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Forums - Nintendo - "Wii U GPU is several generations ahead of current gen" Shin'en

oni-link on 29 May 2013
Soundwave said:
Is there any point in making a "from the ground up" GPU in this day and age anyway? Aside from wanting ridiculous power consumption restraints, it just seems to me like a massive waste of time and money, and Nintendo is probably paying out the rear end for this GPU because it's so heavily customized.

Why not just use a more off-the-shelf part that AMD has already done most of the grunt work on, tweak it specifically for games and cut power consumption here and there and call it a day?

Many of AMD's notebook GPUs would've given Nintendo close to XBox One performance and still a reasonable power draw (40 watts or so) and probably would've even been cheaper per unit than going for a completely custom part.

And third parties would've liked it more too because PC GPU architecture to them is like putting a fish in water.


I know but at least it's several gens ahead of the the PS360!!! 



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AnthonyW86 on 29 May 2013
oni-link said:
AnthonyW86 said:
HoloDust said:
AnthonyW86 said:
oni-link said:

I read that it is a heavily modified version of the Evergreen series.  Seeing how the specs are so close (from the die shots) to that line of GPU's it's the closest one (without the special sauce) to compare the GPU to.  The Wii U is even made in the same plant as the Evergreen!!!

for reference:

http://www.amd.com/US/PRODUCTS/DESKTOP/GRAPHICS/ATI-RADEON-HD-5000/HD-5550/Pages/hd-5550-overview.aspx#2

Note that Wii-U's gpu only has half the bandwidth though.

5550 actually comes in 3 flavors when it comes to memory - GDDR5 (57.6GB/s), DDR3 (28.8GB/s) and DDR2 (12.8GB/s). Aggregate VP ratings for these cards are 27, 21.8 and 16.5, so they are quite sensitive to memory bandwidth.

WiiU, although it has DDR3, has bandwidth of the DDR2 version, but I'm thinking that EDRAM might put it somewhere between DDR2 and DDR3 version (theoretically I guess maybe even on par with DDR3 version).

For comparison, XOne's GPU equivalent (7770) has VP rating of 96, and PS4's (7850) stands at 141.

This is all without customizations each platform holder incorporated in their solution, so differences are most likely even bigger.

For reference, 360 is rated at around 12.

Thanks for saving me the time to explain, but yes you are right. And that's my point in bringing it up, the difference with the other next gen consoles will be massive. Especially since you're talking about 2gb, let's say they want to use 1gb for the gpu that's a lot of memory to fill with such a small bandwidth. Even the 360 and ps3 have about double.

It will also depend on the game engine. For example in raw computing power an HD7850 is about 50%  faster than a HD7770, however it can be anywhere from 50% up to almost 100% faster depending on the game.

On a side note in the benchmarks i have encountered where an HD7850 manages about 30fps an HD5550 only does about 3fps-4fps... and that's the DDR3 version.


Wow that's an amazing diffrence!!! I was actually feeling mighty confident about the customized Evergreen GPU inside the Wii U until that.  I wonder if the special sauce will help increase it's performance even a wee bit?  It was never a question that the PS4/XBone will be more powerful!!   The statement that most Nintendo developers, for this instance Shin'en is that the Wii U is not underpowered compared to the current-gen systems.  In fact, when a developer takes time to know the systems capabilities, the Wii U is able to do things a bit beyond what the PS360 maybe capable of. (DX10.1-11.0 features vs DX8.1 features) etc.

I'm sure we will still get some great looking games on the Wii-U, especially from Nintendo themselves. Even on the Wii we got some great looking titles and with the Wii-U the games will also look good on a HDTV. It's more the 3rd party support i'm worried about. Sure you could state that developers should just get to know the system better, but the reality is if they are planning to launch the same game on Xbox One and PS4 they probably don't want to spend the time on optimizing the Wii-U version. And some engines like UE4 and Frostbite 3 will simply not be made compatible with the system.



farlaff on 29 May 2013

What bothers me, good as Nintendo's ideas are, there is a great feel of unfulfilled potential. Motion controls could have had greater support, but few were the ideas that made them really worth. Seems the same can happen to second screen.



My 1000th post: https://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=9368779

curl-6 on 30 May 2013
Otakumegane said:

These guys know what they're talking about. Nano Assault was nothing. Wait on their next game that isn't a launch title.

 

Shin'en even said that Neo was nowhere near really showing what the system can do:

‘We only know that you need to treat the Wii U differently than other consoles, because of a very different and in our view more accessible architecture. There is a lot of power to unleash in the Wii U. Enough power for many years to come, at least from our point of view.

‘We know many people see us as Wii U experts. That is because we got a lot of technical praise for Nano Assault Neo but it’s not well deserved. Only very tiny bits of Nano Assault Neo took advantage of the Wii U architecture. We had the game from start in 720p at 60fps. We drew the complete game world twice for TV and GamePad. We had tons of overlays, special effects and even camera streaming and still had no GPU or CPU problems. So we simply had no reason to dig deep into the architecture. We didn’t expect to be seen as the spearhead of Wii U graphics as it is undeserved, when looking at what the Wii U can truly achieve.‘



EricFabian on 30 May 2013
curl-6 said:
Otakumegane said:

These guys know what they're talking about. Nano Assault was nothing. Wait on their next game that isn't a launch title.

 

Shin'en even said that Neo was nowhere near really showing what the system can do:

‘We only know that you need to treat the Wii U differently than other consoles, because of a very different and in our view more accessible architecture. There is a lot of power to unleash in the Wii U. Enough power for many years to come, at least from our point of view.

‘We know many people see us as Wii U experts. That is because we got a lot of technical praise for Nano Assault Neo but it’s not well deserved. Only very tiny bits of Nano Assault Neo took advantage of the Wii U architecture. We had the game from start in 720p at 60fps. We drew the complete game world twice for TV and GamePad. We had tons of overlays, special effects and even camera streaming and still had no GPU or CPU problems. So we simply had no reason to dig deep into the architecture. We didn’t expect to be seen as the spearhead of Wii U graphics as it is undeserved, when looking at what the Wii U can truly achieve.‘

Good Nintendo news means nothing here. Sadly. 

 

and btw

Only very tiny bits of Nano Assault Neo took advantage of the Wii U architecture. We had the game from start in 720p at 60fps. We drew the complete game world twice for TV and GamePad. We had tons of overlays, special effects and even camera streaming and still had no GPU or CPU problems.

great!



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Wh1pL4shL1ve_007 on 30 May 2013
VGKing said:
:D This gonna be good.


CAn someone ban this gif. It really irritating and always used for all the wrong reasons. 



Yay!!!

curl-6 on 30 May 2013
EricFabian said:
curl-6 said:
Otakumegane said:

These guys know what they're talking about. Nano Assault was nothing. Wait on their next game that isn't a launch title.

 

Shin'en even said that Neo was nowhere near really showing what the system can do:

‘We only know that you need to treat the Wii U differently than other consoles, because of a very different and in our view more accessible architecture. There is a lot of power to unleash in the Wii U. Enough power for many years to come, at least from our point of view.

‘We know many people see us as Wii U experts. That is because we got a lot of technical praise for Nano Assault Neo but it’s not well deserved. Only very tiny bits of Nano Assault Neo took advantage of the Wii U architecture. We had the game from start in 720p at 60fps. We drew the complete game world twice for TV and GamePad. We had tons of overlays, special effects and even camera streaming and still had no GPU or CPU problems. So we simply had no reason to dig deep into the architecture. We didn’t expect to be seen as the spearhead of Wii U graphics as it is undeserved, when looking at what the Wii U can truly achieve.‘

Good Nintendo news means nothing here. Sadly. 

 

and btw

Only very tiny bits of Nano Assault Neo took advantage of the Wii U architecture. We had the game from start in 720p at 60fps. We drew the complete game world twice for TV and GamePad. We had tons of overlays, special effects and even camera streaming and still had no GPU or CPU problems.

great!

Nano Assault Neo looks absolutely gorgeous, so if only "tiny bits" of that are taking advantage of the architecture, the system has plenty of potential for beauty.

I'm interested to see where Shin'en take their next Wii U game, which looks likely to be a sequel to FAST Racing League, which already looked this good on Wii:



Mr Puggsly on 30 May 2013

I'm not saying it isn't true... but it doesn't really matter until its demonstrated.



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curl-6 on 30 May 2013
Mr Puggsly said:
I'm not saying it isn't true... but it doesn't really matter until its demonstrated.

Well, it is nice to know that the potential is there.



Porcupine_I on 30 May 2013

um... show, don't tell?



“It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grams a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be reduced to twenty grams a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it.”

- George Orwell, ‘1984’