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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Nintendo Wii U Design Focused on Memory Efficiency

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As usual, Nintendo makes it's gaming platform very customized which means most devs haven't caught up to it yet, and as usual, more on efficiency than brute force:

I don't think that the #WiiU CPU and GPU are imbalanced in favor of the GPU. It depends how you measure. GPU chip is bigger. In modern CPUs, the math logic portions are rather small. In new PCs and servers, the CPUs may be big, but the logic is small. It's common for the surrounding SRAM cache memory in CPUs to be bigger. From that viewpoint, you wouldn't see them imbalanced. It's a memory-intensified design. I can't get into specifics, but I think it's rather powerful. As for the GPU, the tech is fairly mature and going in the same direction as competitors. Makers are used to prog. shaders. The experience of other companies and Nintendo with shaders means that the difficulty with them early on has decreased. - Genyo Takeda

Source: http://gonintendo.com/?mode=viewstory&id=195400

Q. Isnt the WiiU architecture too much focused on the GPU?

Miyamoto : For High End graphics there is a hurdle, since we have to reeducate our people. The development itself hasnt changed but we are recruiting specialists that can become core members in each specialized area. External Developers are used to shader techniques and we are collaborating a lot with external companies nowadays so we have a very good development structure.

Iwata: Every gaming hardware has its specialties. There is a timing of hit and miss before the functions can be used fully. We were not able to provide development kits that get out all the power of wiiu until mid of last year. With other gaming consoles firms had 6 to 7 years to experiment but our console has a different balance so it is easy to see who has adapted and who hasnt. However this is something time will heal so we are not too worried.

Takeda : WiiU is a machine that has a lot of performance compared to its power consumption. The GPU is definitely more pronounced than the CPU . There are people saying that the CPU is weak but that is not true. It is a trendl that the cash memory is whats getting biggrr with CPUs not the processing power. i do not think at the CPu is underpowered. Its just a design where the memory is more stressed.

Source: http://gonintendo.com/?mode=viewstory&id=195403



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Expanations for a non-tech guy, good sir?



KHlover said:
Expanations for a non-tech guy, good sir?

The Wii U is a prius in a world of SUVs.



KHlover said:
Expanations for a non-tech guy, good sir?

it means 3 GCs and a Wii minus a DS duct taped together



    R.I.P Mr Iwata :'(

the_dengle said:
KHlover said:
Expanations for a non-tech guy, good sir?

The Wii U is a prius in a world of SUVs.

If we look at the past generations gamers seem to like the Prius :P



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KHlover said:
Expanations for a non-tech guy, good sir?


It's hard to guess exactly what they are saying but my speculation is that they took the FPU portions entirely out from the CPU and is using the GPU to do heavy math, which is usually a bad idea for a platform like a PC due to hardware differences but not a bad idea for a more customized modern hardware since they can write their dev kits around it since the GPU can be insanely fast for it. I also suspect that they have customized memory controllers that not only is making the system running the DDR3s in dual channel but also have insane low lantency. Not to mention that since it's a customized CPU, the SIMD would be vastly different and a lot would not even be needed since a lot of those can be offloaded to the GPU as well. So while people may look at it like a PC, the way it works is not like a PC at all and using PC logic would be difficult to gague the actual performance on it.

Of course, before the haters come in, PS4 and Nextbox will still be faster, so rest assured that Wii U will not be the best console graphics in the 8th gen and pipe the fuck down.



Neogaf is doing a gpu tear down, they paid chips work 200$ to do the job, so we will no if wii u is weaker or stronger then current gen soon.



dahuman said:
KHlover said:
Expanations for a non-tech guy, good sir?


It's hard to guess exactly what they are saying but my speculation is that they took the FPU portions entirely out from the CPU and is using the GPU to do heavy math, which is usually a bad idea for a platform like a PC due to hardware differences but not a bad idea for a more customized modern hardware since they can write their dev kits around it since GPU can be insanely fast for. I also suspect that they have customized memory controllers that not only is making the system running the DDR3s in dual channel but also have insane low lantency. Not to mention that since it's a customized CPU, the SIMD would be vastly different and a lot would not even be needed since a lot of those can be offloaded to the GPU as well. So while people may look at it like a PC, the way it works is not like a PC at all and using PC logic would be difficult to gague the actual performance on it.

Of course, before the haters come in, PS4 and Nextbox will still be faster, so rest assured that Wii U will not be the best console graphics in the 8th gen and pipe the fuck down.

 As if any sane person would think that now :D



ninjablade said:
Neogaf is doing a gpu tear down, they paid chips work 200$ to do the job, so we will no if wii u is weaker or stronger then current gen soon.

Or wait and see the games do the talking. 



Seeing the shiny new Wonderful 101 trailer running at 60fps shows that Platinum sure knows how to get great results from the hardware. I can't wait to see how Bayonetta 2 is progressing.