WiiU clockspeeds found by marcan (Wii hacker)

[TVNewsIsBiased]

Cool. How does this compare to stuff like desktop PCs, taking into account the fact that it's different architecture? I know GHZ doesn't mean everything, but do these numbers tell us any good info?

Here's some food for thought. Running PS2 games on a PC will bring a single-core CPU running at frequencies as high as 3.6 - 3.8Ghz to it's knees.. The highest clocked chip in the PS2 was a little under 300mhz (MIPS5900,) yet it will bring cpus over 3000mhz to a crawl.

The reason is parallel processing. Rather than putting in 1 high-clocked chip, consoles get many low-clock chips that all work parallel. In addition to the parallel execution, the chips in consoles aren't typical chips. They have specialized instructions for the kind of loads they handle (Vector processors, encoding/decoding chips, texture compression/decompression chips etc.) You might recall our PC's boards also have dedicated chips like NICs, memory controllers, audio processors etc. but in addition to the many different cpus in consoles, they also have those chips hehe!

Even trying to run them on multi-core CPUs found in PCs is non trivial, because of high tightly synchronized the chips in consoles are.

Are these specs good enough to make people who cry about it being inferior to MicroSony's stuff shut up?

Haha, not even maybe.

In my honest opinion, it's just knee-jerk reactions founded in profound ignorance. I don't think the Wii U's performance issues are a fault of the Wii U's "power" but rather the fact that these ports are rushed and half-assed, not even making an attempt at properly optimizing the engine for the Wii U's architecture.

The PS3 initially went through the same struggle in the beginning. Games were visibly crisper and more responsive on the 360 than the PS3... Even though the PS3's FPOS (Floating-Point Operations per Second) and data through-put (How much data can be moved from the ram into the Cell processor's 7 different cores) puts it in a league of it's own in terms of raw processing power.

 

[FAST6191]

Interesting, on matters of determining potential performance from assembly and architectures these days if see the phrase along the lines of "I just work there, I don't live there" you will probably get somewhere close to what I peg myself at so I am out for the time being. I hope some more stuff is revealed at 29C3 next month, timings seem a bit tight though but given the whole wii presentation a couple of years back a month might be more than enough.

 

[RupeeClock]

The WiiU can already interact with the 3DS, maybe this'll lead to some interesting discoveries 3DS side if the WiiU is supposedly so vulnerable.

For the sake of compliance the SmashStack exploit in Brawl still works perfectly fine in Wii mode, it's nuts.

 

[9thSage]

Of COURSE people here'd automatically think any kind of hacking would equal backups running on WiiU. That's really not neccesarily the case, in fact I hope it's not. I do want the system to actually be successful.

 

[FAST6191]

Other than Hyro-Sama's jest post I see nothing of the sort 9thSage and instead see discussion of what it could mean and how it might play out as far as the resulting games- I am not quite sure if that counts as projecting but either way a bit less of it is probably in order.

 

[Rockhoundhigh]

In marcan I trust, though honestly that clock speed seems a bit ridiculous, I mean 1.24 GHz!? Unless the GPGPU is magically supposed to make up for that deficit then I don't know what Nintendo was thinking processor wise still at least it's three cores.

 

[the_randomizer]

Newsflash, lower clock speeds =/= lower performance.

How else could a Core i7 at 1.8 GHz outperform a Core 2 Duo at 2.4 GHz? I really wish would stop denouncing the Wii U. It's pissing me off.

 

[Felipe_9595]

Of COURSE people here'd automatically think any kind of hacking would equal backups running on WiiU. That's really not neccesarily the case, in fact I hope it's not. I do want the system to actually be successful.

Ps1, Ps2 and Wii says hi.

 

[chyyran]

Great, we know the WiiU is vulnerable.

However, these numbers will just be an excuse for idiotic PS360 fanboys to bitch about how the WiiU is inferior. Like we don't have enough of those already.

 

[the_randomizer]

Great, we know the WiiU is vulnerable.

However, these numbers will just be an excuse for idiotic PS360 fanboys to bitch about how the WiiU is inferior. Like we don't have enough of those already.

My point exactly, clock speeds only tell a chapter of the story, not the entire novel.

 

[Devin]

I'm definitely glad they're getting somewhere in terms of learning how the thing works and as a 360 fanboy I can honestly say that I don't care about clockspeeds. As long as the games run, and run well. Then the WiiU is fine in my books. But sadly I have to wait till Christmas to open mine..

 

[Valwin]

o nice to know the clock speed in WII MODE

 

[tmv_josue]

^ I don´t think that's in vWii mode.

 

[DiscostewSM]

If the WiiU bombs, are we going to call it the PiiU?

 

[9thSage]

Ps1, Ps2 and Wii says hi.

Oh yeah? Say hi back for me if you would.

 

[Rydian]

So does half of gbatemp have me on ignore or something?

The number of "we can't make comparisons" and "this doesn't tell us the power" posts made after my paragraph-level post with resource links and comparisons is just... sad.

 

[Snailface]

In marcan I trust, though honestly that clock speed seems a bit ridiculous, I mean 1.24 GHz!? Unless the GPGPU is magically supposed to make up for that deficit then I don't know what Nintendo was thinking processor wise still at least it's three cores.

And you should trust him. He has, since he revealed the Wiiu's alarmingly slow clock, elaborated on the architectural differences between the Espresso and the Xenon: basically the Xenon doesn't have near the advantage most people speculate (despite the great difference in clock speeds)
https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/274182672652308480

There are many more tweets supporting this opinion this if you care to read his full twitter feed.

 

[the_randomizer]

And you should trust him. He has, since he revealed the Wiiu's alarmingly slow clock, elaborated on the architectural differences between the Espresso and the Xenon: basically the Xenon doesn't have near the advantage most people speculate (despite the great difference in clock speeds)
https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/274182672652308480

There are many more tweets supporting this opinion this if you care to read his full twitter feed.

Just read his post and all I can say is QFMFT.

 

[Maxternal]

I know it's not meant to be a processing powerhouse or anything but I'm kinda wondering how the clock speed of the Starbucks compares to that of Starlet.

The next thing that comes to mind is how they compare to ARM procs in handheld game systems.

 

[tronic307]

In marcan I trust, though honestly that clock speed seems a bit ridiculous, I mean 1.24 GHz!? Unless the GPGPU is magically supposed to make up for that deficit then I don't know what Nintendo was thinking processor wise still at least it's three cores.

Those clock speeds honestly make no sense unless "cool to the touch" is Nintendo's ultimate performance metric. I thought it would at least be 1458MHz, (2x Wii) and that the GPU would be 486MHz with memory at 729 or 972MHz, and the audio DSP would remain at 121.5MHz. What happened to Nintendo's even multipliers for reduced latency? If Marcan is right, at least we'd know why it doesn't get as hot as the Wii, or even the 3DS.