Hardware WiiU's CPU weaker than 360/PS3

[OriginalHamster]

2.5 - 3Ghz on a 45nm chip? Look at the size of the thing, there's no way the required cooling would fit. Broadway runs at 729Mhz, that speed would only be increased 3x at most.
You're also kidding yourself if you think games will be using GPGPU functionality. It's not even common place in PC apps where the capability has been there for several years.

So probably CPU would be a bottleneck for Wii U?
It doesn't makes much sense for Nintendo choose a beefy GPU if its potential will be limited by the CPU. I wonder what's is your take on the overall architecture of Wii U, with the info. available

 

[DiscostewSM]

You're also kidding yourself if you think games will be using GPGPU functionality. It's not even common place in PC apps where the capability has been there for several years.

I dunno about that. PC gaming evolves far too often, so changes are made just as often, as well as having to deal with the older tech at the same time. Gaming consoles/handhelds are not like that. Rather than having to focus on what's coming up, you focus on what's available.

 

[tueidj]

So probably CPU would be a bottleneck for Wii U?
It doesn't makes much sense for Nintendo choose a beefy GPU if its potential will be limited by the CPU. I wonder what's is your take on the overall architecture of Wii U, with the info. available

I don't think either of them is a bottleneck, they seem to be matched pretty well. I think they should have included more than 32MB for the framebuffer, lack of AA for 1080p is going to hurt.
Overall I stand by the comments I made months ago, it's a step up but it's not awesome hardware that will blow everything else out of the water (and for the price they're selling it, you can't expect it to).

 

[Foxi4]

Sounds more like people are confusing x86 chips with PowerPC. How about ARM, how many >2Ghz smartphones are out there?

Smartphones? None. This however is not a matter of heat - this is a matter of how much power they would draw from the battery. We're simply unable to do that on portables as of today without lowering the battery life to only a few hours, which is unacceptable on smartphones. However...

Say hello to Nufront Dualcore Coretex-A9. See that black square with thin, passive cooling? That's a SoC. The chip requires a measily 2W of power to operate, which is one of the reasons why it produces very little heat. As you can see, there are no fans in the box whatsoever. The chip is built in 40nm technology, it contains the two cores of the CPU, a 64-bit DDR2/3-1666 RAM controller, a SATA2 controller, a 1080p video engine, a USB2 controller, and an Ethernet controller. Can it be done? Yes, yes it can.

As for PowerPC, there's enough space in that box to use heatpipes and divert the heat to the back of the console where it could disperse in a radiator and sucked out by the mains fan, nobody's going to convince me that the console is "too small" to include cooling - that's asinine.

EDIT: ACTUALLY...

http://www.cio.com/a..._Atom_Processor

Motorola Razr i has a 2ghz ATOM as its heart.

http://www.engadget....-on-intel-2ghz/

 

[Eerpow]

You're also kidding yourself if you think games will be using GPGPU functionality. It's not even common place in PC apps where the capability has been there for several years.

Stop comparing a console to a PC.
There's a difference between developing a console game and developing a PC game, of course developers will take advantage of the GPGPU functionality.
It wasn't mentioned in the Japanese Nintendo Direct broadcast for nothing you know.

 

[tueidj]

Did they mention the custom DSP as well? Because out of all gamecube/wii developers, only one company ever managed to write their own code to make use of it.

 

[Deleted-185407]

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[Foxi4]

You're also kidding yourself if you think games will be using GPGPU functionality. It's not even common place in PC apps where the capability has been there for several years.

What are you on about? The majority of physics engines use GPGPU, so that pretty much means the majority of PC games use GPGPU.

Eeexactly. It's easy to understand why - CPU's don't exactly thrive when it comes to floating point, wheras GPU's and graphics cards with physics chips are the exact opposite. Most contemporary games rely on those to create accurate depictions of physical events, such as gravity or even glare. Those instructions are carried out by GPU's and physics chips, they have been since dedicated chips were introduced. It's been years and years since GPU's stopped dealing with graphics and graphics only.

 

[Mantis41]

Interesting article here: http://www.cinemablend.com/games/Wii-U-GPGPU-Squashes-Xbox-360-PS3-Capable-DirectX-11-Equivalent-Graphics-47126.html. don't know if this one had been posted somewhere already.

 

[Ghostyis40]

Sigh...does this have to happen every 5 to 6 yrs when the next gen war's start lol...we allready know the system at the very least both CPU and GPU will be about 4x to 5x more powerful than this generation...so I mean whats the deal quite comparing the U to the last gen when were entering the new gen! kick back and chill and enjoy the ride Nov18th is right around the corner!

The way I see it specs are specs, I can't play them, so give me the games and show me what the system can do and why its called next-gen!

 

[the_randomizer]

Sigh...does this have to happen every 5 to 6 yrs when the next gen war's start lol...we allready know the system at the very least both CPU and GPU will be about 4x to 5x more powerful than this generation...so I mean whats the deal quite comparing the U to the last gen when were entering the new gen! kick back and chill and enjoy the ride Nov18th is right around the corner!

The way I see it specs are specs, I can't play them, so give me the games and show me what the system can do and why its called next-gen!

Well, people are implacable and insatiable when it comes to these things, they want certain things and when they get them, they want more.

 

[Foxi4]

Sigh...does this have to happen every 5 to 6 yrs when the next gen war's start lol...we allready know the system at the very least both CPU and GPU will be about 4x to 5x more powerful than this generation...so I mean whats the deal quite comparing the U to the last gen when were entering the new gen! kick back and chill and enjoy the ride Nov18th is right around the corner!

The way I see it specs are specs, I can't play them, so give me the games and show me what the system can do and why its called next-gen!

That's the Wii and DS attitude - that's the attitude artificially developed by Nintendo when it became the beaten dog, whimpering after PS1 beat the crap out of the N64 and the Gamecube died a quick and painful death when faced with the XBox and the PS2. That's the attitude of a console manufacturer who survived this ordeal due to high sales of their handhelds (which had zero serious competition at the time, mind you. Unless you count the N-Gage, which admittedly was far superior specs wise, but had a portrait screen and poor buttons when it came to gaming), devised a scheme to sell cheap and weak hardware at an affordable price to stand back on its feet and convinced its target audience that it's actually a good thing.

Nintendo was *always* about specs, they boasted about them on every corner with every system they've ever created *except* the Wii and the DS. They're back in the game now though, so I expect them to turn right back to their olden days attitude with the system.

 

[Minox]

Sigh...does this have to happen every 5 to 6 yrs when the next gen war's start lol...we allready know the system at the very least both CPU and GPU will be about 4x to 5x more powerful than this generation...so I mean whats the deal quite comparing the U to the last gen when were entering the new gen! kick back and chill and enjoy the ride Nov18th is right around the corner!

The way I see it specs are specs, I can't play them, so give me the games and show me what the system can do and why its called next-gen!

That's the Wii and DS attitude - that's the attitude artificially developed by Nintendo when it became the beaten dog, whimpering after PS1 beat the crap out of the N64 and the Gamecube died a quick and painful death when faced with the XBox and the PS2. That's the attitude of a console manufacturer who survived this ordeal due to high sales of their handhelds, devised a scheme to sell cheap and weak hardware at an affordable price to stand back on its feet and convinced its target audience that it's actually a good thing.

Personally I couldn't give a crap about specs and/or graphics so long as the gameplay is solid and fun.

 

[Foxi4]

Personally I couldn't give a crap about specs and/or graphics so long as the gameplay is solid and fun.

Poor specs mean little developer support these days - without allowing developers to put their multiplatform games on the system or having them water down the ports, you're cutting yourself away from a huge portion of the market. You don't want to do that.

A video game system is what it implies - a system that you play video games on, and if there is one kind of software that requires proper specs, it's video games.

There needs to be a carefully-created balance between specs and price tag to maximize the adoption rate and stimulate developer's interest.

 

[JulietStMoon]

That's the Wii and DS attitude - that's the attitude artificially developed by Nintendo when it became the beaten dog, whimpering after PS1 beat the crap out of the N64 and the Gamecube died a quick and painful death when faced with the XBox and the PS2. That's the attitude of a console manufacturer who survived this ordeal due to high sales of their handhelds, devised a scheme to sell cheap and weak hardware at an affordable price to stand back on its feet and convinced its target audience that it's actually a good thing.

Nintendo was *always* about specs, they boasted about them on every corner with every system they've ever created *except* the Wii and the DS. They're back in the game now though, so I expect them to turn right back to their olden days attitude with the system.

I agree with you, but in [member=Centrix]'s defense, I'm pretty sure they meant they didn't care about the raw technical details. For example, i really don't care at all what "technical" specs make the 3DS or Vita more powerful than last generation's handhelds. All I care about is that I see THIS

Spoiler

and can tell that it's better than THIS

Spoiler

Yeah I know, I'm oversimplifying (I would've compared the 3DS to the Vita instead, but I think Mario games on DS and 3DS are a more obvious comparison), but you get what I'm saying. I don't care about the technical stats as long as the system can put out games that are visually impressive to me, and that's what Centrix is saying, as evident by the last part of his/her comment.

 

[Foxi4]

Yeah I know, I'm oversimplifying (I would've compared the 3DS to the Vita instead, but I think Mario games on DS and 3DS are a more obvious comparison), but you get what I'm saying. I don't care about the technical stats as long as the system can put out games that are visually impressive to me, and that's what Centrix is saying, as evident by the last part of his/her comment.

All I'm saying is that a system should give developers an appropriate amount of resources to work with in a given generation - it doesn't have to be overpowered unless it's planned to last for a long time, it merely has to be "sufficient" to support its contemporary software and the theoretical future software throughout its lifespan.

 

[Ghostyis40]

Pretty much specs don't make the games good or great the developers behind them do and their creativiety that goes into them as a team! Thanks for the help!

 

[Foxi4]

Pretty much specs don't make the games good or great the developers behind them do and their creativiety that goes into them as a team! Thanks for the help!

Creativity only takes you that far - it's the games that make the system, but it's the developers that make the games, and it's the specs which draw the boundry between what is feasable on a system and what isn't. A single look at "CoD Wii" and "CoD Anything Else" illustrates it perfectly.

Developers need to be given a palette and a canvas to create with - they're only holding a brush, and they're not going to paint a Mona Lisa on a Post-It, no matter if they're creative or not.

 

[Ghostyis40]

so yeah basicly the same thing I just said lol, with out creativie minds we don't have games there is no limit to how creative one can get and its that simple fact that matters, well to me any ways lol. So with out the games there is no systems and with the minds to make them there are no games, Ying and Yang!

 

[Foxi4]

and its the creativity that makes the games

That's great man, but I'm trying to explain that creativity alone won't make developers produce quality content. Programming requires resources, which is why specs are key in many cases. A low-specs machine has to rely on first and second-party developers to keep it on life support, a contemporary machine with sufficient specs allows anyone to develop for it without the pain of having to optimize code over and over again to make it work on a limited machine.