# [FAKE] Wii U CPU and GPU speeds significantly increased after latest update



## Walker D (May 10, 2013)

I don't know how relevant this rumor can be, based on the source... by here it is anyways..

A discussion from Neogaf (_here_), that got some traction on NintendoLife (_here_), pointed that the WiiU got a substantial performance increase after the latest update:



> The CPU and GPU are built on the same package.
> 
> CPU: IBM PowerPC 7xx-based tri-core processor "Espresso" clocked at 1.24 GHz before the 3.0.0 update, 3.24 GHz after the 3.0.0 update. This is an evolution to the Broadway chip used in the Wii, is 64 bit and uses Power6 technote When IBM has said that Nintendo has licensed the Power7 tech from IBM, Nintendo is not using it for the Wii U, explaining its backwards compatibility.
> 
> GPU: AMD Radeon High Definition processor codenamed "Latte" with an eDRAM cache built onto the die clocked at 550 MHz before the 3.0.0 update, 800 MHz after the 3.0.0 update.


 
Some say that this 800Mhz would put the WiiU in a position of "almost as powerful as PS4 is said to be"
what do you think?


And yeah ....keep your salt truck ready...


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## Foxi4 (May 10, 2013)

If the clocks sigificantly increased, so did power consumption. This can be _easily _checked for validity.


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## Coto (May 10, 2013)

that it's quite possible, some notes on the past gen Wii CPU(ibm) said the multiplier could be easily pumped 6x instead of 3x as the stock CPU on Wii is currently. (243*6=1458mhz vs 243*3=729mhz. The Wii U's clock per clock that is, but if SIMD isn't supporting lots of today's standards, means reinventing the wheel for most frameworks

I say, Nintendo or IBM should work on shared libs to give support to today frameworks, so 3rd party devs won't need to go away


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## trumpet-205 (May 10, 2013)

Simple to prove whether this rumor is true or false. Get a wattage meter and measure its power draw before and after. You cannot increase clock speed so much without increasing power draw.

Also more power draw means more heat, which I highly doubt Wii U is capable of dissipating that much heat.

All in all, I'd say this is a false rumor.


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## Ethevion (May 10, 2013)

Walker D said:


> And yeah ....keep your salt truck ready...


 
Way ahead of you


Spoiler


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## JoostinOnline (May 10, 2013)

While there is a huge performance boost after the latest update, I don't really buy this.
Even though my Wii U was quite cool before the update, I just felt it and the temperature is almost the same now (that is, I can't tell much of a difference when it's on or off).
It's not really about clock speed these days, it's about cache.


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## Eerpow (May 10, 2013)

False as the wattage remains unchanged. It's still possible as it's incredibly underclocked only using below 50% of the potential power consumption plus that we know that it's capable of overclocking too, a higher clock and more RAM access is almost guaranteed to come in the future, but never as much as this claims though.
They've already reclocked the 3DS, unlocking cores and whatnot, improving the system through updated SDK's and system updates is common practice in the industry, PS3 has seen similar updates.


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## JoostinOnline (May 10, 2013)

Eerpow said:


> False as the wattage remains unchanged.


Did you test it then?


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## Eerpow (May 10, 2013)

JoostinOnline said:


> Did you test it then?


Others have. Read this rumor earlier today and yes, people did test it.


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## JoostinOnline (May 10, 2013)

Eerpow said:


> Other's have. Read this rumor earlier today and yes, people did test it.


Source please?


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## trumpet-205 (May 10, 2013)

Eerpow said:


> It's still possible as it's incredibly underclocked only using below 50% of the potential power consumption plus that we know that it's capable of overclocking too, a higher clock and more RAM access is almost guaranteed to come in the future, but never as much as this claims though.


Not possible. Underclock means decreased power consumption.

So even if you underclock Wii U there will still be a difference in power consumption.


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## JoostinOnline (May 10, 2013)

trumpet-205 said:


> Not possible. Underclock means decreased power consumption.
> 
> So even if you underclock Wii U there will still be a difference in power consumption.


He didn't say it was possible without a power consumption change.


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## Walker D (May 10, 2013)

Could the voltage be left intentionally high at launch, as a precaution measure, just in case a correction in the way WiiU works was needed?


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## Eerpow (May 10, 2013)

trumpet-205 said:


> Not possible. Underclock means decreased power consumption.
> 
> So even if you underclock Wii U there will still be a difference in power consumption.


I never said there wouldn't be a difference in power consumption.
The Wii U currently uses below 50% of the PSU, the CPU is already underclocked but it's capable of overclocking. It's likely a boost could happen in the future. Not to this degree but still.

Source? I read it on neogaf, just google Wii U update clock speed and you should be able to find it.


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## trumpet-205 (May 10, 2013)

Walker D said:


> Could the voltage be left intentionally high at launch, as a precaution measure, just in case a correction in the way WiiU works was needed?


Voltage can be fixed, but current is directly related to clock speed. High clock speed means high amperage.

Wattage (power consumption) = voltage x current.


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## RedCoreZero (May 10, 2013)

GREAT!

All we need is more ram for 3DS.


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## Eerpow (May 10, 2013)

maniax300 said:


> GREAT!
> 
> All we need is more ram for 3DS.


For what?
And if you read the discussion you would know it's false news anyways.


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## lismati (May 10, 2013)

Guys, the Wii U clockspeed TV tropes poster is full of it. It's all utter BS.

-marcan, on Twitter[


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## Rizsparky (May 10, 2013)

maniax300 said:


> GREAT!
> 
> All we need is more ram for 3DS.


Ram? lolwut

On topic, this is probably feasible but PS4 level? Yeah....


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## Walker D (May 10, 2013)

lismati said:


> Guys, the Wii U clockspeed TV tropes poster is full of it. It's all utter BS.
> 
> -marcan, on Twitter


 
yup ... seems like the rumor is down..

also:  "The TVTropes article also has other nonsense in it, like the claim that it's 64bit (it isn't).   - marcan, twitter"


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## Hielkenator (May 10, 2013)

trumpet-205 said:


> Voltage can be fixed, but current is directly related to clock speed. High clock speed means high amperage.
> 
> Wattage (power consumption) = voltage x current.


 This must be measured from within the Wiiu housing.
Measuring at the socket won''t work remember there''s a Transformer.
Power consumption will be the same at the socket.


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## Veho (May 10, 2013)

Hielkenator said:


> Power consumption will be the same at the socket.


No, it will increase. If the power consumption at the socket remained the same, that would mean the device is drawing full power even when in low mode, and that the difference in power disappears somewhere. 

Try measuring yourself, measure the consumption while playing a game and while it's idling on the home screen.


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## PityOnU (May 10, 2013)

Nope.

This is quite literally impossible on for the hardware. Perhaps they changed the power management firmware so that whatever tool is being used to report the clock speed now sees a different one, but that's about it.

Otherwise, my i7 would be at 15GHz right now.


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## Fat D (May 10, 2013)

You are seriously overestimating the capabilities of a transformer. Input power equals output power plus losses, and the losses are not big enough to mask such a huge clock speed difference by their variance. A transformer just scales the voltage by a certain factor and the current by the inverse one.


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## JoostinOnline (May 10, 2013)

PityOnU said:


> This is quite literally impossible on for the hardware.


Why is it impossible to stop underclocking?


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## Eerpow (May 10, 2013)

JoostinOnline said:


> Why is it impossible to stop underclocking?


I think he means that the numbers mentioned are impossible.


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## JoostinOnline (May 10, 2013)

Eerpow said:


> I think he means that the numbers mentioned are impossible.


I don't think he knows that for sure.


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## Veho (May 10, 2013)

PityOnU said:


> This is quite literally impossible on for the hardware. Perhaps they changed the power management firmware so that whatever tool is being used to report the clock speed now sees a different one, but that's about it.


It is entirely possible it's been underclocked to reduce power consumption. It happened with the PSP too. It makes less sense on a home console but it's not impossible.  

However, what's the point of giving devs and users the impression of a drastically slower machine if they could have at least hinted at the possibility of unlocking more power later on in the console life. 

And the _almost triple increase in speed_ is very suspect. 50% increase? Plausible. 160% increase? Doubtful.


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## Maxternal (May 10, 2013)

Well, I can see where the rumor comes from. The clock speed is obviously settable in software to some degree since it can drop down to Wii speed (just like the Wii proc could be dropped down to GC speed) and people saw so much of a loading time performance increase in the last update that some thought a clock speed increase would have made sense.

I would attribute this more to a lot of code cleanup and optimization more than anything, though. Nintendo had plenty of time to find the best clock speed without it burning up or crashing before launch. Suddenly deciding it can be doubled or tripled at this point is not realistic. At this point it's no longer about heat. It's about the time it takes for the transistors on the die to react to a new signal. Much faster and it will no longer function no matter how much you cool it. Also, I remember tueidj making a comment pre-launch that on a processor that's backwards compatible with Wii software it's simply not going to be able to go faster than somewhere in the 1.X GHz range.


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## Gahars (May 10, 2013)

What is this, voodoo electronics?


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## gamefan5 (May 10, 2013)

trumpet-205 said:


> Voltage can be fixed, but current is directly related to clock speed. High clock speed means high amperage.
> 
> Wattage (power consumption) = voltage x current.


Thx for giving me a brief of my physics electricity class. XD No srsly!


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## Taleweaver (May 10, 2013)

Veho said:


> And the _almost triple increase in speed_ is very suspect. 50% increase? Plausible. 160% increase? Doubtful.


Quoted for truth. By the sounds of it, someone looked at the difference in loading speed of the wiiu menus and drew a retarded conclusion on it.


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## DiscostewSM (May 10, 2013)

More than likely, the update improved efficiency of the hardware without having to change the clock speed, but the people who don't know better assume that if something runs faster, then they must have OCed it. 3Ghz is too much of a stretch for the Wii U in any case.

But, I wonder whether the system was purposefully underclocked, and if they would bring up the clock speed at some later point in time?


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## Hop2089 (May 10, 2013)

The update came too little too late, I doubt this will convince developers to flock to the WiiU.  Hopefully the OCing won't result in overheating systems.


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## p1ngpong (May 10, 2013)

Amazing! I knew we would win!

I can't wait to play Frostbite engine 4 games on my Wii U now!


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## Taleweaver (May 10, 2013)

Here's a fragment of a rumored interview with Iwata*:

*reporter*: so...with sony and microsoft coming up with more powerful consoles, aren't you afraid it will leave the wiiu underpowered?
*Iwata*: naah...we'll just release a couple firmware updates that will download extra clockspeed, memory and graphical power from the internet. 
*reporter*: wow...you guys can do that?
*Iwata*: sure...if you have enough disk space available. That's why the basic version will have an extra update to download and install more disk space before starting the actual firmware update.



*source: I pulled it out of my ass. And while that may not sound like much, it's still above average when it comes to gaming news.


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## weavile001 (May 10, 2013)

Taleweaver said:


> *That's why the basic version will have an extra update to download and install more disk space*





Taleweaver said:


> *That's why the basic version will have an extra update to download and install more disk space*


WTF?


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## Rockhoundhigh (May 10, 2013)

Personally I'm at least glad to know that that means they've actually been spending all these months optimizing the software rather than just bumping up the clock speed. Either way a nearly 200% overclocking sounds like it would just eat through any normal processor.


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## DiscostewSM (May 10, 2013)

weavile001 said:


> WTF?


Read the small print.


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## loco365 (May 10, 2013)

maniax300 said:


> GREAT!
> 
> All we need is more ram for 3DS.


Better go download some then.


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## Eerpow (May 10, 2013)

DiscostewSM said:


> More than likely, the update improved efficiency of the hardware without having to change the clock speed, but the people who don't know better assume that if something runs faster, then they must have OCed it. 3Ghz is too much of a stretch for the Wii U in any case.
> 
> But, I wonder whether the system was purposefully underclocked, and if they would bring up the clock speed at some later point in time?


The system has a pretty good cooling system from what I've read, the heatsink should be capable enough to allow the CPU to be overclocked.
Why the Wii U is underclocked I have no idea, then again why was the firmware so unoptimized, why were the SDK's not available until only a few months before release, and why haven't they done anything with the Wii U since launch in terms of software releases and advertising? They only released it early because of Christmas is seems, it's been put to sleep since. Really risky move since they're playing with peoples patience.

I'm sure they'll clock it higher eventually, would be a wasted opportunity f they didn't.


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## Rizsparky (May 10, 2013)

weavile001 said:


> WTF?


you obviously missed the part where he said it came out of his arse.


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## WiiUBricker (May 10, 2013)

At this point, you probably want to read what marcan had to say about the Wii U CPU in the comments section here, it's worth it: http://fail0verflow.com/blog/2013/espresso.html


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## Qtis (May 10, 2013)

p1ngpong said:


> Amazing! I knew we would win!
> 
> I can't wait to play Frostbite engine 4 games on my Wii U now!


WiiU Master Race here I come!!! 


oh wait..


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## weavile001 (May 10, 2013)

Rizsparky said:


> you obviously missed the part where he said it came out of his arse.


But still,install more memory in an update?wtf?


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## Qtis (May 10, 2013)

weavile001 said:


> But still,install more memory in an update?wtf?


It's also called giving up memory from the OS. It has been done during the whole PS360WII generation without any press releases


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## PityOnU (May 10, 2013)

JoostinOnline said:


> Why is it impossible to stop underclocking?





PityOnU said:


> Perhaps they changed the power management firmware so that whatever tool is being used to report the clock speed now sees a different one, but that's about it.


 


Veho said:


> It is entirely possible it's been underclocked to reduce power consumption. It happened with the PSP too. It makes less sense on a home console but it's not impossible.





PityOnU said:


> Perhaps they changed the power management firmware so that whatever tool is being used to report the clock speed now sees a different one, but that's about it.


 
Please read the whole post next time. Thanks.


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## Bladexdsl (May 10, 2013)

how can an update magically make the cpu/gpu faster? who falls for this?!


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## RedCoreZero (May 11, 2013)

Eerpow said:


> For what?
> And if you read the discussion you would know it's false news anyways.



Better internet browser,miiverse,better graphics,quicker loading times.I already read this,and even before,I was like what?The fuck is that possible,and the fuck how?Plus the leap is just too big.


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## Taleweaver (May 11, 2013)

weavile001 said:


> But still,install more memory in an update?wtf?


I take it you're not familiar with the concept of irony. So let me just be extra clear:

MY LAST POST WAS A JOKE. IT'S NOT POSSIBLE TO MAKE HARDWARE CHANGES BY A FIRMWARE UPDATE.


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## Rydian (May 11, 2013)

Bladexdsl said:


> how can an update magically make the cpu/gpu faster? who falls for this?!


In PCs and some other devices, clock speeds can be controlled by software nowadays without much hassle, so it's not impossible as far as normal people think.


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## Bladexdsl (May 11, 2013)

so they're overclocking consoles now


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## trumpet-205 (May 11, 2013)

Hielkenator said:


> This must be measured from within the Wiiu housing.
> Measuring at the socket won''t work remember there''s a Transformer.
> Power consumption will be the same at the socket.


No it will not. Your AC adapter will varies its power consumption as Wii U is demanding different wattage.

When you overclock your PC your PSU will also draw different wattage at the socket.


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## shakirmoledina (May 11, 2013)

It's as if Nintendo always tucks in an afterburner or nitro in their systems that they unlock later on. why?
ok now things will start to heat up!


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## Bladexdsl (May 11, 2013)

Well I didn't notice any speed increase in the games I played like lego city. You would have seen some increase in speed in that since in some parts the fps can get a little bad.


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## geishroy (May 11, 2013)

Bladexdsl said:


> so they're overclocking consoles now


 
have you ever used a psp?


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## Rydian (May 11, 2013)

To be fair 333mhz is the CPU's stock clock rate, the system just underclocks it by default for most software... though some of the later games do give you the option of running at 333mhz officially when in that game, like the Kingdom Hearts game.


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## FAST6191 (May 11, 2013)

Taleweaver said:


> IT'S NOT POSSIBLE TO MAKE HARDWARE CHANGES BY A FIRMWARE UPDATE.



Pretty sure I once installed a firmware update to a FPGA that changed some I/O into memory.


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## Hielkenator (May 11, 2013)

trumpet-205 said:


> No it will not. Your AC adapter will varies its power consumption as Wii U is demanding different wattage.
> 
> When you overclock your PC your PSU will also draw different wattage at the socket.


In order to change the the current sent to the motherboard you would have to change the number of windings in the trafo.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformer


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## Veho (May 11, 2013)

PityOnU said:


> Please read the whole post next time. Thanks.


I did. Now _you_ read _my_ whole post, thanks.


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## redact (May 11, 2013)

FAST6191 said:


> Pretty sure I once installed a firmware update to a FPGA that changed some I/O into memory.


bravo you magnificent bastard


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## Mantis41 (May 11, 2013)

Every Wii-U thread and news story I read screams desperation. It's underpowered get over it.

If you're a Nintendo fan and like Nintendo games buy it. If your expecting the next big thing then wait.


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## raulpica (May 11, 2013)

Since it's faek, lock incoming.


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