How much of that additional 1GB is used to stream to the Upad? I imagine using 2 pads simultaneously requires a lot of RAM.

And a hypothetical question: If the Wii U was an exact copy of a PS3 or Xbox360 but with 1GB of RAM for games what would the difference in performance be like? Which games would profit from it and would developers be able to let their games run in 1080p instead of 720p? (Thinking of the N64 Expansion Pack here: It doubled the RAM and most developers used that to increase resolution)

The streaming doesn't require much RAM.

Likely the huge amount is to allow for new features to be added later on without taking RAM away from devs and to allow for OS reductions like they did with the 3DS and Sony did with the PS3....which actually gives developers more RAM.

You are pretty much correct about the second part.   There'd be games in higher resolutions, higher resolution textures, better A.I., better physics, better frame rates.

I'll bet by next year half of that 1GB used for OS is freed up and available to use for games

The Wii got more RAM unlocked for gaming during its lifespan?

About 40-45W of actual power consumption then? Assuming around 25W for graphical purposes and the same efficiency of current 28nm GPU/GPGPUs (15 GFLOPS/W) we should have around 375 GFLOPS for the GPU, about 1.5 times the X360's Xenos (but some 20-25% more efficient factoring optimizations in?). That's consistent with a RV770 chip operating at about 300 MHz. Mmm....

5x Blu-Ray drive then? Fair enough I guess.

Also, RAM ended up being a good surprise. Like it was mentioned, probably we're going to see some extra ~500MB being available to games during the console's life cycle.

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1 GB for OS is ludicrous. That's the amount that the incredibly bloated Windows Vista needed to run, the worst of the PC operating systems

Hopefully Nintendo will open some of that up (similar to how Sony opened up more of the PSP's processor capabilities over time). An extra 512 would make a big difference, and give the Wii U's capabilities room to grow in the future, a good way to gain ground against PS4720

Hopefully they give details about the performance of the processor and the GPGPU.

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1GB for OS?

This is like the PSP at launch where 1/3 of its power was locked off.

Maybe it has something to do with the other screen requiring more RAM

Or later on more of that RAM could be opened up for games.