Hardware Wii U processing speed low compared to 360, PS3, says Tekken producer

[DiscostewSM]

​

Tekken producer Katsuhiro Harada has said that the WiiU processor's clock speed appears to be lower than the processor's clock speed in both the Playstation 3 and the XBox 360.

"As far as graphical processing and such, it's not much of an issue. But as far as the CPU goes, the clock is kinda low."
"I guess they're trying to keep power consumption down so we have to come up with creative ways to get around that and that's taking a little bit of time."
When asked whether it was lower than that of the Xbox 360 or PS3, he replied: "Maybe a little bit.

Source

I'll admit that this could clearly mean that the WiiU's CPU is weaker than that in the PS3 and XBox 360, but the wording tends to not be specific about being "weaker". Simply "slower". As it is, CPU clock frequencies are not the end-all be-all in terms of a CPU's processing capability. CPU architecture continues to improve, even so much that the past's 3.0Ghz CPUs lag behind current 2.0GHz CPUs because what current CPUs can do more in a single clock cycle than what past CPUs could do.

Edited for formatting

 

[Rydian]

The clock rate is the mhz/ghz, and ghz is not a measurement of speed.

Older Processors.
The "Intel Pentium 4" 2.26ghz processor scores 282.

Newer Processors.
The "Intel Core 2 Duo P7350" 2.00ghz processor scores 1,401.

So it's 100% possible for a processor with LESS ghz to be better. More ghz does not mean the processor is better in every case. Only when comparing two of the SAME processor.

Ghz is like RPM in cars. It describes how fast it's cycling. How much it does per cycle, however, varies between processor models.

Let's say you have two cars, both in second gear, doing 4000 RPM. One of the cars accelerates up to 6000 RPM, in the same gear. It is now going faster than it was previously.
If the second car kept accelerating to the point that it changed gears and dropped down to 3000 RPM, it would appear to be going slower (if you only compare RPM values), but it's going faster than the first car.

The reason people think that a higher ghz rating means a processor is faster is because of this. If you raise the ghz, the processor will be going faster than it was previously. However, when comparing two different processors, you cannot compare them by just ghz.

That's how processors are. If a processor can do more per cycle, then it can cycle less, while still doing the same amount or, or more work. The advantage of a processor cycling less is that less heat is generated, and less power is used.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megahertz_Myth

 

[AlanJohn]

But I thought that the WiiU had some kind of super computer CPU or something.

 

[AceWarhead]

But I thought that the WiiU had some kind of super computer CPU or something.

It has BLAST PROCESSING

 

[KingVamp]

I seen this article and I figure it really didn't mean anything. They could reasonably overclock at anytime.

I can barely see the words of the OP which I believe it due to the black theme with this format.

 

[nando]

But I thought that the WiiU had some kind of super computer CPU or something.

i thought you left

 

[Coto]

if the CPU clock speed equals bandwidth between northbridge, southbridge, ram, gpu and others critical parts of the system then raw cpu clock shouldn't be a problem. Or it'd bottleneck like mad. Some developers tend to argue this often.

 

[Gahars]

THE DRAMA THICKENS

Seriously though, do we need another one of these threads?

 

[Guild McCommunist]

How about from now one we put all these dumb Wii U speculation threads in the place they belong?

New rule: no specs, no hard info, no service.

 

[Hells Malice]

If I see one more " *insert comment about Wii U* says *random production company* " i'm gonna smack a bitch.

 

[Rydian]

But I thought that the WiiU had some kind of super computer CPU or something.

i thought you left

I thought you read more than the title of a thread, but AJ's fake EoF thread proved that one wrong.

 

[Luigi2012SM64DS]

But I thought that the WiiU had some kind of super computer CPU or something.

I thought you left.
steal

 

[DiscostewSM]

New rule: no specs, no hard info, no service.

Guess no more Nintendo hardware threads, lol.

 

[Midna]

>Clock
Oh boy I know how this is going to be interpreted by fucking everyone.

Bottom line is Nintendo probably severely underclocked their processor for heat and power reasons. Developers are probably a bit dissatisfied by that. Interesting titbit, but still tells us fucking nothing about the actual specs, and the clock rate in comparison to the PS360 means less than nothing as well.

---

 

[Rockhoundhigh]

More speculation, hooray for my degrading optimism and sanity while I wait for an official word

 

[the_randomizer]

But I thought that the WiiU had some kind of super computer CPU or something.

It uses the IBM POWER7 architecture, which was used in the Watson supercomputer, but as was mentioned by others before, the architecture has NOTHING to do with clock speed. Clock speed only tells part of the story; take for instance a Core i7 2670QM 2.2GHz versus a Core 2 Duo E8400 3.0GHz. The Core i7 wins despite it's lower GHz value, and this is due to several factors, such as the processor instructions(SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, 4.2, x64, etc), the pipelines, how much L1, L2 and L3 cache and so on. More clock speed doesn't always make it faster.

 

[Rydian]

More speculation, hooray for my degrading optimism and sanity while I wait for an official word

There likely won't be one until close to launch. The current specs can vary a lot during the development process for different reasons, and dev units tend to have different specs than retail anyways (usually more RAM/storage) to make working with inefficient coding/resources easier so oftentimes the dev specs aren't the same as retail, barring broad things we think we know already.

 

[shakirmoledina]

people have programming so carelessly (some). with a proper structure like the wii u, they will focus their graphics processing on the gpu and not rely on the cpu for graphics.

 

[Deleted member 194275]

It will not take longer for someone (again) come with an anonymous industry source telling that WiiU is less powerful than a N64, and then another guy come with a Nintendo Fansite News Website telling that Wii U is so powerful that can beat Garry Kasparov. This kind of discussion lead us for nowhere.

 

[BORTZ]

How about from now one we put all these dumb Wii U speculation threads in the place they belong?

New rule: no specs, no hard info, no service.

>Wii U is not out yet
>People making wild accusations about its power.