Found this tech-centric video on N4G. It's nice to see someone who knows a bit about tech obliterate the rubbish rumours that the Wii U will be weaker than current gen consoles.

http://n4g.com/news/974731/wii-u-hardware-specs-explained/com

It needed to be said.

Moore's law shows that even if the WiiU was built on technology from a few years ago, it would STILL totally blow the current gen systems out of the water, and that's NOT including newer architectural techniques, such as Quad thread processing per core and unified shading.

In order for the WiiU to be beaten by the Xbox 360 and PS3, they would have to go through more trouble than it's worth. That includes shrinking down an old, outdated architecture to current die size processes (since die process shrinkage would be their main aim. It uses less material, consumes less power and dissipates less heat for the same amount of work). So they'd most likely aim for a process that's not too old, but will work effectively under a die shrink without too much modification. Hence, they'd be looking for a GPU made in the past 3 years or so.

The good part about the 4850 is, unlike the 3000 series, it's the start of a newer architecture. I remember this because I bought two 3870s just months before the release of the 4000 series. Not only did the 4870 blow the 3870 out of the water, it's newer architecture also handled the excessive heat generated by the GPU a lot more effectively! I was spitting chips when I found that out.

This is exactly why i said earlier in another thread that there will be very little difference overall between the Wii U, 720 and PS4. They're all using similar GPU chipsets made by the same company, and just because the rumored GPUs in the PS4 and 720 are 2-3 generations newer than the Wii U's, performance-wise the Wii U will be more than able to hold its own, and is a definite step up from the current gen HD consoles.

The most interesting part of the video IMO is the comparisons of the CPUs... lately we've been hearing how allegedly piss-poor the Wii U's CPU is compared to even the PS3's Cell, but if the final product is anything like what the video describes, then once again there's nothing to worry about as the Wii U will blow the current gen systems out of the water.

Of course, it's all up to Nintendo to show off what the Wii U is actually capable of at E3... they better come out with guns blazing showing off some software that puts the current gen systems to shame, or else these rumors of the Wii U being underpowered are only going to persist.

Yeah, this video has been making the rounds here as of late (it's on the official WiiU thread) and for good reason. It's nice to see some common sense amidst the "anonymous devs and analysts" lunacy.

I very much agree. While I believe the Wii U will still be the weakest of the next gen machines (although I'm basing that on absolutely no evidence whatsoever), I don't think the gulf in class will be that great between any of them. If the Wii U roughly alligns to what's described in this video Microsoft and Sony would have to spend an awful lot (and take a considerable loss per machine) to produce a console that discernably outperforms the Wii U by a considerable distance.

Nice vid, those rumors were obviously false but this is good for people who actually believed them

I thought this was going to be a lot more technical ...

Anyways, what he is saying is what a lot of people have been saying for a while.

While the point he makes is true (WiiU rumoured being less "powerful" than current gen (whatever people mean by "powerful"), it is clear that the guy doesn't really understand the numbers he reads from his selection of spec sheets. In the GPU section, he misunderstands a few minor things (let's not forget the WiiU GPU is NOT an AMD GPU, it is built on 48xx architecture but heavily redesigned to Nintendo wishes). In the CPU section, there are too many technological problems to discuss here, also the WiiU CPU won't be the "normal" PP7 processor that burns 100W, but a "lighter" version of it.
So to sum up: You can't compare of-the-shelf components and get to reasonable conclusions, as very likely all CPUs and GPUs in the coming conoles are proprietary chips that don't "behave as normal PC chips".

Perhaps, although judging by the recent threads around here it couldn't hurt to say it again.

Yay! Now we can all stop with this non-sense about the Wii U being graphically inferior to current generation consoles. Right? Right!?