Digital Foundry: Watch Dogs Wii U

[bonzobanana]

curl-6 said:

bonzobanana said:

ICStats said:
Big surprise there...

I could understand having problems like famerate due to CPU issues. Open world games like Watchdogs are CPU heavy, and that's a weakness for Wii U. I don't understand how the graphics could not be improved, like not even bumping up texture detail to use Wii U's extra RAM & GPU power.

I guess the poor port deserves the poor sales, and the poor sales deserve the poor port.

I don't agree withi the poor port sentiment. The wii u is underpowered hardware and we have seen no wii u versions of games at all of cpu intensive multi-platform games that perform well only games with low cpu requirements.

The wii u is a console that needs games designed from the ground up for it. Games that don't have high cpu requirements.

The wii u has 3 32bit underpowered 1.25ghz cpu's and likely a mobility radeon gpu of 176gflops performance. Despite this the gpu still likely outperforms 360/ps3 in many areas but its not  powerful. If your trying to get an open world cpu intensive game engine working on wii u you will likely steal some compute functionality from the gpu in order to assist the weak cpu's. This is likely the reason why the wii u version has poor textures etc. Lets not forget the wii u only has 12.8 GB/s bandwidth from its main memory. Far less than 360 and PS3 and we know this as fact as the ram chips are labelled.

Ubisoft have done their best with very weak hardware. The same can't be said of Nintendo who have tried and failed to sell an incredibly under-powered console at an inflated price. The reason Watchdogs wii u is poor is Nintendo's fault not Ubisoft. 

I really struggle to see how its fair to criticise Ubisoft when they have provided wii u support unlike other publishers. Many wii u owners have completely unrealistic expectations of the performance of the console and are in denial of reality and somehow  it's Ubisoft's fault that they can't produce ps4/xbone quality versions of games on what is basically a weaker console than ps3 and 360 in many areas.

Dropping frames in a bland room with two characters in it is just piss-poor porting, it's illogical to blame the hardware for that when we've seen it perform far better with more demanding games. If it only happened in the open world fine, but it doesn't, it drops in totally undemanding scenes, which points to a lack of software optimization.

And while you cherry-pick the RAM bandwidth you neglect to mention Wii U has more than three times as much eDRAM as 360 to compensate.

The 176 Gigaflops GPU argument is still unproven.

I can't comment on the bland room, two characters comment as I'm not sure what that is referring to. It may well point to a small part of the game that should have been optimised more. Surely its not significant though. There are many 360 and PS3 games that slow down in unexpected areas. 

You yourself have forgot to mention that 2GB of memory has a 12.8gb/s memory bandwidth but only 32MB of edram has increased memory bandwidth. Hardly much different from cache in the scheme of things and only a tiny percentage of memory with increased bandwidth.

As for the 176gflops performance figure it fits in perfectly with the fabrication and power requirements of the wii u. There is probably about a 40-50% performance gain due to the later architecture of the wii u gpu and also it will need far less cpu support which again helps compensate for the wii u's lack of cpu power.  At 176 gflops the wii u's current performance makes sense but if 352 gflops there is something seriously wrong in the wii u architecture that is holding back all games. 

We are far enough in now surely to be able to judge the wii u by its performance. What seemed likely at the beginning is now basically written in stone by what the wii u is technically achieving. 

It can still punch a bit above ps3 and 360 for games designed to max out the gpu and work a round the weak cpu.

It should have never been like this though. The wii u should have surpassed the 360 and ps3 with ease with every multi-format game being superior on wii u. The gamepad should have had analogue triggers to ensure decent feel for driving and fps games. Nintendo's cost cutting has done massive damage to the wii u. The fact remains there are better more impressive and ambitious games on 360 and ps3. If you compare all 3 consoles technically the best of ps3 and 360 are better than wii u.

Nintendo could have easily produced a console with a quad core 3ghz processor and a decent 6-800 gflops gpu and using a 28nm fabrication process (like ps4 and xbone) it would have been possible in the existing wii u console design but instead we get some cheap and nasty 40/45nm fabrication process that severely limited the power inside the wii u to mainly below that of the 360 and ps3 overall.  That console would have been capable of some amazing game experiences beyond that of 360/ps3 even if still behind ps4/xbone.

There are games on wii u displaying cartoon graphics with lots of repeated texturing that still can't do 720p with decent anti-aliasing.