I think it will be more like DC vs PS2 or even GCN than DC vs GCN and Xbox.  The original Xbox was considered a huge leap compared to PS1 and N64...I am not seeing that on any of these so called new gen systems.  So it'll be more like DC vs PS2 for Wii U owners; and it'll be a toss up between 720 and PS4 IMHO. Like SC said it won't make that much of a diff for all 3 systems.

The Wii U is very far from terrible.

Oh, I didn't mean Wii U is terrible, I meant the situation of Wii U being quite a whole lot less powerful... But then again, we don't know that...

But its not wierd, there's a significant difference.

Wii was not only more than ~10x lower in raw power than PS360, it was also missing specific technical features and that made it fundementally costly for devs to create special engines for one platform.

WiiU is not that. Which is very good. It is no more than 3-4x lower (at this point) in raw power and shares all the same technical features, shaders, etc. Now, its not going to require a whole different engine. Just a factor of scalability.

So yes I accept WiiU is not as powerful as the rest, but at this point its very good that it should have no technical reason to not be ported AAA 3rd party games. Now there is still the idea of Rols conspiracy of everyone against Nintendo anyways, so maybe it won't matter. But its something that is good now.

Its certainly not terrible. Most people wouldn't even notice a difference in a 1080p vs 720p game or 30fps vs 60fps.. so long as the game was otherwise identical plus the off TV play or gamepad extra stuff is awesome.

Yeah, I guess all of that is true... But it feels weird to be happy with something because it's not 10x less powerful...

I believe it.

If MS wants more system memory, it might have been way too costly to use 8GB of GDDR5. A compromise could be  a custom 256-bit bus over DDR3-2133? That gives us exactly the rumored 68.256GB/sec (256 bit x 2133mhz / 8 bits per byte)

You make a good point. But even if HD7970M in PS4 has half of the memory bandwidth it might have dedicated GDDR5 for the GPU. You still have not addressed the other issue I talked about regarding sharing DDR3 through the northbridge = a large latency penalty. 

HD5450 and E-350 (6310) have the same number of shader processors but the HD5450 has a dedicated 1.6GHz memory bus to feed it.

Look at the huge performance penalty incurred by a GPU with shared DDR3 memory over the NorthBridge (the Xbox 720 approach):

http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph4023/34111.png

http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph4023/34112.png

http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph4023/34113.png

"Compared to the Radeon HD 5450 the 6310 offers between 66 - 69% of its performance in our GPU bound tests. The performance reduction is entirely due to the 6310's limited memory bandwidth being shared with the dual Bobcat cores on-die."

From what I am seeing, the memory bandwidth limitation and the additional latencies due to GPU having to go through the NorthBridge to communicate with the system memory will produce at least a 30% performance hit, and that's assuming MS is able to maintain the memory bandwidth at HD7770Ghz level to begin with. So you have a double-whammy: the additional middleman NorthBridge latency + reduction in memory bandwidth on the Xbox 720 due to lack of GDDR5. 

If eSRAM was a better approach to having a dedicated GDDR5 memory, then GPU makers would solder dedicated eSRAM/eDRAM chips next to the GPU die on the same package and save $ on not having to use the more expensive GDDR5/wider bus widths feeding the GPU. If you look at Wii U's crippled memory sub-system, it actually goes with a similar cost savings route by neutering the GPU with DDR3 and trying to make up for it with eDRAM on the die. MS promised us nearly 'free 4xAA' with Xbox 360 due to its embedded RAM and we got nothing of the sort. Sorry, but I am smelling more marketing BS from them on this one. Xbox 1 was the most powerful console in its generation and it was the closest to a PC design. It appears PS4's GPU subsystem mimics the approaches used on the PC a lot closer as well. I am going to lean towards the PC approach being superior for performance and efficiencies because that's the approach used for $500-1000 PC gaming GPUs. Anything else smells like cost cutting.

Ironically, eDRAM allows larger amounts of memory to be installed on smaller chips compared to eSRAM (about a 3x area savings vs. eSRAM). If MS is using eSRAM instead of the more expensive eDRAM, this only continues to highlight all these areas they are trying to save $$$ in my eyes. I hope I am wrong.

Of course all these are just rumors but MS's console seems to be pushing marketing to the average consumer ("Oh it has 8GB of system memory, it must be awesome!!!!"), and some "magic sauce" modules. For all we know the Video Codecs and Data Move Engines could be used for recording TV shows directly onto the Xbox 720 and have nothing to do with aiding graphics. This "secret sauce" hidden deep within Xbox 720 is not inspiring much confidence at the moment.

Ok, thanks for the head's up. I fixed PS4 figures related to bandwidth, etc.

Also great discussion on the memory and other stuff above. Lots of interesting details there.

I have been browsing this thread now and then. And It's quite obvious you guys are having fun with all that technical data.
But unless i'm missing something the only part which could somewhat reliable from the OP, is the Wii U stuff.

no, its all very reliable. wait... are you referring to the listed specs or my assumptions of those specs?

my assumptions are just that and could be wrong.

the listed specs are very reliable and confirmed by multiple devs.