ethomaz said:
snowdog said:
On paper it's around 3 times more powerful than the 360 - 3MB CPU cache compared to 1MB CPU cache, a modern architecture for the CPU, 4 times as much RAM, slightly more than 3 times more eDRAM on the GPU (32MB compared to 10MB) which also has the advantage of being on-die, a GPU that has a DX11 equivalent feature set rather than the DX9 feature set that Xenos has.
In real-world performance it should be around 4 times more powerful given that the CPU doesn't have to deal with sound and IO thanks to having dedicated silicon to do the job as well as the CPU having Out-Of-Order Execution, which means less wasted clock cycles and more effeciency.
We'll probably see the PS4 and 720 being 2-3x more powerful than the U, meaning we'll have the 8th gen being similar to the 6th gen with all 3 consoles being in the same sort of ballpark in terms of power. |
In the paper the Wii U is not 3 times better... what we have in the paper.
CPU (Espresso x Xenon): You can say the Expresso have a better IPC than Xenon... that's true but the Xenon have almost three time the speed of the Expresso and can run 2 threads per core... yeap the Xenon takes that easily.
Xenon won by a good margin.
Memory: Wii U have more memory but it's ways slow... sorry but it's harder to say what is better... for GPU it's better to have a faster memory than a lot of memory... I think both have the pros and cons... and Wii U have just 2x the memory of 360... not 4x like everyone here things (just 1GB is for games).
Tie.
GPU (Espresso x Xenos): The Wii U takes the leap here... the GPU is better and more advanced but it's a high-end GPU... it's a mid to low-end GPU (PC comparision). The clock is almost the same... so what will define how much the GPU is better is the other specs like SPs, ROPs, TMUs, etc... so what I read until now (and the size comparision) the GPU is at max 2x better than the 360's CPU.
Espresso won by a good margin (2x)
CONCLUSION
In the paper the Wii hardware is not even 2x better than the 360 hardware... it have better and worst components... overall I believe the Wii U is 1.5x better than X360 but just for you not says I'm biased...
Wii U is 1.7-1.8x better than X360 in the paper.
3x or over that is just delusional.
PS. The Wii's CPU is not modern... it's a 10 years old (or more) architecture... the same architecture used in X360's CPU.
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The funny thing is that the Broadway, with one core without multithreading and clocked at 729MHz, beats the Xenon at general processing thanks to the Wii having dedicated silicon to deal with sound and IO. The only thing that Xenon has over the Broadway and the Expresso is being great at floating point operations...but that's what the GPU is for. The DSP (Digital Signal Processor) alone makes a huge difference. Developers have to have one thread entirely dedicated to sound, and games with extensive use of sound such as racers for example often have two threads out of six, a third of the Xenon's processing power, dedicated to sound. The Wii U also has a dual-core ARM co-processor but we don't know what sort of work that's doing yet. And you're also not taking into account that Expresso has 3 times more cache than Xenon, which is quite a big deal.
As for the memory, Nintendo have sacrificed high bandwidth for low latency, despite the difference in bus size the U's memory has a lower latency compared to the previous gen consoles. And it is 4 times the amount of memory, not all of the 360's 512MB is used for games either, you can't move the goalposts. The 360 has a total of 512MB and the U has a total of 2GB.
Just to finish, here's what Shin’en’s Manfred Linzner had to say about the hardware:
Wii U Hardware/Tech
- Hardware avoids “typical bottlenecks”, such as RAM latency.
- GPU “quite open”.
- Hardware has good optimisation potential, and components well balanced.
- Have had no problems with the CPU/GPU combination. Feels they’re a “good match”.
- GamePad streaming and camera capture do not put a burden on the CPU/GPU.
- Nano Assault Neo using a few tricks that are not possible on current generation hardware. States the modern Wii U GPU is capable of effects that can make Wii U games look better than any game on current generation hardware.
- Audio DPS used for 3D audio and lowpass filtering.
- Excited to see what developers do with the hardware over the years.
Source
What everyone seems to be forgetting is that Nintendo always release balanced hardware. They're not going to bung in a GPU with plenty of grunt with a CPU and RAM that will give bottlenecking issues. There's a lot more going on under the hood that we don't have a clue about.
