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curl-6 on 09 April 2016
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elektranine said:
curl-6 said:

Regarding the more modern feature set, I remember Black Forest Games talking about how Wii U's GPU, Latte, has DX11 level features like geometry shaders. Also, it's a GPGPU, and having access to 32MB of Embedded DRAM (that's over three times more than 360) would be a big help. Shin'en in particular talked a lot about how useful the eDRAM to pushing graphics in their games.

It may not be a big leap over PS3/360, but it's definitely more capable.

I hate to tell you this but you've been misinformed. Geometry shaders are not a DirectX 11 level feature and the Wii U GPU does not have the hardware to support DX11 and the GPU does not have direct access to the edram.

 

  • Geometry shaders have been possible on many DirectX versions and OpenGL. You can do these shaders as far back as DX9. So geometry shaders prove nothing besides DX 9-11 level hardware support.
  • The Wii  U GPU comes froma reference design that only has upto DirectX 10.1 feature level hardware. It lacks the needed hardware to ever support features exclusive to DX11/ newer OpenGL.
  • GPGPU is just a term that stands for general purpose GPU applications. It is not new or exclusive to the Wii U gpu and both the PS3 and Xbox 360 support that. It is simply about running code originally meant for the CPU and adapting it to the GPU. They had GPGPU even before the PS3/Xbox 360 launched.
  • The 32mb of EDRAM is embedded on the CPU not the GPU on the Wii U. This means that the GPU can never directly access the EDRAM iwthout first doing through the system bus and querying the CPU. This adds latency and computational costs that would quickly destroy any advantage of using the edram by the GPU. Nintendo should have put the EDRAM on the GPU not the CPU.
  • Shin'en is not a particularly good example for developers praising the Wii U's system architecture. They are pretty much exclusive to Nintendo and have no real experience outside of Nintendo products. They haven't even released any full retail Wii U titles yet. So they can be classed as a sceond party indie developer.
So if you have any concrete numbers or examples to show that the Wii U is "definitely more capable" than the PS3/Xbox 360 then list them. I'm talking some sort of big leap or something that would definitely not be possible on the other two consoles. As far as I am aware there was no game possible on the Wii U that wasn't on the PS3/Xbox 360.

 

Devs who've worked on the system  as well as Digital Foundry's teardown say otherwise:

http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2013/09/developer_interview_black_forest_games_on_bringing_giana_sisters_twisted_dreams_to_wii_u

"The Wii U has some PC-like dx10/dx11-like systems like geometry shaders"

" On the tech side, having DX11 level features is pretty useful"

https://mynintendonews.com/2013/09/21/shinen-claims-its-not-the-hardwares-fault-if-devs-cant-create-good-looking-wii-u-games/

"on Wii U the eDRAM is available to the GPU and CPU."

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/df-hardware-wii-u-graphics-power-finally-revealed

"In the cyan area we have the 32MB of eDRAM - fast memory contained within the GPU itself. "

And no, Shin'en are not second party. They have developed on PS4. They are a third party developer, albiet one with extensive knowledge and experience with Wii U's hardware.

Is there a game on PS3/360 that does physically based rendering at 60fps?