39 replies to this topic

[Desert Punk]

I'd like to know what idiot came up with this mhz argument that mhz isn't important. It's a major factor of comparision between cpu's but clearly architecture of the cpu has to be factored in as well. There never was a time when you could compare processors by mhz. When the 386 was replaced by the 486 performance doubled by mhz approx. When the pentium came out it doubled performance again approx by mhz.

The reason developers are less than impressed with the wii u cpu and games are struggling to compare to 360/PS3 at times is because it has neither an advanced architecture or a good mhz/ghz speed. That's the issue.

I personally think the wii u cpu and gpgpu overall make the console about current gen performance although some of the early titles are a little weaker as its a new platform. I'm happy with this.

What I'm not happy with is people pretending its a next gen console that will compete with ps4 and the new xbox. Clearly this isn't true and is completely unrealistic. Surely we have gone past that point now and can be more realistic about the wii u. Spec wise it will not compare, the wii u is really Nintendo's entry into the current gen of consoles.

It stiil represents a huge jump in performance over wii.

[Alex Atkin UK]

But that is the point, we don't know the exact architecture so we cannot say how efficient it is at a given mhz rating.

I agree, its not going to compare well to the next Xbox or Playstation, but I highly suspect in the right hands it IS better than the current generation. Its just as it IS relying more on architectural differences rather than raw speed, it needs the effort put in to run well.

As has been said before, its very similar to the PS3 situation where its a very poor CPU if you do not utilise the SPUs, but utilising the SPUs requires a lot of time and effort to learn how to best use them. On Wii U, no developer trying to get a game out in the launch window had anywhere near enough time to learn its architectural strengths, so all they see right now are its weaknesses. Plus the biggest negatives came from developers who haven't written anything for the Wii U at all so they naturally only see the negatives.

It happens on PCs too. I remember upgrading a graphics card to a newer, faster, model and it played my older games worse because its backwards compatibility for the older versions of DirectX was downgraded in favour of pushing the newer more optimised functions.

This is somewhat where Wii U is now. Ports from Xbox/Playstation are suffering as they are written for the older CPUs and GPUs, so simply trying to execute the same code on the Wii U gives an inferior result. It will require a different way of thinking, which is actually more similar to how the new Xbox and Playstation will work than it is current gen. So its not time to panic yet, the developers just haven't had the time or inclination to try and get the most out of Wii U yet.

At the end of the day, I would hugely offended if the new Xbox WASN'T many times more powerful than the Wii U. The Xbox was never designed to be a silent, small, unobstrusive console. Its always been a huge, noisy, beast of a machine. If its anything less than that I just can't see it selling. Although I do hope they put more effort into a more efficient and quieter cooling system (and optical drive) this time round - the original Xbox 360 system was noisier and less efficient than it should have been.

Edited by Alex Atkin UK, 23 December 2012 - 03:25 PM.

[syks-1]

I always knew the wii u would be behind the next ps3/360 when i bought it considering sony and microsoft are going with crazy amounts of ram for there consoles(or so its rumored) but it didnt worry me when i bought it and it dosnt really worry me now...i will be buying the next ps3 anyway and my lovely wii u will still be used for the exclusives

It did/does surprise me though how slow the clock speed is on the new wii u but like some people have said the clock speed isnt everything and i think that the wii u will push out graphics better than the 360/ps3 of this gen when developers have gotten used to it.

[GAMER1984]

its amazing to me this is still a topic of debate on so many sites. im going to enjoy the games that come for wii u and i cant wait to see the impossible made possible.

[3Dude]

I'd like to know what idiot came up with this mhz argument that mhz isn't important.

1. No one has said that, you are putting words in peoples mouths to create a stupid looking easy to beat strawman argument.

2. It was Steve Jobs. Thats computer science 101. How do you guys consistantly know absolutely nothing about recent pertinent history?

3. Speaking of architecture, a tricore 750 would get 18 instructions per clock compared to Xenons 6.

[tboss]

I always knew the wii u would be behind the next ps3/360 when i bought it considering sony and microsoft are going with crazy amounts of ram for there consoles(or so its rumored) but it didnt worry me when i bought it and it dosnt really worry me now...i will be buying the next ps3 anyway and my lovely wii u will still be used for the exclusives

It did/does surprise me though how slow the clock speed is on the new wii u but like some people have said the clock speed isnt everything and i think that the wii u will push out graphics better than the 360/ps3 of this gen when developers have gotten used to it.

i heard varing things, early rumors said vary buff systems, and those rumors slowly lowered and lowered in quality. like PS omini new rumors have it as only a small improvement over wiiU, but most of its extra power and price is used on some virtual reality like hemelt.

xbox still claims very high stats, and a sell at a massive loss price,

sony seems to be coppying nintendo but also tring to 1up them.

xbox want to be buff and run a high risk consul off of microsofts money and their high fanbase. microsoft is slowly starting to fail in every area though.

[Nollog]

I'd like to know what idiot came up with this mhz argument that mhz isn't important. It's a major factor of comparision between cpu's but clearly architecture of the cpu has to be factored in as well. There never was a time when you could compare processors by mhz. When the 386 was replaced by the 486 performance doubled by mhz approx. When the pentium came out it doubled performance again approx by mhz.

The reason developers are less than impressed with the wii u cpu and games are struggling to compare to 360/PS3 at times is because it has neither an advanced architecture or a good mhz/ghz speed. That's the issue.

I personally think the wii u cpu and gpgpu overall make the console about current gen performance although some of the early titles are a little weaker as its a new platform. I'm happy with this.

What I'm not happy with is people pretending its a next gen console that will compete with ps4 and the new xbox. Clearly this isn't true and is completely unrealistic. Surely we have gone past that point now and can be more realistic about the wii u. Spec wise it will not compare, the wii u is really Nintendo's entry into the current gen of consoles.

It stiil represents a huge jump in performance over wii.

Pro gamers use FlOpS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLOPS

We don't know the flops for the wii u's gpgpu yet.
The 360 claims 115 GFLOPS whereas the PS3 claims 218 GFLOPS.
Adjusting stuff in my head about the ppc750 range I'd guess Wii U's CPU would be around 300 GFLOPS.

[Plutonas]

wii U gpu may be much more than 400... max at 500.... If you check some amd models at 6xxx series, can give 75w at 700-800gflops (unmodified pc parts)... so...give it some faith.. lol 300 is better than the current but not much. Depends how many spus, etc the card got... The only certain thing is, wii U gpu is big.

Edited by Orion, 24 December 2012 - 01:17 PM.

[Nollog]

Yeah 300gflops is not factoring in the gpu at all though.

[Alex Wolfers]

Edited by Mr.Saturn, 24 December 2012 - 10:15 PM.

[3Dude]

Pro gamers use FlOpS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLOPS
We don't know the flops for the wii u's gpgpu yet.
The 360 claims 115 GFLOPS whereas the PS3 claims 218 GFLOPS.
Adjusting stuff in my head about the ppc750 range I'd guess Wii U's CPU would be around 300 GFLOPS.

Ha ha, oh wow. 300? 750's arent very good at floating point/simd, g5 (xenon/cell ppu) specializes in flops (xenon has a special unit dedicated to it) at the expense of whats really important to cpu's, general purpose.

So xenon has a very high peak theoretical flop count, but cant get above 60% of it in real world applications due to shortcomings like in order execution and 500 cycle branch miss penalties for having a not goodly deep instruction pipeline (damn near 30 iirc) so it could be clocked so high.

750, will never reach 300 gflops. More like 30.

Edited by 3Dude, 26 December 2012 - 10:38 AM.

[Nollog]

Ha ha, oh wow. 300? 750's arent very good at floating point/simd, g5 (xenon/cell ppu) specializes in flops (xenon has a special unit dedicated to it) at the expense of whats really important to cpu's, general purpose.

So xenon has a very high peak theoretical flop count, but cant get above 60% of it in real world applications due to shortcomings like in order execution and 500 cycle branch miss penalties for having a not goodly deep instruction pipeline (damn near 30 iirc) so it could be clocked so high.

750, will never reach 300 gflops. More like 30.

It was a trek to find any information about floping ppc750's.
They apparently use specialised dsps for floating the points.

[Plutonas]

guys dont confuse and compare 750 and xenon with gpus... we speak about gpu flops... Xenon flops are 56 (theoretically is CPU Floating Point Performance 115.2 GFLOPS )... And when originally xbox360 released.. it was seperate chipsets. After 3-4 generations xbox transformed to a gpgpu.

Also ps3 cpu is 210+ gflops but in real performance is about 25-40... When I said more than 400, I ment the gpu of wii U, not the cpu.. lol

Edited by Orion, 26 December 2012 - 11:35 AM.

[3Dude]

It was a trek to find any information about floping ppc750's.
They apparently use specialised dsps for floating the points.

yeah.

They would absolutely have to if they wanted strong flop performance.

32 64 bit registers just isnt really screaming flops performance machine.

guys dont confuse and compare 750 and xenon with gpus... we speak about gpu flops... Xenon flops are 56 (theoretically is CPU Floating Point Performance 115.2 GFLOPS )... And when originally xbox360 released.. it was seperate chipsets. After 3-4 generations xbox transformed to a gpgpu.
Also ps3 cpu is 210+ gflops but in real performance is about 25-40... When I said more than 400, I ment the gpu of wii U, not the cpu.. lol

There is so much wrong in this. Cell is no effeciency wonder machine, but it does manage better than 12% effeciency.

You do realize cell took large amounts of the rendering load off of the rsx right?

Edited by 3Dude, 26 December 2012 - 11:37 AM.

[Nollog]

flops really don't matter that much anyway.
I don't think AI or textures are done by calculating .3747634234525345763254532452356452 mul 257435634.6723743525
Dunno how ai is done really. I assume it's more intelligent than random number generating, which is why you'd use crazy floats or doubles in my experience.

[Plutonas]

true... xbox1 was 150 gflops!! and xbox360 was 116 gflops

Edited by Orion, 26 December 2012 - 01:30 PM.

[3Dude]

flops really don't matter that much anyway.
I don't think AI or textures are done by calculating .3747634234525345763254532452356452 mul 257435634.6723743525
Dunno how ai is done really. I assume it's more intelligent than random number generating, which is why you'd use crazy floats or doubles in my experience.

Floating points are important for textures, primarily rotating translating and transforming them over a polygon frame in a continuous (as opposed to incremental) environment. Same for polygons, especially for polygons, floating point is the major competing method for crunching seamless polygons, as its used to quickly track the millions of vertices in a continuous 3d space.

It is NOT particularly well suited for accurate ai and physics, as its not a real number, but a fast approximization of one, but can be used for simplistic easy to branch predict ai's and physics that actually... Arent a whole lot more intelligent than, as you put, random number generating. But it can be done in large quantity, making it desirable, after all, the gamers human brain cant pay attention to everything happening at once, typically only the few immediate things their attention is on, which is given higher quality instructions.

[Nollog]

Floating points are important for textures, primarily rotating translating and transforming them over a polygon frame in a continuous (as opposed to incremental) environment. Same for polygons, especially for polygons, floating point is the major competing method for crunching seamless polygons, as its used to quickly track the millions of vertices in a continuous 3d space.

It is NOT particularly well suited for accurate ai and physics, as its not a real number, but a fast approximization of one, but can be used for simplistic easy to branch predict ai's and physics that actually... Arent a whole lot more intelligent than, as you put, random number generating. But it can be done in large quantity, making it desirable, after all, the gamers human brain cant pay attention to everything happening at once, typically only the few immediate things their attention is on, which is given higher quality instructions.

I keep forgetting flops happen in gpu's too.
I didn't even factor them in when making that post I mean.

[tshrimp]

I'd bet my left nut that several of the tech nuts on this forum have already read this, or articles stating the same thing (heck, even I don't really get into this console tech numbers nonsense and know Marcan cracked it).

There's nothing wrong with this thread per se, and despite it not really looking like it, these types of thread have been flamebait in recent days. The brawl over specification discussion is ridiculous.

You are in luck....you do not have to give up your left nut. I am a tech geek, and have read this. It is so hard to tell how things will turn out. Spec and reviews on the PS3 was how it is the most powerful of the consoles, but we have seen that it seems to have slightly worse graphics than the Xbox 360, and more framerate issues.

We will know in the next year or 2 how powerful the system actually is. The fact that it can handle a direct port with success is a good sign.

[Soul]

I'd like to know what idiot came up with this mhz argument that mhz isn't important. It's a major factor of comparision between cpu's but clearly architecture of the cpu has to be factored in as well. There never was a time when you could compare processors by mhz. When the 386 was replaced by the 486 performance doubled by mhz approx. When the pentium came out it doubled performance again approx by mhz.

The reason developers are less than impressed with the wii u cpu and games are struggling to compare to 360/PS3 at times is because it has neither an advanced architecture or a good mhz/ghz speed. That's the issue.

I personally think the wii u cpu and gpgpu overall make the console about current gen performance although some of the early titles are a little weaker as its a new platform. I'm happy with this.

What I'm not happy with is people pretending its a next gen console that will compete with ps4 and the new xbox. Clearly this isn't true and is completely unrealistic. Surely we have gone past that point now and can be more realistic about the wii u. Spec wise it will not compare, the wii u is really Nintendo's entry into the current gen of consoles.

It stiil represents a huge jump in performance over wii.

You had me then you lost me.