Hardware WiiU's CPU weaker than 360/PS3

[Deleted_171835]

Either way, that's not a very credible rumour

It's not a rumour and it's certainly quite credible (coming from an actual developer). It's just that there are different factors at play (with the Wii U having an OoOE CPU and all).

Nothing new here really. The 3DS has a slower CPU than the PSP but sports better graphics.

That's the first I've heard of that. Mind elaborating?

 

[Foxi4]

Nothing new here really. The 3DS has a slower CPU than the PSP but sports better graphics.

...Benchmark please? Because I find it hard to believe.

As for the WiiU, its CPU is similar to that of the XBox 360 (PowerPC architecture), but it's in a new revision (Power7), plus it has one more core while working at a comparable frequency.

Now, depending on how much resources are restricted to the OS, the CPU is either much faster or at the very least comparable with the 360. Not that it really matters, since the CPU is the least of your worries - gaming is more concerned with GPU's, and the WiiU's is way more powerful than the competition's.

 

[Snailface]

Nothing new here really. The 3DS has a slower CPU than the PSP but sports better graphics.

...Benchmark please? Because I find it hard to believe.

As for the WiiU, its CPU is similar to that of the XBox 360 (PowerPC architecture), but it's in a new revision (Power7), plus it has one more core while working at a comparable frequency.

Now, depending on how much resources are restricted to the OS, the CPU is either much faster or at the very least comparable with the 360. Not that it really matters, since the CPU is the least of your worries - gaming is more concerned with GPU's, and the WiiU's is way more powerful than the competition's.

Slower in terms of clock speed. 268(3ds) vs. 333(psp)
http://3dbrew.org/wiki/Hardware
Yes, the 3ds has two cores which I didn't mention. And there's architectural differences, which could make comparisons apples/oranges.
I was merely trying (in vain) to point out that the 3ds is a more powerful system by virtue of its superior graphics tech in spite of a somewhat underwhelming CPU.
It was late when I made that post.

 

[Foxi4]

Slower in terms of clock speed. 268(3ds) vs. 333(psp)

http://3dbrew.org/wiki/Hardware
Yes, the 3ds has two cores which I didn't mention. And there's architectural differences, which could make comparisons apples/oranges.
I was merely trying (in vain) to point out that the 3ds is a more powerful system by virtue of its superior graphics tech in spite of a somewhat underwhelming CPU.
It was late when I made that post.

Why of course, the frequency is lower per-core, but that doesn't mean that it's "slower" - it's still perfectly capable of processing more instructions per second due to architecture differences and so-on, and so-forth, dual-core aside.

Frequency should never be the measure of CPU power - it's merely a measure of the amount of cycles a CPU performs per second.

 

[DiscostewSM]

Wasn't the PSP's CPU downclocked until later on when games required more? We've already seen the 3DS's 2nd CPU getting unlocked to developers recently.

 

[funem]

Like any hardware you can take a single component like a GPU and put it in different hardware setups and recieve different results. The sum of the hardware power is the sum of all the supporting components and how they are utilised by the system. Case in point, when I looked for a new phone a year or so ago, the Samsung Galaxy S2 on paper was the same as a lot of the other phones coming out at the time. The way Samsung utilised the CPU and its supporting harware ripped the benchmarks to shreds and the "similar" phones with "similar" chip specs could hardly touch it for speed and power. The main difference was they built the hardware to compliment the system rather than put a load of tech in a box and shoe-horn the OS in and hope for the best. As for the WiiU I'll wait for the finished product and see how it performs, you may even need to wait a short while, whilst programmers get to grips with getting the most out of it.

 

[Foxi4]

Like any hardware you can take a single component like a GPU and put it in different hardware setups and recieve different results. The sum of the hardware power is the sum of all the supporting components and how they are utilised by the system. Case in point, when I looked for a new phone a year or so ago, the Samsung Galaxy S2 on paper was the same as a lot of the other phones coming out at the time. The way Samsung utilised the CPU and its supporting harware ripped the benchmarks to shreds and the "similar" phones with "similar" chip specs could hardly touch it for speed and power. The main difference was they built the hardware to compliment the system rather than put a load of tech in a box and shoe-horn the OS in and hope for the best. As for the WiiU I'll wait for the finished product and see how it performs, you may even need to wait a short while, whilst programmers get to grips with getting the most out of it.

I think that the problem developers are having with the WiiU right now is that they need to get used to the SDK and its features, as with any new piece of hardware. The PS3 has gone through a period of time early in its life cycle in which people compared it to the Sega Saturn due to the number of SPU's and honestly believed that there is no way that it will ever outshine the 360. Well, look at it now - the specs are utilized just fine when the SDK was perfected.

 

[MarcusRaven]

So, all ranting aside, why does this matter when game systems are supposed to be about THE GAMES?

Take out the processor and the system can't play any games. This would be asanine, and thus irrelivant.

Give a system a more powerful processor and it can handle better AI and more entities at once. Naturally, but that alone doesn't make a console better or worse.

Give a system a weaker processor and it restricts the games that can be played on it, which developers have noted is an issue with the Wii. This is ultimately the plight of the developer, and doesn't neccessarily define if a console is good or bad.

My views on your points are in italics.

Ultimately, the internals of the console alone don't make or break it. Its what the developers do with those internals that defines it. And from what I've seen, the games that are coming are using the internals just fine.

 

[Foxi4]

Wasn't the PSP's CPU downclocked until later on when games required more? We've already seen the 3DS's 2nd CPU getting unlocked to developers recently.

Yes, yes it was.

The early builds of the PSP firmware had the option to allow an application to choose how much resources it requires - it never worked full-speed though due to concerns for battery life. If I remember correctly, the most common frequency used was 222Mhz. The 6.xx builds changed that and I'm pretty sure that PSP's run at 333Mhz now at all times, but the feature is still there and it's actively used by a myriad of homebrews and CFW's as means of "power saving".

 

[JulietStMoon]

Ultimately, the internals of the console alone don't make or break it. Its what the developers do with those internals that defines it. And from what I've seen, the games that are coming are using the internals just fine.

And, surprise surprise, the hardware power of a system limits devs, regardless of how good they are. Yes, better devs will make better games with the hardware given (as you said), but that's beside the point. If you take a team of a thousand of the greatest game developers of all time, give them an unlimited budget, and tell them to make a version of Call of Duty: Black Ops II for the NES that runs on par with the 360/PS3/WiiU counterpart, and they just flat-out won't be able to do it.

In other words, good devs are important, but even the best of devs can only do so much with the hardware given.

 

[Foxi4]

Ultimately, the internals of the console alone don't make or break it. Its what the developers do with those internals that defines it. And from what I've seen, the games that are coming are using the internals just fine.

And, surprise surprise, the hardware power of a system limits devs, regardless of how good they are. Yes, better devs will make better games with the hardware given (as you said), but that's beside the point. If you take a team of a thousand of the greatest game developers of all time, give them an unlimited budget, and tell them to make a version of Call of Duty: Black Ops II for the NES that runs on par with the 360/PS3/WiiU counterpart, and they just flat-out won't be able to do it.

In other words, good devs are important, but even the best of devs can only do so much with the hardware given.

That's... a suprisingly accurate description of my point of view.

 

[Maxternal]

A basic lesson from my programming theory course:
Any processor can be made to do the work of any other.
It MAY just take a lot of thinking to get it working and be REALLY, REALLY slow about it.
So a NES port of Black Ops 2 WOULD work but it would be limited to a very creative use of a 56 color pallet and run with a FPS of about 1 frame every 5 minutes (or slower, actually). You would also have to connect a HDD through the EXT port on the bottom for a swap file for memory limitations. (In short, not playable at all so Hardware is REALLY important.)

That said, all this really means is that a straight over port that really hammers the CPU of the PS3 or 360 might be a little tricky. Luckily, since the GPU is actually significantly better and supports GPGPU (using the GPU as a CPU) a port of anything from that generation CAN be done. It just might fall into the "take a lot of thinking to get it working" category mentioned above. The developers would just have to decide if it's worth their time.

Competing with the PS4 and 720, on the other hand, we don't have more than a tentative, semi-rumored release year for them and NO information about their hardware other than the assumed "better" so I think we can leave that one alone for now.

 

[Foxi4]

A basic lesson from my programming theory course:
Any processor can be made to do the work of any other.
It MAY just take a lot of thinking to get it working and be REALLY, REALLY slow about it.
So a NES port of Black Ops 2 WOULD work but it would be limited to a very creative use of a 56 color pallet and run with a FPS of about 1 frame every 5 minutes (or slower, actually). You would also have to connect a HDD through the EXT port on the bottom for a swap file for memory limitations. (In short, not playable at all so Hardware is REALLY important.)

...I hope you have a truck of mappers in your backyard mate - you'd need quite a lot to map individual pixels. ;P T'is polygon graphics, not raycasting - something the NES has an issue understanding. The cartridge used would practically have to be a separate console piggy-backing on the NES as a display source... but yes, entirely possible.

 

[DiscostewSM]

Black Ops 2D all the way (and it might be more popular too).

 

[Foxi4]

Black Ops 2D all the way (and it might be more popular too).

Relevant:

[yt]mgRffJtbYeM[/yt]

 

[Maxternal]

I was just talking theory, though, but I really did mean the part about it running at less than a frame every 5 minutes (no multi-player, though, won't sync up right.). The NES's processor would have to do all the work of the CPU and the GPU plus a lot more since it'd have to deal with 64-bit numbers (and floating point, too, I think) when it's only 8-bit which takes some creative math.

[member='foxi4']'s idea is a little more doable, kinda putting a dedicated late gen console in the cartridge and outputting just enough to the NES console for it to put the crappy image on the screen. You'd also have to do something about the controls. You'd have to put button mappings across multiple controls on a Four Score or Satellite.

Anyway, I'm kinda tickled at the idea. lol.

 

[ShadowSoldier]

"Koei Tecmo"

...Yeah... I'll wait until I hold off judgement until I hear from a better developer.

 

[Foxi4]

"Koei Tecmo"

...Yeah... I'll wait until I hold off judgement until I hear from a better developer.

What's wrong with Tecmo? I mean, Tecmo made Fatal Frame 2 and 4 for the Wii - I think they're pretty good at pushing consoles to their limits.

That said, yeah, I don't think they're right - I'd blame the SDK and the process of getting used to it.

 

[Lurker2]

Koei's massive amount of Warrior games that don't change much and the new IPs they make are usually miss instead of hit (Quantam Theory) make me doubt the developer. Also Team Ninja has been doing poorly and Tecmo-Koei owns the studio.

 

[Guild McCommunist]

Koei's massive amount of Warrior games that don't change much and the new IPs they make are usually miss instead of hit (Quantam Theory) make me doubt the developer. Also Team Ninja has been doing poorly and Tecmo-Koei owns the studio.

Tecmo-Koei has always been a shlock raker but they often rake in enjoyable shlock. I mean Dynasty Warriors moves about as much as continental drift but it's still enjoyable. They have an entire franchise that sells on breast physics for Christ's sake.