Desert Punk, on 25 Aug 2013 - 3:03 PM, said:
I still don't get why there is any debate on this. The wii u cpu is weak.
The gamecube, wii and wii u are all based on the PPC750 architecture and we know the wii u uses this because only one core is used for wii mode on the wii u but the other 2 cores are identical. The speed is 1.24ghz so you have an easy calculation of around 8000 dmips for the 3 cores. Yes there is more cache which means the cpu is better utilised but it can't go above the dmips figure.
All the figures are clearly listed here;
http://en.wikipedia....ions_per_second
The AMD Jaguar cores are meant to be just over 3 dmips per mhz so by multiplying by 1600 then 8 you have about 40,000 dmips. Same figure for both ps4 and xbox one.
I know the devil is in the detail but this gives you a rough idea of the performance difference.
Obviously then you have to weigh in other factors like the wii u low bandwidth main memory, fast 32MB video memory, seperate arm cpu, xbox one kinect/operating systems, 32MB fast memory, ps3 cell ppu's etc. which add or detract from performance. The PPC750 is a very old chip architecture dating back to 1997.
The xbox 360 xenon chip may be poor but each core has a dual thread and it runs at 3.2ghz so that is 6 threads at 3.2ghz. Yes its a rubbish cpu but with 2x the threads and over 2.5x the speed of the wii u cpu it gives it a huge advantage in final speed for integer performance. The difference in floating performance is even more huge but not as significant as the wii u gpu takes up the slack there.
I really wish people would stop pretending the wii u cpu is not weak. The issue is clearly seen in so many games with low frame rates. We all know the wii u gpu is not at fault, its a superior spec to 360 and PS3 but clearly there is an issue in the wii u spec causing many games to underperform and have sometimes cpu intensive features removed. The architecture of the wii u gpu is likely to be of an AMD design that require 30% less assistance from the cpu as well.
http://www.eurogamer...ations-face-off
It is getting ridiculous when everywhere else people have realised the wii u is current gen performance but you come here and people are pretending its competitive with ps4 and xbox one or signficantly more powerful than ps3 and xbox 360.
The evidence of how powerful the wii u is can be easily understood by looking at reviews that compare wii u versions to other versions on other consoles. That is the evidence. You'll learn nothing useful from reading the rantings of a fanboy.
You have severely misinterpereted all the nformation you have linked to, but everyone already knows this about youso im not getting into that branch of specifics.
The wiiu has stronger memory bandwidth than ps360, despite having 'lower' main memory bandwidth, because its edram is 3x the size of 360's (no for ps3) which means it can do the entire frame buffer in a single pass, and fit things like all the local render targets in the edram instead of dipping in main ram AND be used as a scratchpad for cpu...
While the 360 had to dip into its main ram bandwidth over several passes, eroding it away to well below the 'poor' 12.8 Gb a second you are so proud of misunderstanding.
Both jaguar and espresso are under 3dmips, espresso is 2.42 and if iirc jaguar is 2.7 something. Which is nice, until you think about how jaguar is on a process twice as small as espresso and '40 million years newer', and thats all its got.
As for Xenon (and the rest) Thats peak theoretical performance punk, and xenon never exceeded 65% of its peak theoretical performance. broadway was 90 something, as are jaguar and espresso.
Why? Because it was a deep pipelined architecture (so it could reach those clock speeds you are talking about). With really really bad branch prediction, and no fail protection for if a branch was taken.
That means that whenever xenon missed a branch, the pipeline would stall until it was flushed, this was on average a 500 cycle penalty where NOTHING was being done on that thread. And it happened a LOT.
This is why instancing and billboarding were so prevalent on 360, because multiple iterations of the same models doing the same thing were very easy to stream with simd, and since they were all doing exactly the same thing, werent a concern for branch prediction.
This is why the wonderful 101 has hundreds upon hundreds of completely unique models, all in different frames of animation and doing different things, while say, kameo or dead rising only have a handful of the same models repeated over and over again, and all doing the same exact action as there counterparts, just in different places, with only a small group near the player with 'active' ai. If you were to begin circling 'matches' you would have a screen full of circles.
Its fake. Being strong in simd, ps360 were very good at providing a high volume of instanced and billboarded fakes. Higher than espresso (without gpgpu assistance).
But for doing the larger number of unique and independantly controlled objects, Espresso crushes ps360. And it is already being showed less than a year into the consoles life. Perhaps you should look at what ps360 were doing in their first year.
