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HappySqurriel on 07 April 2012
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zarx said:
HappySqurriel said:
zarx said:
HappySqurriel said:


The GPU would have faced significant customization over the past 3 to 4 years, and would be manufactured using a much newer and smaller process, so what we know about the stock PC GPUs may not hold true for the GPU in the Wii U.


yes but customisations don't magically increase performance per watt and Nintendo won't go below 40nm which is just 1 step from the 55nm original. The customisation will likely be less shaders and some eDRAM to get good performance at an acceptable wattage.


Actually, customizations could change performance per watt pretty substantially ...

Companies like ATI and nVidia are able to release a new generation of GPUs (roughly) every year because their chips are designed in a modular fashion, and the work from existing chip designs. Many of the design changes that were made for the Radeon 5xxx, 6xxx, 7xxx and are being made on the 8xxx series of processors could be back-ported to the chip ATI is working on for Nintendo; which could translate into significant improvements in processing power per watt.

By the time this chip is released it could have one of the highest performances per-watt of any GPU ATI makes; I'm not saying it is, but we simply don't know and can't assume based on a 4 year old version of it that was released for the PC.

But doing that would be an uneeded expense on Nintendo's part, if they were planning on new features and a more advanced architecture they would have gone with a more advanced architecture. You don't spend an extra $100 million customising a GPU architecture to add features that are already available in an existing architecture. RV770 is already 4 years old if Nintendo wanted a more advanced GPU they would have bassed it on a newer architecture. The reason they went for a RV770 chip is likely so they could get something cheap they can scale down, not so they could spend a lot of money making it more advanced.


Not really ...

Generally how these deals work is that Nintendo will pay a large amount of money up front (in the range of $375 Million) and then pay for time and materials project to customize the processor to meet their needs ($125 Million); as a result they own the design, can have anyone manufacture it, and pay small (or no) per unit licensing fees.

Nintendo could choose a newer chip but it would cost far more upfront, they may not own the design, might not have rights to manufacture it themselves, and may pay a large licensing fee for every chip sold.

 

Basically, it is the Gamecube approach vs. the XBox approach ...

Nintendo paid for the Gekko and Flipper upfront and the per-unit manufacturing and licensing fees on those processors were small, and Microsoft was forced to use new less-customized hardware and paid a massive amount per unit.