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DICE dev offers further comments on Wii U power, Digital Foundry explains
“GPU and RAM is nice to have shaders/textures loaded. Physics and gameplay run on CPU mostly so player count is affected etc. I don't actually know what makes it slow, but enough 'tech' people I trust in world are saying the same things. Should be a great fun platform if you are a Nintendo fan the coming years and the memory and GPU part looks good!” - Gustav Halling, lead designer at DICE
To further explain statements like this, Digital Foundry chief Richard Leadbetter stepped in.
“Outside of dev circles the Wii U CPU is a bit of a mystery. Just about the only confirmed facts are that IBM has produced it and it's been fabricated on a 45nm process - just like the combined CPU/GPU in the Xbox 360.
Based on rough calculations, the Wii U CPU occupies the same amount of silicon - and so has a roughly similar amount number of transistors - as a single Xbox 360 core (update: plus the L2 cache) in the Xenon tri-core processor. Transistor count alone can't be used to judge 'power' as such (though that's what Moore's Law is based on) but it's safe to say there'd need to be a huge amount of efficiency gains to produce anything like the same amount of processing power as the 360 with that silicon budget.
While we're on the subject of power, it is worth pointing out that an Xbox 360 Slim draws around 70 watts from the mains. The Wii U is closer to 35 watts. In terms of overall performance from power consumed, that's rather impressive.”
Link
To further explain statements like this, Digital Foundry chief Richard Leadbetter stepped in.
“Outside of dev circles the Wii U CPU is a bit of a mystery. Just about the only confirmed facts are that IBM has produced it and it's been fabricated on a 45nm process - just like the combined CPU/GPU in the Xbox 360.
Based on rough calculations, the Wii U CPU occupies the same amount of silicon - and so has a roughly similar amount number of transistors - as a single Xbox 360 core (update: plus the L2 cache) in the Xenon tri-core processor. Transistor count alone can't be used to judge 'power' as such (though that's what Moore's Law is based on) but it's safe to say there'd need to be a huge amount of efficiency gains to produce anything like the same amount of processing power as the 360 with that silicon budget.
While we're on the subject of power, it is worth pointing out that an Xbox 360 Slim draws around 70 watts from the mains. The Wii U is closer to 35 watts. In terms of overall performance from power consumed, that's rather impressive.”
Link