IGN review of the Wii U

[Soleron]

cunger said:

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I'm just not convinced that the cpu is worse overall..  I think it might have twice the threads per core compared to 360 and more cache. Yes the clock speeds are lower but it may provide superior performace with optimisation.

The silicon area difference is pretty huge - 3x. Performance per transistor or per watt shouldn't vary much from the same company on the same process despite any technology improvements since. I mean 5% extra performance per area is something Intel spends tens of billions of R&D to achieve these days. 300% more area won't be slower. It's about the same size as the netbook CPU Intel Atom.

Also the 360 core is heavily software optimised as it has been the lead platform for seven years.