Wii U Final Specs Datasheet

dremic said:
mobile gaming isnt shit and is so commonly over estimated.
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I agree.
The fact is that some younger gamers haven't gamed on anything but an Ipod touch or cell phone. Older people, many of which never gamed before, are using their phones as a gaming device as well. Not to mention the "Smart TV's" that now have games that are essentially mobile games ported to the TV.

It's scary to think that traditional systems as we know it may be gone within 10 years, but it's a reality that even the highest spec'd system can't cure. Especially with the ability now to stream games through the web.
 
DaRat said:
I agree.
The fact is that some younger gamers haven't gamed on anything but an Ipod touch or cell phone. Older people, many of which never gamed before, are using their phones as a gaming device as well. Not to mention the "Smart TV's" that now have games that are essentially mobile games ported to the TV.

It's scary to think that traditional systems as we know it may be gone within 10 years, but it's a reality that even the highest spec'd system can't cure. Especially with the ability now to stream games through the web.
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no doubt, and im not saying the mobile games arent being played. shit i play them myself. but are they a replacement for traditional systems highly unlikely. mobile devices are used for multiple things you know. consoles are for one main specific focus and thats gaming. its why handhelds are still viable cause they play games way better then an ipad can
 
DaRat said:
The Wii -> Wii U is a pretty substantial upgrade IMHO. Wii's lack of HD support killed the system for me since it looked like complete ass on my sub-par HD TV.
It is a big jump.
I'm also not convinced 3rd parties are going to run to the new systems when they are released. Mobile gaming is looking better and better to these developers and if they can get a few of their "AAA" titles on the mobile ecosystem, that does not bode well for console gamers.
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I think all of the big third party studios are already working with next gen sony/ms software dev kits.

If you just look at it like 2 of the systems will have similar abilities and should be easy to make for both systems at the same time, while one will be like a generation behind (Wii-U). It makes sense they would put their efforts into the 2 proven third party game selling systems, i.e. playstation and xbox. The combined marketshare of PS4 and 720 will be larger than Nintendo. There is just no way IMO that Wii-U is going to be a phenomenon as strong as Wii.

After real next gen launches, Wii-U will be in a totally different ecosystem than PS4 and X720. I'm sure next Zelda will look amazing but it won't be capable of handling next gen ports from playstation and xbox.

Those systems will have 2-4x the ram, 5x better GPUs, likely 10-20x better CPUs. I just think with respect to third party support, Nintendo may fair slightly better than last generation since Wii-U should be capable of some pretty nice looking games. But they will need to be dedicated Wii-U projects. It's not in the cards for Wii-U to receive downports of true next gen games that will be arriving in 1-2 years.

If Wii-U sells well, maybe hopefully it will get some better support than Wii had this generation. It could continue to get an occasional lower budget third party exclusive, but I wouldn't bet on it. I'd buy a Wii-U simply to play its exclusive first party games.

The Zelda tech demo looked pretty awesome. A new F-Zero would be nice.
 
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Stereophile said:
I think all of the big third party studios are already working with next gen sony/ms software dev kits.

If you just look at it like 2 of the systems will have similar abilities and should be easy to make for both systems at the same time, while one will be like a generation behind (Wii-U). It makes sense they would put their efforts into the 2 proven third party game selling systems, i.e. playstation and xbox. The combined marketshare of PS4 and 720 will be larger than Nintendo. There is just no way IMO that Wii-U is going to be a phenomenon as strong as Wii.

After real next gen launches, Wii-U will be in a totally different ecosystem than PS4 and X720. I'm sure next Zelda will look amazing but it won't be capable of handling next gen ports from playstation and xbox.

Those systems will have 2-4x the ram, 5x better GPUs, likely 10-20x better CPUs. I just think with respect to third party support, Nintendo may fair slightly better than last generation since Wii-U should be capable of some pretty nice looking games. But they will need to be dedicated Wii-U projects. It's not in the cards for Wii-U to receive downports of true next gen games that will be arriving in 1-2 years.

If Wii-U sells well, maybe hopefully it will get some better support than Wii had this generation. It could continue to get an occasional lower budget third party exclusive, but I wouldn't bet on it. I'd buy a Wii-U simply to play its exclusive first party games.

The Zelda tech demo looked pretty awesome. A new F-Zero would be nice.
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There is so much delusional thought in this post, there is no way in hell that the next Xbox or PlayStation will be near the insane jump you are claiming.

I mean seriously 5x better GPU come on. 10-20x better CPU , not by next Christmas no way in hell. I love gaming but some of the crazy shit that people say and argue about its really fucking laughable.
 
HisSvt76 said:
There is so much delusional thought in this post, there is no way in hell that the next Xbox or PlayStation will be near the insane jump you are claiming.

I mean seriously 5x better GPU come on. 10-20x better CPU , not by next Christmas no way in hell. I love gaming but some of the crazy shit that people say and argue about its really fucking laughable.
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hes also failing to realize that the ps3 sold for 600$ and cost a fortune to produce. that simply isnt viable any more. and the next gen machines will not be as big of a leap as he thinks.
 
dremic said:
hes also failing to realize that the ps3 sold for 600$ and cost a fortune to produce. that simply isnt viable any more. and the next gen machines will not be as big of a leap as he thinks.
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Dam right they won't be! even PC gaming hasn't made a huge leap in 3 plus years, and they can't afford to lose money like before and people won't pay ridiculous prices. The market has changed allot. And it looks like Microsoft is gonna release 2 versions from what industry insiders are saying. One to do apps and casual games and another more hard core machine.
I think across the board reliability of units will be much better we have come a long way with manufacturing processes. Should not see issues like red rings and ylod.

I personally am not holding my breath to see a new Sony system till 2014. But until we see E3 2013 its all just guessing.
I don't think either will want to exceed 400 dollars it could be suicide.
 
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I've been predicting for years that Nintendo would make an attempt to force the hand of Microsoft and Sony to encourage the next gen. Both of them would be foolish to jump in straight away
 
HisSvt76 said:
There is so much delusional thought in this post, there is no way in hell that the next Xbox or PlayStation will be near the insane jump you are claiming.



I mean seriously 5x better GPU come on. 10-20x better CPU , not by next Christmas no way in hell. I love gaming but some of the crazy shit that people say and argue about its really fucking laughable.
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Insane jump ? LOL

5x better GPU than Wii-U is nothing. That's still far weaker than a top of the line PC videocard.
And that's a pretty accurate number. Knowing the equivalent perfomance per thermal in the orginal PC design, Wii-U's custom GPU is looking to have about 400 Gflops. x5 of that that is in the range of the discrete GPUs reported in the next gen dev kits.
A 2 TF class GPU (HD 7000 class "Pitcairn" ) on the likely for next gen 28nm process works out to take up about the same physical space RSX started out as on PS3.

A GPU x5 Wii-U's is a very sober and realistic prediction of its competitors next gen systems GPU abilities. To act like it's so out of the realm of possibility only shows how out of touch you are with where next gen is heading. And/or you fail to realize how modest an improvement Wii-U is over PS360. But the mind blowing thing I've read is not only has the Flops rating increased, but efficiency is such that the latest GPUs do more with the same number of Flops. So while PS3's RSX was something like 250 Gflops, and PS4 could be as high as 2.5 TFlops (if it uses an APU with intact GPU and a separate discrete 2TF GPU) The real performance differential could be 15x.

And the CPUs in PS4/720 will easily be 10x the performance of the Wii-U CPU. At best that thing is half as good as Xbox 360's Xenon's peak performance. Wii-U's cpus are less complex than Xenon's, they are really stripped down, and operate at about half the speed.

PS4 will be using a modern 4 core AMD APU. One going into 2013-2014 era laptops. One of those cores has more performance than Wii-U's entire CPU. Wii U's CPU tech is ancient now. It would have been a crappy substandard CPU inside of a console in 2006 let alone 2012. MS is rumored to have an even bigger beast of a CPU lurking in X720.

It's really funny when uninformed people think a console has to cost $600 to beat the pants off Wii-U. A big part of Wii-U's budget went to the controller. And Nintendo wanted the smallest, most energy efficient console possible, even knowing that would compromise performance.

The first gen PS4 and X720 games will look as good as any of today's best PC titles. Wii-U is struggling to handle ports of PS360 games, (one of the mods at Beyond 3D said the Wii-U's weak CPU could have been a reason why it's likely not receiving a port of GTA V) Rockstar games are heavily multi-threaded. I think Wii-U only has 3 threads. And I bet time on one of them is reserved for background/OS functions. And they're not fast or very capable compared to even the antiquated stuff in PS3's Cell or X360's CPU. Nintendo really cheaped out.

When the real next gen begins, Wii-U can forget about getting most multiplatform games. It lacks the capabilities. It would be like trying to port the latest Assassins Creed game to PS2. If Nintendo is lucky, some third parties will have their B teams make an occasional lower than AAA budget Wii-U exclusive game, like Zombie-U. But all of the best third party talent will be developing for PS4 and next Xbox.

Concerning ram, since it appears MS is going for 8GB, I don't think Sony would be comfortable with only 4GB or less in PS4. Which is all that is likely affordable with high speed GDDR-5. So DDR4 is another possibility. And many I think 2.5d ram packaging technology has a good chance of first appearing on the next gen consoles.
 
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Stereophile said:
Insane jump ? LOL

5x better GPU than Wii-U is nothing. That's still far weaker than a top of the line PC videocard.
And that's a pretty accurate number. Knowing the equivalent perfomance per thermal in the orginal PC design, Wii-U's custom GPU is looking to have about 400 Gflops. x5 of that that is in the range of the discrete GPUs reported in the next gen dev kits.
A 2 TF class GPU (HD 7000 class "Pitcairn" ) on the likely for next gen 28nm process works out to take up about the same physical space RSX started out as on PS3.

A GPU x5 Wii-U's is a very sober and realistic prediction of its competitors next gen systems GPU abilities. To act like it's so out of the realm of possibility only shows how out of touch you are with where next gen is heading. And/or you fail to realize how modest an improvement Wii-U is over PS360. But the mind blowing thing I've read is not only has the Flops rating increased, but efficiency is such that the latest GPUs do more with the same number of Flops. So while PS3's RSX was something like 250 Gflops, and PS4 could be as high as 2.5 TFlops (if it uses an APU with intact GPU and a separate discrete 2TF GPU) The real performance differential could be 15x.

And the CPUs in PS4/720 will easily be 10x the performance of the Wii-U CPU. At best that thing is half as good as Xbox 360's Xenon's peak performance. Wii-U's cpus are less complex than Xenon's, they are really stripped down, and operate at about half the speed.

PS4 will be using a modern 4 core AMD APU. One going into 2013-2014 era laptops. One of those cores has more performance than Wii-U's entire CPU. Wii U's CPU tech is ancient now. It would have been a crappy substandard CPU inside of a console in 2006 let alone 2012. MS is rumored to have an even bigger beast of a CPU lurking in X720.

It's really funny when uninformed people think a console has to cost $600 to beat the pants off Wii-U. A big part of Wii-U's budget went to the controller. And Nintendo wanted the smallest, most energy efficient console possible, even knowing that would compromise performance.

The first gen PS4 and X720 games will look as good as any of today's best PC titles. Wii-U is struggling to handle ports of PS360 games, (one of the mods at Beyond 3D said the Wii-U's weak CPU could have been a reason why it's likely not receiving a port of GTA V) Rockstar games are heavily multi-threaded. I think Wii-U only has 3 threads. And I bet time on one of them is reserved for background/OS functions. And they're not fast or very capable compared to even the antiquated stuff in PS3's Cell or X360's CPU. Nintendo really cheaped out.

When the real next gen begins, Wii-U can forget about getting most multiplatform games. It lacks the capabilities. It would be like trying to port the latest Assassins Creed game to PS2. If Nintendo is lucky, some third parties will have their B teams make an occasional lower than AAA budget Wii-U exclusive game, like Zombie-U. But all of the best third party talent will be developing for PS4 and next Xbox.

Concerning ram, since it appears MS is going for 8GB, I don't think Sony would be comfortable with only 4GB or less in PS4. Which is all that is likely affordable with high speed GDDR-5. So DDR4 is another possibility. And many I think 2.5d ram packaging technology has a good chance of first appearing on the next gen consoles.
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PCs can get away with offering powerful components vs console for a couple of reasons.1) Design. This is in a way more influence by the expected user base. The average pc is designed for a decent size box with decent cooling with its own space. Consoles are designed for basically what amounts to small form factor under a tv in a living room. Cant cram very powerful components and expect it to run cool and quiet. 2) Cost. Console consumers will not buy very costly products. PCs can get away with offering powerful components because they can sell one way or another, aftermarket or OEM, PC gamers/consumers are willing to buy components that cost almost as much as an entire console. 3) versatility. consoles as good as they have become as media players, still cant match the raw versatility of a pc. A lot of pc owners dont just game on their pc, they use it for alot of other things that sometimes this extra power comes in handy. So this does help with the cost reason. 4) The economy. the economy has changed. I don't foresee MS (which is in a much better position overall finicially) or Sony taking a huge loss upfront on the next gen consoles. They will take some, a good bit more then nintendo, but not as much as the previous gen.

So when you look at raw numbers,especially compared to the pc, its possible they could put in some [H]ard hardware in the conosle and blow the doors off of the wii u. But when you factor in Cost, design, and market, Not gonna happen. I foresee next gen 6 to 8x more powerful. which would in some ways place it about 3x more powerful then the wii u. In a way, not that much more then the wii u.

8gbs of ram on xbox 720.. I so wish. Ram always gets underestimated. I dont see it though. 4GB seems to be about right, and 8GBs i think would be too expensive. This is also taken in consideration of the console consumer market of 1080p displays. if this is based on the rumor of 8gbs being in development units, I seem to recall xbox 360 development units using 1gb because they need a good bit to run the game and to debug/develop at the same time.
 
This is something you need to consider as well and is know fact. Taken from a IGN article.

It is often forgotten that Sony and Microsoft’s reluctance to launch new hardware is a function of their own financial struggles. Sony is in a dire situation right now, only last week its credit rating was downgraded to junk status. (You don’t need to be a Wall Street Whizz to understand that this is bad news.)
Microsoft has more cash to play with, but troubles aplenty of its own. Forbes is running an article today on whether or not “Microsoft is on the verge of collapse”. It’s an extreme view, prompted by the ho-hum reception to Windows 8 and the rise of cloud computing, rather than anything specific to gaming, but still, it’s cause for concern.
Sony and Microsoft have definitely been guilty of milking the current generation as far as it can. Price cuts have not been aggressive enough as both companies have sought to grow their share of the motion-control and casual markets through 'value-added' pack-ins. And both companies have been extremely aggressive and impressive in developing their digital download offerings, none of which especially helps third parties who still rely on the boxed games market. The hardware companies, perhaps understandably, want to cash in on large user-bases that were acquired at great expense and effort.
 
i'm also in the camp that thinks the next sony and ms console won't be a giant leap like some people are expecting. i can see each box having their own exclusives, with the same cross-platform games.

i have a high-end pc and i'm more interested in nintendo's first party games, which is why i won't be buying the next gen ms or sony offerings.
 
Every single time a new console is to be released people claim the power is not possible and people are horribly overestimating. Every time the consoles have packed a very good punch when they release. They have been around top of the line PC every single time at their time of release. Even assuming they would simply be around mid range PC this time its a HUGE upgrade over what is in the current consoles.

I think Next Gen will be a huge leap, just as every other has been.
 
Cali3350 said:
Every single time a new console is to be released people claim the power is not possible and people are horribly overestimating. Every time the consoles have packed a very good punch when they release. They have been around top of the line PC every single time at their time of release. Even assuming they would simply be around mid range PC this time its a HUGE upgrade over what is in the current consoles.

I think Next Gen will be a huge leap, just as every other has been.
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that may have been the case before but it is no longer the case now. unlikely that any of the new consoles will match my system in power. sorry. PC hardware has become increasingly more efficient and powerful over the last few years. not to mention pricing is more affordable and they are viable for much longer periods of time. look at how old the 2500k is now.. its almost been two years and when it comes to computers that is fucking ancient.



anyways. this is all moot because MS and Sony havent released shit yet. what we do know is that a console improves dramatically as it grows with age and developers grow in experience. so where the wii u is at launch i am perfectly happy.
 
dremic said:
that may have been the case before but it is no longer the case now. unlikely that any of the new consoles will match my system in power. sorry. PC hardware has become increasingly more efficient and powerful over the last few years. not to mention pricing is more affordable and they are viable for much longer periods of time. look at how old the 2500k is now.. its almost been two years and when it comes to computers that is fucking ancient.



anyways. this is all moot because MS and Sony havent released shit yet. what we do know is that a console improves dramatically as it grows with age and developers grow in experience. so where the wii u is at launch i am perfectly happy.
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The Xbox had a Geforce 3 before the PC did.
The Xbox 360 had a unified architecture before the PC did.

I would be shocked if a Xbox 720 didnt match your PC.
 
Cali3350 said:
The Xbox had a Geforce 3 before the PC did.
The Xbox 360 had a unified architecture before the PC did.

I would be shocked if a Xbox 720 didnt match your PC.
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The fu?
Geforce 3 (NV20) came out in March 2001. I had one, Visiontek model.
Xbox cameout in November 2001 with a derivative, NV2A.

What are you saying here? The refresh cards (the Ti line) came out in October, one month before Xbox.

Again, what are you saying here?
 
LeviathanZERO said:
The fu?
Geforce 3 (NV20) came out in March 2001. I had one, Visiontek model.
Xbox cameout in November 2001 with a derivative, NV2A.

What are you saying here? The refresh cards (the Ti line) came out in October, one month before Xbox.

Again, what are you saying here?
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You are right, my mistake. The NV2A had a second vertex shader, as opposed to the Geforce 3 which had only 1. The Geforce 4 reconciled that.
 
Cali3350 said:
I would be shocked if a Xbox 720 didnt match your PC.
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It won't match a top 2013 PC card's muscle, but it will have all of the latest features of a 2013 or newer GPU.

The PC based X720 dev kits had an HD6800 or something in them. One of the first PS4 SDKs was allegedly sporting an HD7850. Something from the HD8000 line makes sense for both systems. It will be the newest and most power efficient AMD GPU available a year from now.

2TF is a realistic guess for a $400 console. It's doable within the financial and power/heat requirements. It's actually not that powerful compared to the best cards that will be out next year but it's going to seem like a HUGE leap from PS3/X360 specs.

A year from now, the first generation PS4 and next xbox games will look as good as today's maxed out PC games. In 2-3 years, the next gen consoles will have games with graphics better than anything anyone has ever done up until now. Imagine what Naughty Dog can do with 10 or 15 PS3s duct taped together.
 
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you guys that think the next gen will be a massive improvement also have to remember that the TV's in 99.9% of households are still a max of 1080p. you may see 60 fps at 1080p on the new consoles, but i think it will be more along the lines of 30fps with better visuals.
 
Stereophile said:
It won't match a top 2013 PC card's muscle, but it will have all of the latest features of a 2013 or newer GPU.

The PC based X720 dev kits had an HD6800 or something in them. One of the first PS4 SDKs was allegedly sporting an HD7850. Something from the HD8000 line makes sense for both systems. It will be the newest and most power efficient AMD GPU available a year from now.

2TF is a realistic guess for a $400 console. It's doable within the financial and power/heat requirements. It's actually not that powerful compared to the best cards that will be out next year but it's going to seem like a HUGE leap from PS3/X360 specs.

A year from now, the first generation PS4 and next xbox games will look as good as today's maxed out PC games. In 2-3 years, the next gen consoles will have games with graphics better than anything anyone has ever done up until now. Imagine what Naughty Dog can do with 10 or 15 PS3s duct taped together.
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naughty dog can make the poopiest of poop gold
 
Stereophile said:
It won't match a top 2013 PC card's muscle, but it will have all of the latest features of a 2013 or newer GPU.

The PC based X720 dev kits had an HD6800 or something in them. One of the first PS4 SDKs was allegedly sporting an HD7850. Something from the HD8000 line makes sense for both systems. It will be the newest and most power efficient AMD GPU available a year from now.

2TF is a realistic guess for a $400 console. It's doable within the financial and power/heat requirements. It's actually not that powerful compared to the best cards that will be out next year but it's going to seem like a HUGE leap from PS3/X360 specs.

A year from now, the first generation PS4 and next xbox games will look as good as today's maxed out PC games. In 2-3 years, the next gen consoles will have games with graphics better than anything anyone has ever done up until now. Imagine what Naughty Dog can do with 10 or 15 PS3s duct taped together.
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ok, so initially Nintendo Beta Wii-u Development kits had an ati 4850 in them and developers were told to expect that performance. ati 6850 raw performance is under 2 cf/sli 4850. and then the 7850 is about 20% more or less faster than a 6850. That gives us a base line. From that we can extrapolate that even pcs fastest cards barely if they are at all 3x more powerful then the wii u. http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/513?vs=549 i know its 4870.
 
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Zohar78 said:
ok, so initially Nintendo Beta Wii-u Development kits had an ati 4850 in them and developers were told to expect that performance. ati 6850 raw performance is under 2 cf/sli 4850. and then the 7850 is about 20% more or less faster than a 6850. That gives us a base line. http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/513?vs=549 i know its 4870.
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I don't know what was in the Wii-U beta kits, but remember hearing rumors about HD4000 tech a year or two ago.

But final Wii-U hardware has been analyzed and the GPU die space area is only large enough to contain an HD 4770 class GPU. And we know the Wii-U's GPU has edram contained on the same package. So on 40nm process, there isn't room for an entire 4770 + edram, so no way Wii-U has something as good as a 4850.

As I said earlier, it can't have all 640 SPUs from a 4770, so forget about a 4850's 800 SPU. At best, it's got 480, but probably 320. Also at an unknown clock speed. Most likely on the conservative side compared to the PC cards that had massive heatsinks compared to the Wii-U's minimalist design.

And then instead of GDDR-5 in the PC cards, you have super low bandwidth memory necessitating an edram buffer, which as we saw with X360, complicates things further. But Wii-U's main weakness lies in its CPU. Its GPU actually seems robust in comparison. The GPU is the only component on Wii-U that is known to be superior to PS3 and X360.

You're extrapolating way too much based on a shaky premise, that a retail Wii-U has a PC HD4850 class videocard. I doubt it's half as good as that. And even if it is half as good as 4850, that leaves plenty of room for a massive upgrade on PS4/X720.

The other systems will have GPUs built on a smaller process - 28 nm, AND at the same time be physically larger chips, so the GPUs will be far more powerful. I think they'll end up with around HD 7850 performance with less power consumption and GPGPU tweaks equaling a custom HD 8750 Sea Islands based GPU. It won't be as powerful as top of the line 2013 PC cards i.e. an HD 8950, but it won't be that far behind, however still miles ahead of Wii-U.

Zohar78 said:
From that we can extrapolate that even pcs fastest cards barely if they are at all 3x more powerful then the wii u.
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Today's best PC cards are much better than 3x Wii-U's GPU. Wii-U's hardware would have been impressive if it was released in November of 2008.
 
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Stereophile said:
I don't know what was in the Wii-U beta kits, but remember hearing rumors about HD4000 tech a year or two ago.

But final Wii-U hardware has been analyzed and the GPU die space area is only large enough to contain an HD 4770 class GPU. And we know the Wii-U's GPU has edram contained on the same package. So on 40nm process, there isn't room for an entire 4770 + edram, so no way Wii-U has something as good as a 4850.

As I said earlier, it can't have all 640 SPUs from a 4770, so forget about a 4850's 800 SPU. At best, it's got 480, but probably 320. Also at an unknown clock speed. Most likely on the conservative side compared to the PC cards that had massive heatsinks compared to the Wii-U's minimalist design.

And then instead of GDDR-5 in the PC cards, you have super low bandwidth memory necessitating an edram buffer, which as we saw with X360, complicates things further. But Wii-U's main weakness lies in its CPU. Its GPU actually seems robust in comparison. The GPU is the only component on Wii-U that is known to be superior to PS3 and X360.

You're extrapolating way too much based on a shaky premise, that a retail Wii-U has a PC HD4850 class videocard. I doubt it's half as good as that. And even if it is half as good as 4850, that leaves plenty of room for a massive upgrade on PS4/X720.

The other systems will have GPUs built on a smaller process - 28 nm, AND at the same time be physically larger chips, so the GPUs will be far more powerful. I think they'll end up with around HD 7850 performance with less power consumption and GPGPU tweaks equaling a custom HD 8750 Sea Islands based GPU. It won't be as powerful as top of the line 2013 PC cards i.e. an HD 8950, but it won't be that far behind, however still miles ahead of Wii-U.



Today's best PC cards are much better than 3x Wii-U's GPU. Wii-U's hardware would have been impressive if it was released in November of 2008.
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This is par for the course at Nintendo at this point though. Nintendo is the only company still striving for profit on unit sale at the start. Sony, just a year ago, was still willing to lose money on unit sale (PSVita).

It isnt possible to make a console that competes with a PC today without taking a loss at sale, thats true. I see no reason to think Microsoft or Sony will stop doing that though, even with their current financial positions (which isnt that bad at Microsoft anyhow). The only thing that might weaken the next Xbox from this perspective is the fact they are apparently including Kinect as a stock unit in the new Xbox. That would lower the cost per console they are willing to spend.
 
Stereophile said:
I don't know what was in the Wii-U beta kits, but remember hearing rumors about HD4000 tech a year or two ago.

But final Wii-U hardware has been analyzed and the GPU die space area is only large enough to contain an HD 4770 class GPU. And we know the Wii-U's GPU has edram contained on the same package. So on 40nm process, there isn't room for an entire 4770 + edram, so no way Wii-U has something as good as a 4850.

As I said earlier, it can't have all 640 SPUs from a 4770, so forget about a 4850's 800 SPU. At best, it's got 480, but probably 320. Also at an unknown clock speed. Most likely on the conservative side compared to the PC cards that had massive heatsinks compared to the Wii-U's minimalist design.

And then instead of GDDR-5 in the PC cards, you have super low bandwidth memory necessitating an edram buffer, which as we saw with X360, complicates things further. But Wii-U's main weakness lies in its CPU. Its GPU actually seems robust in comparison. The GPU is the only component on Wii-U that is known to be superior to PS3 and X360.

You're extrapolating way too much based on a shaky premise, that a retail Wii-U has a PC HD4850 class videocard. I doubt it's half as good as that. And even if it is half as good as 4850, that leaves plenty of room for a massive upgrade on PS4/X720.

The other systems will have GPUs built on a smaller process - 28 nm, AND at the same time be physically larger chips, so the GPUs will be far more powerful. I think they'll end up with around HD 7850 performance with less power consumption and GPGPU tweaks equaling a custom HD 8750 Sea Islands based GPU. It won't be as powerful as top of the line 2013 PC cards i.e. an HD 8950, but it won't be that far behind, however still miles ahead of Wii-U.



Today's best PC cards are much better than 3x Wii-U's GPU. Wii-U's hardware would have been impressive if it was released in November of 2008.
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It isn't a 4000 series it was found to be a E6760 series and modified from there. What the first Dev kits include don't always reflect the full final abilities. I doubt the first 360 or ps3 kits are still the same that they use now. I think I might have to unsubscribe from some of these threads they are getting retarded neither other company has even more than a rumor out there and everyone is quick to shit on this system. I will go back to enjoying mine now along with my ps3 and 360 and PC. To many games to play to sit and argue specs based on rumor and fanboy hatred.
 
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HisSvt76 said:
It isn't a 4000 series it was found to be a E6750 series and modified from there. What the first Dev kits include don't always reflect the full final abilities. I doubt the first 360 or ps3 kits are still the same that they use now. I think I might have to unsubscribe from some of these threads they are getting retarded neither other company has even more than a rumor out there and everyone is quick to shit on this system. I will go back to enjoying mine now along with my ps3 and 360 and PC. To many games to play to sit and argue specs based on rumor and fanboy hatred.
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take comfort in his lack of knowledge and his wild speculations.
 
Stereophile said:
I don't know what was in the Wii-U beta kits, but remember hearing rumors about HD4000 tech a year or two ago.

But final Wii-U hardware has been analyzed and the GPU die space area is only large enough to contain an HD 4770 class GPU. And we know the Wii-U's GPU has edram contained on the same package. So on 40nm process, there isn't room for an entire 4770 + edram, so no way Wii-U has something as good as a 4850.

As I said earlier, it can't have all 640 SPUs from a 4770, so forget about a 4850's 800 SPU. At best, it's got 480, but probably 320. Also at an unknown clock speed. Most likely on the conservative side compared to the PC cards that had massive heatsinks compared to the Wii-U's minimalist design.

And then instead of GDDR-5 in the PC cards, you have super low bandwidth memory necessitating an edram buffer, which as we saw with X360, complicates things further. But Wii-U's main weakness lies in its CPU. Its GPU actually seems robust in comparison. The GPU is the only component on Wii-U that is known to be superior to PS3 and X360.

You're extrapolating way too much based on a shaky premise, that a retail Wii-U has a PC HD4850 class videocard. I doubt it's half as good as that. And even if it is half as good as 4850, that leaves plenty of room for a massive upgrade on PS4/X720.

The other systems will have GPUs built on a smaller process - 28 nm, AND at the same time be physically larger chips, so the GPUs will be far more powerful. I think they'll end up with around HD 7850 performance with less power consumption and GPGPU tweaks equaling a custom HD 8750 Sea Islands based GPU. It won't be as powerful as top of the line 2013 PC cards i.e. an HD 8950, but it won't be that far behind, however still miles ahead of Wii-U.



Today's best PC cards are much better than 3x Wii-U's GPU. Wii-U's hardware would have been impressive if it was released in November of 2008.
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AMD changed their shader design since the 4000-series from VLIW5 to VLIW4. If it is indeed a 6000-class derived architecture then the shader count would be both higher and more efficient.

It's hard to say exactly though unless someone breaks NDA.
 
Rizen said:
AMD changed their shader design since the 4000-series from VLIW5 to VLIW4. If it is indeed a 6000-class derived architecture then the shader count would be both higher and more efficient.

It's hard to say exactly though unless someone breaks NDA.
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Not really. Someone will get it under a microscope at some point and find the layout. That should tell us if its VLIW4, 5 or GCN.
 
Stereophile said:
I don't know what was in the Wii-U beta kits, but remember hearing rumors about HD4000 tech a year or two ago.

But final Wii-U hardware has been analyzed and the GPU die space area is only large enough to contain an HD 4770 class GPU. And we know the Wii-U's GPU has edram contained on the same package. So on 40nm process, there isn't room for an entire 4770 + edram, so no way Wii-U has something as good as a 4850.

As I said earlier, it can't have all 640 SPUs from a 4770, so forget about a 4850's 800 SPU. At best, it's got 480, but probably 320. Also at an unknown clock speed. Most likely on the conservative side compared to the PC cards that had massive heatsinks compared to the Wii-U's minimalist design.

And then instead of GDDR-5 in the PC cards, you have super low bandwidth memory necessitating an edram buffer, which as we saw with X360, complicates things further. But Wii-U's main weakness lies in its CPU. Its GPU actually seems robust in comparison. The GPU is the only component on Wii-U that is known to be superior to PS3 and X360.

You're extrapolating way too much based on a shaky premise, that a retail Wii-U has a PC HD4850 class videocard. I doubt it's half as good as that. And even if it is half as good as 4850, that leaves plenty of room for a massive upgrade on PS4/X720.

The other systems will have GPUs built on a smaller process - 28 nm, AND at the same time be physically larger chips, so the GPUs will be far more powerful. I think they'll end up with around HD 7850 performance with less power consumption and GPGPU tweaks equaling a custom HD 8750 Sea Islands based GPU. It won't be as powerful as top of the line 2013 PC cards i.e. an HD 8950, but it won't be that far behind, however still miles ahead of Wii-U.



Today's best PC cards are much better than 3x Wii-U's GPU. Wii-U's hardware would have been impressive if it was released in November of 2008.
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Let me point out that i did not say the actual retail wii unit had a 4850 in it. I said the beta kits had it and Nintendo told the developers to expect that performance baseline for final product. The performance was the goal, not the card. would i use that math to bet somebody's life on? Hell no. But it does give us a rough idea.
 
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Actually, I think the clock speed is more important to know than the features.
We can already see the features in released games and apps. Clock speed, you can't really see.

But honestly, I'm leaving this thread because I have a WiiU and 5 games. The games are fun, the graphics are awesome, I don't think I really care about the specs anymore. Everything I've played so far looks just as nice as my PC games, on my awesome TV. Anything else is years away and unknown, so who cares?

I'm having a good time with that 550mhz GPU. Thats actually less than half of what my PC video card runs at, not 10x slower or anything like that. I dont understand why this is a big deal on some other sites. It's kinda stupid really. Go play the system.
 
HisSvt76 said:
I read this earlier it doesn't really tell anything about the GPU it just list some clock speeds but no features of any kind for the CPU or the GPU. Doesn't mean shit really.
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From DICE "Physics and gameplay run on CPU mostly so player count is affected etc.” regarding the WiiU's CPU. Also from what I've heard the WiiU loading times are worse than the Wii....so yeah.

I'm not hating on the thing, I have one in the top of my closet "Deluxe" for my 8 year old for Christmas. This just kinda bothers me cuz I'm one of those parents who has bought a DS, DSi, DSXL, and then a 3DS for my son with Nintendo and their little incremental hardware increases to try to squeeze every little bit of $ out of their consumers as they possibly can. This happened to me when I bought him the DSXL then less than a year later the 3DS comes out and if you want the new Mario you gotta upgrade.

Nintendo's on their way to becoming Apple I think....
 
Creepingdeath1977 said:
From DICE "Physics and gameplay run on CPU mostly so player count is affected etc.” regarding the WiiU's CPU. Also from what I've heard the WiiU loading times are worse than the Wii....so yeah.

I'm not hating on the thing, I have one in the top of my closet "Deluxe" for my 8 year old for Christmas. This just kinda bothers me cuz I'm one of those parents who has bought a DS, DSi, DSXL, and then a 3DS for my son with Nintendo and their little incremental hardware increases to try to squeeze every little bit of $ out of their consumers as they possibly can. This happened to me when I bought him the DSXL then less than a year later the 3DS comes out and if you want the new Mario you gotta upgrade.

Nintendo's on their way to becoming Apple I think....
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Nintendo was apple before apple was apple:) better than being Sega though! Burning their bridges just when they got it right! Long live the Dreamcast.
 
They are not even attempting to compete for triple A third party next gen titles. The Wii U hardware is sufficient to get their first party franchises into HD resolutions. They don't intend to compete on graphics, that is clear. They have to make this move because they have to have a solution for HD sized screens which are now ubiquitous. So you get Zelda, Mario and Metroid in HD, and their creative game design and art style and head start in the market will allow them to continue to sell their games for another five years and stay in the game. This is not even an attempt at pushing the state of the art as far as graphics and physics go. The Zelda tech demo is all you need to know about their ambitions for this system. Mario and Zelda are in development. This is Wii+ HD.
 
I really wish Nintendo at least tried to push graphics more. Frankly, you have to realize that after everything they say, they don't give a shit about 3rd parties or the US "hardcore" (whatever that means) gamer who likes a cinematic experience.

If the Unreal Engine 4 can't run (well) on the Wii U and the CPU can't handle a 32 or 64 player BF4 online map, I don't see the Wii U selling anywhere near as well as the Wii.

The only way I see Nintendo winning big is if the PS4 and 720 either launch in 2014 or they have lackluster games if they launch in 2013.

Still though, I think devs haven't figured out how to really use the system. The entire community is so 360 oriented (which is why most PS3 ports are subpar) and all their code is optimized for that.

For a while everyone had their hopes up: a modern 3-core 3 GHz PowerPC CPU and true Radeon 6xxx based GPU (Northern Islands) with clock speeds close to 1 GHz. You'd figure will all the money they make in software that they would make a more powerful system.

Only time will tell...
 
umeng2002 said:
I really wish Nintendo at least tried to push graphics more. Frankly, you have to realize that after everything they say, they don't give a shit about 3rd parties or the US "hardcore" (whatever that means) gamer who likes a cinematic experience.

If the Unreal Engine 4 can't run (well) on the Wii U and the CPU can't handle a 32 or 64 player BF4 online map, I don't see the Wii U selling anywhere near as well as the Wii.

The only way I see Nintendo winning big is if the PS4 and 720 either launch in 2014 or they have lackluster games if they launch in 2013.

Still though, I think devs haven't figured out how to really use the system. The entire community is so 360 oriented (which is why most PS3 ports are subpar) and all their code is optimized for that.

For a while everyone had their hopes up: a modern 3-core 3 GHz PowerPC CPU and true Radeon 6xxx based GPU (Northern Islands) with clock speeds close to 1 GHz. You'd figure will all the money they make in software that they would make a more powerful system.

Only time will tell...
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Remember the controller bill of materials is like $140. the console itself still only sells for 350.
 
dremic said:
take comfort in his lack of knowledge and his wild speculations.
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hahah you're a joke. everything I've said in this thread has come to pass. Wii-U doesn't use an E6670 ! An E6670 requires more power than an entire Wii-U system uses.

Wii-U hardware is a joke. It's close enough to PS3/X360 to not matter. Its completely outclassed by Durango and Orbis. Not even the same ballpark. The situation is just as dire as a Wii vs PS3 or X360.
 
Its a highly customized ati 5670 or something along that lines. It supposed to only be 2-3 generations newer in terms of GPU performance than the PS3. More in line with a 9800gtx.

The CPU on the other hand has the possibility of being incredible but im afraid was stupid since it'll alienate developers as its a GPUPU, while its looking as though the other consoles are doing regular CPU's.

And BTW, thread necro much?
 
Sorry but the Nintendo fanboys needed a reality check. They really believed Wii-U against PS4/720 was like a Dreamcast to Xbox scenario When it's a console with 7th gen performance running on 40 watts.

The FUD was funny to read.

Orbis is certainly looking like a proper next gen upgrade. 8 Core Jaguar, (I thought it would only be 4!) 7850 GPU with customized compute functions, 4GB GDDR5, custom audio DSP etc.. I don't think it will be that expensive either. Besides the price you have to include the value. Wii-U, even though it's cheaper, will be a poor value compared to Durango and Orbis.

Hopefully Wii-U continues to sell poorly, and Nintendo will be forced to release a PROPER net gen console next time putting serious heat on Sony and MS. They got lucky with Wii. They make nice handhelds, I've bought a DS, 3DS, and 3DS XL, but their home consoles stink.
 
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