| HoloDust said: Well, if it's any consolation, that GPU looks to me very much like HD 5550 (pretty much what I thought it would be similar to after first measurements, that or 5570) - Youtube 5550 and some games, and you'll see it's not that bad (well, it is, but not THAT bad) - it can play Skyrim on medium with some AA @720p at 30+ frames for example (and that's on PC, with all its baggage), so I'm sure Zelda will look quite nice. |
That's an excellent observation HoloDust!
HD5550 has a VP rating of 27 and a power consumption of 39W on 40nm node.
The power consumption of the Wii U in games is roughly 35W. This is for the entire console, not just the GPU. I am going to give the benefit of the doubt and assume the developers are not using the Wii U's CPU and GPU at 90%+ capacity, which is not telling us the actual load power consumption once developers utilize the GPU/CPU more effectively.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-wii-u-is-the-green-console
Assuming the specs outlined in the article/found by NeoGaf are at least in the ballpark, imo the graphics card is weaker than HD5550 because it is based on R700 series not HD5000/Redwood core.
Redwood HD5550 (DX11) = 550mhz GPU clocks (352 Gflops), 320 SPs, 16 TMUs, 8 ROPs, 28.8 GB/sec memory bandwidth over 128-bit bus = 27 VP
RV730 HD4650 (DX10.1) = 600mhz GPU clocks (384 Gflops), 320 SPs, 32 TMUs, 8 ROPs, 16 GB/sec memory bandwidth over 128-bit bus = 17.8 VP
R700 Wii U's rumored GPU (DX10.1) = 550mhz GPU clocks (352 Gflops), 320 SPs, 16 TMUs, 8 ROPs, 12.8 GB/sec memory bandwidth over 64-bit bus
^ That means R700 in Wii U is actually slower than HD5550. You can also see that even with just 320 SPs, these GPUs still need memory bandwidth ==> 4650 is much slower than HD5550 wven with higher GPU clock and 2x the TMUs, partly because it has just 16GB/sec memory bandwidth. The other reason is HD4000 series has worse performance per clock/IPC than HD5000 does. This can be observed by comparing HD4870 vs. HD5770. Despite HD4870's near 50% memory bandwidth advantage over HD5770 (http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=564&card2=615), the 2 cards are actually similar in performance.
If we assume that some "secret" sauce & eDRAM has allowed R700 in Wii U to land between HD4650 and HD5550, we would get a VP rating of 22.4 (avg of HD4650 and HD5550).
The GPU in Xbox 360 was claimed to be similar to X1800XT 512MB by ATI themselves, or a VP rating of 16.7. That means a full blown HD5550 GPU is roughly 62% faster than the GPU in the Xbox 360. HD5550 has 28.8 GB/sec memory bandwidth but Wii U's only has 12.8GB/sec. I am inclined to believe that 32MB of eDRAM cannot make up for losing more than half of the memory bandwidth. For that reason I'd put R700 in Wii U at 22.4 VP instead of 27 VP of HD5550.
The rumored specs for Durango includes a GPU about as powerful as an HD7770 (94 VP). For Orbis, it's ~HD7850 (141 VP).
http://alienbabeltech.com/abt/viewtopic.php?p=41174
That means PS4 and Xbox 720 could easily end up 4.2-6.3x faster. I would consider that in an entirely different league.
Going from 1280x720 to 1920x1080 is a 2.25x increase in pixels. The GPU in the Wii U appears to be barely 50% more powerful than Xbox 360's (if that). That means Wii U is going to struggle rendering next generation games at native 1080P at 30 fps. The other downside is lack of DX11 which means no next generation effects in any of Wii U's games. Having said that most people buy Nintendo's console for their 1st party games, not graphics.
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The facepalm moment for me is Nintendo could have just went with a $130 65W Trinity A10-5700 and ended up with a faster CPU and GPU.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/FM2_APU_Review/
I am flabergasted as to what Nintendo was thinking on their CPU and GPU selection choice. How in the world is the console $350 with such anemic CPU/GPU components? Even if we consider that the controller costs $175 of that, it's not as if Nintendo would have had to pay the retail $130 for the A10-5700. If Nintendo waited 6 more months to launch their console, they could have fit an even faster A10-6700 in the same 65W power envelope of A10-5700, and this would also have given them time to build up 3rd party support and have a stronger game line-up at launch.
