Actually, no, Nano Assault Neo is not on 3DS. That's the original Nano Assault. Different game. More modern shader techniques seem a likely candidate for its post-PS3/360 tricks, as more than one dev has corroborated that the GPU has a newer feature set than last gen consoles.

And Trine 2 is quite a bit more demanding than Rayman Legends, hence the resolution/fps gap. The latter is largely 2D sprites, while the former uses 3D geometry with much more demanding shaders, lighting, etc.

Trine and Need for Speed have already proven Wii U can do better textures than PS3/360 thanks to more memory. Hard-drive streaming is not enough to alleviate a 1GB-<500MB disadvantage in RAM size. Ultimately you'll run into situations where you need more than 500MB in play at once, and when that happens, PS3/360 hit a brick wall.

As to Wii U's GPU being well documented, we don't know that; it's make and model have not been confirmed. People said last gen that the Wii would not improve graphically cos it was older tech, but it did.

Talk about bumping a thread but anyways on to your post ...

Who's to say that streaming textures from the harddrive isn't enough ? For the vast majority of the multiplatform games, parity is achieved with the last gen HD twins in terms of texture quality compared to the WII U ... 

The graphics chip designer has always been AMD and the model isn't important. What's important is the architecture since that serves as basis for a family of products. He's most likely right that the GPU is well documented given how open AMD they are about these things in their recent years so even if Nintendo were to refuse passing on the documents to 3rd party developers, they can just ask for it from AMD ... 

I didn't bump in, bonzobanana did, haha. 

A hard drive still isn't a complete substitute for RAM, it's more like a crutch. A useful one no doubt, but you can still do more with more actual useable RAM.

As for the GPU, in that sense 360 and PS3 had well documented GPUs from day 1 as well, and so do PS4/Xbone, but it still takes dedicated development to squeeze the most out of the specific quirks of a particular piece of hardware.

I don't mean to be rude though but I'll probably just respond to bonzo from here on, if only cos I have a bit less time to spend on VGChartz for the next few days so I can't do both, especially when we'll be addressing a lot of the same points. Just so you don't think I'm snobbing you. Besides, I don't reckon much will come up we haven't talked about before, haha. ;)

I didn't bump in, bonzobanana did, haha. 

A hard drive still isn't a complete substitute for RAM, it's more like a crutch. A useful one no doubt, but you can still do more with more actual useable RAM.

As for the GPU, in that sense 360 and PS3 had well documented GPUs from day 1 as well, and so do PS4/Xbone, but it still takes dedicated development to squeeze the most out of the specific quirks of a particular piece of hardware.

I don't mean to be rude though but I'll probably just respond to bonzo from here on, if only cos I have a bit less time to spend on VGChartz for the next few days so I can't do both, especially when we'll be addressing a lot of the same points. Just so you don't think I'm snobbing you. Besides, I don't reckon much will come up we haven't talked about before, haha. ;)

More ram is definitely the ideal but you have to factor in that the wii u memory bandwidth is very low, main memory that is and is shared between the background os and game mode. The ps3 can stream simultanously from optical and hdd and it seems very effective with many games as can the 360. Some games really do have a massive texture improvement but if the disc read fails then suddenly its not so good. Working perfectly it probably achieves more than the wii u extra memory.

I don't think its fair to state the gpu's for ps3 and 360 were understood day one. They were new architectures, same with the cpu's which even the 360 cpu was customised.  If your going by dates the gpu and cpu of both ps3 and 360 were designed within a couple of years before launch where as the wii u cpu dates back to 1997 for its architecture and the gpu 2008 plus a bottom end chip, likely a mobility architecture.

Going back to NFSMW which is a game I have on both ps3 and wii u I can see the wii u clearly has a graphic advantage although only a small one but I'd like to point out the game is far superior on ps3 purely because of the analogue triggers. It just feels so much better. I tried to like the wii u version but it just doesn't feel right. Another Nintendo damaging cost cutting measure. It's also worth pointing out that driving games are not as cpu intensive, they are clearly more about a good workout for the graphic system hence why the humble ps2 could do gran turismo at 1080i (1920x1080i) but utterly failed to match the original xbox for any cpu intensive games like fps games. NFSMW definitely indicates the graphic hardware is capable of a bit more than 360/PS3 but its only a marginal improvement over 360 and PS3.

It's a shame about the wii u. I've got two of them, one upstairs and one in the living room. I still to this day don't understand why Nintendo didn't pitch the wii u in power between the old generation and the new generation rather than have something that is actually inferior to ps3/360 on many levels. I know it probably doesn't read that way but I'm a huge Nintendo fan but bitterly disappointed with Nintendo's approach for their last two consoles. Both consoles have been pathetically underpowered and has meant the magic that Nintendo created on snes, N64 and Gamecube is just not possible. They are constantly fighting with the weak hardware trying to impress. I don't envy them that job.

As for the GPU, in that sense 360 and PS3 had well documented GPUs from day 1 as well, and so do PS4/Xbone, but it still takes dedicated development to squeeze the most out of the specific quirks of a particular piece of hardware.

Stopping you there because this is utter bullshit, the "gpu" in the PS3 is extremely underpowered and was never designed to single handedly handle the graphics processing, the cell was, and as such the hardware intended graphics processing solution was anything but well documented.

It took thousands of devs sharing code and workarounds on scedev over several years to start utilizing the Cell processor the way it was originally intended to be used.