You were making a very good point but I think you gave a bad example. You can't calculate the "brute strength" just from the number of cores and the clock frequency. For example, two CPUs with exactly equal clock and number of cores can have a huge brute strength difference just simply from having more complex instructions than the other or more ALUs than the other, which enables them to perform more work per cycle.

The cache example you touched is a good one... Intel's low-cost Celeron line is basically the same CPU with little or no cache, which means the CPU will be starved for data in many applications, even though it has the same "brute strength" as its non-Celeron counterpart.

This is the most awesomely trolling thread I've ever seen. The Wii U isn't underpowered. As we saw with the Wii, it produced beautiful games. So will this.

As long as it has good games for it no one will care about the graphics.

Well I've heard rumours that WiiU could be as powerful as 3.5x the PS3. IBM has only confirmed that WiiU will be able to handle any game for PS3/360. So Uncharted3 is not the limit of WiiU's power. Now the news from IBM is that they are still developing the chipset. It will come from the same plant making the current 300mm chip plant.

Now official specs have not been released and I would have to say Nintendo has not shown us the power of the WiiU. So everyone speculating has no real knowledge of how powerful it is. Infact Nintendo has not released final dev kits, in the three years developers are rumoured to have had kits final dev kits are still not availible.

Infact Nintendo may not even be aware of the consoles limitations as IBM hasn't finished the chipset. Work is ongoing on the console's hardware. The tech demo's Nintendo used are probably running on early dev kits, not finalized hardware. Its way to early to be judging Nintendo's console.

Also note that Nintendo not once showed actual WiiU footage. The tech demo's were all called early demo's and not actual products. The third party software turned out to be PS3 versions. Nintendo is hiding the consoles power if they actually know its full potential. I think once final kits are in developers hands and IBM has completed the chipset Nintendo is using. Once Nintendo has the final console in production. Then we can start judging its hardware capabilities.

Its far to early to judge Nintendo WiiU's graphical performance. The console is still in development and Nintendo has purposely hidden its graphical potential from us by not showing us any of the first party titles. Infact they didn't even show the third party titles.

Take this as an example. THQ says the console is so powerful that it only took 5-weeks to get DarkSiders2 running at full potential on the WiiU. Only five weeks, that is incredibally fast and it proves that WiiU has alot of power under the hood, and that five weeks was on an early dev kit. Imagine what the final machine will be capable of?

We are getting to the point to when the successors to the PS3 and X360 come out, the graphical enhancements won't really make much of a difference, because to me, the graphics are already so good that any inprovements won't be noticable. So, with me being a Nintendo-only owner, The graphics jump from the Wii to the Wii U will be perfectly fine with me. I don't really see any reason to get a PS4/X...720?... if the gameplay is still the same. with the Wii U, it has graphics improvements, and a new way to play.

I wouldn't trust that rumor either, how many of those pre E3 rumors have been true?

IBM can say a lot about the CPU of the new console (as it should), but shouldn't the focus be AMD and the GPU part? An excellent processor without an equally good graphic chipset is rather pointless as most if not all the games are more GPU dependant than CPU dependant.

I agree that Nintendo hiding the power of the console is a good move given that they haven't even given a release date. The less the competitors know the better, but they should finish the specs rather soon than later or the developers won't be able to deliver.

In the end I'm quite confident that Nintendo knows which CPU and GPU the console will use but are still trying to find the sweet spot regarding speed/heat/power.

One thing TS needs to remember is the fact that the shown WiiU's demos, the garden and HD Zelda is very very early build engine.

PS3 and X360 are in they're 5th and 6th year, how do you think WiiU will look in it's 3rd or 4th year? Well obviously MUCH better than now when it's in super beta stage, and already now it looks better than the "HD" twins..

As usual, Nintendo is just keeping a lot info behind close doors. This will give them time to further tweak and polish the console more.

This 2011 E3 for Nintendo was really to announce a console and a controller at its BETA stage. They have plenty of time to improve and add more components. They do not want to discuss much because they are well aware Microsoft and Sony are out there to try and mimic. It keeps their competitors sweating bullets.

Next E3 get ready because that is when they will be announcing the Big guns with extra info. Their IP's as well as the 3rd party titles.

We arn't even close to the graphical limitations, Of course the progress toward those limitations might slow down consiurbly. Its not as if we have  glassless 3D QFHD 2160p  TVs and Consoles capible of redering out ultra high polly models  with ray-tracing to get all those dynamic reflections, lighting, etc etc (thats still very far off). But in the mean time most games do not run at 1080p/60fps (more like 640p) and the animations, physics, and lighting can be vastly improved (the next version of the unreal engine should be a notible improvement at the very least).

I don't think there's been a hardware developer in the world who's ever given a precise release date this far in advance. And Nintendo has always been relatively vague about t until closer, anyways. Unless it's releasing earlier than most people are expecting, the release date won't be announced until E3 next year. Nintendo had the 3DS almost 100% complete at E3 last year, and they didn't announce the release dates until this year's Nintendo World (Space World).

As for the fact that GPU is what matters, you're absolutely right there. HOWEVER, unless Nintendo's planning on doing a LOT of things with the system that don't use graphical power whatsoever (which is completely and entirely unrealistic), then it stands to say that the GPU will also be quite the powerhouse so that they aren't tossing in an entirely pointless bottleneck just for the heck of it. There's no reason to use a powerful CPU with a weak GPU. Just doesn't make sense.

So, as was said earlier, if we're running an IBM Power7-based CPU, then it's safe to assume that the GPU will almost certainly from ATI's R800 (HD 5000-series) , Northern Island (HD-6000 series), or Southern Island (HD-7000) families of chipsets, which is quite powerful.