Hardware Wii U GPU confirmed!

[Deleted_171835]

damn i thought they were gonna put a gtx 580 in it

...Yeah, not happening.

 

[Midna]

damn i thought they were gonna put a gtx 580 in it

That's okay, I already have a computer with a GTX 580, I don't need two of them

 

[KingVamp]

*Looks up GTX 580
That's more than twice the wii u price alone. D:

Just overkill.

 

[Bladexdsl]

*Looks up GTX 580
That's more than twice the wii u price alone. D:

Just overkill.

oh i know it's overkill that's why i have 1 on my pc

it's still cheaper than a 690!!!

 

[Guild McCommunist]

*Waits for Sony fanboys / Ninty haters to come in and start saying about how CPU is the major important thing in a console (even though it was all about graphics with PS3 / 360)*

Sorry it's gonna take a while for me to wheel in the strawmen.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

This will make the Wii U a pain to emulate.
Still good news though

 

[Bladexdsl]

This will make the Wii U a pain to emulate.

but a dream to emulate on!

 

[MelodieOctavia]

I wanted to hate the Wii-U. I really did, but at this point it looks like I'm going to be getting one anyway. Even if it's second-hand.

The platform shows so much promise that Dev teams would have to be entirely comprised of brain dead quadriplegic chimps to not make a game with innovative controls and/or gameplay, and make it look good to boot.

 

[iFish]

I'm still skeptical how the Wii U will hold up NEXT generation. I'm hoping it'll still be OK seeing as I like Nintendo, but I've also lost a lot of trust in Nintendo over the years.

So I'm VERY skeptical still.

 

[Deleted_171835]

I'm still skeptical how the Wii U will hold up NEXT generation. I'm hoping it'll still be OK seeing as I like Nintendo, but I've also lost a lot of trust in Nintendo over the years.

So I'm VERY skeptical still.

With this GPU, they’ll certainly fare quite well against the likes of the PS4/720. While it won't be as powerful as the other two consoles, this is most definitely competent enough.

In terms of specs, the Wii U is shaping up to have a similar power-gap with the PS4 as the Dreamcast/PS2 compared to the Xbox.

 

[Clarky]

This will make the Wii U a pain to emulate.

well with todays technology yes....should become easier over time though and even then it would depend on whos building the emu

 

[p1ngpong]

Its just a shame that the Wii U is so severely bottlenecked by its weaksauce CPU that it isnt even capable of rendering games at full 1080p HD.

source

 

[Deleted_171835]

Its just a shame that the Wii U is so severely bottlenecked by its weaksauce CPU that it isnt even capable of rendering games at full 1080p HD.

source

@everyone else

These Wii U games are said to run in native 1080p.

• Scribblenauts Unlimited
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 2
• Transformers Prime
• Toki Tori 2
• Dragon Quest X

 

[Maxternal]

Really, the CPU should have nothing to do with the resolution. All it has to do it tell the GPU which polygons to render where and what effects to put on them. It's the GPU that does more or less work depending on the resolution, HD or not.

 

[tronic307]

Given that this GPU has a clock of 600MHz, and that the audio DSP will likely remain clocked at 121.5MHz for Wii backwards compatibility, we might just fill in the blanks for the other clock speeds in the system. Wii BC might also indicate a surprisingly similar architecture for Wii U.

This is pure speculation, but if we use the Gamecube and Wii for reference:

1. The CPU multiplier would be a multiple of 3 (15,18,21 or 24x multipliers)
2. Memory clock would be 2/3 CPU clock
3. GPU clock would be 1/3 CPU clock
4. Audio DSP would run at base clock: 121.5MHz

15x CPU multiplier:
121.5MHz x 5 = 607.5MHz GPU (583.2 GFLOPS) Higher than rumored: 2.43 x Xenos
607.5MHz x 2 = 1215MHz Memory
607.5MHz x 3 = 1822.5MHz CPU

This jibes with the small form factor, 75W power supply, and comments from developers about the GPU being somewhat stronger than the CPU.

Or 18x CPU multiplier:
729MHz GPU (699.84 GFLOPS) Very high: 2.916 x Xenos
1458MHz Memory
2187MHz CPU

But, the GPU is already overclocked in this scenario, and it begins to seem as if a 75W power brick might not cut it. The GPU could then be downclocked to 364.5MHz (@ about 21W) which would give us 349.92 GFLOPS. This is still 1.458 x Xenos' 240 GFLOPS. These numbers are based on an unmodified E6760 which does 576 GFLOPS @ 600MHz @ 35W.

 

[DiscostewSM]

Its just a shame that the Wii U is so severely bottlenecked by its weaksauce CPU that it isnt even capable of rendering games at full 1080p HD.

source

I'd like to see a CPU render games at full 1080p HD. Care to link to one?

 

[Maxternal]

I'm sure some game could try running nearly the whole game with GPGPU and let the CPU run a software renderer but that would just be silly, inefficient, and and masochistic.

 

[Bladexdsl]

Its just a shame that the Wii U is so severely bottlenecked by its weaksauce CPU that it isnt even capable of rendering games at full 1080p HD.

source

I'd like to see a CPU render games at full 1080p HD. Care to link to one?

pc has been doing it for years

 

[Minox]

Its just a shame that the Wii U is so severely bottlenecked by its weaksauce CPU that it isnt even capable of rendering games at full 1080p HD.

source

I'd like to see a CPU render games at full 1080p HD. Care to link to one?

A CPU by itself does not render games since that kind of thing should be left to a GPU, however there are CPUs with integrated GPUs capable of doing exactly what you mention. From on top of my head the AMD Fusions and the later Intel Core iX series are capable of just that.

 

[McHaggis]

I'm still skeptical how the Wii U will hold up NEXT generation. I'm hoping it'll still be OK seeing as I like Nintendo, but I've also lost a lot of trust in Nintendo over the years.

So I'm VERY skeptical still.

With this GPU, they'll certainly fare quite well against the likes of the PS4/720. While it won't be as powerful as the other two consoles, this is most definitely competent enough.

In terms of specs, the Wii U is shaping up to have a similar power-gap with the PS4 as the Dreamcast/PS2 compared to the Xbox.

People keep betting on the next generation MS and Sony consoles to be significantly more powerful than the current gen, but I'm thinking that it's about time their R&D teams took a quick look at history and realised that the powerhouses rarely win the console wars. I wouldn't be surprised if they just aimed to match the Wii U's power―or beat it slightly―and tried to do something innovative, for a change.

They'll have a year or two to get something a little better for the same price, but I'm not sure Sony want to repeat what happened with the PS3, given their substantial losses over the last few years and the time it took for the console to achieve profitability. They did all that because they were complacent, they won the PSX and PS2 generations and got sloppy thinking that everyone would buy a PS3 no matter what price tag they stuck on it, I can't see them making the same mistake all over again.

As for Microsoft, I believe they'll pull a Nintendo in the next generation, tape two Xboxes together and try to push Kinect more.