Wii graphics should look like Fatal Frame IV, that looks amazing.

We need more games with Lost In Blue 3 graphic quality.

Ahhh sweet.  Always nice to read articles on this kind of stuff I haven't seen. 

My own Wikipedialing comparison of the specific tech didn't factor in how these various inner systems work with one another.  I know the GameCube and Xbox both broke the mold by being, essentially, the first non-bit based consoles as the PS2 and Dreamcast (I believe) were the last consoles that were measured by "bits," with both being 128-bit systems.  System stats are so much harder to read and compare these days because you can always find a conversation like this:

"SystemX is better than SystemY because Circuit5 is more powerful in SystemX than SystemY's puny Circuit3."

"Ahh, but System Y uses BufferN which works with Circuit3, effectively making it more powerful."

"Shut up you stupid fanboy."

A real-life example is how the PS3 is supposed to be more powerful than the Xbox360, and I've read an article online in which a single issue--essentially a data read/write option--is gimped in the PS3 allowing the Xbox360 to potentially be the more powerful system.

It's funny, all these years I thought the Neo-Geo was the most powerful system during the 16-bit days.  I'm not sure why, but I believed it to be the only 24-bit console ever made only to find out that it uses a 16-bit system similar to the Genesis and that, in the end, the SNES had more powerful architecture.

My comparison came from larger key points:  GPU and CPU capability comparisons (in which case, the original XBox almost looks like it belonged in another generation when compared to the PS2), but again, my lack of total understanding of how these inner systems work with one another is another story. 

I guess the thing to do now is figure out, exactly how much more powerful, comparitively speaking, the Wii may be than the original Xbox.

In a sense, it's almost too bad that games aren't on some sort of cartridge any more.  Anything that the console itself couldn't do could sometimes be improved with hardware in a cartridge like the FX Chip used to do.  That's what gave the SNES strengths over the Genesis/Sega CD/32X in the end.  But it was also one of the unfortunate reasons Nintendo gimped the N64.

Nintendo's first comments were that the Wii is between 2.5 to 3 times as powerful as the GC.

Always pick their first statement.After it Nintendo will always give shifty info.

An example would be when Nintendo said they were killing off the Gameboy line with the DS.However people kept asking them if they were still supporting the Gameboy(i.e. they wanted it to be so) and Nintendo said yes.Many people never realized that Nintendo meant the GBA at the time and to this day still think that a new Gameboy might be released.

I've always thought this. The wii is a gamecube with a motion sensor controller. The public fell for it though!

@ Resident Hazard, Yes you are correct. .WHile the xbox in raw specs was more powerful, it was basically an old pc. It's cpu was simlar to a celeron, it's gpu was similar to a geforce 2. These architectures are very inefficient. It may be more powerful, but it can't use all or even most of that power. The gamecube on the other hand was what console processors should look like. The gpu had many seperate components for each thing it need to do graphically. The cpu and gpu I would say were very very very efficient allowing probably 75%+ of the power to be used.
Then you also have the different architectures, affecting how the console does these things as stated in the article. I would say the gamecube was ALMOST on par with the original xbox. NOw the wii does the same thing the gamecube does but faster, and even more efficiently. Theres also additions to the hardware that makes it easier to do some things. The wii compared to the xbox allows for 8x more textures compressed, compared to the gamecube and the original xbox limit at 6x. The wii also has a chip for physics between the cpu and gpu I believe reading somewhere. It has many more things. The wii's architecture probably allows for it to work fully efficient. The ram is faster and there is more of it. There is less latency issues. Alot of things that professional developers ignore, yet others see. It terms of power the wii may be equivalent to the original xbox,when talking from a gpu cpu standpoint, but in terms of overall graphical capabilities it is far ahead the xbox.

@Bored4Life
That is what I keep saying, but people think im outrageous for saying it. I believe the wii is 2.5 times more capable graphically than the xbox. While in raw power their equal, but the wii has many things the original xbox does, and is able to use more of it's resources because it's highly efficient architecture.

Edit: Oh and in response of the wii being capable of higher resolutions than 480p. Yes I believe it could. WHile it won't look too nice to games pushing the wii in 480p and isn't really pratical. I do believe games like fps' would benefit a little from 720p, but anythng else on the wii would have less than it would in 480p and wouldn't be pratical. I believe maybe some sub hd resolutions that alot of ps360 games have is a more better fit.

Also nintendo never gave official specs. All of the specs came from the developers of the chips or 3rd parties, but none of them went into detail. There is alot we don't know about the wii's hardware, because of this and analysis' won't be too acurate until more is known. I will try to make mine as accurate as possible. 

Oh jeez not another one of these threads!

Well, only one thing to do...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=U-BiHdefxJU

I think you are overestimating Wii's graphical capabilities. According to wikipedia, the Wii's framebuffer is similar to Gamecube's (3MB split into 1MB texture memory and 2MB framebuffer). Higher resolutions need more framebuffer memory as there are more pixels to fit into the framebuffer. 720p is 1280x720 = 921600 pixels wheras 480p is 640x480 = 307200 pixels. Now, I don't know what kind of colour format they're using (some say it's YUY2 which means 16bits per pixel) but you have to multiply the number of pixels by the pixel depth which is something between 16bits and 32bits (2 bytes - 4 bytes). Then you'd probably have to double that, if they're double buffering (most probably) and you'll see there's not enough framebuffer memory for 720p output. Even if it had a bigger framebuffer, it would have to have enough fill rate to actually render those pixels.

PS. Oh, and take a look at this, these guys seem to know much more than me: http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=46169

So SONY only doing what NInty did in the old days then about not phasing out existing product to favor the new product.

Why didnt bdbdbd, resident hazard, rol, sc94597 and other members here should replace the "so called" professional analysts like Pachter. I think you are better analyst than they are.