270 replies to this topic

[Goodtwin]

All I know is Nintendo has to show it. I'm tired of all the talk of what the Wii U is capable of. Show us!

 

I agree with this.  We arent going to find out anymore concrete specs than we already have now since Nintendo will never tell us.  The annoying thing is how developers made comments on how easy the Wii U was to develop for, and then their product hits the shelves and they have performance issues.  As usual, a handful of developers will really showcase what the Wii U can do, and the rest will either have poor performance or sacrafice visuals.  I know Retro is going to showcase something that far exceeds anything we have seen on the console thus far, but that wont really change the fact that most third party developers will not tap into the consoles true abilities.  Nintendo's hardware design is always in such a way that if a game isnt designed from the ground up for the console, they tend to have performance issues.  There were tons of PS2 ports to Gamecube that had framerate issues, yet Resident Evil 4 looks and performs way better on GC than the PS2.  Obviously the GC is more capable, but its obvious that the game code must be layed out in a very specific way to get the best results.  Time will tell. 

[Plutonas]

nintendos problem may be, not the specs... but the lifespan chart they got for their consoles.  They kill their consoles very fast!

 

An example, ps3 and 360 still selling and making games correct?  Going for the 8-9th year!!... Look the games back in the 5th year and compare them with the 9th...  That means, nintendo doesnt allow developers to look into the console, to progress their knowledge and advance their games.

 

But I remember what Miyamoto said:  games are not art, they are just products.. that means, they have different ideology in things... if they complete their cycle with games like, 1-2 marios, 1-2 zeldas and 1 pikmin, we move to the next... just like that.. lol I dont like that in nintendo, I prefer it with more lifespan... NOT 8-9 years, but at least 7!!!  (wii stayed alive for 6 years, they made a progress).

 

well.. GC was almost the same as Wii... That was a kind of familiar for developers, but very bad for nintendos customers... They had to change 2 consoles be able drain all the resources from the GC tech. Remember how xenoblade looked? amazing...

 

Here is a nice suggestion for a mass gallop nintendo fans must do and send over to nintendo... NOT to kill wii U in the 5th year, but extend its life, its good for our pockets too,

 

ps: I delayed to buy my wii U because of its price, they sell it here extremely expensive... Now I wonder if I have to wait for wii U 2... lol

Edited by Plutonas, 22 March 2013 - 07:18 PM.

[Julio93]

Gee i wonder if they'll have another console or something because this is seriously not good.

[3Dude]

Plutonas, on 22 Mar 2013 - 13:24, said:nintendos problem may be, not the specs... but the lifespan chart they got for their consoles.  They kill their consoles very fast!
An example, ps3 and 360 still selling and making games correct?  Going for the 8-9th year!!... Look the games back in the 5th year and compare them with the 9th...  That means, nintendo doesnt allow developers to look into the console, to progress their knowledge and advance their games.
But I remember what Miyamoto said:  games are not art, they are just products.. that means, they have different ideology in things... if they complete their cycle with games like, 1-2 marios, 1-2 zeldas and 1 pikmin, we move to the next... just like that.. lol I dont like that in nintendo, I prefer it with more lifespan... NOT 8-9 years, but at least 7!!!  (wii stayed alive for 6 years, they made a progress).
well.. GC was almost the same as Wii... That was a kind of familiar for developers, but very bad for nintendos customers... They had to change 2 consoles be able drain all the resources from the GC tech. Remember how xenoblade looked? amazing...
Here is a nice suggestion for a mass gallop nintendo fans must do and send over to nintendo... NOT to kill wii U in the 5th year, but extend its life, its good for our pockets too,
ps: I delayed to buy my wii U because of its price, they sell it here extremely expensive... Now I wonder if I have to wait for wii U 2... lol


Every console generation in gaming history has on average been 5 years.

This generation is the only one in history to go on this long because the busines model isbroken, innovation is completely stagnant, game publishers own the media, and we keep getting the same games over and over and over and over and over again.

There is NOTHING good about this generation. It is the most disgusting generation of gaming i have ever seen, and its been dragged on YEARS padt when it should have ended.

[NegaScott128]

Not only that, but having to cater to the consoles has held gaming tech back significantly. I don't think most games will look much better on the new consoles than they did on the old ones; not because of power, but because most engines are still optimized for older consoles.

[tboss]

Plutonas, on 22 Mar 2013 - 13:24, said:nintendos problem may be, not the specs... but the lifespan chart they got for their consoles.  They kill their consoles very fast!
An example, ps3 and 360 still selling and making games correct?  Going for the 8-9th year!!... Look the games back in the 5th year and compare them with the 9th...  That means, nintendo doesnt allow developers to look into the console, to progress their knowledge and advance their games.
But I remember what Miyamoto said:  games are not art, they are just products.. that means, they have different ideology in things... if they complete their cycle with games like, 1-2 marios, 1-2 zeldas and 1 pikmin, we move to the next... just like that.. lol I dont like that in nintendo, I prefer it with more lifespan... NOT 8-9 years, but at least 7!!!  (wii stayed alive for 6 years, they made a progress).
well.. GC was almost the same as Wii... That was a kind of familiar for developers, but very bad for nintendos customers... They had to change 2 consoles be able drain all the resources from the GC tech. Remember how xenoblade looked? amazing...
Here is a nice suggestion for a mass gallop nintendo fans must do and send over to nintendo... NOT to kill wii U in the 5th year, but extend its life, its good for our pockets too,
ps: I delayed to buy my wii U because of its price, they sell it here extremely expensive... Now I wonder if I have to wait for wii U 2... lol


Every console generation in gaming history has on average been 5 years.

This generation is the only one in history to go on this long because the busines model isbroken, innovation is completely stagnant, game publishers own the media, and we keep getting the same games over and over and over and over and over again.

There is NOTHING good about this generation. It is the most disgusting generation of gaming i have ever seen, and its been dragged on YEARS padt when it should have ended.

 

honostly i expect next gen to be longer than this one. as for poorly made games, well people mostly ran out of ideas =/, so built difference versions of the same thing. i do want to see more veriety in games but most of the good new ones will be low quality for the first game, i doubt many people will finance something new and creative do to risks and price.

[routerbad]

Plutonas, on 22 Mar 2013 - 13:24, said:nintendos problem may be, not the specs... but the lifespan chart they got for their consoles.  They kill their consoles very fast!
An example, ps3 and 360 still selling and making games correct?  Going for the 8-9th year!!... Look the games back in the 5th year and compare them with the 9th...  That means, nintendo doesnt allow developers to look into the console, to progress their knowledge and advance their games.
But I remember what Miyamoto said:  games are not art, they are just products.. that means, they have different ideology in things... if they complete their cycle with games like, 1-2 marios, 1-2 zeldas and 1 pikmin, we move to the next... just like that.. lol I dont like that in nintendo, I prefer it with more lifespan... NOT 8-9 years, but at least 7!!!  (wii stayed alive for 6 years, they made a progress).
well.. GC was almost the same as Wii... That was a kind of familiar for developers, but very bad for nintendos customers... They had to change 2 consoles be able drain all the resources from the GC tech. Remember how xenoblade looked? amazing...
Here is a nice suggestion for a mass gallop nintendo fans must do and send over to nintendo... NOT to kill wii U in the 5th year, but extend its life, its good for our pockets too,
ps: I delayed to buy my wii U because of its price, they sell it here extremely expensive... Now I wonder if I have to wait for wii U 2... lol


Every console generation in gaming history has on average been 5 years.

This generation is the only one in history to go on this long because the busines model isbroken, innovation is completely stagnant, game publishers own the media, and we keep getting the same games over and over and over and over and over again.

There is NOTHING good about this generation. It is the most disgusting generation of gaming i have ever seen, and its been dragged on YEARS padt when it should have ended.

TOO.  MANY.  SHOOTERS.

 

This console generation should have ended three years ago.  It has gone on for way too long and even with the next generation we can see mostly uninspired hardware design from Sony and Microsoft.  They are trying to make their consoles as PC as possible while adding kitschy social features that do nothing but detract from gameplay. 

 

I am glad this generation is finally ending, and if all we get from Sony and Microsoft and EA, and Activision, and the other big name publishers is shooters, I'll just stick with Nintendo

[Alex Atkin UK]

Personally, I have had more fun with this generation than I ever have before.

 

I used to quickly get bored with games where you couldn't save your progress, where their difficulty meant I got stuck and never got any further.  I like the fact there are so many games which are forgiving for people who aren't expert gamers, but remain fun due to their story and design.

 

I also feel the too many shooters argument is invalid, the problem isn't how many shooters there are but that a few franchises are being milked the death.  You just have to look at how many racing games there are and how varied they also are to see that you can have a lot of the same game type without them all being carbon copies of each other. (although granted, sometimes that happens there too)

 

I have to admit I do miss the fact there seems to be few platformers these days, even fewer that are actually any good.  Then again, third-person games have become something of a mix between 3D platformers and adventure games.  So the definition of a platformer is pretty hard to narrow down these days.  Personally,  I don't like the new Rayman games, I somewhat liked the 3D ones although they are still far short of my favourites (Conker, Starfox Adventures).

 

Let's not forget, the current-gen had the excellent LEGO games.  They played far better on Xbox/PS3 than other platforms and I am hugely looking forward to LEGO City Undercover on Wii U in a few days (annoying UK release date).

[Soul]

Not too many shooters too many of the same shooters.

[3Dude]

Need for speed impossible port made me dig through the aandtech numbers again. Found the mistake. Should have payed better attention the first time around.

They confused x16 wide as the bus width.

Its not.

Thats the device configuration data width, not data bus width.

What this means is that inside each ram chip are 16 256mb (megabit not megabyte) cells totaling 512 MB for the entire chip.

Ddr3 is standardized as a 64bit bus

So, single chip of 512mb @800MHz would give us the 12.8 figure.

However, thee are 4 512MB ram chips on the WII U. Assuming only two of them are used for games thats...

64+64=128 bit

128 bit bus=25.6 GB/s

A main memory bandwidth number that would make the performance of need for speed wii u actually possible.
 

Edited by 3Dude, 31 March 2013 - 11:33 AM.

[routerbad]

Need for speed impossible port made me dig through the aandtech numbers again. Found the mistake. Should have payed better attention the first time around.

They confused x16 wide as the bus width.

Its not.

What this means is that inside each ram chip are 16 256mb (megabit not megabyte) cells totaling 512 MB for the entire chip.

Ddr3 is standardized as a 64bit bus

So, single chip of 512mb @800MHz would give us the 12.8 figure.

However, thee are 4 512MB ram chips on the WII U. Assuming only two of them are used for games thats...

64+64=128 bit

128 bit bus=25.6 GB/s

A main memory bandwidth number that would make the performance of need for speed wii u actually possible.
 

I don't think they would separate the bus on the silicone, RAM access through the memory controller would be 64 bit per chip, but the software doesn't know that, the memory controller is handling 2GB of DDR3 on a 256 bit bus, and is able to use all of that speed to load/unload RAM, unless they have two chips on one controller, and two on another.  It doesn't have to partition RAM based on the chips themselves, and it doesn't have to place data sequentially within the chips either, and it's more efficient if it doesn't.

 

The controller and CPU/GPU would access RAM indiscriminate of the hardware separation.  It recognizes 2GB and addresses it all the same, and unless they lock the games to only using specific address tables, it's up to the memory controller to make the big decisions each cycle based on shortest wait.

[3Dude]

routerbad, on 31 Mar 2013 - 05:54, said:I don't think they would separate the bus on the silicone, RAM access through the memory controller would be 64 bit per chip, but the software doesn't know that, the memory controller is handling 2GB of DDR3 on a 256 bit bus, and is able to use all of that speed to load/unload RAM, unless they have two chips on one controller, and two on another.  It doesn't have to partition RAM based on the chips themselves, and it doesn't have to place data sequentially within the chips either, and it's more efficient if it doesn't.
The controller and CPU/GPU would access RAM indiscriminate of the hardware separation.  It recognizes 2GB and addresses it all the same, and unless they lock the games to only using specific address tables, it's up to the memory controller to make the big decisions each cycle based on shortest wait.

You havent seen the mother board?

Its not certain, but its heavily looking like the ram is seperated into groups of 2 chips, each with a 128 bit bus, leading seperately into different sides of the mcm.

Certainly not set in stone, but a very solid foundation. Though i wouldnt be one to complain if nintendo starts allocating some of that untouchd Gig of ram to game side.

Regaurdless.... The topic at hand 12.8 misinformation has hereby been officially debunked.

Its 25.6.

[routerbad]

routerbad, on 31 Mar 2013 - 05:54, said:I don't think they would separate the bus on the silicone, RAM access through the memory controller would be 64 bit per chip, but the software doesn't know that, the memory controller is handling 2GB of DDR3 on a 256 bit bus, and is able to use all of that speed to load/unload RAM, unless they have two chips on one controller, and two on another.  It doesn't have to partition RAM based on the chips themselves, and it doesn't have to place data sequentially within the chips either, and it's more efficient if it doesn't.
The controller and CPU/GPU would access RAM indiscriminate of the hardware separation.  It recognizes 2GB and addresses it all the same, and unless they lock the games to only using specific address tables, it's up to the memory controller to make the big decisions each cycle based on shortest wait.

You havent seen the mother board?

Its not certain, but its heavily looking like the ram is seperated into groups of 2 chips, each with a 128 bit bus, leading seperately into different sides of the mcm.

Certainly not set in stone, but a very solid foundation. Though i wouldnt be one to complain if nintendo starts allocating some of that untouchd Gig of ram to game side.

Regaurdless.... The topic at hand 12.8 misinformation has hereby been officially debunked.

Its 25.6.

Easily 25.6  I saw the motherboard, but I may need to take a closer look, the back of the mobo the RAM leads all seemed to head into the same side of the MCM, but I may be wrong.  It would make little sense to use two separate memory controllers.

[Robotic Sunshine Commander]

sounds like a lot of HOOPLA to me

[3Dude]

routerbad, on 31 Mar 2013 - 06:12, said:Easily 25.6  I saw the motherboard, but I may need to take a closer look, the back of the mobo the RAM leads all seemed to head into the same side of the MCM, but I may be wrong.  It would make little sense to use two separate memory controllers.

iirc, it has 2 on one side, 1 leading into the corner, and one on a completely different side. The GB pairs are traced to each other, but not to their partners across the way.

Little sense from a games performance perspective.

From a force control perspective, it makes more sense.

Edited by 3Dude, 31 March 2013 - 12:37 PM.

[routerbad]

routerbad, on 31 Mar 2013 - 06:12, said:Easily 25.6  I saw the motherboard, but I may need to take a closer look, the back of the mobo the RAM leads all seemed to head into the same side of the MCM, but I may be wrong.  It would make little sense to use two separate memory controllers.

iirc, it has 2 on one side, 1 leading into the corner, and one on a completely different side. The GB pairs are traced to each other, but not to their partners across the way.

Little sense from a games performance perspective.

From a force control perspective, it makes more sense.

Even from a forced control perspective it prevents them and their own developers from using the additional RAM if they ever need it or want it.  They can't have assumed that the OS would always take up that much system memory.

[3Dude]

routerbad, on 31 Mar 2013 - 06:58, said:Even from a forced control perspective it prevents them and their own developers from using the additional RAM if they ever need it or want it.  They can't have assumed that the OS would always take up that much system memory.




Hah, yeah it sure would, thats the way it appears to be going down to me anyways. Very purposeful prevention of access too it would seem.

Crazy huh?

Though I dont think its the os that rams reserved for. Sure system and os takes a little bit. But im fairly certain they plan on using that GB for some multitude of suspend accessable services of some kind, and thus, never had any intention of making more available.

Which would turn out to be quite the whoopsie if those services never come out or something, and that GB is left sitting unused.
 

[routerbad]

routerbad, on 31 Mar 2013 - 06:58, said:Even from a forced control perspective it prevents them and their own developers from using the additional RAM if they ever need it or want it.  They can't have assumed that the OS would always take up that much system memory.




Hah, yeah it sure would, thats the way it appears to be going down to me anyways. Very purposeful prevention of access too it would seem.

Crazy huh?

Though I dont think its the os that rams reserved for. Sure system and os takes a little bit. But im fairly certain they plan on using that GB for some multitude of suspend accessable services of some kind, and thus, never had any intention of making more available.

Which would turn out to be quite the whoopsie if those services never come out or something, and that GB is left sitting unused.
 

It certainly would, though releasing features like that would take some of the wind out of the PS4s sails.

[Goodtwin]

Need for speed impossible port made me dig through the aandtech numbers again. Found the mistake. Should have payed better attention the first time around.

They confused x16 wide as the bus width.

Its not.

Thats the device configuration data width, not data bus width.

What this means is that inside each ram chip are 16 256mb (megabit not megabyte) cells totaling 512 MB for the entire chip.

Ddr3 is standardized as a 64bit bus

So, single chip of 512mb @800MHz would give us the 12.8 figure.

However, thee are 4 512MB ram chips on the WII U. Assuming only two of them are used for games thats...

64+64=128 bit

128 bit bus=25.6 GB/s

A main memory bandwidth number that would make the performance of need for speed wii u actually possible.
 

 

 

Thankyou for that.  I really found it odd that Nintendo would choose a narrower bus to the main ram than even the Wii had, so this makes a lot more sense.  Not a single developer was complaining about the memory, so this is good to know.  Thanks for doing the real research.  This is the problem with Nintendo not reveiling the specs, they get slandered into being less impressive.  Not trying to say the Wii U is a beast, but this is one of those specs that never really made a ton of sense, but every website was stating it as a fact.  I have to concede to a guy on Miiverse that I was wrong now.

[3Dude]

Thankyou for that.  I really found it odd that Nintendo would choose a narrower bus to the main ram than even the Wii had, so this makes a lot more sense.  Not a single developer was complaining about the memory, so this is good to know.  Thanks for doing the real research.  This is the problem with Nintendo not reveiling the specs, they get slandered into being less impressive.  Not trying to say the Wii U is a beast, but this is one of those specs that never really made a ton of sense, but every website was stating it as a fact.  I have to concede to a guy on Miiverse that I was wrong now.

No you dont. Trust me, hell be okay.

Also, its really hard to try and talk in depth on miiverse XD.