routerbad

so so true ^^

you keep saying the same feature set as if that means anything at all. The games that come out and the people that choose to buy Nintendo or Sony/Microsoft will determine if the Wii U is a success. Just because things do the "same" thing doesn't make them equal.

It actually does.  Having the same featureset is huge.  they can all do exactly the same things, support all of the same engines, all have similar API's, etc.

 

Also, the second part of your response to me has nothing to do with what I said or why I said it.  It seems you had nothing substantive to say other than "as if" but had to fill in some white space.  Being the console with the weakest hardware in a generation where they will all be extremely close and all support the same techniques, features, and engines is as meaningless as it gets.

 

Well the  Killzone Shadow Fall footage we have seen only used 3 GB of the 8GB that the PS4 has so yeah, it's gonna be hard to top that. Wii U games will still look alright, but I expect in 2-3 years for the gap between Wii U and PS4-Nextbox to be pretty damn noticeable.

<Sigh>

Another post from someone who knows absolutely nothing about hardware or graphics development.  just, just go.

People will claim that all of the footage was from the games running off high end PCs. I guarantee you that will be the response, at least from people who enjoy hating on the system and Nintendo in general.

 

Realistically speaking though, there IS going to be a gap between what these three systems can do and the WiiU is going to be on the lower end of that rope. It just goes hand in hand with releasing a system earlier, most of the time. The thing nobody knows and yet everyone is speculating and talking about however is how big of a gap there is and what it will mean for the systems. There's honestly no telling one way or another.

All three consoles will have the exact same featureset, XBOX will likely be around the same cpability level as WiiU after cycles are used on Kinect.  PS4 will do the exact same things, but slightly better, which will mean pretty much nothing visually.

Looks like they've locked the 100YOG thread on IGN boards.  It ended with another long post from 100YOG.  I would like to point out that this could all very well be someone trolling, but he went into detail where it mattered, and if what he's said does end up being the case, it will be a monster e3 for Nintendo.

Doesn't that make sense though, wii u has the strongest gpu, xbox 360 second and the ps3 last. Fighter games need low cpu resources and this seems a logical game to perform well on wii u. This follows the pattern most impartial people have predicted for wii u.



32MB is video memory and is dwarfed by the 1GB of system memory which will be fully utilised with modern games. The 32MB is really just a frame buffer and texture cache, a more generous one than 360 (10MB) but  still most of the data is stored in the main 1GB of memory.

All evidence points to the wii u cpu being very weak especially when you factor in the more modern gpu of the wii u actually performs some tasks that the 360 and PS3 require their cpu's to do. The wii u cpu is directly wii code compatible somehow, that means wii software sees a cpu identical to the original wii. That means even if the processor has extended instructions the bulk of it will be identical including how it handles memory etc and the memory bus to external memory. When Nintendo decided the wii u would be compatible with the wii a huge number of performance compromises had to be made to achieve that.

The fact is the wii u is struggling to outperform current gen consoles and is meant to be a very easy console to develop for. No one is doubting the wii u gpu is superior in many ways so something else is severely throttling the performance of the wii u.

It's only code compatible in Wii mode, when two cores are locked and the cache is shrunk.  

WiiU is GPU centric, but nevertheless the CPU is stronger than cell and xenon.  Your argument doesn't hold water, saying its weaker because the GPU is stronger is not accurate, it doesn't work that way.  

All Nintendo and IBM had to do was ensure that one core was code compatible with Wii, not a difficult task for a company specializing in custom CPU applications.

No where is WiiU struggling to outperform current gen consoles, switching an engine from relying on high clocked, in order, long piped CPUs to one with lower clocks, shorter pipelines, and out of order execution but higher IPC cannot happen without rewriting all of the game engine code, and six months or less is not enough time to do it.

The claims you're making have been repeatedly and easily buried.  

As for the cache, you do realize that the services that are bandwidth sensitive are all very small.  The frame buffer is immensely important despite being ridiculously tiny, 32MB  is more than enough to also hold some commonly accessed texture data.  Of course the rest is going to be held in main memory or streamed from disc, but the bandwidth is high enough to handle that.

To add, Nintendo are the kings of tessellation, and decent Tess allows for dynamic textures that don't get stored in RAM.

Fighters are typically more CPU intensive and regardless it would have been designed for each specific console to utilize the power available.  Injustice on PS3 and 360 is running primarily on CPU, all games designed for those platforms do.

I would of considered the mass effect trilogy on wii u but never considered paying anywhere near full price for for me3. I will probably pick it up when I see a copy sub £10 but thats it.

 

I don't agree that porting all 3 would be easy though. EA literally just stripped out the physics engine from Madden for wii u because they clearly weren't prepared to put the effort in to get it working on the weak cpu of the wii u. I'm sure porting the whole Trilogy would throw up a load more problems than that.

 

I think most of us realise EA are not Nintendo friendly, wii support was uninspired and they were really forced to support wii due to its enormous success. EA faced with an underperforming Nintendo console are in a 'kick them when their down' sort of mode.

The physics engine wasn't pulled because of "the weak Wii U CPU".  The Wii U CPU is stronger than both the PS3 and 360 CPU's, but with shorter pipelines, OOE, and a lower clock.  EA's garbage support is the farthest thing from an indictment of the Wii U hardware.

Edit: He didn`t mention a FPS, but a First Person game. My bad!

 

There`s a guy on IGN boards that says it`s a big FPS and that it will graphically impress.

100-Year-Old-Gamer, that`s his name. He opened a topic and by the looks of it, he seems to have a reputation: http://www.ign.com/b...arts.452980149/

 

According to him, he works at Nintendo... and has met the man, the one called Reggie!

He did mention later that it is the best looking shooter he's ever seen, including Killzone: Shadowfall.

Shader pipelines was the correct way of figuring shaders up until the HD 2900, when ATI called 64 vec5 shader pipelines 320 shaders. After that, everyone seemed to adjust. When the 360 was first released, people probably said it had 48 shader pipelines. But now it seems more correct to say 240 shaders (48 vec5 shader pipelines). People seem to believe the Wii U to have 80 vec4 shader pipelines.

That's actually not what happened at all.  64 VLIW5 shaders is 64 shaders, capable of 320 shader operations.  That was 64 shaders @ 5 sh ops per cycle.  

Each VLIW5 shader in the unified shader architecture introduced with HD5xxx is capable of 10 shader ops per cycle

WiiU is VLIW5

It's 5Jiggahertz wifi

It isn't wifi at all, it's a proprietary protocol based around Bluetooth

he emulated the gamepad. not the wiiU itself, that will be the hard part because you have to emulate a customized hardware far from standered. but the gamepad, all you really should need is button inputs, something to use as the touchpad(mouse), and something to send/recieve signals, all of that is not hard compared to true emulation. but this one is good for playing on PC,

He is handling the gamepad behind the camera, that much is fairly obvious, the camera "shakiness" is intentional.  It would have been easier to put it down on a tripod so it's steady and use both hands for the controller if it was legit.  It's too easy to fake that.  However someone with a dev unit probably would be able to emulate the gamepad, I imagine that would be a tool given to developers

There was a picture or pictures taken of the insides of the Wii U and the experts now believe it has 8 rops, 16 tmus, and 320 shader units. And we know the clock speed, 550MHz.

http://www.eurogamer...inally-revealed

The PS4 is said to have 8 rops, 18 tmus and 1152 shader units, and a clock speed of 800MHz.

I suppose you're going to say that the experts are wrong and don't know how to properly understand the Wii U GPU though?

Funny you should reference the Eurogamer article that pissed off the GAF users that actually made the die shot happen.  Because the article you referenced actually never sourced NeoGAF as a source for the information, and jumped to conclusions that were being actively explored at the time in order to get quick clicks out of it.  Everything in that article is garbage.

 

If you want to see the real thing, go to GAF or the thread here. 

 

I am going to say that the "experts" that actually analyze DIE SHOTS for a living, the ones that took the microlithographs have said quite a bit on the chip.  First, that it is completely custom, the only bit of logic that resembles anything from AMD are the SIMD engines.  Everything else, totally custom.  They placed the price of the chip at ~$100 just for the GPU die.  Another thing, its massive, more massive than most GPU's and the EDRAM doesn't account for much of the size.  Here's the most important bit: The "experts" can't figure out what about 50% of the Wii U GPU logic is there for. 

 

 

I'll say it again, the "experts" have said that they can't figure out what 50% of the GPU logic is there for.  THEY HAVE SAID THIS.

 

Since you used Eurogamer as your source, I'll assume you haven't read through any of the GAF thread, where all of the actual info is, and where all of the leaks happened.  There are people posting in that thread that have inside info from both developer and engineer perspectives.  Last I saw, there was no concensus on exactly how many ROPs and TMUs there were, because they were hard to physically pinpoint on the die.  There were also suggestions that there were assymetric ALU's, meaning they weren't lined up like they are on typical GPU's and that the 8 ALU's that we saw were only a portion of the total number. 

 

There was also a leak, that the other 50% of the chip was dedicated to effects that typically require a lot of SIMD performance and put a lot of strain on the SIMD engines.

 

It isn't all clock speeds, FLOPS, and ALU's, son.  There is much more going on in a GPU than that, which is why I keep saying it only tells part of the story. 

 

Also, no one, not one single person on this board, ever, has argued that the PS4 is less powerful than the Wii U, so stop trying to argue against a strawman.  Putting words in our mouths will get you no where.

 

What we have said is that the power difference won't be enough to make a huge difference visually.

First off, who is this "you people"? I'm just stating that Wii U isn't next gen technology. I never said that I don't classify as a next-generation system. I do, but the tech in it, isn't.

Here's the problem, the tech in it, is.  As I have said multiple times, none of the technology, not the CPU, not the GPU, not the RAM, not NFC, not the wireless video standard, none of it, was available last gen.

 

The GPU is completely custom and completely new, with one component, programmable shaders, derived from an AMD reference that wasn't available last gen.  The shaders account for less than half of the GPU logic.

 

The CPU is a custom IBM chip based on Power7 architecture and uses the PowerISA2.06 instruction set, neither were available last gen.

 

DDR3 was not in production until two years after last gen started.

 

The GPU is 40nm, the CPU 45nm, a process that was not available at the start of last gen.

 

So, before you start talking about whether the tech is "last-gen" or not, actually look at the components and when the underlying technologies became available not commercially, but industrially, before making the statement.

 

And "you people" refers to a group of people who constantly parrot one another with baseless claims derived from ignorance.

Why on earth would Nintendo users or Nintendo want origin on wii u. It's Nintendo's console and clearly they would want to control software sold through wii u. Surely that's a massive revenue stream for Nintendo that they would not give to EA. 

 

Seems strange that EA could ever have expected that to happen.

 

EA did do massive damage to the dreamcast by denying Sega many sports titles which helped kill the dreamcast in the USA. They have cancelled the next madden for wii u too. I guess their wii support was respectable but most of it was forgettable. The only wii title they did which I liked a lot was Monopoly Streets. The need for speed titles are pretty weak and comparable to ps2 versions.

I can't think of a reasonable reason that Nintendo would have accepted that deal, so I find it odd that EA is taking it like this.

Nope they are making business decision that just don't include Wii U. Sad but that's their right to do what they want with their company.

That wasn't the question.  They are in fact trying to shape the hardware landscape based not on business decisions (they poured money into Crysis3 for WiiU then made sure they made zero profit, bad business)(they released ME3 for $60 on WiiU and released the trilogy on other platforms at the same price, intentionally cannibalizing ME3 sales, bad business) but on bad business relations.  What they are doing to Nintendo transcends smart money moves, as none of their decisions to date have been smart money moves.  

 

They are within their rights to develop where they want, but lets not get confused as to the reason.  EA believe they control the gaming industry, and Nintendo got in their way of making that pipedream a reality.

 

Making comments that are obvious bald faced lies through social media and press releases is not based on a business decision, its based on a want to destroy any possibility of Nintendo succeeding without EA games now that they have made their choices.  If Nintendo succeeds, without any EA titles in the future on the platform, how does that make EA look?  

What ever opinions EA and Epic games have its their prerogative. That doesn't make them jerks. If you don't agree then fine but they doesn't mean you have to throw insults.

Their opinions are one thing, they are trying to pass off obvious BS as fact, and it is completely insulting to anyone who knows anything about the industry.  That's a pretty jerkish thing to do.

You obviously haven't considered both of them might be true. None of us have an insight into any of these developers and publishers. They obviously have their reasons for not supporting the Wii U and that is a business decision they have made.

Whats interesting about it is that Precursor claim they have been in constant contact with Nintendo, and they don't have a publisher, and are using crowdfunding.  Other developers are tweeting every day that they are now licensed Nintendo developers.  I doubt very seriously they've put much effort into contacting Nintendo.  The install base excuse doesn't really fly either, they obviously already have dev units, and they obviously already are licensed to develop for Wii U, that's a big investment to stop developing on the console because "the user base is too small" when PS4 and XBOX have exactly 0 users.

No. What they said was that all future 4.x updates to Unity would consequently be available on Wii U. Those are two different things.  

 

That's why I was (still am to some point) a little worried about the GPU's efficiency to run more modern multiplatform games (PS4/Next Xbox).

 

If the last 6 years of multiplatform game development is anything to do by, then these games will probably be made from the ground up utilizing DX11 (DX9 was what we saw last-gen) and then ported to other consoles (with their respective API).

 

See, one of the reasons that made multiplatform developers step out of the Wii was that its GPU only supported approximately DX7-level features, and porting a DX9-level game would be either too expensive or it would simply ruin the game's structure. 

That wasn't a reason for "stepping out" of the Wii, the platform was hard to make money on, based on sales and the restrictions in place that Nintendo refused to remove that cost money to work with.  It's always all about money.

 

As far as whether WiiU will run "DX11 equivalent" effects, it already is.  NintendoLand shows this, and Unity mentioned during the keynote that Unity4 Pro on WiiU would have feature parity with the PC engine through 4.x updates in the future, in not so many words.  

 

You also have to remember that there aren't that many DX11 specific effects, DX11 was basically DX10 with more efficient subroutines that made development faster and used less hardware resources, making it possible to do more with less.  Very important on PC when they were getting ready to release ARM based devices with DX11 on it.