spurgeonryan said: greenmedic88 said: VGKing said: exit52000 said: All these people analysising specs drives me potty. All you need to do is look at what the machine will hopefully be capable of. Not only will the machine be capable of 1080p resolutions on most games which neither the PS3 or Xbox 360 are capable of doing but at the same time as doing this it will have to stream 480p graphics to at least 1 Pad if not 2. So if you think that 1080p is 5 times the resolution of 480p. The wii U will infact be capable of running 7 times standard definition. The chipset for the graphics card has been rumoured for sometime and this chipset has its own (on PCs anyway) 1GB RAM. 768MB shared will not be the case IMO. The Processor if Quad core is at least 25 percent more power than the Xbox due the additional core and from memory the Xbox only uses 1 core for gameplay and the other 2 for other functions. And finally when will people learn thats its not all about the Graphics. This machine will especially if it has 2 pads provide some amazing new gameplay experiences and I am really looking forward to its release . Where did you get that it will run most games at 1080p? Reggie said its capable of 1080p. So are PS3 and Xbox 360. You're just assuming these games are going to run at native 1080p? This is Nintendo. They sell their consoles at a profit. A HD4850 can run (native render) most games of the current generation at 1920x1080, typically over 30fps depending on the level of added effects and AA.  Until I hear anything compelling that convinces me otherwise, I'll accept the concensus among most major reports that the AMD R700 design will be used for the final production GPU.  As for costs, the R700 is mature technology (2008), meaning the per unit cost on chips from AMD will probably be about or under $50, which for a $300-400 retail price console design, is pretty consistent with former consoles.  But yes, stating 1080p capable could mean anything from "plays 1080p video" to natively renders games visuals at 1920x1080. Quite a difference.  Was that they sell their consoles at profit a joke or were you being serious? As for plays 1080p video and rendering game visuals at 1920X1080 what is the difference?What does one do that the other does not?

Video is already rendered and done by computers but in-game is rendered while you play it. Video does not need the processing power to just display it on screen while games need the console to be able to render it while you play it.

And as for VGKing. He was sent by the Sony gods to make the 3DS look like a PSP and the WiiU is going to be less powerful than the PS3. He is on a mission!

Just on the topic of the 3DS, I do believe the 3DS does give some insight on what Nintendo is doing/thinking ...

While you can get into an argument on just how powerful any system is, in real world performance the PSP produced results that were closer (and arguably worse) than what we saw for the Dreamcast. In contrast, the 3DS appears to be producing results that are similar to Gamecube/Wii games while rendering at a higher resolution and outputting graphics on 2 screens with one being in 3D; and Nintendo has recently made changes which unlocked additional processing power to developers for 3DS games. Certainly, the PSP was state of the art for when it was released and the 3DS (arguably) isn’t as advanced comparatively speaking, but the 3DS is clearly far more powerful than the PSP.

If you assume that the Wii U might have been designed with a similar approach, the jump from the HD consoles to the Wii U would be somewhere around the difference from the Dreamcast to the Wii; and, with Nintendo choosing to increase the performance of the 3DS after release as best as they could, it wouldn't surprise me if Nintendo tweaked the hardware for higher performance recently. As precident, consider than Nintendo increased the clockspeed of both the CPU and GPU of the Gamecube ( by over 25%) between its announcement as the dolphin at E3 and when it was introduced as the Gamecube at E3 the following year.

While I agree your post Happy, Nintendo actually increased the GC's CPU clock speed from 405mhz to 486mhz and decreased the GPU speed from 202.5mhz to 162mhz. So they raised the CPU clock by roughly 25% but decreased the CPU by the same amount.

I guess I remembered it incorrectly, I thought they increased both but I must have been mistaken

I didn't say anything about Nintendo selling their hardware at a profit, but it is a given that they always engineer and price their devices for profitability from Day 1. Smart business. 

The difference between playing prerendered 1080p video or upscaling a 480p or 720p signal to 1080p and natively rendering game visuals at 1920x1080 resolution is pretty significant. They are not the same by any means.

In a gaming PC, a lesser video card would have to sacrifice frame rates or resolution (or GPU based visual effects) to one with a better/newer GPU with more VRAM. 

So to answer your question, higher specs (better GPU, more VRAM) means faster graphics processing capabilities and more memory for storing high res textures and more layers of textures (diffuse, specular, bump map, normal map, occlusion, etc. etc.). More layers of textures provide more realistic visuals and higher detail. Better GPU allows for more polygons, larger maps/geometry, faster frame rates and higher native resolution rendering.