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DieAppleDie on 05 February 2013
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Cyborg13B said:

And now let's draw comparisons to the GPU dice of the Xbox 360.  At the end of my post, I reveal the Wii U GPU's transistor count.  It is shockingly large!  Here's the picture of the Xbox 360's GPU dice:

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And here's the Wii GPU's die again:

 

Now here's both together:

 

The 360 GPU has 10 MB of eDRAM - the Wii U has 32 MB though.  But notice the relative size of the Xbox 360 GPU dies.  The Xbox 360 GPU parent die takes up 96,480 pixels, while its daughter die takes up 81,073 pixels.  The parent die is 232 million transistors, the daughter 100 million.  Thus at 81,073 pixels, the Xbox 360 GPU would take up 194,951,658 transistors.  The daughter die takes up 100 million at 81,073 pixels.  Thus - daughter die, composed mostly of simple EDRAM, takes up half the space for the same transistors.  But it also has extra anti-aliasing logic as well.  Let's say that that logic has the same density per square pixel that the main logic does - a good estimate.  The Xbox360 GPU die is composed of 95,858 pixels and has 232 million transistors.  Thus each pixel has on average 95,858/232,000,000 = 4.1318103448275862068965517241379e-4, or .00041318103448275862068965517241379, thus giving 2420.2466147843685451396857876478 transistors per square pixel for logic density.  The daughter die takes up 81,073 - its AA + AZ (anti-aliasing and z-culling) takes up 13,454 pixels.  Thus giving the daughter die 32,561,997.955308894406309332587014 worth of logic transistors.  Thus 100,000,000 - 32,561,997.955308894406309332587014 = 67,438,002.04469110559369066741299 EDRAM transistors.

10 MB of EDRAM = 67,438,000 transistors , 32 MB of EDRAM = 215.8 million transistors

This also gives us the ratio of transistors per square pixel taken up by the EDRAM.  That number is equal: (daughter die pixel count - logic pixel count) / (daughter die transistor count - logic pixel count). Here's that calculation: (81,073 - 13,454) / (67,438,002.04469110559369066741299) = 0.0010026839163353170993702192542769 pixels per transistor, or 997.32326778998662496769646743688 transistors per pixel.  Now, we divide the main transistor logic density by the EDRAM transisotr logic density, to get that ratio.  2420.2466147843685451396857876478 / 997.32326778998662496769646743688 = 2.4267423542092842230579697798922.  Thus - the main logic transistors are approximately 2.42 times more dense then the EDRAM transistor density. 

Now judging by the relative spacing, we can extrapolate the amount of transistors present on the rest of the total GPU die of the Wii U.  Wii U's EDRM takes up 95,150 pixels, while the rest of its GPU takes up 268,572 pixels.  Dividing the latter by the former yields a ratio of total space of logic space to EDRAM space of 2.8226169206516027325275880189175 : 1. 

Now, the following equation gives the total number of transistors dedicated to the Wii U's GPU!  (1 * 215.8 million transistors [32 MB of EDRAM]) + (2.8226169206516027325275880189175 * 215.8 million transistors [what the rest of the GPU would take up if it was only EDRAM]) *2.42 times more dense for logic =  1,689,872,170.1734104046242774566471 transistors for the Wii U's GPU.  That's 1.689 billion transistors! 

And the final numbers:

Wii U GPU's transistor count = 1.689 billion

Wii U GPU's EDRAM transistor count = 215.8 million transistors

Wii U GPU's logic transistor count = 1.4732 billion transistors

 

That's a lot of transistors for a machine that runs so slowly!  And thus the reason Nintendo hid the figures from us - they don't want us to come to this conclusion.   

 

 

 

 

 



and the conclusion of the comparison is....