Soleron said:
Essentially, this makes the processor “overclock” at higher end speeds while reducing power consumption.
The main effects of recent shrinks are cost and power consumption, not clocks. Overclocking is also the wrong word.
Essentially, it makes the Wii U’s processor run even faster than it’s clock speeds with higher efficiency and lower power output.
Process has nothing to do with efficiency.
What this allows the Wii U to do, essentially, is move more data at once
No. It allows the Wii U to access that data in fewer cycles than a RAM fetch.
So, the processor is slower, but similar to the Power 7 tech, it moves more data at once at that slower rate than the standard processor at such rates.
Its memory bandwidth is actually a major weak spot.
Again though, the CPU is not Power 7 based, so it only increases the performance level by a certain amount.
We don't know anything about the architecture. It might be more modern than Power7. Who knows.
Certainly though, the performance increase does fundamentally make it have a higher efficiency than whats in the current gaming consoles.
No. The 360 and this are both on the same process node and similar architecture, so they are roughly equal in efficiency per transistor or for cost or power.
he Wii U version of the Radeon HD 5670 that has been custom built is actually more powerful than the original PC version of the card
No it isn't, because it consumes much less power than a 5670. I suspect it is either not as many shaders or has been downclocked.
A GPGPU are quickly become standard in gaming rig PCs for a few reasons, but chief among them is the fact that GPGPU’s actually handle several functions that the CPU traditionally does, except it does them better.
GPGPU is the ability of the GPU to make general calculations. It's not something extra on the GPU. Running those things on a CPU is more power efficient. PhysX, the only reasonable GPU Physics implementation, is proprietary to Nvidia. The other solutions suck.
he console is actually built around the notion that the GPU will tackle said tasks.
No it isn't.
The downfall of the GPGPU is that if it’s not being used in the fashion it’s intended to, which means taking on heavy graphical processing and extreme mathematical equations to perform in the game (aka, if you’re not heavily using the GPU and it’s processing), it actually performs slower.
GPGPU capabilities are in all modern GPUs from AMD and Nvidia and not using them therefore doesn't slow anything. You can't take them out.
Rather, it’s the the Wii U uses more advanced technology that actually takes away the stress normally associated with a CPU
The Wii U will still want to run game physics on the CPU for power and dev time reasons.
and in turn lowers power consumption, heat level, and ultimately leads to producing some of the best graphical capabilities on the market.
GPGPU isn't going to lower power consumption.
essentially, with everything customly aimed towards gaming, the Wii U is like a middle of the road gaming PC.
It's nowhere near that capable.
Unless the PS4 and the 720 are being silly, both should also feature GPGPU’s like the Wii U, and will both likely have better processors than the Wii U.
They have no choice. All graphics cards they could choose are GPGPU capable.
So, the Wii U will be behind, but it’s unlikely the PS4 and 720 will feature GPU’s that are any beefier than the Wii U.
The PS4 and 720 will have much better GPUs, because they will not be limiting themselves to 30W for the whole console.
it’s conceivable the other consoles in turn have less powerful GPGPU’s
GPGPU is not more or less 'powerful'. It's a capability of modern architectures that probably will not be used in any 8th gen console for economic reasons.
It just requires people, like the DICE dev, to fundamentally change the way in which they make games take advantage of the hardware.
No. Wii U is similar in programming model to Wii and in architecture to either Wii or 360. It is easy to program for and I think we're close to getting the max out of the hardware already. This is nothing like as bad as PS3 was.
n the future, developers would be wise to truly take hold of the beefy GPGPU in the Wii U and push it as hard as they can.
They won't.
Current generation (or last generation for us Wii U owners) are extremely CPU based games. Heavily reliant on the CPU pushing through. In the next generation, this is going to change significantly.
Wow something actually true. Modern PC games are more GPU bound now, indeed. Devs will probably need to adjust for weak Wii U CPU and stronger GPU.
ny concerns over a slow processor are completely negated by the fact the Graphics Card on the Wii U can actually handle some of the larger processes, like physics, usually reserved for the processor.
Again no.
The Wii U is going to be just fine folks. While it wont be as powerful as the PS4 or 720, that beefy GPGPU is going to ensure the Wii U can stay up with the new systems that are coming.
GPGPU is irrelevant to whether it will keep up. Which it won't, because those two will be much more expensive and use several times the power.
Naturally, the biggest reason to go against console convention and use a GPGPU like the Wii U does is costs.
GPGPU isn't something added to the Wii U, per above.
GPU’s are just a lot cheaper, and when you start to be able to toss the larger processes at them like Physics, it pretty much increases the efficiency of the entire console 10 fold
It really doesn't. Even Nvidia haven't been able to persuade many game companies to adopt PhysX and that's the best implementation (other than terrible quality video encoders)
The Wii U is doing something that the PS3 and 360 can only dream of doing presently.
No.
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