I've been doing some digging and looking at numbers for different cards, performance wise and tdp numbers to get an idea of what kind of heat the really fairly small console will be able to handle compared to it's much bigger cousins. Now given that the 360 and PS3 use really old and inefficient gpus there should still be room left to keep the Wii U really powerful but I'm still really interested in what’s in the guts of this new Wii console.
I found the following site to compare the different choices based on what kind of tdp they will generate:
http://www.geeks3d.c...r-tdp-database/
I've looked at the 5770 as a possible choice but it would draw about 108 watts, the 5750 has 86 watts but I doubt the Wii U will be able to handle that kind of heat. The 5670 can probably handle it with its 61 watts.
Looking at the 6000 generation the 6670 makes the most sense it has 66/72 watts of tdp and is one of the most power efficient cards on the market. Check out the following site:
http://www.techpower...HD_6670/23.html
Looking at this site but going back a page gives you “Relative Performance (all resolutions)” and shows that the 5770 is 46% faster and the 5850 is 94% faster then the 6670.
But then I went back to the 4000 generation of cards to take a closer look since this was the gpu generation that was in the very first rumour about the next Nintendo console (all that about 6 inch touchscreen, no multitouch etc, etc). Looking at the 4770 in particular and comparing it to the 5770 which is a pretty decent card (it’s the same gpu that’s in the 6770 for some reason). Take a look at the following site which compares these two cards and remember that the Radeon HD 6850 is only about 30 % faster then the 5770:
http://www.hwcompare...radeon-hd-5770/
( If you don’t believe me about the 6850 only being 30% faster then the 5770 then see this:
http://www.anandtech...duct/296?vs=291 )
So the 4770 has 80 watts tdp, at first I thought the 4770 was on 55nm and that AMD would simply shrink it to 40nm to get some lower temps buts apparently it was 40nm from the beginning.
So what do you think? which route will they go? gpus can most of the time handle much higher temps then cpus so mayby this console can handle much more then I think it can.
(Sorry if you think my post is too long or irrelevant for some reason…)
(Edit1, 1,5 hours later):
I've noticed that the Anandtech link I gave didn't really show what I intended with it - instead view this link that I talked about beforehand:
http://www.techpower...HD_6670/22.html
Doing the calculations the Radeon HD 6850 is about 33% faster then the 5770.
But the most important part I've now realized is a really good alternative to the gpus I've mentioned: the 6790 but it would probably have to be clocked down to get down from its 110-115W tdp. (the tdp number from my first post and that link is in error - it doesn't have 150w tdp).
Maybe if AMD can offer some kind of middle path between the 6670 and the 6790 we could get something really nice, been given this some more thought and since I wrote my first post I actually think that 80w tdp would be the max they could get away with and the new Wii console looks to have increased its size - it's thicker, wider and longer. Plus the pictures show more ventilation holes on the right side so they could get away with it. Seeing as how Apple can throw in 95 watts Core i5 and i7 quad core CPUs in fairly low profile iMacs - Nintendo probably can squeeze in an 80 watt GPU in their next console.
Edited by CapeOfSuperman, 21 June 2011 - 11:23 AM.
