As cool as all of this is, seeing as how Nintendo is first in line and the developers are reveling in the idea of "Wow, it can do what the PS3 can do" and not "Wow, this is true next generation technology for video games!" I'm afraid we may turn up in another Wii situation.
Then again, I don't know much more they can do with home consoles. Either way, the fact that they're amazed with how it matches up with the PS3 is a bit underwhelming to me. I don't want this turning into the Wii where a lot of games don't come to it because it's so far behind. The Wii was more powerful than the Xbox and the PS2, but look where it went. This isn't enough to get excited about.
I wouldn't expect that. Rumors of the Xbox "Loop" are pointing to a smaller, cheaper Xbox Next with ARM 6-core processor. For those who don't know, ARM is whats in most smartphones and tablets. These processor by 2013 are said to have power just as good as Xbox 360.
If this rumor holds true, this would mean the Xbox "Loop" is going to be on par with the IBM Watson CPU and the ATI/AMD RV770 inspired GPU.
This merely goes along with the rumor that the Wii U uses a GPU based on the RV770 series of ATI Radeon GPU. This narrows the expectations down to a specific range, but still were talking about a GPU from about 3 to 5 times as powerful as current HD consoles, but with developers earlier pointing toward the Wii U's GPU being around a Radeon HD 4850 and more recent rumors of it being around a Radeon HD 4870 in power we can at least hope that the Wii U is around 4 to 5 times as powerful as Xbox 360.
Where have you heard it was from the 48xx series? And the RV770 is the base for all newer cards, or most, from AMD. Which means Nintendo might have started with the RV770 and AMD has been updating it since. Also all rumors point towards the GPU pretty much being done, if I remember correctly, and CPU still be worked out. Or that could be swapped.