Those passively cooled 5570's need good airflow inside a not too small case. When you are working with convective heat transfer, you need somewhere to place the energy these chips dissipate. If you don't have good airflow, your card burns. Yo can find >100C temperatures in reviews, imagine that in a very small form factor as the WiiU

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1058-page5.html

@DeSero "WiiU has 45nm custom chip ... a SOI design & packs same processor tech found in #IBMWatson" http://t.co/7PiZsVnI - @engadget

— IBM watsonx (@IBMwatsonx) August 28, 2012

Both the power pc core in the Cell CPU and 360 CPU were designed and custom built for those consoles by IBM with design input from Microsoft, Sony, Toshiba and IBM?  It was made with both the 360 and PS3 in mind though not just one or the other.  There was no other chip even close to this power pc core in any of IBM's portfolio.  Microsoft actually turned down all their server chips for the one they knew IBM were designing for the PS3 as it was so far ahead of everything else at that time.

Good airflow has nothing to do with form factor. Good airflow means getting enough cool air across the hardware that needs cooling. You're talking about in case heat build-up. Laptops are smaller than the Wii U will ever be and have less ventilation. They don't fry themselves either. And before you begin with how low laptop TDP is, the lowest TDP of any mobile ivy bridge cpu is 17 Watts. If you take a reasonable mobile processor with a reasonable mobile gpu, the combined TDP is already higher than what you think is the limit of the Wii U's small form factor. Yet those components are frequently fitted in 13" laptops without problems of overheating.

And that review has nothing to do with what will be possible in the Wii U. Notice they say the heatsink of the 5570 is the reason why the gpu hits 100+ C.
The Wii U GPU will be custom built, thinks like an insufficient heatsink won't make it past the testing fase.

The 360 and PS3 are based on 7 year old technology, you'd have to be an utter moron to think today's technology can't deliver more power with a smaller power envelope. Like I proved already the 5570 has a TDP of 39 Watt, the 2600 XT a TDP of 50 Watt. Yet the 5570 is mutliple times faster.

5570 is made with 40nm channel lenght transistors. 2600 XT on 65nm. That's a huge difference, three manufacturing nodes (65nm->55nm->45nm->40nm), the same chip made with the same number of transistors would be on 40nm tech only a 38% of the size of a 65nm chip, (without taking into consideration pad limited chips) and that's why you have more performance with lower TDP. Do you understand it or need a diagram?

Actual X360 and PS3s are made on 45nm, WiiU uses 45nm for the proccesor and 40nm for the graphics chip. It doesn't have the manufacturing advantage.

Regarding good airflow, look at the WiiU size, and tell me that you can have good airflow on a box of that size without screaming fans. I have a 15.4 gaming laptop with a TDP of 70W and even with undervolt on the proccesor and graphics chip it's a f*cking overcraft when I play games, both fans scream like there is no tomorrow, so don't tell me how a laptop has good and silent airflow, because it's impossible. You have good imagination, I'm realistic and I don't expect miracles.

You mean two manufacturing nodes.... 65->55->40. 45nm hasn't been used for desktop/mobile gpu's, that's a cpu node. Shows us what you know...
But you're completely talking around the FACT that newer technology is faster than old technology. The 360 and PS3 are made on 45nm TODAY, they were designed on 90nm. You believe they miraculously became more powerful after they went down in size? The only advantage is that they consume less power now and can run almost completely quiet.

So yes, the Wii U does have a manufacturing advantage. That advantage being that it's based on newer tech.

Also, sorry to hear your laptop is utter shit. Mine is fine though. Core i7 2630QM combined with a GeForce GT540M. Good for 77 Watts with those two parts alone. It get's hot, but not unbarable. Noise is about the same as the 360 Elite I had when on full pelt. The heat dissipation vent is about the same size as the Wii's by the way. I know, IMPOSSIBRU right?

But you'll probably won't believe me and say it's my 'imagination'.

What do third parties have to do with our discussion? Wow please stop just grasping for straws and actually tell me what a decent selling game is. Sony has one game that can reach 7 million why even include that one franchise, its called an outliner. 99% of Sony's games cant even crack 4 million lol. How about this, if Sony's games sell decent then Cod, GTA, Mario, Pokemon, etc must be godly to you. That was a horrible bundle, nobody wants Motorstorm like the rest of Sony's exclusives. Sony should bundle games people want, not just bundle just to bundle. You can expose a turd all you want, at the end of the day it will still sell like a turd.

That a full node or a half node weren't used for graphics chips doesn't mean that they weren't nodes. There is still the same size difference, what is more, if they wouldn't have used 55nm, the difference between the physical characteristics between 65nm node and 40nm node is the same, the 40nm chip still has a die size of approximately a 40% of the die size of the same chip on 65nm, with the consumption and/or power advantages that difference provides.

The 360 and the PS3 made with 45nm technology today still use more than 90W, designed on 90 nm or not. The fact that they were designed for 90nm don't mean nothing when those chips are shrink to 40 and 45nm (RSX now is made on 40nm). Both consoles power consumption are on the 90-100W range, with 45nm chips. The main advantage that Nintendo has is much more memory and compatibility with newer effects, but it won't provide a huge jump on performance to what PS3 and X360 provide.

We won't need to speculate for too long, in less than a month we will see who is correct and who's wrong. I have not too high expectations, so the performance can only be equal or better than what I expect. You will find that the reality isn't what you expect, because you have unreasonable expectations.

40% of 50 Watts is 20 Watts. The 5570 is rated at 39. By your logic that means it can only be twice as powerful as the 2600 XT. Yet it delivers about 4 times the power of the 2600 XT. Newer tech = faster hardware.

As for my expectations. I believe the limiting factor will be price as I've said already.
There's a good chance the Wii U will only be 2 times as powerful as the 360. Not because it can't handle more powerful hardware but because Nintendo don't want to lose (too much) money on every sold unit.

Die size difference =! power consumption difference. There are other factors as more advanced transistors technologies as HKMG, as an example. The difference is that we're talking here of chips made in the same process, there is not foundry advantage.

Bold: whatever. If you believe that they can make a much more than two times more powerful console, on half the volume of a X360 or a PS3, with the same foundry technology than the PS3 and the X360 sold today and an acceptable thermal and sound envelope, then Nintendo engineers must me geniuses, as they shouldn't comply with the thermodynamic laws.