31 replies to this topic

[ShadowVector]

There has been some recent clarification to the comment that was made awhile back by 4A Games’ Metro: Last Light. Chief technical officer, Oles Shishkovtsov, that "[The] Wii U Has A Horrible, Slow CPU." Huw Benyon of THQ has now stated that:

"Our look at the Wii U extended to a very early look at some very early kits. We...we did some work on it, but we made a decision fairly early on that we weren’t going to commit further resource to it. So yeah, we didn’t go too far. Take any of the comments you’ve seen attributed with a pinch of salt - it’s certainly not been based on any kind of analysis of final hardware." — Source

Since it has been reported that Wii U had undergone significant improvements throughout its development over early kits, this should help put some minds at ease in knowing that THQ's comment was based on nothing more than a very early look of some very early Wii U dev kits.

Edited by ShadowVector, 13 December 2012 - 08:20 AM.

[Hunter]

There has been a lot of spec discussion threads posted recently. If you wouldnt mind, could you please use the "search" function in future to find previously made threads regarding the topic youre posting about, or just post it in the general spec discussion thread (http://thewiiu.com/t...ussions-thread/).

Regarding this topic, it would be best to post it here: http://thewiiu.com/t...last-light-dev/

Edited by Hunter, 13 December 2012 - 08:43 AM.

[Plutonas]

I think the early dev kits had more powerful cpu than the actual retail wii U (?)... And it was a equivalent to wii U cpu, not a broadway... the broadway cpu was well known after wii U shiped to the stores. We all thought its a power 7 based cpu... but its not. It uses some features, "out of order execution", ed ram, cache... but thats it..

I remember the dev kit by VGLEAKS, showed almost an equal to 360 cpu... This one is less than the half in raw power... now the features may give it a faster access in stuff.. But, yeah its less powerfull the the dev kit by VGLEAKS.

Edited by Orion, 13 December 2012 - 08:51 AM.

[3Dude]

I think the early dev kits had more powerful cpu than the actual retail wii U (?)... And it was a equivalent to wii U cpu, not a broadway... the broadway cpu was well known after wii U shiped to the stores. We all thought its a power 7 based cpu... but its not. It uses some features, "out of order execution", ed ram, cache... but thats it..
I remember the dev kit by VGLEAKS, showed almost an equal to 360 cpu... This one is less than the half in raw power... now the features may give it a faster access in stuff.. But, yeah its less powerfull the the dev kit by VGLEAKS.

The wii u cpu rapes xenon, eats it, and craps it out brutally in every single category except one.

Xenon was a horrible horrible cpu.

One wii u core can execute as many instructions in a cycle as the ENTIRE 360 cpu.

360 can execute 1 instruction per thread, it has 2 threads a core, and 3 cores, thats six instructions a clock.

wii u gets six instructions a core (including 2 integers) and three cores for 18 instructions a
clock.

Thats not even getting into how short the wii u instriction pipelines are, and how stupid long xenons are, how awesome wii u's branch prediction is and how crap xenons is, How every single missed branch is a 500 cycle penalty, while wii u has a zero penalty 1st miss and a six cycle miss afterwards.

Edited by 3Dude, 13 December 2012 - 09:38 AM.

[Zinix]

Hmm, interesting. I wonder how the trolls will try to spin this around.

[Crysos161]

So basically never trust anything when coming from someone who works at THQ, gotcha!

Edited by Crysos161, 13 December 2012 - 11:18 AM.

[alan123]

not this again !

[Gamejunkie]

How many more threads do we need on the specifications of the Wii U. Honestly !

[Eskimo_sam]

come on guys we have heard these rumours to many times by so many people there has to b truth in it. weather its a little bit more powerful or on par with ps360. i think it is a little more powerful and im thinking cause its new tech they might be able to optimize it abit more but if its on par were in trouble cause evrything has been squeezed out of the current gen already which means basically wat ur seeing now is wat ur gunna get

[Zinix]

come on guys we have heard these rumours to many times by so many people there has to b truth in it. weather its a little bit more powerful or on par with ps360. i think it is a little more powerful and im thinking cause its new tech they might be able to optimize it abit more but if its on par were in trouble cause evrything has been squeezed out of the current gen already which means basically wat ur seeing now is wat ur gunna get

I bet you thought that launch 360 and PS3 games were what we were going to get as well.

[Medu]

The wii u cpu rapes xenon, eats it, and craps it out brutally in every single category except one.

Xenon was a horrible horrible cpu.

One wii u core can execute as many instructions in a cycle as the ENTIRE 360 cpu.

360 can execute 1 instruction per thread, it has 2 threads a core, and 3 cores, thats six instructions a clock.

wii u gets six instructions a core (including 2 integers) and three cores for 18 instructions a
clock.

Thats not even getting into how short the wii u instriction pipelines are, and how stupid long xenons are, how awesome wii u's branch prediction is and how crap xenons is, How every single missed branch is a 500 cycle penalty, while wii u has a zero penalty 1st miss and a six cycle miss afterwards.

Can we stop with the fiction. The Wii U does not do 18 IPC, it does a bit more than 2. The Xenon does about 2 making it in theory about twice as fast as the Wii. However the Wii U CPU will get much closer to it's maximum potential due to been OoOE- common figure is about 1/3 faster- making the Wii U CPU about 2/3 as fast as the Xbox CPU.

[MorbidGod]

How many more threads do we need on the specifications of the Wii U. Honestly !

200 threads. And one more when Wii U 2 comes out.

[cannonshane]

Refer to sig, Who gives a carp. Play the games you like and enjoy them for what they are, which is fun, not because some nerd reckons its not that powerful.

[SoldMyWiiUAndLeftTheForums]

These forums really are dying aren't they, slowly but surely..........................

[3Dude]

Can we stop with the fiction. The Wii U does not do 18 IPC, it does a bit more than 2. The Xenon does about 2 making it in theory about twice as fast as the Wii. However the Wii U CPU will get much closer to it's maximum potential due to been OoOE- common figure is about 1/3 faster- making the Wii U CPU about 2/3 as fast as the Xbox CPU.

heh heh... ha... ha ha HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!

Broadway retires 2 instructions a clock. fetches 4 from the instruction cache, and executes six. Oh, and most instructions are finished in ONE clock.

You are right, wii u may not do 18 ipc. Thats what an un upgraded broadway would do as a tricore. If anything espresso would be capable of more.

Why dont you follow your own advice, AND RETIRE YOUR MADE UP FICTION YOU PULLED OUT OF YOUR BUTT, and replace it with the REAL NUMBERS from the official broadway documentation ive actually ATTACHED to this board numerous times.


So what does the OFFICIAL documentation say about instructions executed?

No way six?

What have we learned?

Edited by 3Dude, 14 December 2012 - 02:38 AM.

[dyatir]

1. They told us already that they had an early dev kit.
2. The wii u is GPU centric.

[Plutonas]

all next gens will be GPU centric's... Thats good for pc! All 3 will have gpgpus and maybe sony and or ms going for dual gpus.. There is some rumors though that ms may go for a 6 core cpu and a weak gpu 6 or 7 AMD series (ibm cpu though)... if they do that, they will try to stick with the current optimizations... cpu based most... But if sony and nintendo are gpu centrics, I think xbox will fail... 2v1

anybody knows the true leaks about xbox720? In my research it says 16 cores POWER7 cpu, that means.. 4 cores 16 threads at about 2ghz ...

If thats true, we are going to have a victim in the next gen... Sony follows nintendo and microsoft tries a different path ; because

Nintendo IBM cpu and a good GPU (gpu centric)
Sony x86 based cpu (PC based cpu) and 2 gpus (gpu centric)
Microsoft a good cpu (IBM) and cheap gpu. (cpu centric)

After edit : XBOX720 will be like sonys x86 based cpu by AMD... so it will be gpu centric to.

Edited by Orion, 15 December 2012 - 01:50 PM.

[Medu]

heh heh... ha... ha ha HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!

Broadway retires 2 instructions a clock. fetches 4 from the instruction cache, and executes six. Oh, and most instructions are finished in ONE clock.

You are right, wii u may not do 18 ipc. Thats what an un upgraded broadway would do as a tricore. If anything espresso would be capable of more.

Why dont you follow your own advice, AND RETIRE YOUR MADE UP FICTION YOU PULLED OUT OF YOUR BUTT, and replace it with the REAL NUMBERS from the official broadway documentation ive actually ATTACHED to this board numerous times.


So what does the OFFICIAL documentation say about instructions executed?

No way six?

What have we learned?

You are been confused by terminology. Here is a decent blog posting that is worth a read.http://perilsofparal...rscalar-vs.html

Broadway retires 2 instructions a clock.

Which means it can finish 2 instructions per clock, which is what I was saying.

and executes six.

I cannot be sure what IBM mean by this but it's probably just the stages in the pipeline. Not even an ivybridge core can complete 6 instructions per clock.

Oh, and most instructions are finished in ONE clock.

Again this will be the instructions at the pipeline level. There is nothing special about that for a RISC chip. A CISC chip might take more than 1 clock to execute a single pipeline stage.

At a more basic level all you have to do is take a look at the CPU die size, and the systems power usage, and you will know it's not a very powerful CPU. It's a very cost/power usage efficient CPU but not all that powerful. The PS360 CPU's weren't very efficient but they massive were brute force monsters. When released the Xbox360 had a CPU of 176mm2 and a GPU of 182mm2(without eDram). The Wii U has a 32mm2 CPU and a 150mm2 GPU(alothough that probably includes a lot of eDram). This shows that Nintendo have put a lot more resources into the GPU than CPU which is fairly stand in this day and age but most games will be designed for CPU's with more power than the Wii U mainly because the PS360 generation had more powerful CPU's than they really should of had(most games run better on the Xbox due to it's better GPU- PS3 was way too CPU focused).

[Plutonas]

This shows that Nintendo have put a lot more resources into the GPU than CPU which is fairly stand in this day and age but most games will be designed for CPU's with more power than the Wii U mainly because the PS360 generation had more powerful CPU's than they really should of had(most games run better on the Xbox due to it's better GPU- PS3 was way too CPU focused).

I disagree with u, that xbox runs better than ps3, because it has better gpu... All ports from 360 to the PC, ALL are cpu limited!!!!!!!!!! And its a pain in the A#$# .. Never seen a game port from 360 that has any gpu instructions on it... Thats why we had so many problems with the pc versions! Our sli and cf was more like pointless..

Even assasins creed 3, the latest.. is cpu limited!!! And because xbox runs with 1 core - 2 threads for the games... If you have a quad core or a duo core cpu in the pc, it has TOTALLY the same cpu ussage!! Skyrim took about 6 - 8 months, till bethesda fix it for the PC. It was CPU limited and u could see a GTX580 with 10 fps in some areas!! lol

I wonder, some developers mock wii U because is GPU centric... What will happen when the new ones come out (ps4 and 720).. they will have to re-programm their engines.

Edited by Orion, 16 December 2012 - 03:58 PM.

[GAMER1984]

You are been confused by terminology. Here is a decent blog posting that is worth a read.http://perilsofparal...rscalar-vs.html



Which means it can finish 2 instructions per clock, which is what I was saying.



I cannot be sure what IBM mean by this but it's probably just the stages in the pipeline. Not even an ivybridge core can complete 6 instructions per clock.



Again this will be the instructions at the pipeline level. There is nothing special about that for a RISC chip. A CISC chip might take more than 1 clock to execute a single pipeline stage.

At a more basic level all you have to do is take a look at the CPU die size, and the systems power usage, and you will know it's not a very powerful CPU. It's a very cost/power usage efficient CPU but not all that powerful. The PS360 CPU's weren't very efficient but they massive were brute force monsters. When released the Xbox360 had a CPU of 176mm2 and a GPU of 182mm2(without eDram). The Wii U has a 32mm2 CPU and a 150mm2 GPU(alothough that probably includes a lot of eDram). This shows that Nintendo have put a lot more resources into the GPU than CPU which is fairly stand in this day and age but most games will be designed for CPU's with more power than the Wii U mainly because the PS360 generation had more powerful CPU's than they really should of had(most games run better on the Xbox due to it's better GPU- PS3 was way too CPU focused).

Agree and disagree with you.