Hardware How does the Wii U hardware handle games better than a PC?

[Deleted User]

Hi,

This might have been asked before, but I am curious about how the Wii U is able to play demanding games such as Batman, Call of Duty Ghosts, Need for Speed Most Wanted, Watch Dogs (Ignoring those FPS drops the game has) with good FPS at 1080p and good quality when the GPU used by it is equivalent to that of a mid-range laptop, and the Wii U has 2GB RAM shared between the system and the GPU.

For example, the laptop I am posting this thread from has an ATI Mobility HD Radeon 5650, which is almost equivalent to the Wii U's Latte GPU if not better:
- Wii U Latte: https://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/1903/wii-u-gpu
- ATI Mobility HD Radeon 5650: https://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/b313/ati-mobility-radeon-hd-5650

And my GPU is not able to handle those games mentioned above at even 720p. Is it because the Wii U OS is "optimized' for gaming? Or is it the game engine used to create/compile games for Wii U? Or do game developers for Wii U Only care about resolution while disabling/decreasing all other graphical effects such as using low shadow quality, disabling blur and anti-aliasing (Using the Wii U on a 40' HD TV, I have noticed some sharp edges for models in different games), etc...?

 

[lisreal2401]

Optimization and, none of those games are getting close to 1080p renders. NFS Most Wanted is the best port in that list and yeah, it can push out Ultra settings but it's a game from... 2012.

 

[RyanAnayaMc]

Consoles themselves are designed to run games, and as such, their OSes are designed to be low-power. Especially with the Wii U. The Wii U menu looks nice, but ingame you are limited to a very simple HOME menu. It also lacks the background processes of rendering notifications of getting messages and stuff. Now let's take your common Windows PC. Open up your Task Manager, and check out your processes and services running. Don't count them, because there are too many. A desktop OS has to load more stuff in the background while your game is running. Also, PCs are designed for versatility, not specialization in one thing like consoles. Also, games are specifically optimized for consoles at times. For PCs, you have to worry about support with an array of OSes, GPUs, CPUs, RAM configurations, and other background processes. The customization of a PC serves as a double-edged sword here. You have to make a game support everything. For the Wii U or any console, on the other had, there are few, if any hardware differences with consoles. A game can then be designed to run the best it possibly can on certain hardware. Also, yes, there is the lower graphics options like the antialiasing, shadow quality, depth of field, post processing, etc. (or lack thereof).

 

[Nimrod-002]

you can ask this question about any console, ps3 only has 512mb shared ram and it handles all the games you mentioned. i guess with devs working on a bare-bones os and a specific gpu/cpu they can optimize the code to use the units to their full potential.

 

[Deleted User]

But still, the PS4 has really high technical specs and its a "Gaming console", 8-core x86-64 CPU along with a general purpose AMD high-end GPU, 8GB GDDR5 RAM, etc...
And Nintendo still use lower end resources for its consoles, such as in their new console Switch, they use 8-core ARM cortex CPU along with a 750MHz GPU and 4GB of RAM... And that also seems to be shared.

 

[RyanAnayaMc]

But still, the PS4 has really high technical specs and its a "Gaming console", 8-core x86-64 CPU along with a general purpose AMD high-end GPU, 8GB GDDR5 RAM, etc...
And Nintendo still use lower end resources for its consoles, such as in their new console Switch, they use 8-core ARM cortex CPU along with a 750MHz GPU and 4GB of RAM... And that also seems to be shared.

Nintendo always did things differently. They have never put the best hardware in their consoles nor do I predict they ever will. Instead, Nintendo works on more elegant solutions of optimization. The PS4 does things with a more brute-force method, and Xbox does also to a lesser degree. Because Nintendo always has to have some sort of gimmick they have to force themselves to use more inexpensive hardware to compensate for the cost of said gimmick. The Wii U has that expensive gamepad, and both the Wii U and the gamepad had to have powerful enough 5GHz wireless to get the Wii U and the gamepad to sync up well enough with a good enough picture. And just to make sure their console isn't $500, they had to go with cheaper hardware.

Now, to directly address your question, games are optimized for weaker hardware. Some graphical fidelity is taken off here and there, but resolution is generally a priority for games. So, there is the aforementioned optimization going on for the Wii U, but there is a limit to what you can do with lower-end hardware, so to get games to run well enough on the lower end, concessions must be made to achieve a good FPS. Lower graphics settings are needed.

 

[lisreal2401]

But still, the PS4 has really high technical specs and its a "Gaming console", 8-core x86-64 CPU along with a general purpose AMD high-end GPU, 8GB GDDR5 RAM, etc...
And Nintendo still use lower end resources for its consoles, such as in their new console Switch, they use 8-core ARM cortex CPU along with a 750MHz GPU and 4GB of RAM... And that also seems to be shared.

The PS4 is pushing 1080p though with much more technical stuff going on. But you have a bigger overhead, same with Xbox.