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Forums - Nintendo - Wii U GPU new info and more speculation

Aielyn on 11 February 2013
ninjablade said:
we undertsand enough to know, the fact is the gpu si weak even in its best case scenerio, you think nintendo after using such a weak CPU and crippled memory bandwidth put some alien tech in the gpu, if you know anything about gpu's then you would know even at 320SP the GPU is gimped by the memory band banndwidth already, they are over doing with 320 SP as it is.

You mean the speculated memory bandwidth that has yet to be confirmed?

And I'll remind you that multiple sources have been marvelling at how much graphical power the Wii U is getting relative to the power draw of the system. There has to be SOME sort of explanation for that. But I don't think anything about what the 30% of the chip is doing - all I know is that it's doing *something*, and that it's insane to ignore that fact when determining the power of the chip.



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Kuramakun on 11 February 2013

So if the GPU is "Weak" as some say, Is it still more powerful than the 360 and PS3? If it is i'm cool with that.



ninjablade on 11 February 2013
Aielyn said:
ninjablade said:
we undertsand enough to know, the fact is the gpu si weak even in its best case scenerio, you think nintendo after using such a weak CPU and crippled memory bandwidth put some alien tech in the gpu, if you know anything about gpu's then you would know even at 320SP the GPU is gimped by the memory band banndwidth already, they are over doing with 320 SP as it is.

You mean the speculated memory bandwidth that has yet to be confirmed?

And I'll remind you that multiple sources have been marvelling at how much graphical power the Wii U is getting relative to the power draw of the system. There has to be SOME sort of explanation for that. But I don't think anything about what the 30% of the chip is doing - all I know is that it's doing *something*, and that it's insane to ignore that fact when determining the power of the chip.

first of all about the gamepad when mirrored come for free, meaning does not tax the hardware, second of the memory bandwidth is confirmed 100%, and about the 30% of the board unknown, is probably because we never had a console with a tablet and BC, those are probably functions for them to work properly on the gpu, because like i said before there is no technoloy to make a gpu even 25% more powerful based of the logic, which doesn't even have enough sram for it.



ninjablade on 11 February 2013
Kuramakun said:
So if the GPU is "Weak" as some say, Is it still more powerful than the 360 and PS3? If it is i'm cool with that.


at the moment we don't know for sure, most likely on par.



Ghutto on 11 February 2013

With study and research in technology, everything is possible.



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Aielyn on 11 February 2013
ninjablade said:
first of all about the gamepad when mirrored come for free, meaning does not tax the hardware, second of the memory bandwidth is confirmed 100%, and about the 30% of the board unknown, is probably because we never had a console with a tablet and BC, those are probably functions for them to work properly on the gpu, because like i said before there is no technoloy to make a gpu even 25% more powerful based of the logic, which doesn't even have enough sram for it.

Gamepad in Sonic Racing isn't just a mirror of the main screen. And in multiplayer, it supports an extra player on the gamepad, while holding the same FPS as the PS3. Given that the computational power for higher resolution is smaller than the computational power for an extra 'camera' (in-engine camera, that is), it makes a difference.

Regarding memory bandwidth... no, it's not confirmed 100%, any more than the number of SPs is confirmed 100%. It's believed to be a certain number. And just because you speculate that the unknown 30% is for tablet and BC, doesn't make it true or a good reason to assume anything.

And there is no technology in any current GPU that would have a significant impact. That doesn't mean that such a technology doesn't exist.

But then, I'm curious as to your explanation for how the Wii U is able to draw so little power. Even at the 40/45nm scales, the PS3 and 360 both draw 60+ watts of power. The Wii U, which we can be confident is at least as powerful as those two systems, is doing so at about 32 watts peak power draw. More typical numbers for active use put the Wii U at 32 watts when both other systems are over 70 watts. What is your explanation for this particular observation?



Turkish on 11 February 2013
Kuramakun said:
So if the GPU is "Weak" as some say, Is it still more powerful than the 360 and PS3? If it is i'm cool with that.


On par or a bit better.

But the ugly truth is, no 3rd party dev will every fully utilize it. Its up to Nintendo again, its best to wait at E3 how the new Mario looks because that will be WiiUs flagship title, just like Mario Galaxy was to the Wii, graphics on WiiU won't get better than that.

There's also the problem that Nintendo just entered the HD era and they've let us known they have difficulty adapting to the "new" era, so things probably won't go too smooth for them.



ninjablade on 11 February 2013
Aielyn said:
ninjablade said:
first of all about the gamepad when mirrored come for free, meaning does not tax the hardware, second of the memory bandwidth is confirmed 100%, and about the 30% of the board unknown, is probably because we never had a console with a tablet and BC, those are probably functions for them to work properly on the gpu, because like i said before there is no technoloy to make a gpu even 25% more powerful based of the logic, which doesn't even have enough sram for it.

Gamepad in Sonic Racing isn't just a mirror of the main screen. And in multiplayer, it supports an extra player on the gamepad, while holding the same FPS as the PS3. Given that the computational power for higher resolution is smaller than the computational power for an extra 'camera' (in-engine camera, that is), it makes a difference.

Regarding memory bandwidth... no, it's not confirmed 100%, any more than the number of SPs is confirmed 100%. It's believed to be a certain number. And just because you speculate that the unknown 30% is for tablet and BC, doesn't make it true or a good reason to assume anything.

And there is no technology in any current GPU that would have a significant impact. That doesn't mean that such a technology doesn't exist.

But then, I'm curious as to your explanation for how the Wii U is able to draw so little power. Even at the 40/45nm scales, the PS3 and 360 both draw 60+ watts of power. The Wii U, which we can be confident is at least as powerful as those two systems, is doing so at about 32 watts peak power draw. More typical numbers for active use put the Wii U at 32 watts when both other systems are over 70 watts. What is your explanation for this particular observation?

here is a confirmation of the memory bandwidth, it's not speculation at all http://www.anandtech.com/show/6465/nintendo-wii-u-teardown my explanation is simple, wii u is based of newer, more efficante technoloy in watt usage.

 


Power usage this is what we got?

33 watts max from wall @ 90% psu ~30 watts

Disk drive ~4 Watts Cpu ~8 watts

Whats left ~18

My guesses,anyone have hard numbers?
2GB DDR3 Ram ~2 Watts 
wifi ~.5 Watts 
Flash Storage/misc .5 Watts

Leaves about 15 watts for the whole gpu chip

Its very impressive that this little bit of power can keep up with the ps360



MDMAlliance on 11 February 2013

People can keep on talking and talking, but in the end it all boils down to how it performs in the real life tests and not on paper. It also boils down to how games are implemented and WHAT games are on the system. Hell, the Wii U can be weak for all I care I do not regret my purchase one bit. It has been more than useful already, and will see many more hours of gameplay later. I have high hopes for Nintendo this generation in terms of sales, and quality titles.

edit: What really annoys me about speculations of the hardware aren't the numbers, but the smugness people have about a Nintendo system "being weak" while the PS4/720 are going to be way better and that Nintendo is "doomed" and shouldn't be even in the same league as the "real" consoles.  



Aielyn on 11 February 2013
ninjablade said:
here is a confirmation of the memory bandwidth, it's not speculation at all http://www.anandtech.com/show/6465/nintendo-wii-u-teardown my explanation is simple, wii u is based of newer, more efficante technoloy in watt usage.

Let me quote from your link, emphasis mine:

"Memory is shared between the CPU and GPU, and if I'm decoding the DRAM part numbers correctly it looks like these are 16-bit devices giving the Wii U a total of 12.8GB/s of peak memory bandwidth."

EDIT: And regarding watt usage, you haven't answered the question. How is it able to achieve that efficiency? Saying "oh, it's based on newer technology", but that doesn't answer the question.