77 replies to this topic

[BrosBeforeGardenTools]

This thread is for specs discussions and technical discussions of the Wii U. Like the CPU, GPU, shaders, RAM, etc. We could also cover the very technical subjects here, like 3D and how it relates to the hardware. Things not covered by this thread are hardware help and problems, and reviews of the hardware - unless, that is, you're taking your Wii U apart lol.

Here are some of the things we know about the Wii U:

- Supposedly has a 1.2GHz CPU of an advanced architecture.

- Supposedly has a 550MHz GPU, probably of an advanced/more powerful architecture compared to the 360's and PS3's GPUs.

- Apparently has 2GB RAM, 1GB for OS and 1GB for games.

Try to keep arguments as civilized debates and not fighting.

[The Lonely Koopa]

I'm pretty contempt with the specs at the moment I was(and still am) disappointed with the CPU clock speed but its understandable I guess that Nintendo went with the lower speed because Japan cares about energy consumption. .

The Ram I feel is fine because 1 gig of game ram is still twice as much as last gen and I'm sure they will be a way to take OS ram to game Ram if it ever needed.

GPU so far seems great its clocked higher than the 360 and ps3 GPU and its much more modern,

Edited by The Lonely Koopa, 12 December 2012 - 05:57 PM.

[BrosBeforeGardenTools]

I've given multiple theories about the power of the Wii U but based on what I know right now, I'd go with my theory that it's about 33-50% more powerful than the 360/PS3 overall.

[The Lonely Koopa]

I've given multiple theories about the power of the Wii U but based on what I know right now, I'd go with my theory that it's about 33-50% more powerful than the 360/PS3 overall.

I feel that might be about right I'm thinking 33-50% more powerful in specs but its modern architecture will allow it to do things more efficiently hopefully making it seem larger than that by a year from now.

[Foot]

We know that the CPU has Watson-like architecture, so that should be pretty great once developers begin to unlock it, and it combination with the GPGPU, the GPGPU should be able to handle some physics of its own, creating perfect gameplay mechanics...like I said, once developers unlock it...

~~~~~

RAM, 2 GB, 4 GBit chips (512 MB), @ 12.8 GB/s, with 1 Gb for OS, and 1 GB for Games (CPU, GPU)

GPGPU: Customized Radeon HD e6760 (AMD confirmed this to me in an email, actual specs customized by Nintendo) however the base specs include 480 stream shader processors, and DirectX 11 capabilities (which would me amazing detail levels even though it can't be used on a Non-Microsoft system, i.e. PC, Xbox) 550 MHz is pretty good I guess.

CPU: 3 Customized PowerPC 750 cores clocked @ 1.24 GHz. IBM has obviously upgraded the cores so yeah.

EDIT: About 4x more powerful than PS360

Edited by Heyheyharold, 12 December 2012 - 06:30 PM.

[The Lonely Koopa]

Still in my gut I feel the wiiU is going to be the wii situation even with good specs.
I feel the gaming industry for the most part won't be able to handle 3 consoles and pc being developed at once so one of these is going to get the short end of the stick and I feel its going to be the wii U even if it launched first.

Edited by The Lonely Koopa, 12 December 2012 - 06:37 PM.

[Sobari]

CPU-wise, I believe the Wii U will probably tie with current gen. The IPC (Instructions Per Clock) of the Wii U's CPU will undoubtedly be much higher than the 360's CPU do to it being a more efficient architecture, which means it'll be able to deliver comparable performance even with its lower clock speed. The fact that it supports Out-of-Order Execution also makes up for its lack of Hyper-Threading, since it can juggle tasks between its supposed three physical cores with ease; something the 360 can't do, which is why it needs its six threads to handle heavy workloads. Essentially, it delivers about the same performance in a much more efficient package.

When it comes to GPU and RAM, that's where the Wii U will probably shine the most. We hardly know anything about the GPU, but one of the few things we know for a fact is that the system has 2 Gigabytes of RAM to work with, half of which will be available to developers. That's at least DOUBLE the amount the 360 has to work with, and it's possible that more RAM will be freed up for developers to use as the system matures. It's hard to believe the Wii U actually requires a whole Gigabyte to handle whatever it's doing behind the scenes, so it might be a placeholder amount until Nintendo solidifies their ideas for the system.

[SoldMyWiiUAndLeftTheForums]

Potato, dude, your creating a new specs thread everyday man, half of them had All In One in the title, STOP

[Sobari]

We know that the CPU has Watson-like architecture, so that should be pretty great once developers begin to unlock it, and it combination with the GPGPU, the GPGPU should be able to handle some physics of its own, creating perfect gameplay mechanics...like I said, once developers unlock it...

~~~~~

RAM, 2 GB, 4 GBit chips (512 MB), @ 12.8 GB/s, with 1 Gb for OS, and 1 GB for Games (CPU, GPU)

GPGPU: Customized Radeon HD e6760 (AMD confirmed this to me in an email, actual specs customized by Nintendo) however the base specs include 480 stream shader processors, and DirectX 11 capabilities (which would me amazing detail levels even though it can't be used on a Non-Microsoft system, i.e. PC, Xbox) 550 MHz is pretty good I guess.

CPU: 3 Customized PowerPC 750 cores clocked @ 1.24 GHz. IBM has obviously upgraded the cores so yeah.

EDIT: About 4x more powerful than PS360

First off, GPGPU is not a piece of hardware; it's a name given to the act of running code traditionally meant for the CPU on a GPU. Second, Havok already confirmed that their physics engine included in the Wii U dev kit will be running on the CPU and not the GPU, presumably because advanced GPU-accelerated physics would suck too much performance away from the GPU and not leave enough resources left to produce graphics that can compete with or surpass current generation systems. And third, Wii U will be using OpenGL instead of DirectX, like all non-Microsoft hardware/operating systems, which can still handle most of the technologies that DirectX can, such as tessellation.

[BrosBeforeGardenTools]

Potato, dude, your creating a new specs thread everyday man, half of them had All In One in the title, STOP

I plan on this and that XBox 720/PS Omni one being my last one. What good would official threads be if I didn't follow them myself?

[Hunter]

Ugh, can a mod please pin this thread and lock the other million specs/technical discussion threads? Im sick to death of them (and i think majority of other forum users are too).

[Goose]

Ugh, can a mod please pin this thread and lock the other million specs/technical discussion threads? Im sick to death of them (and i think majority of other forum users are too).

Yes please

[3Dude]

First off, GPGPU is not a piece of hardware; it's a name given to the act of running code traditionally meant for the CPU on a GPU. Second, Havok already confirmed that their physics engine included in the Wii U dev kit will be running on the CPU and not the GPU, presumably because advanced GPU-accelerated physics would suck too much performance away from the GPU and not leave enough resources left to produce graphics that can compete with or surpass current generation systems. And third, Wii U will be using OpenGL instead of DirectX, like all non-Microsoft hardware/operating systems, which can still handle most of the technologies that DirectX can, such as tessellation.

Havok sure did confirm that. Though a lot of official sources confirmed a lot of false things this gen...

Looking at the wii u's cpu, one things very apparrant, it has strong grneral purpose and ipc, because its instriction pipelines are so short , and weak simd and low clockspeed (because its instruction pipes are so short).

I dont know WHAT 750 this is, but people like hector are murmuring things like fx, (broadway was cle) which compared to broadway, would have twice the transistors per core X 3 for tricore, and clocked nearly twice as high, with a huge edram cache, and a blazing fast interconnect to the gpu with access to the gpu's 32Mb edram.

The system would be capable of strong ai and ai systems, but 'weak' in large amounts of simultaneous ai.

Same with physics. strong in in depth physics, 'weak' in large amounts of simultaneous physics.

The gpu would be more than capable of covering simpler simplified physics and ai jobs for background masses, what with the easily prefictable paths used today, while the cpu handles things the player has its attention on.

Nintendo is already doing nutso stuff with this.

[Foot]

First off, GPGPU is not a piece of hardware; it's a name given to the act of running code traditionally meant for the CPU on a GPU. Second, Havok already confirmed that their physics engine included in the Wii U dev kit will be running on the CPU and not the GPU, presumably because advanced GPU-accelerated physics would suck too much performance away from the GPU and not leave enough resources left to produce graphics that can compete with or surpass current generation systems. And third, Wii U will be using OpenGL instead of DirectX, like all non-Microsoft hardware/operating systems, which can still handle most of the technologies that DirectX can, such as tessellation.

First off, GPGPU is a piece of hardware. It can handle some aspects to pull of some of the CPU payload.
Second, the presence of a GPGPU wasnt announced before Havok said it will be implemented. AND there are other physics engines that can be used, which the GPGPU can prob pull off some of the CPU's payload. The power split among the coding for the game can be decided by the developers for that stuff. And third, i am aware that DirectX is a Microsft-strict program. Wii U will use OpenGL, which can match DirectX performance. If the e6760 at its base can pull off DirectX 11, than OpenGl should be able to perform to that level as well, as long as Nintendo hadnt had the GPU downscaled.

You just got served

Havok sure did confirm that. Though a lot of official sources confirmed a lot of false things this gen...

Looking at the wii u's cpu, one things very apparrant, it has strong grneral purpose and ipc, because its instriction pipelines are so short , and weak simd and low clockspeed (because its instruction pipes are so short).

I dont know WHAT 750 this is, but people like hector are murmuring things like fx, (broadway was cle) which compared to broadway, would have twice the transistors per core X 3 for tricore, and clocked nearly twice as high, with a huge edram cache, and a blazing fast interconnect to the gpu with access to the gpu's 32Mb edram.

The system would be capable of strong ai and ai systems, but 'weak' in large amounts of simultaneous ai.

Same with physics. strong in in depth physics, 'weak' in large amounts of simultaneous physics.

The gpu would be more than capable of covering simpler simplified physics and ai jobs for background masses, what with the easily prefictable paths used today, while the cpu handles things the player has its attention on.

Nintendo is already doing nutso stuff with this.

750 is an earlier Powerpc core system from the 90's. Obviously IBM has upgraded it to Watson like capabilities, meaning our slow speed (1.24 GHz) is irrelevant when it comes to the instuctions of the cylces of the system. AMAZING!!!!!!!

In combonation with the GPGPU, well, the system can handle more power, and show off great graphics.

It will be next gen because of the capabilities of the combo

Edited by Heyheyharold, 13 December 2012 - 12:49 PM.

[tboss]

guess we need to mostly wait and see. this thread's claims look alot better than everywhere else, who says' clock speeds low, wiiU junk, xbox is going to be 6 times more powerful' based on clockspeed that is impossible. heck wiht the specs fanboys claim i wouldnt be surprised to see a $1000 consul that gets red ring of death regulry if you dont have a industrial fan hooked up. adn on top that 1-2 games in its lifetime that uses claimed power.

wiiU should hold fine if people actualy develope and optimmize it. GPGPU can help if the game is held bacck by weak CPU. but i expect the CPU to get ruffly double the xbox's CPU power by the end of its lifecycle. but if you want to guess optimization, look at xbox/PS3 release games, most were ports from teh generation before, and a few solos. like quake4, that ran worse than metriod prime 3, on wii. and wiiU runs top end xbox games worse on launche. add ruff amount of estimation from optimization and you should easily get double the xbox's power, if not more.

as for next gen, i see a similar approch to wiiU most likly, with CPU's that are closer to the gamecube=wii upgrade, if nto a little above, but buff GPU's. as very few games legit need that much power to run, and it looks next gen. if tehy go raw power again then they will probly hurt themself alot. heck microsoft is starting to fail enough that teh xbox is the fallback money instead of the rest of the company.

[GAMER1984]

this is the problem IMO... im not sure any 3rd party developer will give a damn about pushing the Wii U to its limits. I will admit i could be wrong and we could be very suprised at E3 2013. I really do believe the best looking games we could see on Wii U will be 1st and 2nd parties and indie devs. i think people like shin'en multimedia, frozenbyte, and Gaijin games will do more on Wii U from tech standpoint then the big 3rd party devs.

[CoffeeBuzz]

At some point console leaders have to put price point ahead of graphics.. Hardware tech is advancing so fast , the latest tech is always super expensive.
I think Nintendo is just ahead on this , if the others want to blow them out of the water with high tech gfx ect, their units I think would cost too much for the average joe..

Thats not to say they wont out perform, they are still in development and will have more options and slightly cheaper prices, but I dont think it will be the 2x to 4x better thats beings rumored.

Its possible wii u will be treated like the WII, thats unfortunate but I did enjoy the wii, and ill enjoy the wii u. Nintendo exclusives are always a lot of fun anyway. By the time the next consoles come up ill be able to get one of those too if I want to.. I had the ps3 and wii. So all the comparison stuff is a non issue for me.. I like wii u because I like nintendo games, hainvg games like ZombieU and BO2 are just icing on the cake.

Edited by CoffeeBuzz, 17 January 2013 - 08:32 PM.

[ElderKnight77]

First off, GPGPU is a piece of hardware. It can handle some aspects to pull of some of the CPU payload.
Second, the presence of a GPGPU wasnt announced before Havok said it will be implemented. AND there are other physics engines that can be used, which the GPGPU can prob pull off some of the CPU's payload. The power split among the coding for the game can be decided by the developers for that stuff. And third, i am aware that DirectX is a Microsft-strict program. Wii U will use OpenGL, which can match DirectX performance. If the e6760 at its base can pull off DirectX 11, than OpenGl should be able to perform to that level as well, as long as Nintendo hadnt had the GPU downscaled.

You just got served





750 is an earlier Powerpc core system from the 90's. Obviously IBM has upgraded it to Watson like capabilities, meaning our slow speed (1.24 GHz) is irrelevant when it comes to the instuctions of the cylces of the system. AMAZING!!!!!!!

In combonation with the GPGPU, well, the system can handle more power, and show off great graphics.

It will be next gen because of the capabilities of the combo

I agree...I see the Wii U's CPU more than just a boosted Broadway CPU. In fact, the way it's designed and stated it seems like it's a new CPU (since Freescale and IBM doesn't even produce the chip anyore) that's a hybrid of both Broadway and POWER7. The fact that the system incorporates GPGPU along with MCM architecture makes the system very efficient and flexible. The only hitch is how powerful is the GPU and which rumored GPU is the system using? The Wii U had been rumored to be anywhere from an R7xxx (highly unlikely due to power draw constraints) to the more feasible e6760 (for power consumption, HDMI 1.4, etc) which gives the GPU a huge variance depending on which GPU is used.

In conclusion the Wii U is most definitely around 2.5x-3x more powerful than an X360, the rendering of two screens alone give proof to that credence.

[GAMER1984]

I agree...I see the Wii U's CPU more than just a boosted Broadway CPU. In fact, the way it's designed and stated it seems like it's a new CPU (since Freescale and IBM doesn't even produce the chip anyore) that's a hybrid of both Broadway and POWER7. The fact that the system incorporates GPGPU along with MCM architecture makes the system very efficient and flexible. The only hitch is how powerful is the GPU and which rumored GPU is the system using? The Wii U had been rumored to be anywhere from an R7xxx (highly unlikely due to power draw constraints) to the more feasible e6760 (for power consumption, HDMI 1.4, etc) which gives the GPU a huge variance depending on which GPU is used.

In conclusion the Wii U is most definitely around 2.5x-3x more powerful than an X360, the rendering of two screens alone give proof to that credence.

Yeah never got the whole its broadway x3 thing. if you look at Nintendo own admission its a new CPU they just had the right people their to make it BC. Wii U will be fine its just gonna need developers who are willing to push it.

[ElderKnight77]

Yeah never got the whole its broadway x3 thing. if you look at Nintendo own admission its a new CPU they just had the right people their to make it BC. Wii U will be fine its just gonna need developers who are willing to push it.

If they just look at it even by CPU speed then the Espresso is technically 5.4x the peak power of the broadway chip. Along with it's ability to do OOE, ability to off load to the GPU via GPGPU, while having more cache; the Espresso is more than capable of keeping up with the Xenon CPU.

Edited by ElderKnight77, 21 January 2013 - 02:44 AM.