Wii U hacked and CPU clock speed revealed, apparently.

[timmah]

Soleron said:

timmah said:
Those of you that keep making sensationalized statements based only on the clock speed number don't understand that this CPU is a totally different architecture than what you're familiar with.

No. It's a very similar architecture to Gamecube and Wii. It's also used in servers we have performance data for. We are VERY familiar with it.

The WiiU CPU is a RISC processor, the other consoles use a CISC processor.

Nope they're both RISC.

The difference is that a RISC uses significantly less complex instructions, meaning there is a lot less processing overhead when crunching numbers. RISC processors are also designed to do more with each clock cycle (better efficiency). This provides a huge boost per clock cycle in the amount of computations that can be done, especially for gaming tasks such as physics and AI.

This was true in the 1980s. Now it is not, because instruction complexity isn't much of a factor in efficiency any more. The overhead for x86 vs ARM, estimated by Intel, is 10% of die area. The difference between the Wii U and 360 dies is a LOT more than 10%. Try 300%. And even then a 10% difference can easily be swamped by better or worse design choices by each CPU.

This is why, though the CPU has less raw clock speed than the 360, it could theoretically be a bit faster at the tasks it's asked to do when code is optimized for the architecture.

Yes. But the clock speed disparity is so huge that the Wii U CPU cannot be faster no matter how much better you might care to speculate it is per clock.

Coupled with the fact that the GPU is much faster and can take on some additional tasks, plus there is a separate DSP, and the fast interconnects referenced by z101, this gives it a significant leg up over the current gen

Yes. The GPU is faster. The Wii U has different strengths and weaknesses to 360/PS3 for sure.

in future *optimized* games (which none of these ports were).

No. What we see now is what we get. Optimisation cannot produce the kind of leap you are imagining, and third parties will not be putting in the effort to do so because the easy route is just to stick to PS3/360 for another year and then jump to PS4/720.

They told us the Cell would eventually be optimised for and be amazingly better. The Cell was actually suited to optimisation as well, being something brand new (unlike Wii U). We didn't see any leap of that kind, especially not versus the competition.

Ah, for some reason I thought the 360 was using a CISC processor, I remember that the original Xbox did. Either way, it does appear from the limited info I've seen that we end up with 2x the overall raw power of the current crop of systems, which is about where I expected things to be. I've also read that Nintendo worked very hard on optimizing the architecture of the system, so I'm very interested to see what can be done with it (I think it will surprise some naysayers in the end).

On the 'what you see is what you get' comment, I disagree. That's never been the case with early ports on any new system and we've always seen significant improvements in graphical quality over the life of a console, this is past history, not just a guess; PS2 and PS3 are both excellent examples of this. I just don't buy that for the first time in gaming history, a console's potential was somehow fully realized on launch day. We'll just have to wait and see.

Oh, and thank you for actually putting a reasoned argument forward unlike some :).