The architecture of the Wii U is actually not similar to Xbox 360 at all. The CPU is an out of order architecture vs. in order CPU architecture of Xbox 360. That means the CPUs are completely different. The GPU is based on RV7xx series vs. R500 series in Xbox 360. RV700 series GPUs didn't even come out until October 2008 as HD4830 (RV770). Your claims that Wii U uses 7-year-old tech are just an opinion. While there is no doubt that the Wii U will not compete on power with PS4/Xbox 720, comparing its potential to Xbox 360/PS3 graphics today is too difficult. Developers had 6-7 years to learn how to optimize games for PS3/360. Early PS3/360 had unimpressive graphics - Kameo Elements of Power, Perfect Dark Zero, Resistence, etc. To gauge true potential of Wii U's hardware, we would need to wait 3-4 years before developers start optimizing games properly for its hardware. I do not remember any games looking like Uncharted 3 or Gears of War 3/Halo 4 in the first 3 years of Xbox 360/PS3's life.

The idea of having an eight-core cpu coupled to an average at best graphics card just doesn't add up to me. 8 cores is overkill, unless the gpu warrants it. Though an 8 gig shared memory architecture sounds promising.

The rumors says 8 cores at 1.6Ghz... that's not so overkill... 8 cores over 2Ghz will be overkill.

How would it be overkill?

An AMD FX 8-core chip at 4ghz can still loose to an Intel Ivy-Bridge 3.2ghz 4 core chip.
In CPU design there are things more important than the amount of cores and clockspeed that determine it's overall performance.

Well if true, 1.6 ghz isn't cutting it even with really efficient parallel processing. I call bullshit. 

Well MS have to choice THE BEST or THE CHEAPEST... choose AMD.

And a 8 cores running at 2.4Ghz will be overkill for consoles... even the 1.6Ghz is great.

I highly doubt they will switch to x86.

For starters.. No backwards compatability with the Xbox 360. (Single threaded performance would need to exceed the Xbox by a large margin and then use a form of emulation.)

Secondly, they can't handle the CPU production themselves, they learn't from that mistake with the origional Xbox when they used Intel and nVidia.
PowerPC is generally cheaper, the cheapest AMD 8 core chip is around $150.

The NextBox is AMD... that's part is almost certain... I can say 80% AMD chance and 20% for IBM.

Anyway both (PS4k and Nextbox consoles uses CPU and GPU AMD.

Looking at a console and basing its parts in comparison to PC has always been strange to me.

What might be "weak" on a PC isnt the same in the console space at all as the way the machine operates and optimizes are quite different.

Good luck building a PC with the same graphics card and CPU as the 360 and have it run Far Cry 3 or a Halo 4 equivalent. There will be PC gamers who will always call console tech "weak" or "outdated" and while that might be true for PC, console architecture is quite a bit different. You can get more out of less.

About that specs...

Aegis response:

"Everything I've heard from reliable sources makes your series of guesses, particularly about total teraflops, impossible. Save for the DDR3 guess, which I'm worried might be true. Which would be incredibly stupid."

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Seems like the 1 TFLOPS is impossible (to down or up?) and there is something to be worried about the DDR3 memory (slow memory like Wii U?).

Edit - 8GB means a 256bits bus so not 384bits... with 256bits DDR3 it would have fairly limited bandwidth.