My questions were mostly rhetorical ...

To use an analogy from sports, if you had an athlete who was 50% stronger, 50% faster, had 50% better endurance and 50% better co-ordination and reflexes, had 50% better training and had 50% more experience would he be 50% better or dramatically better? It can be argued either way because there is no singular measure you can use to justify that the athlete is more than 50% better, but the results of these improvements in any real world competition would seem far more dramatic than a simple 50% improvement.

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.

My laptop with a 4850 ran Mass Effect at 60-80fps during hectic gameplay, 120fps was a common sight on quieter parts.  This was at 1920x1200 and 4XAA with all the effects set to max.

In which ways? By moving to a now, more acceptable, and widespread, resolution compared to 5 years ago? What do you want them to do? Have the console support 1440p, which very few televisions support? I do hope you aren't assuming that Nintendo has 'boasted' about anything other than the Wii U's resolution capabilities. If we're discussing the fidelity of the tech demos, then I have to disagree with your assessment, but regardless Nintendo hasn't been boasting anything specific in relation to them so your point is without subtstance. The tech demos pull off just as difficult feats, if not more, with  5 weeks of development behind them, as what we can see in the top of the line games on current generation platforms while running at Native 1080p and 60fps(compared to the sub-720p 30fps of current consoles.) Many of the things accomplished in both tech demos the PS360 struggle with, and that is at sub-720p/720p native resolutions. Let's not forget that both the cpu and gpu of the Wii U will be at least 3 generations ahead of what the PS360 have; and the cpu is based on a top of the line architecture from IBM. So what is 'boasted" by Nintendo? Games will run at 1080p 60fps with a lowest common factor of PS360 quality graphical fidelity and speculation based on hardware can tell us that it will be much more than that, but of course, with good reason, Nintendo is reluctant to give much more than what we get from the bolded until they're closer to release. So is Nintendo boasting or are you making assumptions and have a distorted idea that they're Nintendo's ideals of progression. But maybe you'll reveal something I have not observed nor considered that will make me see your statement as valid; however, I doubt it.