disolitude said:
HappySqurriel said:
disolitude said:
HappySqurriel said: When you look at what other R700 based GPUs can do, and then factor in some improvement due to modifications and developers optimizing for the particular GPU in the Wii U, I would not be surprised to find out that the Wii U could play current HD console games at 1080p with a frame-rate of 120fps with the higher detail models and textures from the PC version.
To put it another way, while the Wii U will (probably) not be state of the art technology by the time it is released the hardware in it will probably be about 5 years newer than the HD consoles. With how much further ahead the technology is, it shouldn't be difficult to support a higher resolution, better frame-rate and more detailed graphics. |
Unless they stick a 4870 X2 in to WiiU, I don't see it doing anything at 120 frames per second at 1080p. Maybe 720p...
1080p@60 frames per second would be quite doable though with the best R700 based GPU. I doubt they would be doing much improvements to it, other than die shrinks...my guess is Wiiu gpu will be 32nm when it comes out in 2012.
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You have to remember that it will be a heavily customized GPU, and developers will put far more resources into getting decent performance out of this GPU in particular than they ever would for the PC counterpart.
Using an example from Nintendo, the basic technology and design of the Gamecube's GPU was (mostly) in line with what was released on graphics cards in that were a few years old when it was released; but the extensive modifications to the GPU meant that it required a GPU released years after the Gamecube to surpass it when developers fully utilized the system. To see what I mean simply go look at what the minimum requirements for Resident Evil 4 was when it was released on the PC ...
To put it another way, using the Gamecube approach as a template to producing a high performance low cost system it would not be unreasonable to suggest that the GPU in the Wii U might perform at a similar level to a GPU released a year or two after it.
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I see what you're saying. Its possible...but the R&D on these cards is long over. They are almost 3 years old and 3 generations behind. They could make some tweaks to make it work better for Nintendo platform. Maybe slap some more shadders on it while they are at it too...lol. Even if they don't do anything, 4870 is still a great card, and if they stick that in to WiiU, it will mop the floor with PS360.
PS4 and 720 though, if they stick something liequivalent to a GTX580 or 6970 radeon...Nintendo may be again lagging. But it won't be as bad as with the wii. Worst case scenario i see for the wiiu ports to be 720p, while ps4/720 versions are full 1080p.
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I highly doubt that if Nintendo is using the R700 the R&D is "Long over" ... Most likely, ATi began work on Nintendo's version of the chip before it was even released as a PC GPU; and the work has been continuing ever since.
Effectively, if you are trying to create hardware with better performance through higher efficiency rather than through more powerful hardware (resulting in high performance low cost hardware) you have to figure out how the hardware will be used and focus on increasing performance in those specific situations where it is lacking. This tends to involve a lot of repetition as you develop new tests/demos, profile how they run on your hardware, tweek your hardware, and then start over. The reason not everyone follows this approach is that it takes a lot of time to complete, and you have to be good at anticipating how the hardware will be used or you end up with hardware that performs like it is several years old; at the same time if you`re good at anticipating use you can get hardware that has double the performance of the competition at half the price.