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bonzobanana on 31 October 2016
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curl-6 said:
bonzobanana said:

No the hardware specs are mixed but areas the ps3 and 360 are superior are far greater cpu performance, far greater main memory bandwidth. Also surprisingly raw gflops gpu performance but put into perspective with the fact the wii u gpu radeon is slightly later architecture and has the 32MB of embedded fast embedded memory then its clear wii u has the graphic advantage in most areas.

PS3 has a history of being hard to develop for, its gpu is less sophisticated than 360 and its cpu performance weaker unless you make use of the cell processors correctly in which case its much stronger. Many ps3 games were released without the cell processors doing much at all except for normal sound output processing and other elements. When you see games for the ps3 developed by capable developers they are clearly above 360 standard but when the cells aren't fully utilised it is below the 360. The wii u and ps3 are pretty similar in cpu performance if you don't factor in the cell processors. About 9,000 dmips for wii u and about 10,000 for ps3 for its 2 thread main powerpc cpu but then you factor in the cells as well it can be double that of 350 almost. Also both ps3 and 350 can make use of hard drives to use texture caching techniques that make games like GTA5 possible. Using both optical and hard drives to stream new data in.

The wii u is far easier to develop for.  It's a simplified design by Nintendo, no use of multiple threads or cell processors to optimise. It's a much cleaner system.

The wii u across the board has slower loading and missing analogue triggers which effects many games. 

So its not just the issue of the weak chipset of the wii u but its also its hardware configuration which lacks hard drive, analogue triggers and support for mainstream audio formats and output sockets.

The wii u is pretty much done now as we move towards Switch and can be assesed on its full range of software and its not hard to proof both 360 and ps3 are more powerful competent hardware and not just because of the wii's u lack of support either.

I often use a projector and low frame rates, lower resolution and low resolution textures are easy to pick out as is lack of anti-aliasing.

For a long time the argument that wii u was more powerful was the fact it had a 352 gflops gpu of later architecture and was supported by 32MB of high speed memory to compensate for the very low main memory speed and to be honest it was a good argument that I made myself but then games didn't seem to support this performance level. Factor in that actually the wii u only has a 176gflops gpu and it all makes sense. The later architecture and 32MB of main memory is enough to give it a small edge over 350/ps3 overall but you still have the dire cpu performance and having to run games with very low memory bandwidth both a killer for frame rates. Let's face it though if the wii u did have a 352 gflops gpu how would that work with 12.8GB/s memory bandwidth which is also shared with the operating system which takes 1GB of main memory. That gpu would have been throttled by memory bandwidth so it could never have achieved much.

It just seems really unfair to Microsoft and Sony if we pretend the wii u is more powerful. They created 2 incredible consoles of great performance where as Nintendo costed down their console to what they thought was the absolute minimum performance they could get away with. The wii u would have cost peanuts to make in 2012.

PS3/360 don't really have "far" more CPU power. They do have more, just as Wii U has more on the GPU side, but the gap is not as large as clock speed alone suggests due to other factors. (Out of order execution, cache sizes, better IPS, separate audio DSP, GPGPU, etc)

And again, comparing main RAM bandwidth alone does not tell the whole story. If Wii U had no eDRAM, then yes, it would be throttled by it's main RAM bandwidth and it would be weaker than PS3/360, but the eDRAM is there. 

Games like FAST Racing Neo or Xenoblade Chronicles X wouldn't be doable on PS3/360 without cutbacks, due to their heavy reliance on Wii U's large eDRAM and 1GB of main memory respectively.

PS3/360 are definitely vastly more impressive for their time, and the fact that 2005/2006 hardware can come very close to a console released in 2012 is indeed a rather damning statement on Nintendo's complacence with Wii U. I understand that as a customer you feel burned by Wii U, and I don't blame you. I'm not defending Nintendo's decision to go with weak hardware, (which was clearly the wrong call) I'm merely addressing the end result from an academic perspective.

Benchmarks shows both 360 and PS3 have much more cpu processing power and they allow for out of order execuation etc.  Gflops would indicate the wii u has less GPU power but later architecture and eDRAM show it to be more powerful but not by much.

Xenoblade has some horrible compromises to get it working at a consistent 30fps. Horrible pop-in with objects appearing just in front as you move. A complete lack of collision detection in some areas and missing graphic effects/filtering that many 360 and Ps3 games have. The overall effect is great but lots of horrible compromises to achieve that.  See below. Remember how good the original looked on wii and that only has 11 gflops gpu performance. Clearly a game engine designed to look good and impressive at all costs with huge compromises in the actual detail of the graphics.

Fast Racing NEO isn't a particularly impressive title. It only render at 640x720 at times and doesn't even look that great. Main ship fine but world detail more limited.  It actually looks much inferior to wipeout on ps3 with renders at a full 60fps 1080p and only drops resolution occasionally when under heavy load. It also has a much better multichannel sound and 3D support. I would actually question whether the wii u is capable of matching the ps3 here. The cell processor is great for pushing out amazing multi-channel sound and helping render for 3D output. It also does lots of parallel processing ideal for pushing out 1080p at 60fps. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28E1eRy73l4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZXMDB4QaG4

Select 1080p 60fps option on youtube.

Here is a video of Resistance 3 which made heavy use of the cell processor to do all sorts of additional processing in the scene which would not be possible on wii u because a 9000 mips cpu console cannot compete with a console with close to 40,000 mips performance. It uses the cell processors to do specific tasks in the scene from weather effects,  control additional soldiers, physics, multi-channel sound, and other graphic effects . Shame the video resolution is low but at least you can see all the stuff being processed on screen. That 40,000 mips figure includes the 10,000 mips of the main dual thread powerpc cpu at 3.2ghz and then 30,000 approx on top for the cell processors, 7 at 3.2ghz. Alternatively you can see them more as extensions to the main gpu with each having 25.6 gflops of performance. Which x7 plus the 230 gflops approx of the nvidia gpu gives you 400+ gflops.  I'm just making the point that there is a lot of stuff the ps3 and 360 can do that the wii u can't and hasn't done because of weak cpu performance. I mean if you can't afford to add full collision detection to a game engine there are clearly massive issues with the hardware.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_bRdhtqGIc

Your not being fair about memory. It's 12.8GB/s for the whole of the 2GB of memory in wii u and the eDRAM is also shared so 1GB for the operating system and 1GB for games. Remember it is only 32MB of fast memory which is a tiny fraction of the whole 2GB of memory.  It helps but its little more than a frame buffer plus a bit on top. 

This is already done and dusted anyway. There has been debates on neogaf and other places and the end verdict is the wii us is weaker. It's weaker when you analyse the spec and when you analyse the games overall.