Zero999 said:
the wii u uses a custom gpgpu that is several years ahead of what we have on ps360. it's only logical it will have more gigaflops than 7 year old consoles. and before you come arguing about how the games look right now on wii u: at first the xbox360 titles looked no diffrent than their ps2 counterparts, so you can't judge wii u for last gen ports. and so far the few games made from scratch to wii u weren't meant to be technically impressive ( pikmin3, nsmbu, lego city, nintendo land).yet those games already show no sawy edges or blurry textures and has perfectly round 3d modeling. we already had a glimpse of wii u capabilities on project x trailer, it looked great with that huge open world so wii u is a very capable machine.
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I am not saying Wii U is not a capable machine and is way more advanced than PS3/360. I just doubt that it has twice the gflops.
PS3/360 games were 720p at launch so yes it was evident that they clearly had the necessary horse power to render games at that resolution.
And games looked better used techniques PS2/Xbox could not or just limited but if you knew what you are looking at it was visible that they are next gen.
If indeed Wii U had twice the power why not render all games in 1080p or atleast 900p this should be no problem at all. Games would have to be deliberatly slowed down if they are in 720p. They could easily be in 60fps.
When the 360 and PS3 released they were big loud and hot in order to fuel the Chips they needed 180-200 Watts power. Both chips were build at 90nm and had roughly 500mm2 die size for both Chips. Thats the surface of silicon where the individual transistors sit on.
The Wii U is build on a 45nm process. I am not going to go into much detail I will briefly explain how 7 years newer technology in the Wii U doesn't necessarily mean that it has to have more gflops.
90nm means one transistor is a 90nm square at 45nm you can put 4 transistors in the same space as in 90nm. Flops are floating point operations which are performed by the transistors.
So Wii U could have theoretically alot more transistors (4 times as much) on the same space as 360/PS3 have.
But first the overall space must be the same as in PS3/360.
I am going to take PS3 as example:
RSX/GPU: 90nm had a size of 258mm2
Cell/CPU: 90nm had a size of 235mm2
http://www.ps3devwiki.com/wiki/CELL_BE
http://www.ps3devwiki.com/wiki/RSX
Wii U:
Has a 45nm 32mm2 CPU
40nm156 mm2 GPU (and 3mm2 probably memory).
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6465/nintendo-wii-u-teardown
Ok but Wii U can fit 4times asmuch transistors on the same chip surface so it could still have more transistors and more flops
45 nm Cell: 115mm2
45 nm Wii U CPU: 32mm2
40nm RSX: 114m2
40 nm Wii U Gpu 156mm2
Overall the PS3 has at the same transistor size a CPU 3 times as big as the CPU in WII U and a 30% smaller GPU.
What we see is Wii U has a chipset with overall potentially less transistors. Now obviously its not just die size that plays a role. The old PS3 Slim was powered with 100 Watt during gaming. Transistors need electricity and the faster they run the higher the clock the more calculations they can do. http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10318727-1.html
The PS3 Superslim that has the same internal manufacturing process as Wii U draws 75 Watts when gaming.
What does Wii U draw ? In a game 30-35 Watts.
So PS3/360 needed 180-200 Watts when they launched Wii u needs 35 Watts.
Its not only possible but very likely that Wii U has the same or maybe even less gflop performance the PS3/360 did. The advantages Nintendo now has is they can use cheap parts for the chips they don't need such a huge casing cooling box. Its less likely to overheat. And they manage to make a console that only needs half the power their competitors need.
Now we get to the technology part. The Wii U has a more efficent design, they can make more with less ressources. They can use effects (DX 10.1) that can do more stuff with less calculating.
What Nintendo did was make take a PS3/360 level Hardware cut back all useless things streamlined the design and make it work twice as hard with half the ressources (Electricity).
Wii U is capable and has moden technology and will eventually end up having better graphics than PS3/360 but its nowhere near 1 Tflop or 0.8 Tflop performance. In terms of raw power its on the same level as PS3/360. It just lacks the physical space to have enough transistors for twice as many calculations. It also lacks the power draw to make the transistors work twice as fast
The technology jump made the design possible, but don't expect some mysterious power boost. Graphics will improve because it has the technology to do things more easily than PS3/360 did, but don't expect Wii U to be significantly stronger than PS3/360.
