Nintendo Wii: Respectable Specs

[DarkNight_DS]

HappySqurriel said:

Kwaad said:
All I got out of that was you say everything is 2x faster, including the memory, and due to the way power scales, that means it can render a 50% better image than the GameCube.
The graphics chip on the GameCube was on par with a GeForce2. Double the power and you have a GeForce3/4. That makes the Wii's power on par with that of a 4 or 5 year old computer. Both GPU and CPU. Look at the PC games that came out around that time. UT2003(came out in 2002) is a good example. If you look at that, and add in the modern pixel shaders that are used so heavily today, you have what a Wii game will look like. (And actually, if you think about it, it's the truth)

Kwaad, why do you even pretend to know what you're talking about?

ArtX was a company that was made from former SGI employees and was the company Nintendo contracted to produce their GPU for the Gamecube. The Flipper was largely based on the GPU ArtX designed and sold to the US Military for flight simulations and has very little similarity to any nVidia GPU; there is a reason the military is willing to spend $10,000+ per GPU on these flight simulators rather than buy an over the counter graphics card like the Geforce 2. ATI bought ArtX and integrated a large portion of their technology into their main GPU line and this is one of the reasons why the Radeon 9800 series was so successful for ATI.

 The Gamecube's GPU was very close in specs to the original 7500/8500 ATI cards.  The Wii's GPU is very close to what we see in the 9600 cards.  I played Warcraft 3 on an 8500 card for many years...  that game always looked great.  From what I've seen, the Wii is easily able to pull off 8500 quality visuals.  Mario Galaxy, Metroid Prime 3 and Super Smash Brothers Brawl all have a very 9600 ish look (same card in my HTPC).  So I'm not going to complain one bit.  I happen to like the things the 9600 card can pull off.  My 850XT card in my main PC renders frames faster, but still only has the same or close to the same video quality.