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HappySqurriel on 30 November 2008
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Squilliam said:
HappySqurriel said:
Squilliam said:
Im not even sure they will even match the performance of the Xbox 360 with the Wii HD.

Actually scratch that, I don't think they will.

Chips are getting hotter and hotter, if they are targeting a specific thermal profile of say ~20-30W, they may not be able to release something as powerful. They've also aquired a penchant for simple so I doubt it'd have more ram than the 360 as they'd probably target having fewer ram chips and simplify their design.

You do realise the XBox 360 and PS3 are being outperformed by low end GPUs that are manufactured using a 55nm process ... By the end of 2010 a $500 laptop will be more powerful than these systems. Do you really think anyone would have difficulty surpassing the processing power of the PS3 or XBox 360 from this point forward if they wanted to?

You do realise than the countless reasons for the Wii being the size it is, are going to be just as important in the next generation? They were targeting a specific size/shape and since they've been so successful I believe they will target it again.

The reason why I suspect the Wii HD won't be quite as powerful is because the Xbox 360/PS3 were that far ahead of the power curve over last generation and they produced far more heat. Heat and power consumption are not going down as fast as chipsizes are.

 

 

The Wii HD may also need to be a small low energy consumption system, but there is nothing saying it has to be as small as the Wii or as low in energy use and there are ways to keep it (about) the same size while increasing energy consumption without running into heat problems.

Consider that a laptop DVD drive is less than half the thickness of a regular DVD drive, and if you chose to use a laptop drive in the Wii HD you could greatly increase the airflow around the CPU and GPU which should enable you to run using warmer components; if you combined that with more active cooling you could run even warmer components without any concern for overheating.

Being that it is likely that you will see slim-line XBox 360/PS3 systems late 2009/early 2010 as they move to the 32nm process which will not be much larger than a Wii, and Nintendo has used the exact same companies to design their console as Microsoft has, why wouldn't Nintendo be able to surpass that feat in 2012 using a 22nm process?