JEMC said:
Joelcool7 said:
Well I've heard rumours that WiiU could be as powerful as 3.5x the PS3. IBM has only confirmed that WiiU will be able to handle any game for PS3/360. So Uncharted3 is not the limit of WiiU's power. Now the news from IBM is that they are still developing the chipset. It will come from the same plant making the current 300mm chip plant.
Now official specs have not been released and I would have to say Nintendo has not shown us the power of the WiiU. So everyone speculating has no real knowledge of how powerful it is. Infact Nintendo has not released final dev kits, in the three years developers are rumoured to have had kits final dev kits are still not availible.
Infact Nintendo may not even be aware of the consoles limitations as IBM hasn't finished the chipset. Work is ongoing on the console's hardware. The tech demo's Nintendo used are probably running on early dev kits, not finalized hardware. Its way to early to be judging Nintendo's console.
Also note that Nintendo not once showed actual WiiU footage. The tech demo's were all called early demo's and not actual products. The third party software turned out to be PS3 versions. Nintendo is hiding the consoles power if they actually know its full potential. I think once final kits are in developers hands and IBM has completed the chipset Nintendo is using. Once Nintendo has the final console in production. Then we can start judging its hardware capabilities.
Its far to early to judge Nintendo WiiU's graphical performance. The console is still in development and Nintendo has purposely hidden its graphical potential from us by not showing us any of the first party titles. Infact they didn't even show the third party titles.
Take this as an example. THQ says the console is so powerful that it only took 5-weeks to get DarkSiders2 running at full potential on the WiiU. Only five weeks, that is incredibally fast and it proves that WiiU has alot of power under the hood, and that five weeks was on an early dev kit. Imagine what the final machine will be capable of?
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I wouldn't trust that rumor either, how many of those pre E3 rumors have been true?
IBM can say a lot about the CPU of the new console (as it should), but shouldn't the focus be AMD and the GPU part? An excellent processor without an equally good graphic chipset is rather pointless as most if not all the games are more GPU dependant than CPU dependant.
I agree that Nintendo hiding the power of the console is a good move given that they haven't even given a release date. The less the competitors know the better, but they should finish the specs rather soon than later or the developers won't be able to deliver.
In the end I'm quite confident that Nintendo knows which CPU and GPU the console will use but are still trying to find the sweet spot regarding speed/heat/power.
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I don't think there's been a hardware developer in the world who's ever given a precise release date this far in advance. And Nintendo has always been relatively vague about t until closer, anyways. Unless it's releasing earlier than most people are expecting, the release date won't be announced until E3 next year. Nintendo had the 3DS almost 100% complete at E3 last year, and they didn't announce the release dates until this year's Nintendo World (Space World).
As for the fact that GPU is what matters, you're absolutely right there. HOWEVER, unless Nintendo's planning on doing a LOT of things with the system that don't use graphical power whatsoever (which is completely and entirely unrealistic), then it stands to say that the GPU will also be quite the powerhouse so that they aren't tossing in an entirely pointless bottleneck just for the heck of it. There's no reason to use a powerful CPU with a weak GPU. Just doesn't make sense.
So, as was said earlier, if we're running an IBM Power7-based CPU, then it's safe to assume that the GPU will almost certainly from ATI's R800 (HD 5000-series) , Northern Island (HD-6000 series), or Southern Island (HD-7000) families of chipsets, which is quite powerful.
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