Wii U CPU:
- Tri Core IBM 45nm PowerPC750CL/G3/Power7 Hybrid
- Core 0; 512KB Core 1; 2MB Core 2; 512KB L2 Cache
- Clocked at 1.24Ghz
- 4 stage pipeline/not Xenon-Cell CPU-GPU hybrid
- Produced at IBM advanced CMOS fabrication facility
- Can use eDRAM as cache(!? Power7 memory implementation)
- Dual Core ARM for background OS tasks clocked at 1Ghz with 64KB L1 cache per core

Wii U Memory:
- DDR3 2GB, 1GB for OS, 1GB for Games (12.8/Gbps is speculation)
- eDRAM 32MB+4MB Memory/VRAM/Cache(UNIFIED!?, 4MB for gamepad)
- Clocked at 550Mhz
- CPU for Cache and GPU for VRAM use eDRAM
- eDRAM acts as unified memory, similar to AMD’s hUMA/HSA by function/behaviour(?! not similar in terms of architecture)
- Little to no latency between CPU and GPU with eDRAM Cache/Memory/VRAM(?! Power7 memory implementation)

Wii U GPU:
- VLIW 5/VLIW4 Radeon HD 5000/6000 40nm
- DirectX 11/Open GL 4.3/Open CL 1.2/Shader Model 5.0
- Supports GPGPU compute/offload
- Customized, Using custom Nintendo API codenamed GX2(GX1 Gamecube)
- Clocked at 550Mhz
- Produced at TSMC
- Uses eDRAM as VRAM
- Silicon/features involving DirectX 11 is replaced by more transistors and still maintaining Open GL 4.3/Open CL 1.2/Shader Model 5.0 compatibility
- rumors; 320 shader units w/ 352 Gflops performance or based around Radeon HD e6850

Wii U Note;
- Can’t use DirectX 11 because of OS, only Open GL 4.3/Nintendo API GX2 that is ahead of DX11
- Easier to program, no bottlenecks causing trouble like on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3
- more efficient hardware with no bandwidth bottlenecks
- Most early ports and even now use 2 cores and 3rd is barely used #fact
- Wii U CPU has much higher operations per cycle than Xbox 360/PlayStation 3 though it is unknown if it is faster
- It is maybe in fact most efficient performance per watt in the world in terms of 45/40nm chips
- Minor Power7 architecture implementation allows shave off 10% of texture size without loss of quality(special compression)
- Wii U power consumption at full system load is 40 watts, Wii U's power brick is rated 75 watts
- Wii U's Flash storage, RAM, USB ports, motherboard, fan and small secondary chips consume around 10 to 15 watts in total
- Wii U's SoC(CPU and GPU) estimated maximum power consumption is 25 to 30 watts
- Supports 4k displays, native 4k(possible 2D 4k games?)

It is ahead of 7th generation, developers will learn to handle and optimize for Wii U properly. I was digging on the internet for various information’s for a month and all you read is what I compiled and gathered. It can handle 1080p because it has 3.5 times more eDRAM than Xbox 360 also has no severe memory/bandwidth bottlenecks that Xbox 360/PlayStation 3 have all over the system with their FSB that is choking. Xbox 360′s GDDR3 that has theoretical 22-28Gbps is reduced to 10Gbps thanks to piss poor FSB.

Wii U has same amount of eDRAM as Xbox One, remember that and also Wii U’s CPU utilizes Power7 architecture a bit so maybe just maybe Wii U’s CPU can use eDRAM as CPU cache as GPU uses it as VRAM so in a way something alike AMD’s hUMA/HSA is maybe possible on Wii U.

If Grand Theft Auto 5 was on Wii U then you can only expect better visuals/details, less pop ups, higher framerate that would be 60 fps most likely since Wii U is light years ahead of current generation and that is factual and you can be in denial but I did one whole month of dedicated digging on the internet in search of all sort of information’s related to Wii U’s hardware.

It can run it harder, better, faster, stronger and more sexier than 7th generation consoles by far.

In case you are wondering why some games run on Wiii U worser than on 7th generation consoles then I have simple explanation. Wii U hardware is noticeably different than Xbox 360's or PlayStation 3's, Xbox 360 Xenon and PlayStation 3's Cell are processors and not true CPU's since they can operate GPU related tasks well compared to Wii U that is primarily a CPU. Another reason is that developers don't put too much resources on porting the game to the Wii U thus it lacks proper optimizations and adaptions of their game engines to Wii U's hardware. Even though some ports perform lower than on 7th generation consoles, in most cases run on higher resolution and/or at Native 720p/HD.

Most if not all 3rd party launch games were made on older Wii U development kits that had 20 to 40% lower clocks than final development kit that Nintendo released near the launch so developers did not had much time to adapt their games to the final devkit thus games were running poorly also games like Darksiders 2, Warriors Orochi 3 Hyper, Batman Arkham City and other were using only two cores while third was not used at all or was barely used to aid performance of the game involving CPU related tasks. Since most ports are from Xbox 360 and/or PlayStation 3 versions of the games there are sure to be incompatibilities since Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 Processors do CPU and also GPU tasks plus GPU's, RAM/Memory, Latency and other factors are different than on Wii U thus optimizations and adaptations is needed though cheap ports as always tend to be a train wreck. Don't you agree?

I assume your sources are from rumours on the internet.

 

Various sources. Mostly discoveries on various forums, some rumors and I spent one month searching for all bits of information involving Wii U's hardware and doing research, looking at Wikipedia articles involving architecture, Nintendo's deals with companies like S3 graphics, IBM, AMD and others. I scourged, checked, researched and eliminated most unlikely and unproven information's.

 

NeoGAF threads and users had some useful information's, I could only lurk around like a stalker since I sadly can't register...

Most of it seems spot on, from what I can tell.

 

I spent a lot of time, I hope so. If I am wrong then maybe I should do "seppuku"...

 

So the Wii U is awesome, even outside of awesome games? -waits for 3Dude translation-

 

Well from standpoint of power consumption of whole console considering it has chips made at 45/40nm process, it makes my brain explode.

 

As for performance, I don't know. Mostly speculations and rumors, basically impossible to know except if you work for Nintendo or if you are developer though sadly under strict NDA that would in case you break it would literally smack yours or someone else nuts with a sledgehammer.

I'd say this list is pretty much right, do you know how much VRAM is allocated to the gamepad?

 

I wrote it in the thread, look at Wii U Memory second line. I wrote it has 4MB of eDRAM dedicated for gamepad and 32MB of eDRAM is main screen/operation so Wii U has in total 36MB of eDRAM. If has more eDRAM than Xbox One in total though Xbox One eDRAM is eSRAM(inferior).

That's is a incredibly small ammount.  I thought that was for the input.  IE 1 bite for a, if pressed = true, not = false blah blah, then you have the microphone, the camera, and then the screen buffering and streaming back to the console.  So I wondered if the VRAM was allocated or if the system processed both screens and then streamed it to the pad.

 

Gamepad has sub-HD screen, I am pretty sure it is 800x600 pixels or something similar to that resolution so it does not require much eDRAM, those 4MB are most likely used by seperate in built feature into GPU to stream the video/signal of the picture. Microphone and camera send signal via Wi-fi and don't use those 4MB dedicated for streaming/buffering. 32MB for game and 4MB for gamepad streaming. I am sure that it is something like that.

Ahh thanks for explaining, that makes a lot of sense That is impressive.  One more thing, I remember an article on the Wii U being able to hook up to gamepads to one system.  Does this include having two hooked up or would it be reallocated?

Video on Wii U's gamepad is streamed at 60fps constant, if there are two Wii U's then it is cut in half so each gamepad has a stream that is 30fps and if there was a third and fourth then it would be unwatchable except if resolution of the stream is lowered plus it can decide to reduce the quality of it.

 

A fast paced game will automatically have a lower quality stream while an slow paced game will have higher quality stream since it is less stressful.

A rather complete list of internet info and rumours. Very gaffy... Can stand to be a tad bit more discerning with some rumours. I wouldnt exactly consider it a power 7 hybrid because it uses the same edram technology behind p7. Its a bit too... embellished. IBM kinda blew smoke up our butts with the whole watson thing.

The 360 indeed was reduced to 10.8 Gb a second bandwidth... For the cpu to read or write to main memory. It also had to go through the gpu to do either, and had to wait on the latency for two busses/bridges instead of direct on die acess.

Gpu got the 'full' 22.4Gb/second to main ram, though its edram was so small it wasted much of its bandwidth on things wii u simply doesnt, severely cutting out any bandwidth advantadge 360 would seem to have over wii u's 12.8 Gbs bandwidth to main memory.

The 360's edram was also off die, and only had a measly bandwidth of 32Gb/s. Wii u blows it out of the water in capacity, bandwidth, and latency.

Nice info/speculation round up. Certainly one hell of a forum introduction.

 

So... Lets say in hypothetical situation where WIi U is exactly as powerful as Xbox 360 in Gflops though Wii U does not have severe bottlenecks and maintains all the advantages, so how much the Wii U would be in lead over Xbox 360? A little or a lot or in between, depending on scenario and types of data running on it?!

 

It's rumours like this that lessen your post's credibility.
Iwata says the second upad would make it 30fps in an off-hand tweet after e3 and you apply this way-out-there context to it with nothing more to back up your theory.

You'd fit well in neogaf, and maybe you should apply for a job at IGN.

 

I was confirmed that two gamepads could be used, I only stated in what kind of scenarios it would be if there would be third and fourth was used on the same console. I gathered what I could and even if IGN wanted to hire me I would avoid them by matter of miles and light years.

About 8 years worth.
I'd like to see your comparison to same-generation hardware.

 

Gas Guzzler(Xbox 360) vs Ferrari+Nitro(Wii U), simple analogy or steam powered locomotive vs diesel train...

 

I could describe you; Xbox 360 is a city that has less roads and the roads are narrow and have a lot more crossroads while Wii U would be a kind of City that has wider roads, less cross roads with shortcuts and can digest the heavy traffic plus has a mini highway to from one end to another end of the city. Good enough?

3Dude, on 19 Sept 2013 - 8:11 PM, said:

Gflops? A rather limited comparison, but I get your drift. Yeah, if they were equal (they arent though) Wii u is far more effecient, and looks to avoid 360's numerous bottlnecks and performance bleeding.

Even in gflops wii u comes out on top, but its mostly in the gpu, instead of the cpu like the 360.

The cpu has 2x32 bit floating point units per cpu core, which serves as the cpu's simd, often referred to as paired singles. Would seem to be fairly weak simd performance. But either theres more to it, or Nintendo's custom 750 architecture just doesnt care about petty things like reality. Its surprising (competent) devs left and right. Rad tools is still amazed.

Regaurdless, the system has the flop power to far exceed 360 in poly count, as demonstrated by X, Not just in larger scale with farther view distance of more complicated and varied terrain, (far less instancing) and more and larger objects, it also has enough to 'waste' rendering not just non flat terrain, but pebbles made out of polygons. And with enough precision to keep them all from jittering around.

Definately not the same situation as last gen.

Awww.... Reminds me of Gamecube, what an underrated system. The most powerful, cheaper and better but sadly left in the cold... Totally unfair. :/

Nollog, on 19 Sept 2013 - 8:12 PM, said:

I can describe you; 8 year old game versus 1 year old game.

Your description is a lot better than mine... You seem like an awsome persona.

Yeah, thats a bit of an embellishment. Even ps4 isnt light years beyond ps360.

 

I used "light years" since I want to make a point that is nothing like 7th generation Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3, some people here actually believe those butthurt trolls...

 

I always have a meltdown when I see Bayonetta 2 and X, they look so amazing for a pre-alpha footage on a brand new console that does mimic the PC! I am sold!

I don't know why the hell Nintendo released basic with just 8Gb of flash, why not 16Gb? Goddamn it.

 

If Wii U Deluxe was 280$ it would hit a sweet spot, people would think. Ugh... If I buy a Wii U I can also buy two games thus spending same amount as I would spend on PlayStation 4.

We just need to keep our mouth shut and don't announce this to Sony fanboys, I want them to be shocked when they get a feel of the drought...

 

While Wii U owners will be playing games like Mario Kart 8 and Super Smash Bros U, having laugh's at ponies that will went berserk and have a flashback at those first three cruel years that PlayStation 3 when it was bleeding and sucking Sony's wallet dry and then we will hear their excuses. Ponies will fart rainbows and will be running in cycle, do they really though that they won't have a drought?!

 

Lets prepare to see their ego hurt and them being butthurt... :3

 

*grabbing popcorn's*

Anyone did a comparison of Bayonetta and Bayonetta 2? I saw on couple of forums, mostly higher draw distance, more polygons and better textures, not bad for an pre-alpha and X is also pre-alpha and looks amazing for an very pre-alpha build, that draw distance is sick...! I wish there was a new trailer that will show us how graphically it progressed as if they solved pop up issues.

There is a thread on this forum comparing Bayonetta to Bayonetta 2 started by 3Dude and is very well done, good read. 

http://thewiiu.com/t...tta-2-gameplay/

 

Thanks for the link

 

Wii U trashes 7 generation, its not even fair.... We seriously need to move on.

Can you do comparison between MGR:R and Bayonetta 2? Please...

Thats actually a good one. It is platinums latest ps360 game, and of similar genre.

I might start looking into it when I get home.

 

That would be great, thanks in advance.

Shocking.

 

Yea... I know.! duh *sarcasm lol

I did some research, released it this forum and will most likely make a new thread with updated information's.

 

Evidence points out that Nintendo is going to allow/unlock shaders on the Wii U that were detectable in Wii mode via hacks, eg currently 3rd party developers can access 320 SPU's that has 352Gflops performance while the September/October update should give full usage to 960 SPU's and 1056Gflops or 1.05Tflops of performance and maybe push Wii U's power consumption higher eg from 40 watts to 70 watts if 40 watts power consumption was w/ shaders that were all active or inactive if inactive then we can expect higher power consumption.

 

About Wii U's storage, it has flash based that is twice to two and a half times faster than USB 2.0 or HDD's inside Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

 

At least with Wii U you can have good old school way of playing your games, put a dvd in and play without installs.

So your saying the October update unlocks some unused part of the WiiU that suddenly makes it triple the flops and more able to compete with Xbone?

Surly not, why would Nintendo let everyone think the.WiiU was a low power usage console that's 'just' powerful enough for near on a year of its life.

 

I don't know, Nintendo has tendency to lock some things and then unlock them later like on DS and 3DS.

[The ratio (around 60% of the PSUs rated load as I recall) makes sense if Nintendo were taking into account PSU aging which seems likely, as Nintendo are known for making very reliable hardware that just keeps on going for years and years.]

 

http://www.tomshardw...ing-calculators

 

We can ignore it and Nintendo could rated it 75 watt with in mind that PSU ages so it could be higher. it is maybe 5% in its entire life time.

 

[When I compared the Wii U power consumption against the maximum the PSU is rated to output, the ratio was around the same as the Wii power consumption against its PSUs rated maximum.  That suggests to me that the Wii U is drawing close to its design power already.]

 

I must disagree.

 

[So yes the load may increase once developers really start tapping into all the hardware, but I don't think a firmware update is going to magically unlock more SPUs.  For one thing, the scan of the chip has been extensively examined and 320 SPUs was decided to be the most likely MAXIMUM based on its structure.  If it had double or triple that number, I'm pretty sure the experts would have seen that.]

 

Did you forgot that the GPU inside Wii U is heavily customized and I know it is VLIW4 base plus there are no VLIW4 GPU's of any kind using eDRAM or having exactly 320 SPU's. Nintendo is known for doing heavy customizations to the GPU and they will not waste any mm^2 of silicon thus they will resort to removing features and some obviously unneeded also I looked at die shot and I can't find on what eletroscope it was taken and can we even see a single transistors? If it was taken on eletroscope that can go below 40nm then we could have seen individual transistors and other features.

 

Also it is 40nm and made on more mature and refined process than original VLIW4 Radeon HD 6000 series, there was a rumor it is based around HD e6850 and very first alpha Wii U devkit had Radeon HD 4870.

 

Wii U's GPU is 146mm^2 and we remove eDRAM and small eDRAM block and we have 100mm^2 for GPU and Radeon HD 6850 is 250mm^2 and has 960 SPU's and having just 320 SPU's would be 83mm^2 though we know it is customized and not off-shelf GPU so I am sure there will be more SPU's and we know that GPU is produced at mature 40nm Advanced CMOS at TSMC so performance is higher and power consumption is lower.

 

Gah i won't argue with you.

So now Nintendo can unlock something that doesn't even exist? Priceless.

 

That is just a theory, they could be more SPU's and we don't have any die shot of Radeon HD 6000 series and we don't know how many transistors it has nor how much it has been customized, what is the real difference between the GPU in Wii U and off-shelf GPU. Nintendo may implement/unlock option to reduce OS usage from 1GB to 512MB if necessary so developers could use 1.5GB plus they can bump clocks higher for either CPU and/or GPU.

 

I know that Wii U's CPU has Power7 memory architecture though I don't know if its available for 3rd party to use a feature/"shortcut" between CPU and GPU, Wii U's CPU uses eDRAM for L2 caches and Wii U's GPU uses eDRAM as VRAM so using same memory means that Wii U has unified pool of memory or hUMA/HSA like architecture and that will allow to offload AI pathfinding, level rendering and other things to GPU and reduce load to CPU that has been doing tasks that worked better on GPU.

 

Also Nintendo could asked AMD one piece of technology that AMD has but never really tried to use in a commercial product, I forgot the name of it but it allows much higher density of transistors and it is planned to be used in near future by AMD so AMD may used a chance with Nintendo to use this relatively unproven technology/process on Wii U eg Wii U is a lab rat for it.

 

http://media.bestofm...U-350382-13.png

 

AMD calls it high density it was created by ATI and AMD bough it in 2006, ATI now AMD designed GPU's for Gamecube, Wii, Xbox 360 and now Wii U, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

Need For Speed Most Wanted for Wii U actually used properly some capabilities of the WIi U, it had in some PC like textures though only on one or two sides of the buildings and it had better and more refined lightning.

There are two most realistic possibilities...

 

1. They bump the clocks of CPU and GPU

 

2. They increase speed/reading of the drive if possible

It seems you two guys are in denial, are you pretendos?

 

DS and 3DS had locked hardware features and later when it was unlocked, either games and OS performed better. Wii U at maximum consumes 40 watts while PSU is 75 watts so they have head room to increase clocks, specially clocks of the GPU. We know that Wii U's OS was kinda wonky and now it is okay, so Wii U could be rushed and if that is the case then maybe some features were not been usable and stable because of OS.

How can I be in denial? Nintendo them self proclaimed that September/October update is "speed/performance" update and they can further optimize Wii U's OS also how you can act like hypocrite and think that I don't know that performance of games in the end must be done by game developers? You think I am tech illiterate or your ego is so big that you are blind?

 

Why it would not be possible to bump the clocks? Nintendo can and it is not limited by PSU/power brick since if it can only do 45 watts then it would be a 45 watt PSU/power brick and not a 75 watt and guys at Neogaf measured power consumption of Wii U with tools that are worth over 2000$ and it showed that Wii U consumes 40 watts, Eurogamer measured with much cheaper and less reliable tool and they got 33 watts... It is 40 watts and they have enough room to bump the clocks by 10 to 20 percent on both CPU and GPU, please don't talk about PSU/power brick degradation because it is debunked. As long as Wii U maximum power consumption is around 67.5 watts in theoretical 10 year life span then I can say the PSU situation will be just fine