Wii U GPU Die Image! Chipworks is AWESOME!

[JEMC]

Aielyn said:

JEMC said:

I don't know.

Let's assume a case where the game/console runs at 35W. With a power brick with an efficiency of 70% that means that it draws 50W from the wall, add another 20% left for safety (because efficiency goes down with time, etc.) and you end with 60W. With the power brick being 70W, where are the other 10W?

Who knows, maybe they'll do what happened with the PSP or the 3DS and launch a firmware that increases the speeds of the CPU or the GPU (or maybe both).

I'm fairly certain that Nintendo wouldn't have been describing power draw from the wall, specifically because of that efficiency issue - if they were to say "the system draws 60 W from the wall", then after a year, it would draw more, and their claim would no longer be accurate. But the power draw from the system is easily measured.

The other issue is that Nintendo said it could require up to 75 W, but would typically use only 45 W. Based on 70% efficiency, 45 W becomes only 31.5 W, which is below the number we've seen for most games. It's more likely that the 45 W number is the system power draw, not the total power draw at the wall, in my opinion. But then, I'm no expert.

I think I didn't put it right or you didn't get it the way I wanted. Let's do it the other way around.

Let's start on the power brick, which is rated at 75W. From those 75 leave a 20% off for security and you get 60W. An efficiency reduces those 60 to 42W that are what the console can use to run the games and you end with 10W more than what it is using right now.

And just to be clear, I'm not saying that Nintendo is reserving some power. It may also be that they have chosen to go more safe and increased that 20% of safety to 25% and also use a power brick with an efficiency of only 60%, resulting in 33W to run the games which is what they are doing right now.