Hardware WiiU's CPU weaker than 360/PS3

[Foxi4]

Hope that reports that the Wii U's CPU is basically three Broadways (Wii CPU) cobbled together are not true. Broadway is based upon the PowerPC G3, which is technology from 1997, and far below the performance of POWER7.

I don't believe it would be that simple, but remember, the Wii U CPU would have to run Wii code flawlessly. Wouldn't that hint at a scaled up Wii-like architecture?

The Wii has a processor in the PowerPC architecture, the Power7 is its new installment, the WiiU will support Wii games natively. Before someone says "lol, that's weak", so does the 360. The CPU is not weaker, it's far stronger - the SDK tools simply need to be perfected and programmers need to wrap their heads around them. This thread is relatively pointless, it's based on someone's word, which goes againts benchmarks. This is a situat.no analogous to that of the early PS3 days when Sony's SDK was young, convoluted and difficult to master. This is a temporary state which will pass as the system matures.

 

[tueidj]

The Wii has a processor in the PowerPC architecture, the Power7 is its new installment, the WiiU will support Wii games natively. Before someone says "lol, that's weak", so does the 360. The CPU is not weaker, it's far stronger - the SDK tools simply need to be perfected and programmers need to wrap their heads around them. This thread is relatively pointless, it's based on someone's word, which goes againts benchmarks. This is a situat.no analogous to that of the early PS3 days when Sony's SDK was young, convoluted and difficult to master. This is a temporary state which will pass as the system matures.

Did you miss that IBM confirmed it wasn't a Power7 CPU? It's not much stronger at all; just 2 extra cores, some more cache and a higher clock. No new instructions and still no proper SIMD.

 

[Foxi4]

Source?

Regardless of whether or not it's a Power7, it's still in the PowerPC architecture, it's still ahead of the 360 cache-wise and core-wise - it will simply perform more operations per cycle. What I'm saying here is that it's pointless to talk about why the WiiU has a worse CPU when in fact it has a better one, not to mention that more focus is put on the GPU nowadays - the CPU merely has to be "sufficient".

 

[tueidj]

Source?

It might be a good idea to forget about Power7.

Follow the links and you end up at IBMWatson's twitter (which is where the Power7 rumour began):

Pardon the error. It's a custom chip built on Power Architecture base

In other words, "Espresso" is just a rebuilt Broadway (which itself was essentially Gekko with extra IBAT/DBAT registers). But hey, at least we know it's completely backwards compatible!

 

[Foxi4]

Perhaps, but the way I see it, it's still a "three boys carrying three baskets, ten apples each basket versus four boys with four baskets, ten apples each basket. They all walk at a similar pace, so which group carries more apples? Now, replace the boys with PowerPC, the baskets with cores, the pace with cycles and the apples with instructions, and you get what I'm getting at. The CPU doesn't really have to be incredibly strong, most operations in games are performed by the GPU nowadays, CPU's no longer bother with physics. It's for the AI's sake, and for that purpose it's sufficient.

 

[hksrb25s14]

Bottom line, we are all comparing it to ps360, and that's sad for a next gen system being compared to old gen, I'm just saying ps4 and Xbox ___ # will wipe the floor with the wii u and everyone knows it, Nintendo just got on the 1080p train while the others are getting reedy for 4000p and 8000p. Thus making it back where it started off on the gpu war.

 

[silver_ryder]

Bottom line, we are all comparing it to ps360, and that's sad for a next gen system being compared to old gen, I'm just saying ps4 and Xbox ___ # will wipe the floor with the wii u and everyone knows it, Nintendo just got on the 1080p train while the others are getting reedy for 4000p and 8000p. Thus making it back where it started off on the gpu war.

Do you really believe that!? lol

 

[JFTS]

By the way, in a theoritical point of view, what systems could be emulated with Wii U's hardware?

 

[NeoGohan]

Bottom line, we are all comparing it to ps360, and that's sad for a next gen system being compared to old gen, I'm just saying ps4 and Xbox ___ # will wipe the floor with the wii u and everyone knows it, Nintendo just got on the 1080p train while the others are getting reedy for 4000p and 8000p. Thus making it back where it started off on the gpu war.

Prepare to be disappointed

 

[Eerpow]

Bottom line, we are all comparing it to ps360, and that's sad for a next gen system being compared to old gen, I'm just saying ps4 and Xbox ___ # will wipe the floor with the wii u and everyone knows it, Nintendo just got on the 1080p train while the others are getting reedy for 4000p and 8000p. Thus making it back where it started off on the gpu war.

So much wrong in this post.
The CPU is more powerful without a doubt, the clockspeeds are lower because of the different architecture, the difficult part is to port a CPU heavy current gen game to a modern GPU heavy machine with new CPU architecture.
The Wii U is a Power7 multicore system (tricore) with 2GB ram and it's recently confirmed by AMD to use a E6760 GPU (Open GL 4.1, Shader model 5.0, DirectX 11 capabilities) with GPGPU functionality which makes the GPU able to handle processes a CPU normally would struggle with, hence the problem with porting their title.

It's at least 4x current gen machines and seeing that the next Xbox will be a multimedia/kinect focused machine selling for $300 without a loss we can safety assume that both will be in the same league hardware wise.


Also lol, you really think next gen consoles will have resolutions above 1080p? There aren't even consumer level TV's out yet that supports that, and when they eventually come out they will be 50"+ TV's.
The difference between 1080p and 4000k isn't even noticeable by the naked eye on a normally sized TV you know, you really think developers want to waste valuable processing power on resolution?
Even high end PC's would struggle with that kind of resolution, next gen systems selling at a sub $400 price point won't even come close to what a PC is capable off.

 

[kristianity77]

Bottom line, we are all comparing it to ps360, and that's sad for a next gen system being compared to old gen, I'm just saying ps4 and Xbox ___ # will wipe the floor with the wii u and everyone knows it, Nintendo just got on the 1080p train while the others are getting reedy for 4000p and 8000p. Thus making it back where it started off on the gpu war.

You were doing alright until this bit. The new consoles from Microsoft or Sony MIGHT support some kind of video playback format for these new 4K formats but they will not go beyond 1080P for games im 99% sure. It wouldnt be feasible cost wise to do so. You need serious grunt on a PC to go above 1080P on the newer releases and no matter whats around the corner TV wise, 1080P televisions will remain the norm and standard for a good while yet, possibly even another decade.

Both the new PS and XBOX consoles will offer in my opinion full 1080P gaming. Yes you'll get crisper visuals, smoother framerates and an assortment of graphical improvements, but I dont think it will be whizz-bang like people are anticipating. Yes its plain that they WILL both be alot stronger than the WIIU, but they cater for different people.

 

[BORTZ]

Unfortunatly nintendo is ok playing the lowball game.

 

[JFTS]

Unfortunatly nintendo is ok playing the lowball game.

This is the sad truth... And although the next-gen consoles won't probably have many differences from each other, Nintendo is still (apart from the regular Zelda or Metroid title) treated as a child-gaming system.

 

[OriginalHamster]

I wasn´t sure if make a new thread, but it has been confirmed that Wii U will have 32mb eDRAM.

 

[Foxi4]

I wasn´t sure if make a new thread, but it has been confirmed that Wii U will have 32mb eDRAM.

...32MB for the GPU (capital letters make all the difference). For the CPU, it's 3MB (unconfirmed).

 

[JulietStMoon]

Bottom line, we are all comparing it to ps360, and that's sad for a next gen system being compared to old gen, I'm just saying ps4 and Xbox ___ # will wipe the floor with the wii u and everyone knows it, Nintendo just got on the 1080p train while the others are getting reedy for 4000p and 8000p. Thus making it back where it started off on the gpu war.

ROFL. Even if that was true, that totally caused the GameCube and Xbox to "wipe the floor" with the PS2, right? Besides, I highly doubt MS and Sony can afford such an investment after operating on losses this whole generation, and they'd be idiots to do so regardless.

 

[Rydian]

Bottom line, we are all comparing it to ps360, and that's sad for a next gen system being compared to old gen, I'm just saying ps4 and Xbox ___ # will wipe the floor with the wii u and everyone knows it, Nintendo just got on the 1080p train while the others are getting reedy for 4000p and 8000p. Thus making it back where it started off on the gpu war.

Er..

1080p = 1920x1080.
2,073,600 pixels.

4000p/k/whatever = 2304x4096?
9,437,184 pixels.

A game at that resolution would take over four times the power to render as one at 1080p.

 

[OriginalHamster]

@foxi4 yep, I remember an article saying the thing will have a lot of eDRAM, now we have the number, wish we could know the CPU eDRAM.

 

[KingVamp]

Bottom line, we are all comparing it to ps360, and that's sad for a next gen system being compared to old gen,

I'm sorry, but that we are comparing things to last gen therefor the other next gen consoles must be
much stronger make no sense.

For one, there no other thing to compare it to. Unless you want to add the computers in, but then you have to
compare that to the ps4/720. The pc will wipe the floor with all of them graphics wise.

Two, that like me comparing Sony next handheld to the Vita and saying "We're we are all comparing it to the Vita, and that's sad for a next gen system being compared to old gen. 4ds is going to wipe the floor with it. Herp-a-Derp!!!".


Just because you comparing systems (even if it the one just before it) doesn't automatic mean you can make such a baseless statement about how the next system from other companies is going to blow it away.

Yes its plain that they WILL both be alot stronger than the WIIU

*fixed

 

[tueidj]

CPU eDRAM = locked cache. Take half of the L1 cache away and turn it into directly addressable memory, that's what the eDRAM is.