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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Wii U's eDRAM stronger than given credit?

We can easily see how much power WiiU currently has... Aside from the fact that the article itself sounds strange.



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Owning both a 360 and a Wii U, I can say with confidence that the Wii U has better graphics and performance than the 360. The differences may be more subtle -- but they are there.

High end of the 360 is roughly the same as the low end of the Wii U.



I predict NX launches in 2017 - not 2016



 

I don't really care for the power that the Wii U has in stock. I'm already happy to see that it isn't falling behind compared to the PS4/Xbox One as much as the Wii was to the PS3/Xbox 360.



The Wii U is weaker than the other consoles because it's less expensive. The competition is not only a year newer and doesn't split resources across a gamepad, but they also cost $100 more, and are from established tech companies. Nintendo would have to have sacrificed their children to a cult of C'thulu for the Wii U to be more powerful.

That said, I'm still not convinced any amount of difference will amount to a hill of beans, anyway. Graphics weren't the reason last generation ended: memory limits were. Developers just couldn't make big and pretty maps with only 512 MB of RAM. The Wii U has 1.5 GB of RAM, which is not 8 GB, but it's enough.

The graphics on the other consoles may be a notch better, but the graphics of this generation as a whole will only be a notch or two better than last gen, anyway.



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Egann said:

That said, I'm still not convinced any amount of difference will amount to a hill of beans, anyway. Graphics weren't the reason last generation ended: memory limits were. Developers just couldn't make big and pretty maps with only 512 MB of RAM. The Wii U has 1.5 GB of RAM, which is not 8 GB, but it's enough.


The Wii U has 2GB of ram. 1GB is used for the system and 1 GB is avaiable for games.



Egann said:
The Wii U is weaker than the other consoles because it's less expensive. The competition is not only a year newer and doesn't split resources across a gamepad, but they also cost $100 more, and are from established tech companies. Nintendo would have to have sacrificed their children to a cult of C'thulu for the Wii U to be more powerful.

That said, I'm still not convinced any amount of difference will amount to a hill of beans, anyway. Graphics weren't the reason last generation ended: memory limits were. Developers just couldn't make big and pretty maps with only 512 MB of RAM. The Wii U has 1.5 GB of RAM, which is not 8 GB, but it's enough.

The graphics on the other consoles may be a notch better, but the graphics of this generation as a whole will only be a notch or two better than last gen, anyway.

 

It will be a lot better on PS4/Xbone but we will also see a good increase on WiiU, too, but sadly only for exclusives. X looks wonderful, to say the least.

But somehow I think only a few games will max out WiiU, just like what happened to Wii, sadly. Given Wii had twice the power of Gamecube which had visually stunning graphics it was a shame what devs achieved on Wii...



TheLegendaryWolf said:

According to some people over at CinemaBlend, the Wii U’s eDRAM should be capable of much more output than that of the Xbox 360. When taking into consideration the new information and the Wii U’s total bandwidth of gigabytes per second, the Wii U should clock in at around 563.2GB per second. For comparison, the Xbox One runs at about 170GB per second of bandwidth between DDR3 and eSRAM.

"This explanation could show why the Wii U is capable of hitting 1080/60fps on titles with developers who are comfortable working with the hardware, while others struggle and make excuses as to why 1080p gaming isn’t possible on Nintendo’s latest console. Of course, there’s plenty of speculation about specs and the semiconductor technology behind the Wii U, so check out the full piece to see the conclusion. The fact is, the Wii U isn’t nearly as much of a flop hardware-wise as certain third party developers are attempting to paint."

What do you think?


I don't think the WiiU's eDram is the bottleneck given the graphical capabilities (which is well below XB1 or PS4). So a straightforward raw performance comparison would make sense, considering that it also uses an AMD (ATI) GPU. I suggest you to read this thread of mine to see a direct comparison of the GPUs of WiiU and PS4.

WiiU vs PS4 GPU power, architectural differences and efficiency.

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=173912&page=1



Playstation 5 vs XBox Series Market Share Estimates

Regional Analysis  (only MS and Sony Consoles)
Europe     => XB1 : 23-24 % vs PS4 : 76-77%
N. America => XB1 :  49-52% vs PS4 : 48-51%
Global     => XB1 :  32-34% vs PS4 : 66-68%

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Next Gen Consoles Impressions and Estimates

the information is pretty clear, bth wii u edram and xbox 360 edram were made by the same vendor, meaning NEC which fused with renesas, the article from bob paterson says that xbox 360 edram was made of 4 macros each of 500mhz and 1024bits bus width, with that you get 256GB/s(of course that since only the ROPS are in the same die with the edram only them have full access to this bandwidt while the gpu has to communicate via an external bus of 32GB/s, the wii u gpu and edram are in the same die chip silicon so it has full access to the total bandwidth of the edram). The chipworks photo showws that wii u edram is made out of 8 macros, so if we at least suppose something as old as the xbox 360 edram design, then we get 563.2GB/s with the 1024bits per macro and the 550mhz

we must remenber that renesa alreadysaid that wii u edram is using their best technology from the plant of NEC, so this news should come as no surprise, and sony already said that ps4 was going o use an edram of 1 terabyte, meaning that there should exist something like 2048biits per macro but we should sonsider the minium for now

now lets not confuse, edram bandwidth aint power



Squeezol said:
Egann said:

That said, I'm still not convinced any amount of difference will amount to a hill of beans, anyway. Graphics weren't the reason last generation ended: memory limits were. Developers just couldn't make big and pretty maps with only 512 MB of RAM. The Wii U has 1.5 GB of RAM, which is not 8 GB, but it's enough.


The Wii U has 2GB of ram. 1GB is used for the system and 1 GB is avaiable for games.


I was under the impression it was 1.5 GB for games, but it really doesn't matter.