages, that the Wii U is a next generation console, and have shown us rough estimates as to what kind of power it'll have. The 19x value is one of those rough subjective values that is pretty much expected depending on how you calculate the value. If I was a salesperson, I might not know the technical specifications, but I should could tell you roughly how much more powerful something is over something else. It's not news. It's old news. Just like Nintendo provided videos and screenshots, it's just another way of very vaguely describing the power of a device to the average consumer.

Honestly, with what we've been shown so far in terms of tech demos and whatnot, are people really only expecting the Wii U to be 1.5x that of a PS3/360 which already struggle as it is to run 1080p content on a single screen? Logic dictates that rendering full high-definition content to one screen with other modern GPU capabilities, along with rendering to another wireless screen without lag, that the Wii U is at minimum several times more powerful than current generation consoles.

It's common sense, not news. News is when they give us real information and not vague subjective information.

I'm not arguing that a large jump in power over the PS3 is impossible. It's certainly possible given the amount of time that has passed since the PS360 have came out. There is no guarantee that Nintendo will strive for such an increase in power, though. The Wii was only a marginal jump over the Gamecube despite far superior tech being available at the time.

The PS360 are perfectly capable of rendering games at 1080p. Rayman Origins and Super Stardust HD attest to that fact. It's just much more demanding than rendering a game at 720p and that will be the same for the Wii U. With more complex games, the Wii U only features a map and inventory so rendering a second-screen isn't anything impressive.


We haven't had any rough estimates of the Wii U can do. The only games built from the ground-up for the Wii U that we've seen are New Super Mario Bros. U, Nintendo Land and Lego City: Undercover, The Wonderful 101 and Rayman Legends while the rest are all multi-platform games or ports. Frankly, none of those games are really going to show off the power of the system.

This is trolling, surely? Even with a decimal point that got lost in transit, I'm pretty sure it's bollocks. I've seen no evidence that the Wii U can even match the PS3, much less outclass it by such a ridiculous ratio.

The Wii U is obviously more powerful than the PS3. The PS3 is tech from 2006 and is quite outdated. Surpassing the PS3 isn't an extraordinary feat.

Not to mention that multiple developers have already confirmed that it is.

 

[Blaze163]

19x the power of the PS3 has got to be trolling though, surely? Unless Nintendo have discovered the secrets of the Kaio-ken technique to give their stuff a massive power multiplier.

 

[gamefan5]

19x the power of the PS3 has got to be trolling though, surely? Unless Nintendo have discovered the secrets of the Kaio-ken technique to give their stuff a massive power multiplier.

If that was the case then the Wii U would suffer under it's own power. XD
Remember that the Kaio-Ken takes a toll on the body.

 

[Rydian]

Last I checked the PS3's GPU was about a GeForce 7500... what's your info on it?

It's equivalent to a GeForce GTX 7800, which I used for comparison.

Oh, you're right, the 7500's using the G72 and lower-clocked RAM... though I find it odd that a G72 would be so much weaker than a G70 at the same core clock, unless the bottleneck was RAM bandwidth, but given that the 7500's RAM clock is listed as less than 500mhz (real), Idunno' why that'd be an issue.

 

[ShadowSoldier]

This thread should be closed. All WiiU discussions should be closed because they're making everyone on this site dumb, like literally dumb.

 

[Maxternal]

dumb and mute people can still type though

 

[Gahars]

Did that representative happen to be a dark lord of the Sith, by any chance?

 

[Psionic Roshambo]

For a quick laugh anyone remember the PS2 version of King Kong and the 360 version of King Kong? That game had me worried that the 360 was actually weaker than the PS2.... Of course looking back thats completely silly

Bad game conversions are bad and it just shows how new hardware can be hindered by poor code.

 

[Deleted_171835]

For a quick laugh anyone remember the PS2 version of King Kong and the 360 version of King Kong? That game had me worried that the 360 was actually weaker than the PS2.... Of course looking back thats completely silly

Bad game conversions are bad and it just shows how new hardware can be hindered by poor code.

"This time, Microsoft has stated clearly that it is going after the PlayStation. However, they're going not after the PlayStation 3, but the PlayStation 2. They were looking at 2, and that's why [Xbox 360] became like that." (Ken Kutaragi explains Microsoft’s lack of ambition with the 360, 2005).

Oh Ken.