doesn't really matter to the market the wii are tapping into and it's only recently i'm seeing real proof in my own life of that, for instance there's 11 people work in our department and even though it's an IT department as we're all mid 30's and married etc there's only 2 of us that had last gen consoles, where as I had all 3 and currently have wii and 360 one other had a ps2 aand now owns a ps3.

In the last month or so 4 out of that 11 bought a wii and 3 others claim they'll have one by christmas so the way I see as if this happens and 7 out of 11 will own a wii that didn't have a console for years - is what they are missing under the cover they are certainly gaining for it's affordability, simplicity, marketing and whatever has made them have such pull.

I've no doubt whe hdtv is bigger and cheaper then they'll be a wii2 (probably called a medium or summit) to play all this back catalogue in hd and will have storage built in and improved motion controllers, the wii is merely getting a user base to build on.

Does this mean nintendo lied to us? I bought my Wii expecting at least two gamecubes duct taped together.. i am shocked

I believe that Wii can be clocked at 729 and 243 MHz. The point is, that clockspeed is actually only one technical attribute that influences performance. Modern processors use many of their clockcycles to wait for a memory-access to be completed. So if you increase the processor-clockspeed without increasing the memory-clockspeed, the overall perfomance increases only a little bit. That is on the other hand the reason, why a increased cache or a better organized cache can lead to exploding performance - without changing anything about the clockspeed. Other possibilities to increase perfomance without increasing clockspeed are: Multiple pipelines in processor-design (that's not the same as multicore), better out of order execution (that means the CPU reorders the command it get's ... that helps to reduce the wait-cycles), better branch-prediction (better fill of the pipelines, therefore lesser cycles needed to refill the pipeline on a branch that was predicted wrong), new commands that replaces a series of commands (on x86-cpus that is SSE, SSE2, SSE3 ...). So that is easily possible that the Wii is 2-3 as performant, even if the clockspeed not even doubled.

But if the speed of a computer is based on the CPU and GPU together.. if you multiply both by 2.5.. wouldn't you end up with 6.25x faster machine? (2.5 squared)

GFLOPS wise you would... anyway.

To get overall 3x faster wouldn't you multiply both by 1.73 (square root of 3)..

Just throwing some math out there.

(By the way, not arguing the "number of gamecubes" a Wii is, just the mhz of the chips. ) 

...

...I give up. 

It's okay, many a person has tried foolishly to make the internet a better place only to have their hopes and dreams crushed by the masses.  

You can always try again next time; though do clean up those hopes you left on the ground, they're blocking the traffic of stupid comments.

"People should be aware that they're not going to get something like Heavenly Sword or Halo 3, where you have high-definition graphics and 7.1 sound and can fight hundreds of extremely detailed enemies at once, on the Wii; it simply doesn't have the processing power to handle that kind of load."

 When will these so called "hardcore" gamers/reviewers get it.  Not everyone cares about all this crap.  Most don't, they just want a fun experience.  And that is a very subjective thing that is different for everybody.   Its like he is trying to convince people not to buy a Wii, its really sad.  Anyone that has 7.1 sound and HD is likely technically savvy enough to know what they are and are not getting if they buy a Wii.  Its not like this is some "secret" that he's now letting out of the bag here.

I kind of laugh whenever I read this stuff.  How long are they going to keep whining about this.  They just can't STAND that the Wii is dominating the more technically powerfuly consoles.

I'm thinking on an answer that you deserves. As soon as I find one that don't end up banning me I will tell you ;)

Wow, I second that one.

By the way: (CPU + GPU) * 2.5 = 2.5 * CPU + 2.5 * GPU. But I guess I am throwing around some very advanced math here.

 Or I just made a total a%$ out of myself and have to leave these forums - I am confused.

Is it me or around 90% of the people on this site doesn't knows how hardware works? 

Seriously, someone should post a "hardware and performance for dummies" just for the sake of being informative... not that I think you people are dummies, but first the "PS3 is more powerful than 10 Radeons 2900" and now this... lol

Speed is ONE of many factors, read Mnementh post and he got it all right there. Also, don't forget who's making the GPU on the Wii... they are known for some crazy stuff (asymmetrical number of shader units vs. pipelines, unified shader architecture, etc.)... I guess they throwed a new GPU on the Wii, but I'm not sure because I really don't know if TEVs are compatible with PSs.