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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Nintendo Wii U supports 1080p, CPU and GPU confirmed - UPDATE: Spec sheet! 1.5 GB RAM, 3 core PowerPC CPU etc. Thread now includes FREE Icelandic lessons!

NintendoPie on 05 June 2012
Lollipopanon said:
Generally graphics get better on hardware the further into the lifecycle you are. The developers seem to take time to figure out the best way to code for the system, so I'm sure games will look better as we go. Regardless I'm sure the Wii U is more powerful/capable than the current gen systems, but I guess we will have to see how it compares to the 720/PS4

So far the games, especially Pikmin 3 and that one Trine game, look really good for launch titles!



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lilbroex on 05 June 2012
Badassbab said:
lilbroex said:
Badassbab said:
Judging by the dev kit specs leaked, the Wii U should be able to handle current gen ports with ease mainly thanks to the ram and edram. I'm curious as to why they went with the 360 type tri-core CPU set up when quad core have been around for a number of years. Must be a cost thing.

I suspect Nintendo is satisfied with simply having similar yet superior graphics to current gen consoles. So wheras ACIII may feature slowdown and tearing on PS360, the Wii U version should be able to run at a rock solid 30fps and fully v-synced plus nicer textures due to more ram.


What aspect of them both being 3 core points to similarity in power and capability?

That is kind of like saying that the NES has the same level of power as the PS2 since they are both single core. I'm confused.

I guess I'm out of the loop. I didn't know that core count became a static representation of power. I guess that is why the 4 core sandy bridges outperform the 6 core phenom 2s.

IBM have made one tri core processor and that was for the 360 Xenon which was derived from the Cell PPE.

Now judging by the similarities between the Gamecube and Wii CPU (Wii version being twice as fast), my guess is the Wii U will follow a similar path and adopt a version of 360 tri core CPU albeit a more efficient version. This will of course keep cost down significantly for reasons I guess I need not point out.

Your right to point out more cores don't necessarily mean more power. But your wrong to compare Intel and AMD CPU's from a strictly number of cores point of view. Both companies take different approaches on how they maximise CPU power. What you should've done is look to IBM's family of CPU for the comparisons.

I only found it curious because IBM only make one type of tri core CPU and that is the 360 Xenon. Personally I would've preferred an off the shelf solution like at least a 4 core Power7 cpu but I understand cost is an issue.


Exept, we know that the Wii U processor is based on the Power7 which outperforms not only the 360's Power5 but the Cell Broadband as well in all benchmarks. This was the first factual information we leared about the Wii U's hardware last year and it came from IBM themselves.

To my knowledge, there has been no record of this changing so it is still a Power7 derived processor.



Badassbab on 05 June 2012
dahuman said:

since FXAA and MLAA are more of a screen filter, it gets more and more blurry at lower res, I've tested it quiet extensively, as they updated those filters, the quality and speed has so far greatly improved, but try that shit at like 8x6 for example, blurry mess lol. I really think that's the way to go in the future though, it has the potential to use much less resource and produce greater results at high res, I love it.

Are you talking about AMD ATI hardware forced MLAA? Last I tried it, it was really blurry even on 1080p. Never went back. Though that was over a year ago so it might have improved. Shall give it anbother go. PC quality FXAA on the other hand looked great on Deus Ex.






NintendoPie on 05 June 2012
pezus said:
NintendoPie said:
Lollipopanon said:
Generally graphics get better on hardware the further into the lifecycle you are. The developers seem to take time to figure out the best way to code for the system, so I'm sure games will look better as we go. Regardless I'm sure the Wii U is more powerful/capable than the current gen systems, but I guess we will have to see how it compares to the 720/PS4

So far the games, especially Pikmin 3 and that one Trine game, look really good for launch titles!

Trine 2 is being ported to Wii U?

Yup, and it looks fantastic.



Adinnieken on 05 June 2012
ethomaz said:

I guess the big change from PS360 to Wii U is the available RAM for developer... 1.5GB is way better to work than 512MB.

The tri-core PowerPC (the lastest release to date) is nothing so different than the PowerPC used by 360.

And GPU not surprise me yet (that's my bigest unknown).

The Xbox 360's Tri-Core Xenon processor is a Power6-based processor, only customized to Microsoft specifications and better than stock.

The Wii U's CPU is a Quad-Core Power7 processor, from the sounds of it, with some customized specifications for Nintendo.

There is a significant performance difference.  The Wii U's processor is capable of 132.5 GFLOPS, compared to 96.0 GFLOPS for the Xbox 360's Xenon processor.  If you want to quantify it, the CPU performance is 30% better than the Xenon processor in the Xbox 360. 

Some additional differences, the Power7 processors have L1, L2, L3 caches (referenced as Core in the OPs list), the Xenon has only an L1 and L2.  The Xenon has 2 threads per core, the Power7 has 4 threads per core.  This means rather than the Xenon being capable of having 6 things it can do at once, the Power7 CPU can, in a 4 core arrangement, do up to 16 different things. 

Given that the GPU is also of better performance, it stands to reason that overall the Wii U is more powerful than the Xbox 360.

With regard to the PS3, the Cell processor weighs in at 102.4 GFLOPS.  Slightly better performance than the Xbox 360, but the CPU performance is still less than that of the Wii U, and the GPU in the Wii U would be significantly better than the RSX.  Not to mention, the Wii U appears to use the same memory architecture as the Xbox 360 (unified memory).  Depending on what the OS uses, this should represent better performance and games than either the current Xbox 360 or the PS3 can offer.

Is the performance difference going to make an impact?  I don't think so.  But there is a significant performance increase.  Just, it isn't significant enough once the next PlayStation or Xbox is released.



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Badassbab on 05 June 2012
lilbroex said:
Badassbab said:
lilbroex said:
Badassbab said:
Judging by the dev kit specs leaked, the Wii U should be able to handle current gen ports with ease mainly thanks to the ram and edram. I'm curious as to why they went with the 360 type tri-core CPU set up when quad core have been around for a number of years. Must be a cost thing.

I suspect Nintendo is satisfied with simply having similar yet superior graphics to current gen consoles. So wheras ACIII may feature slowdown and tearing on PS360, the Wii U version should be able to run at a rock solid 30fps and fully v-synced plus nicer textures due to more ram.


What aspect of them both being 3 core points to similarity in power and capability?

That is kind of like saying that the NES has the same level of power as the PS2 since they are both single core. I'm confused.

I guess I'm out of the loop. I didn't know that core count became a static representation of power. I guess that is why the 4 core sandy bridges outperform the 6 core phenom 2s.

IBM have made one tri core processor and that was for the 360 Xenon which was derived from the Cell PPE.

Now judging by the similarities between the Gamecube and Wii CPU (Wii version being twice as fast), my guess is the Wii U will follow a similar path and adopt a version of 360 tri core CPU albeit a more efficient version. This will of course keep cost down significantly for reasons I guess I need not point out.

Your right to point out more cores don't necessarily mean more power. But your wrong to compare Intel and AMD CPU's from a strictly number of cores point of view. Both companies take different approaches on how they maximise CPU power. What you should've done is look to IBM's family of CPU for the comparisons.

I only found it curious because IBM only make one type of tri core CPU and that is the 360 Xenon. Personally I would've preferred an off the shelf solution like at least a 4 core Power7 cpu but I understand cost is an issue.


Exept, we know that the Wii U processor is based on the Power7 which outperforms not only the 360's Power5 but the Cell Broadband as well in all benchmarks. This was the first factual information we leared about the Wii U's hardware last year and it came from IBM themselves.

To my knowledge, there has been no record of this changing so it is still a Power7 derived processor.


Xenon is a custom CPU derived from the Cell not Power 5.

Plus the Wii U is a small console. There's only so much power Nintendo can cram in.  But I hope your right about the Power 7 part so can expect at least a 4 core.






lilbroex on 05 June 2012
Adinnieken said:
ethomaz said:

I guess the big change from PS360 to Wii U is the available RAM for developer... 1.5GB is way better to work than 512MB.

The tri-core PowerPC (the lastest release to date) is nothing so different than the PowerPC used by 360.

And GPU not surprise me yet (that's my bigest unknown).

The Xbox 360's Tri-Core Xenon processor is a Power6-based processor, only customized to Microsoft specifications and better than stock.

The Wii U's CPU is a Quad-Core Power7 processor, from the sounds of it, with some customized specifications for Nintendo.

There is a significant performance difference.  The Wii U's processor is capable of 132.5 GFLOPS, compared to 96.0 GFLOPS for the Xbox 360's Xenon processor.  If you want to quantify it, the CPU performance is 30% better than the Xenon processor in the Xbox 360. 

Some additional differences, the Power7 processors have L1, L2, L3 caches (referenced as Core in the OPs list), the Xenon has only an L1 and L2.  The Xenon has 2 threads per core, the Power7 has 4 threads per core.  This means rather than the Xenon being capable of having 6 things it can do at once, the Power7 CPU can, in a 4 core arrangement, do up to 16 different things. 

Given that the GPU is also of better performance, it stands to reason that overall the Wii U is more powerful than the Xbox 360.

With regard to the PS3, the Cell processor weighs in at 102.4 GFLOPS.  Slightly better performance than the Xbox 360, but the CPU performance is still less than that of the Wii U, and the GPU in the Wii U would be significantly better than the RSX.  Not to mention, the Wii U appears to use the same memory architecture as the Xbox 360 (unified memory).  Depending on what the OS uses, this should represent better performance and games than either the current Xbox 360 or the PS3 can offer.

Is the performance difference going to make an impact?  I don't think so.  But there is a significant performance increase.  Just, it isn't significant enough once the next PlayStation or Xbox is released.

I'm pretty sure that is a Power5 processor in the 360. The Power6 wasnt finished until 2007.

The Wii U processor is confirmed to be 3 core and based on the Power7



dahuman on 05 June 2012
Badassbab said:
dahuman said:

since FXAA and MLAA are more of a screen filter, it gets more and more blurry at lower res, I've tested it quiet extensively, as they updated those filters, the quality and speed has so far greatly improved, but try that shit at like 8x6 for example, blurry mess lol. I really think that's the way to go in the future though, it has the potential to use much less resource and produce greater results at high res, I love it.

Are you talking about AMD ATI hardware forced MLAA? Last I tried it, it was really blurry even on 1080p. Never went back. Though that was over a year ago so it might have improved. Shall give it anbother go. PC quality FXAA on the other hand looked great on Deus Ex.


ATM MLAA has better quality than FXAA, but AMD is pretty tight asses about it for some odd reason and Nvidia is not so tight assed about FXAA so you see a lot more games having native support, aka no text blurring problem.



lilbroex on 05 June 2012
Badassbab said:
lilbroex said:
Badassbab said:
lilbroex said:
Badassbab said:
Judging by the dev kit specs leaked, the Wii U should be able to handle current gen ports with ease mainly thanks to the ram and edram. I'm curious as to why they went with the 360 type tri-core CPU set up when quad core have been around for a number of years. Must be a cost thing.

I suspect Nintendo is satisfied with simply having similar yet superior graphics to current gen consoles. So wheras ACIII may feature slowdown and tearing on PS360, the Wii U version should be able to run at a rock solid 30fps and fully v-synced plus nicer textures due to more ram.


What aspect of them both being 3 core points to similarity in power and capability?

That is kind of like saying that the NES has the same level of power as the PS2 since they are both single core. I'm confused.

I guess I'm out of the loop. I didn't know that core count became a static representation of power. I guess that is why the 4 core sandy bridges outperform the 6 core phenom 2s.

IBM have made one tri core processor and that was for the 360 Xenon which was derived from the Cell PPE.

Now judging by the similarities between the Gamecube and Wii CPU (Wii version being twice as fast), my guess is the Wii U will follow a similar path and adopt a version of 360 tri core CPU albeit a more efficient version. This will of course keep cost down significantly for reasons I guess I need not point out.

Your right to point out more cores don't necessarily mean more power. But your wrong to compare Intel and AMD CPU's from a strictly number of cores point of view. Both companies take different approaches on how they maximise CPU power. What you should've done is look to IBM's family of CPU for the comparisons.

I only found it curious because IBM only make one type of tri core CPU and that is the 360 Xenon. Personally I would've preferred an off the shelf solution like at least a 4 core Power7 cpu but I understand cost is an issue.


Exept, we know that the Wii U processor is based on the Power7 which outperforms not only the 360's Power5 but the Cell Broadband as well in all benchmarks. This was the first factual information we leared about the Wii U's hardware last year and it came from IBM themselves.

To my knowledge, there has been no record of this changing so it is still a Power7 derived processor.


Xenon is a custom CPU derived from the Cell not Power 5.

Plus the Wii U is a small console. There's only so much power Nintendo can cram in.  But I hope your right about the Power 7 part so can expect at least a 4 core.


...what? The cell was in developerment when the 360 hit the market...and it was codeveloped under Sony, with them holding the copyright...

I'm fairly certain Sony didn't license their processor to Micrsoft, a year before it hit the market no less.

All of the dcumentiation I've read says that the 360 uses a Power5 based processor. May have been Power5A but I'm not 100% sure. The "cell" is based on the Power series not the other way around.

Is a 3 core power7 based processor, not 4. it it custom made for the console, just as with Xenon so it won't be a big or power consuming a production modal server processor.



fillet on 05 June 2012
NintendoPie said:
pezus said:
Andrespetmonkey said:
Reads "CPU and GPU confirmed"

Then reads "The CPU is an IBM Power-based multi-core processor. The GPU is an AMD Radeon-based High Definition GPU"

Fuck you!

Hey, don't kill the messenger!

It's almost confirmed that it is indeed more powerful than PS3/360. Even the launch games and 3rd party ports look better than the PS3/360 games.

LOL! You seriously think that, Pezus? They showed almost nothing...


If it's based in 7xxx series ATI cards, which means this gen's cards. It's almost certain to be more powerful than the PS3 and Xbox 360. Even the mainstream 7xxx cards piss all over an nVidia 7800GT which is tech inside PS3 (although gimped further in PS3) and about SIX GENERATIONS AHEAD

Geforce 7xxx

Geforce 8xxx

Gefore 1xx (debatable if genuine generation as tech was a frankenstein of 8 series technology)

Geforce 2xx

Geforce 4xx

Geforce 5xx

Geforce 6xx = AMD or ATI 7xxx series.

 

Six generations.

 

Almost impossible to be slower than PS3 or 360. GPU makes up the majority of how good a game looks CPU doesn't count for much where we are these days.