Well, first, as I explained earlier, flops simply dont transfer linearly across architectures.
So even if it WAS 176 gflops, its not the same amount of power Xenon gets with 176 gflops.
Second. Simply no.
He dismisses Jim from Chipworks, who said he cant recognize the design coming from any other amd chips hes worked with (when asked about the 7xx base), because he made up a story where Jim is unable to identify the brand of the gpu (despite everybody already knowing the brand) Because it wasnt on the gpu, but the heatspreader.
Jim doesnt NEED to see a brand to recognize where a gpu came from. He didnt aquire his position of employment by being an incompetent buffoon, hes not a game journalist.
You simply cant tell that kind of detail by eye balling block shapes. Unless you can see the makeup of the arithmetic units inside, or have a chart, because you can give near any shape block of logic any purpose. You can even have the same exact logic block given a completely different shape simply to maximize the use of die area.
Identifying what logic needs to be by ram pools is a good idea in theory, but ultimately rather worthless in real world applications, as these custom layouts are often done by computers in parts to maximize effecient use of die space, and these are often simply put beyond a humans ability to follow. The reason They can be identified at all by their shapes from successor to successor (typically just die shrinks with minor changes( is merely because its cost effective to reuse a practical design.... In custom hardware it may no longer be practical to mantain the conventional layout, as there may be unconventional changes compared to your conventional designs. Such as a massive block of embedded ram.
And these guys love talking about flops, but they never specify what kind of flop, which is really important. This guy keeps talking about the number of 64 bit registers, but a flop is a 32 bit operation. A double precision flop is 64 bit. and Nintendo is known for wanting custom wierd things like cramming a pair of single precision flops into a single 64 bit register.
Observing him, he just doesnt seem to be trying to find an answer by looking at facts.
he seems to be trying to find facts he can use to support an answer he already came up with.
I dont know what exact number of flops the system is packing. It COULD be 176 Gflops. But, Id be willing to bet if it did, it wouldnt be for any of his reasoning. I feel like its comparable to someone telling us the sky is blue.... Because its made of paint. Except via a much smarter avenue of discourse
My team has not been issued a Wii U, our higher ups are kinda... unwilling currently (im not going to say more, but it would be bad publicity)
but I agree, I believe that starting in he wanted to just put out real information but along the way he got blinded by how the media, lesser game devs and those who just hate nintendo and the system have been acting. From me and my teams tech experts perspective, its possible to range everything in the wii u from the high 200's all the way up to the late 600's. The possibility of it being lower to them is laughable, when they and I have looked at the ports and how badly optimized most of them are for the system there would be near 0 possibility of playability if it was just a mere 176 gflop system.
But we honestly can only guess since anything can be hidden within that die, new technology is a distinct possibility. Not that anyone will want to admit that Nintendo had put any of their own money into something new from AMD or that it could hang with the big boys with a bit of scaling... because right now, no one cares about truth or even possibility the world hates what the Wii U is and they dont know why.
