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AnthonyW86 on 29 May 2013
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oni-link said:
AnthonyW86 said:
HoloDust said:
AnthonyW86 said:
oni-link said:

I read that it is a heavily modified version of the Evergreen series.  Seeing how the specs are so close (from the die shots) to that line of GPU's it's the closest one (without the special sauce) to compare the GPU to.  The Wii U is even made in the same plant as the Evergreen!!!

for reference:

http://www.amd.com/US/PRODUCTS/DESKTOP/GRAPHICS/ATI-RADEON-HD-5000/HD-5550/Pages/hd-5550-overview.aspx#2

Note that Wii-U's gpu only has half the bandwidth though.

5550 actually comes in 3 flavors when it comes to memory - GDDR5 (57.6GB/s), DDR3 (28.8GB/s) and DDR2 (12.8GB/s). Aggregate VP ratings for these cards are 27, 21.8 and 16.5, so they are quite sensitive to memory bandwidth.

WiiU, although it has DDR3, has bandwidth of the DDR2 version, but I'm thinking that EDRAM might put it somewhere between DDR2 and DDR3 version (theoretically I guess maybe even on par with DDR3 version).

For comparison, XOne's GPU equivalent (7770) has VP rating of 96, and PS4's (7850) stands at 141.

This is all without customizations each platform holder incorporated in their solution, so differences are most likely even bigger.

For reference, 360 is rated at around 12.

Thanks for saving me the time to explain, but yes you are right. And that's my point in bringing it up, the difference with the other next gen consoles will be massive. Especially since you're talking about 2gb, let's say they want to use 1gb for the gpu that's a lot of memory to fill with such a small bandwidth. Even the 360 and ps3 have about double.

It will also depend on the game engine. For example in raw computing power an HD7850 is about 50%  faster than a HD7770, however it can be anywhere from 50% up to almost 100% faster depending on the game.

On a side note in the benchmarks i have encountered where an HD7850 manages about 30fps an HD5550 only does about 3fps-4fps... and that's the DDR3 version.


Wow that's an amazing diffrence!!! I was actually feeling mighty confident about the customized Evergreen GPU inside the Wii U until that.  I wonder if the special sauce will help increase it's performance even a wee bit?  It was never a question that the PS4/XBone will be more powerful!!   The statement that most Nintendo developers, for this instance Shin'en is that the Wii U is not underpowered compared to the current-gen systems.  In fact, when a developer takes time to know the systems capabilities, the Wii U is able to do things a bit beyond what the PS360 maybe capable of. (DX10.1-11.0 features vs DX8.1 features) etc.

I'm sure we will still get some great looking games on the Wii-U, especially from Nintendo themselves. Even on the Wii we got some great looking titles and with the Wii-U the games will also look good on a HDTV. It's more the 3rd party support i'm worried about. Sure you could state that developers should just get to know the system better, but the reality is if they are planning to launch the same game on Xbox One and PS4 they probably don't want to spend the time on optimizing the Wii-U version. And some engines like UE4 and Frostbite 3 will simply not be made compatible with the system.