Do you have a link for this? Because it seems to me that copper would reduce the power consumption of the CPU and allow for a higher clock speed. Like the equivelent of a longer pipeline in a CPU with more stages which allows for a higher clock rate but instead with a shorter pipeline and achieved with better switching.

CPU mechanics aren't my strongest field.

The analogy to the Xbox is a tough one to make, since, like some other posters have already mentioned, the Xbox was top of its class last generation for graphics. The Wii is at the bottom this generation, so being able to best the last generation is somewhat of a moot point. Also, please keep in mind that although the Wii is easy to program, it's still not compatible with other platforms (except the GC of course). Both the Xbox and the Xbox360 are essentially an offset of the PC platform, and thus get a lot of benefit from that connection. Alternatively, the Wii is adversely affected by the fact that last gen's superstar (the PS2) is still lingering, and dragging the Wii down. Many publishers have (foolishly I might add) chosen to group their game development into 2 categories, SD & HD. They develop one game for the Wii/PS2 and another for the PS360. This hampers the Wii immensely from a graphical standpoint AND a game design view.

I agree with you 100% on this Moondeep, I also think that is one of the big problems with how Developer's and many Gamer's look at the Wii, as "just a more Enhanced GameCube" its far from that, but like you stated its grouped together with Mostly Last Generation graphic's development designs of game's instead of putting more of a push in the graphic's that the Wii is no doubt able to handle. 

I think though that it's more of "the game being made as directive toward somwhere of the sub HD" close to upper SD graphics that are geared toward the many Non-Gamer's, who bought the Wii because of it's fun factor of "Wii sports" type of game interaction that Many grown up's do infact enjoy, and most of the mature owner's of the Wii do not care so much of the higher end graphic's vs' the "is the game fun" if it is that's all i care about.

the very fact the Wii is used in retirement home's for the mature aged gamer 55+ just shows that Wii's market is more of a market that the view of game systems have never been very intune into that market, and the fact that the Wii is. has shown that the direction of the Wii does not need the very intensive graphic's for the majority of gamer's that own the Wii.

from personal experience my father inlaw, never even owned a game console before that is until the Wii. he's 68 year's old both him and his wife love the Wii..."hi grandma".

I think its more of a testimate the Wii that it has been very much an influence into that market that has made the Wii such a great system young and old to own, but on the same token has somewhat hurt it's "Hardcore" graphic's capability's for the developer's to exploit because the majority of the Wii owner's in the market that the Wii is in most do not care.

this is just my Opinion on personal experience but other's may have experience reverse of this.

one thing is for sure the Wii can do better graphic's than what has been shown sofar, but most likely will never be pushed toward those higher graphic's because of the main "market that the Wii has been able to penetrate. 

I think the only ones we can expect pushing the Wii are Nintendo. Metroid: Other M looks better than anything I've seen on the system so far, and I expect the next Zelda will push the hardware to the max as well (unlike Twilight Princess).

Apart from that though, don't expect much. Unless Capcom finally decides to make a proper Resident Evil for Wii, then we might see some good stuff.

Resident Evil The Dark Chronicles is supposed to have great graphics.

just wait for Rogue Squadron IV to blow everyone away...


... hopefully

Just look up IBM copper PowerPC.  It's well documented that a copper chip of similar manufacture to an aluminum chip at the same frequency would allow for more instructions in the same time frame.   A lot of people in the industry give equal footing with regards to power between the Gamecube Gekko and Xbox Celeron based CPU's because of the GC's copper CPU allowing for retalitvely the same number of instructions per second as the Xbox despite the frequency differences.

The Xbox's obvious advantage was in the GPU.   the almost directly off the shelf GPU with DirectX programmable shaders alowed PC devs (most Western studios actually) to quickly utilize the GPU to a great extent.  Whereas the GC utilized a TEV unit for shader like operations which required an unfortunate learning curve for developers instead of being familiar instantly with the shader environment.

I hope everyone in this thread realizes that Lucas Arts had to can the Rogue Squadron 2 and 3 ports to the original X-box because the X-box was not able to run the games.

From what I remember reading back in the day the Gamecube's graphic processor was designed to be very good at cartoon and cell-shaded type graphics which is the direction they felt the industry would be heading in at the time but not that superb at any other types of graphics while the original xbox graphics processor was a more allk around gpu similar to pc gpus and when graphics in games took the realistic route instead it was much better prepared for that.

Judging from Miis etc I think the Wii's graphics processor must be similar to the Gamecube's of course it would be more powerful and probably more general purpose instead of focues just on its ability to do cell shading.

That might be the silliest thing I've read all day.

ArtX didn't design the GPU based around any specific graphical feature or effect and if anyone told you what you just stated, their pants were probably smoking from the fire it was starting.