| ethomaz said: @BlueFalcon |
| ghost_of_fazz said: I'm pretty sure the part you marked as the 8 SIMD blocks is the eDRAM. |
Ya, I was struggling with that. I couldn't reconcile what the other half of the GPU was. I just looked at RV770 diagram and tried to extrapolate how the building blocks might look like. It was a pure guess on my part. However, now if the 2 types of eDRAM take up nearly 40% of the die from that picture and the entire GPU die is just 150mm2, that GPU is going to be extremely underpowered even compared to RV740. If RV740 fits 640 SPs, 32 TMUs, 16 ROPs, and nearly half of the die is taken up by eDRAM, then I doubt they can fit more than a 320 SP, 16 TMUs, 8 ROP 40nm GPU on the right hand side of the die. That would be an even weaker GPU than I estimated. I suppose the 35W load power consumption in games is a giveaway that this console is very underpowered.
Considering the Wii U sells for $300-350, it's shocking how they butchered the GPU and CPU components so much. I mean even if it's a full 320 SPs/ 16 TMU / 8 ROP part, the 12.8GB/sec memory bandwidth is crippling. This seems like wasting millions of dollars on a custom part that would have been outperformed by an off-the-shelf 40nm RV740 GPU with 0 customization! I have no idea what Nintendo was thinking on this one. I am thinking the GPU is barely 50% faster than the 48 SP VLIW-5 R500 in Xbox 360, if that.
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