Guts of the Wii U: Facts & Rumors

[linkgx1]

It's interesting that Gustav Halling is not complaining about the Wii U's RAM. In fact, he has something nice to say about the Wii U's RAM.

@JayLeemin GPU and ram is nice to have shaders/textures loaded.

https://twitter.com/gustavhalling/statu ... 7027895298

And what Gustav Halling has to say about the Wii U's CPU.

@dampflokfreund @JayLeemin I don't actually know what makes it slow, but enough "tech" people I trust in world are saying the same things.

https://twitter.com/gustavhalling/statu ... 3389162497

Yes, it's disappointing that the Wii U's CPU is low clocked and weak, but at the same time, I expected that.

In fact whenever Nintendo releases a new console, there's one or more things that Nintendo screws up on.

- The biggest downfall of the NES was that third party developers had to follow Nintendo's strict censorship policy.

- The biggest downfalls of the SNES was the low clocked and weak CPU, yet the SNES had fantastic third party support, and again, third party developers had to follow Nintendo's strict censorship policy.

- The biggest downfall of the Nintendo 64 was that cartridges were used instead of CDs which was a problem since cartridges have lower storage size than CDs and are more expensive to produce than CDs.

- The biggest downfalls of the Nintendo GameCube was the Nintendo GameCube uses GameCube Game Discs instead of regular CDs which was criticized by third party developers for low storage space (1.7 GB storage) and the Nintendo GameCube had very little to no online support from Nintendo which led to the Battlefield series never appearing on the Nintendo GameCube: http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/28480

- The biggest downfalls of the Nintendo Wii was the Wii's architecture was drastically different than the XBOX 360's & PlayStation 3's architecture, therefore the Wii is incapable of running in 720p, third party developers have a harder time developing games for the Wii, and the Wii's online infrastructure was a complete mess (40MB file size limit for Wiiware, you can only connect to the Internet via Wi-fi (unless you have a Wii LAN adapter which is not ideal), not ethernet port, etc).

- And it seems like the biggest downfalls of the Wii U so far is that the Wii U's CPU is low clocked and weak CPU (like with the SNES) and you can only connect to the Internet via Wi-fi (unless you have a Wii LAN adapter which is not ideal and it's like the Wii).

Keep in mind that I could make some mistakes here, so please kindly correct me if I do make mistakes.

But I don't think the Wii U's problem is as big of an issue as the other consoles. And if the Wii can get a lot of support, the Wii U should.

Either way, the Wii U would be underpowered unless it came AFTER the PS4 and cost more. With it being in the HD realm, a lot of the engines are scalable.

But I honestly the Wii U needs a combo of 1st party games and unique 3rd party games like Zombi U. Even if the Wii U was as powerful as teh Xbox 720, some games like CoD I would still get on the Xbox.

[ddddd]

From what I heard the Wii U is only 20% less powerful than the next Xbox. Not bad if you ask me.

Hopefully it's the PS2 of this generation.

Thats the IGN rumor, unfortunately, it was based on the off-shelf GPUs early kits had, and they basically used the wikipedia FLOPs count of said cards to determine that percentage. You can dismiss that rumor.
While it is indeed rumored by additional sources that NextBox's GPU is not a massive leap over WiiU, the rest of the console's specs are.

[KingBroly]

Before some third party got to Microsoft, that was going to be the case, unfortunately. Microsoft saw what Nintendo did with the Wii and basically thought not a lot of money was required to go next gen. But once that third party got their message, it appears that Microsoft (and Sony) changed what they'd do.

[linkgx1]

From what I heard the Wii U is only 20% less powerful than the next Xbox. Not bad if you ask me.

Hopefully it's the PS2 of this generation.

Thats the IGN rumor, unfortunately, it was based on the off-shelf GPUs early kits had, and they basically used the wikipedia FLOPs count of said cards to determine that percentage. You can dismiss that rumor.
While it is indeed rumored by additional sources that NextBox's GPU is not a massive leap over WiiU, the rest of the console's specs are.

But isn't the GPU the most important aspect in this case? I mean, CPUs are important. Certainly. But you can get away with a slightly slower (note that this IS a POWER7-based ONE) CPU. Unless your game is really AI and PHYSICS heavy. Damn it we won't get portal 3!

[Eternal Rain]

From what I heard the Wii U is only 20% less powerful than the next Xbox. Not bad if you ask me.

Hopefully it's the PS2 of this generation.

Thats the IGN rumor, unfortunately, it was based on the off-shelf GPUs early kits had, and they basically used the wikipedia FLOPs count of said cards to determine that percentage. You can dismiss that rumor.
While it is indeed rumored by additional sources that NextBox's GPU is not a massive leap over WiiU, the rest of the console's specs are.

But isn't the GPU the most important aspect in this case? I mean, CPUs are important. Certainly. But you can get away with a slightly slower (note that this IS a POWER7-based ONE) CPU. Unless your game is really AI and PHYSICS heavy. Damn it we won't get portal 3!

The Wii could fully support Havok, I don't think it'll be a big issue (Brawl used Havok, look at the back of the box and you'll see their logo). Plus the original Xbox got Half-Life 2.

How well a physics engine is implemented depends on the developer, not just a system's architecture. Sonic 06 used Havok on all platforms the game was released on, and it was implemented pretty poorly, but it wasn't the Xbox 360 or PS3's fault for that. If the Wii's CPU could handle physics just fine, then I'm sure the Wii U's will still be fine too.

[ddddd]

Well, to be fair, the Mario Galaxies are not exactly massively demanding games graphically speaking, thats probably the reason why the game can run so many effects with great lighting at 60fps.

Thats the IGN rumor, unfortunately, it was based on the off-shelf GPUs early kits had, and they basically used the wikipedia FLOPs count of said cards to determine that percentage. You can dismiss that rumor.
While it is indeed rumored by additional sources that NextBox's GPU is not a massive leap over WiiU, the rest of the console's specs are.

But isn't the GPU the most important aspect in this case? I mean, CPUs are important. Certainly. But you can get away with a slightly slower (note that this IS a POWER7-based ONE) CPU. Unless your game is really AI and PHYSICS heavy. Damn it we won't get portal 3!

NextBox' GPU will be at minimum 200% or more above WiiU. On WiiU, developers will be forced to offload tasks to the GPGPU, losing power to do graphics while doing so; on the other consoles, that migh not be the case with the large CPUs they will have. So, at some point, the games would have to lose in-game content to fit on WiiU.

[shadowbuster]

Assuming what the devs of Metro, Battlefield and Orichi said about the CPU being "horri***, slow" (yes, it's a bad word now) are correct, Nintendo will struggle, yet again, to have the third party support they deserve because of CPU bottlenecking. So, a possible solution would be to double the clock speed of it's CPU in the near future. It is not the first time Nintendo has done this, since the DSi has double the clock speed of the original DS, according to this comparison.

Maybe, when the next playstation and xbox come out in 2014 or so, Nintendo can find ways to increase, or double the CPU's power, regardless if the GPU has to do the rest of the work or not, that can comply with their newfound "power efficiency" policy, and without overhauling the hardware. They can call this the Wii Ui, or Wii U plus, whatever.

So, do you think Ninty would do this to at least attract some third party devs with their "cpu intensive" games, or will it be the Wii/Dreamcast saga all over again?

[MrWu]

The most plausible case I've heard so far is that the Wii U power draw at launch is no where near the 75w 'full load' specs.

I think tests of Wii U power draw with NSMBU has it at something like 33 watts. According to this study.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6465/nint ... u-teardown

So it's possible they could tinker with clock speeds via firmware. Wii U on idle is surprisingly cool, way way cooler even than my Wii, which heats up quite a bit if you touch the chassis side where the CPU is facing.

You also have to keep in mind, the Wii U has 4 USB ports, so those have to be accounted for in the 75w 'full load' equation.
That said, each USB 2.0 only uses up to 2 watts, so were's looking at 10 watts generously rounded up. That still leaves ~20 watts of consumption unaccounted for.

[RD3AV5]

Assuming what the devs of Metro, Battlefield and Orichi said about the CPU being "horri***, slow" (yes, it's a bad word now) are correct, Nintendo will struggle, yet again, to have the third party support they deserve because of CPU bottlenecking. So, a possible solution would be to double the clock speed of it's CPU in the near future. It is not the first time Nintendo has done this, since the DSi has double the clock speed of the original DS, according to this comparison.

Maybe, when the next playstation and xbox come out in 2014 or so, Nintendo can find ways to increase, or double the CPU's power, regardless if the GPU has to do the rest of the work or not, that can comply with their newfound "power efficiency" policy, and without overhauling the hardware. They can call this the Wii Ui, or Wii U plus, whatever.

So, do you think Ninty would do this to at least attract some third party devs with their "cpu intensive" games, or will it be the Wii/Dreamcast saga all over again?

Nintendo may have added more punch to the DSi CPU and quadrupled the RAM (4MB to 16MB) but these enhancements did NOT benefit from games, only for the new added functions of the camera and whatnot. There were no "exclusive" DSi games (outside of the pre-Eshop games for download, which did not utilize the extra guts either).

[Devil_Rising]

Assuming what the devs of Metro, Battlefield and Orichi said about the CPU being "horri***, slow" (yes, it's a bad word now) are correct, Nintendo will struggle, yet again, to have the third party support they deserve because of CPU bottlenecking. So, a possible solution would be to double the clock speed of it's CPU in the near future. It is not the first time Nintendo has done this, since the DSi has double the clock speed of the original DS, according to this comparison.

Maybe, when the next playstation and xbox come out in 2014 or so, Nintendo can find ways to increase, or double the CPU's power, regardless if the GPU has to do the rest of the work or not, that can comply with their newfound "power efficiency" policy, and without overhauling the hardware. They can call this the Wii Ui, or Wii U plus, whatever.

So, do you think Ninty would do this to at least attract some third party devs with their "cpu intensive" games, or will it be the Wii/Dreamcast saga all over again?

There are multiple problems with what you just suggested. The biggest one being: it would be incredibly impractical, and certainly not cost effective for Nintendo OR the consumer, to have them feel like they have to buy "upgraded" versions of the console, just to "compete" with the other systems when they come out. So how else would you suggest Nintendo up clock speed? It's not like they could just provide a downloadable update to do such a thing, it's a hardware issue.

Furthermore, as someone else pointed out in a different thread, it isn't so much an issue of allegedly "Slow ram", or "weak CPU" power. It's more an issue of "understand how the hardware is specifically meant to work, and then learn how to get the most out of that hardware". You can't copy/paste code for a game from one console to the next and expect it to work exactly the same (which is likely why you see so many multi-console ports where one version is fine and the other one, which features almost the exact same content/graphics/etc., kind of sucks). You have to program a game to work WITH the hardware, not just shove your code up it's....processor, and expect it to work exactly as it would on a different platform with vastly different hardware. Wii U's issue with the CPU/GPGPU set-up, is not too dissimilar, as that same poster pointed out, from the way the PS3's Cell processor works. Fundamentally speaking, as I understand it, the PS3 doesn't really have six processors that work in tandem. Most games probably only ever use one or two of them, tops. The others are simply meant to help pick up any excess slack from the GPU, etc. That's basically what the Wii U's setup seems to be for.

So the TRICK is, for developers to actually bother taking the time to learn how to program for Wii U, and then learn how to really get the most out of the system. My guess is, the console is a lot more powerful, at least speaking in terms of potential, than most people seem to be letting on, or perhaps even know about, but to REACH that power, you have to really work within the hardware. Which, again, is really the case for any console. We're not talking about PC's here, after all. You look at the PS2, which absolutely had the weakest hardware of it's generation (not counting the Dreamcast), yet certain (not all) developers found ways to really make it hum, and produced games on it that I'm sure some people would have thought wasn't possible. The same could probably be said for The Gamecube producing games like Metroid Prime and Twilight Princess, which were honestly on par or better than most (graphically superior) Xbox games. There were also developers who managed to do some really great stuff with the "very limited" Wii hardware, and not just Nintendo, not just Retro, but a few third parties as well.

Anyways, as I've myself pointed out many times in the past over this same basic conversation, I don't think anyone who is being practical and sober-minded would ever argue that the Xbox3 and PS4 AREN'T going to be more powerful than the Wii U, in terms of raw statistics. But I would argue that I don't think it's going to be anywhere NEAR the kind of disparity that you saw with the Wii. And even then, there were some developers who bothered to actually try making ports of multiconsole games for Wii, or even a few exclusives, that got a lot out of the system and made some pretty strong, good looking games. So considering that the "power gap" will inevitably be much shorter this time around, because even the PS4 is NOT likely going to wind up being as ridiculously powerful as some on here seem to want to imagine (it's just not cost effective, ask Sony how doing that with PS3 worked out for them for the first 3-4 years), I'd think that developers who actually bother trying, and know what they're doing, will still be able to make multi-console ports to Wii U that look great, function great, etc.

[linkgx1]

Some of you guys also seem to be missing the point that the Wii U is DESIGNED BY NINTENDO. And the Wii U features a GPGPU-SOMETHING THAT HAS ONLY BEEN PIONEERED AROUND 5 YEARS AGO. I'm sorry, but the Wii U does not have old technology by any standards. That's like saying a Core 2.2GHZ i7proceessor is a step backwords compared to a 3.8GHZ Pentinium III. I mean not only does the Wii U have more RAM than the Xbox 360 and PS3, it' featuresa parallel processing GPU. And Nintendo smartly placed the GPU really close to the CPU so they can cut down on the 'lag'. I'm not sure what's bad about that. Note that Nintendo is rumored to use the POWER7 architecture for the CPU and the Radeo HD 7000 series for the GPU.

Nintendo is the company that worked wtih IBM and ATI to respetively make the Dolphin and Gekko processing units. With teh GCN, Nintendo built many of the instructions in to the GPU. In many ways, Nintendo is smarter than SONY. Sony decided to use the Cell-Chip techonloogy. Arguably it's one of the best if not the best processor you can use in the world. But the problem is they took a 'powerhouse' CPU made for....Supercomputers and less suitable for gaming (still a great CPU once you can use it by the way). Nintendo knows the most important part and the heart of a gaming console is the GPU.

To me, if Nintendo wanted to make a terrible console, the would have taken the Xbox specs with no changes or R&D spending. Even then, the Xbox and PS3 still have pretty good specs. What killed them a lot was the sheer memory in the system itself. Had they had 2GB or so in the CPU and GPU we would probaly waiting until 2016 for consoles.

Besides, I think Nintendo is purposely looking or a shorter console life span. I mean, that's more money. Look at what a 1 year cycle has does to Apple. This could work if done correctly.

[RD3AV5]

Splitting the Wii U user base by releasing a Wii U+ would be suicide. They could in theory unlock more Ram for developers from the OS pool and even do a slight CPU overclock with a firmware update, but releasing a new beefier Wii U would be madness.
Nintendo could in theory rush right now to develop a new system to go on the market in three years designed to outperform the PS4/720. The sense in that would be that the next Sony and MS systems will be occupying a generation that will be a full 10 years. The graphics/physics and gameplay that the next generation will be able to produce will keep people happy for 10 years at least. If Nintendo ready a new system for holiday 2015 that outperforms the competition they could be the console hardware top dog for about 8 years. Will Nintendo stick with the Wii U for all of next generation, which isn't really starting for another year, which would be eleven years from now? I really can't say that they will. Will it be 3, 4 maybe 5 years before they release a new system? Whenever they do release a new system it will be going up against the PS4/720 as Sony/Microsoft won't be able from a financial standpoint to upgrade, but Nintendo will. It's kind of a long game strategy, and Nintendo might be thinking something completely different, but it's one possibility.

Which makes me wonder.

Wouldn't it be smarter, in that case, for Nintendo to have made the Wii U 'open' in terms of upgradability?

I say this because the N64 expansion pack was one of the coolest ideas I've ever seen when it came to consoles. I think Nintendo knew that some things were lacking and all of the really good looking games (Majora's Mask, PD) required it's use .But it came with most games that required it. Nintendo's consoles seem to have lost the ports after the GCN, but it's something to consider.

That way.

During year 2.5 you can catch back up to the competition.

Nice idea, but that ultimately is the market for PC gamers. SEGA took this idea with their Genesis and had TONS of expensive add-ons (sega CD, 32X) and it hindered them big time. I loved the N64 expansion pack, but it really didn't add much to the overall gameplay experience. As in, I still can't see where the real "benefits" of the expansion pak were. HONESTLY, the Wii U is powerful enough. Nintendo didn't skimp out on anything. they are LOSING money giving us a great system, meaning it would have been impossible to make the system any "better" for less than $300/$350. Wait and look at games in 2 years... they'll be amazing.

[linkgx1]

Some of you guys also seem to be missing the point that the Wii U is DESIGNED BY NINTENDO. And the Wii U features a GPGPU-SOMETHING THAT HAS ONLY BEEN PIONEERED AROUND 5 YEARS AGO. I'm sorry, but the Wii U does not have old technology by any standards. That's like saying a Core 2.2GHZ i7proceessor is a step backwords compared to a 3.8GHZ Pentinium III. I mean not only does the Wii U have more RAM than the Xbox 360 and PS3, it' featuresa parallel processing GPU. And Nintendo smartly placed the GPU really close to the CPU so they can cut down on the 'lag'. I'm not sure what's bad about that. Note that Nintendo is rumored to use the POWER7 architecture for the CPU and the Radeo HD 7000 series for the GPU.

Nintendo is the company that worked wtih IBM and ATI to respetively make the Dolphin and Gekko processing units. With teh GCN, Nintendo built many of the instructions in to the GPU. In many ways, Nintendo is smarter than SONY. Sony decided to use the Cell-Chip techonloogy. Arguably it's one of the best if not the best processor you can use in the world. But the problem is they took a 'powerhouse' CPU made for....Supercomputers and less suitable for gaming (still a great CPU once you can use it by the way). Nintendo knows the most important part and the heart of a gaming console is the GPU.

To me, if Nintendo wanted to make a terrible console, the would have taken the Xbox specs with no changes or R&D spending. Even then, the Xbox and PS3 still have pretty good specs. What killed them a lot was the sheer memory in the system itself. Had they had 2GB or so in the CPU and GPU we would probaly waiting until 2016 for consoles.

Besides, I think Nintendo is purposely looking or a shorter console life span. I mean, that's more money. Look at what a 1 year cycle has does to Apple. This could work if done correctly.

The GPGPU does give you the ability to offload some tasks from the CPU to the GPU, but it seems like this still only brings performance up to 360 level and doesn't really trump it. The CPU is "newer" but it's still very likely a 3 core CPU like the 360's but with fewer threads, not a 6 core like an i7. There are also different classes of CPU's, like the mobile CPU's in laptops that are crippled to save power (increase battery life), and seeing as the Wii U only sips power it would be a good educated guess to conclude that the Wii U CPU is akin to a Power 7 mobile CPU, not a desktop CPU like the 360 is. The 360 is also very likely (all but confirmed to be) clocked faster.
As for the GPU, it's thought to be an R7xx series GPU, which is not a Radeon HD 7000 series GPU. The R7xx is again akin to the ATI mobile laptop GPU and not like the desktop GPU, the Radeon 1950 that the 360 is modeled after. Nintendo is on record saying they went with these chips (CPU & GPU) because they got a very good price on them, not just because they were the best chips to use. Yes the Wii U does also have more RAM, but it's clocked much slower then the 360's RAM, which is causing problems in games like longer load times, and instances of chugging frame rates.

Don't get mad at the messenger, I also wish this wasn't the case.

Meh, it's gonna take 3 years to see good visuals on the NextBox anywho. And all I care about this point is HD Metroid Prime.

Nintendo hasn't officially released it yet so we'll see. But I still don't think the jump on the next consoles is gonna be that huge. I'm hoping I'm wrong. But. Hell the Xbox still wows me. And playing through Starfox Adventures still kinda wows me going though the Water Forcepoint temple and...Cape Claw.

Well see next gen how the consoles perform. Should be interdasting.

[ddddd]

Oh, the jump will be big, you can be sure of that. Still, Nextbox is not the system you want to go for graphics, thats the PS4 for. I thought Sony wouldn't be so stupid to make it 4K to sell those tvs, but I guess they thought their situation wasn't challenging enough already

[Devil_Rising]

MS and Sony will lose far more money per console than Nintendo, again, and neither console will sell like hotcakes out of the gate, because of pricing. Again. Nintendo by then will have a huge lead, a strong library of games, and many Nintendo franchise titles out to help sales right along (not to mention the inevitable release of Dragon's Quest X for Wii U).

I've said this a hundred times in here in the past, but somehow tech nerds still talk about it: You simply CANNOT compare a game console's hardware specs to "similar" hardware for PC. It's apples and oranges, period. ESPECIALLY when you factor in that EVERYTHING in the Wii U is custom, the CPU, the ram, the GPGPU, etc. This never-ending endeavor by "the internets" to try and futilely compare PC performance to that of game consoles, is as useless as it's ever been. And yes, once more, the Wii U IS ultimately more powerful than the PS3. It doesn't matter that the PS4 will have more powerful hardware, because with the PS3 as evidence, all the power in the world means nothing, if no one ever USES it.

And please, I would love for someone to point out even one game, that has ever really made full use of the PS3's overpriced, overpowered hardware? I'll wait.

[linkgx1]

The most plausible case I've heard so far is that the Wii U power draw at launch is no where near the 75w 'full load' specs.

I think tests of Wii U power draw with NSMBU has it at something like 33 watts. According to this study.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6465/nint ... u-teardown

So it's possible they could tinker with clock speeds via firmware. Wii U on idle is surprisingly cool, way way cooler even than my Wii, which heats up quite a bit if you touch the chassis side where the CPU is facing.

You also have to keep in mind, the Wii U has 4 USB ports, so those have to be accounted for in the 75w 'full load' equation.
That said, each USB 2.0 only uses up to 2 watts, so were's looking at 10 watts generously rounded up. That still leaves ~20 watts of consumption unaccounted for.

It would be interesting if Nintendo intentionally underclocked the Wii U knowing they can send an update to unlock the rest of the console. I only say this because updates seem to be an INTEGRAL part of Wii U. More so than my Xbox 360 (kinda rivals the PS3 when it comes to downloading and updates). Booting up New Super Mario Bros Wii U shows version like 1.10 (I think?) and the Wii U console is already on version 2.00U.

[bomblord]

Some of you guys also seem to be missing the point that the Wii U is DESIGNED BY NINTENDO. And the Wii U features a GPGPU-SOMETHING THAT HAS ONLY BEEN PIONEERED AROUND 5 YEARS AGO. I'm sorry, but the Wii U does not have old technology by any standards. That's like saying a Core 2.2GHZ i7proceessor is a step backwords compared to a 3.8GHZ Pentinium III. I mean not only does the Wii U have more RAM than the Xbox 360 and PS3, it' featuresa parallel processing GPU. And Nintendo smartly placed the GPU really close to the CPU so they can cut down on the 'lag'. I'm not sure what's bad about that. Note that Nintendo is rumored to use the POWER7 architecture for the CPU and the Radeo HD 7000 series for the GPU.

Nintendo is the company that worked wtih IBM and ATI to respetively make the Dolphin and Gekko processing units. With teh GCN, Nintendo built many of the instructions in to the GPU. In many ways, Nintendo is smarter than SONY. Sony decided to use the Cell-Chip techonloogy. Arguably it's one of the best if not the best processor you can use in the world. But the problem is they took a 'powerhouse' CPU made for....Supercomputers and less suitable for gaming (still a great CPU once you can use it by the way). Nintendo knows the most important part and the heart of a gaming console is the GPU.

To me, if Nintendo wanted to make a terrible console, the would have taken the Xbox specs with no changes or R&D spending. Even then, the Xbox and PS3 still have pretty good specs. What killed them a lot was the sheer memory in the system itself. Had they had 2GB or so in the CPU and GPU we would probaly waiting until 2016 for consoles.

Besides, I think Nintendo is purposely looking or a shorter console life span. I mean, that's more money. Look at what a 1 year cycle has does to Apple. This could work if done correctly.

The GPGPU does give you the ability to offload some tasks from the CPU to the GPU, but it seems like this still only brings performance up to 360 level and doesn't really trump it. The CPU is "newer" but it's still very likely a 3 core CPU like the 360's but with fewer threads, not a 6 core like an i7. There are also different classes of CPU's, like the mobile CPU's in laptops that are crippled to save power (increase battery life), and seeing as the Wii U only sips power it would be a good educated guess to conclude that the Wii U CPU is akin to a Power 7 mobile CPU, not a desktop CPU like the 360 is. The 360 is also very likely (all but confirmed to be) clocked faster.
As for the GPU, it's thought to be an R7xx series GPU, which is not a Radeon HD 7000 series GPU. The R7xx is again akin to the ATI mobile laptop GPU and not like the desktop GPU, the Radeon 1950 that the 360 is modeled after. Nintendo is on record saying they went with these chips (CPU & GPU) because they got a very good price on them, not just because they were the best chips to use. Yes the Wii U does also have more RAM, but it's clocked much slower then the 360's RAM, which is causing problems in games like longer load times, and instances of chugging frame rates.

Don't get mad at the messenger, I also wish this wasn't the case.

Ram has absolutely no effect on loading times the data is read from the disc and loaded onto the ram the only way that the ram could affect loading times would be if the disc drive or hard drive was reading data faster than the rams write speed (which is impossible in any real world situation). Also, to be blunt we don't need a very powerful CPU in any consoles a high end Core 2 Duo will run any game on the market today at maxed out settings with the exception of a few experimental or extremely physics heavy ones. The wiiU's CPU coupled with the GPU will have adequate power to run any game you can think of unless the developer wants to do something insane like have 5,000 enemies onscreen at once each running their own separate AI.

[Lakster37]

So what is causing Darksiders 2 to load slowest on the Wii U when changing areas?http://www.gonintendo.com/?mode=viewstory&id=191044 Is that not being caused by the RAM, if not then what is causing it?
Maybe the CPU can be overcome with good programing, but the fact that games like Batman run with glitches and no anti aliasing suggests it's having trouble keeping up to the 360.

Or that it's a port developed by a studio who didn't make the original game to begin with on a console that was just released.

[TheSchaef]

I say this because the N64 expansion pack was one of the coolest ideas I've ever seen when it came to consoles. I think Nintendo knew that some things were lacking and all of the really good looking games (Majora's Mask, PD) required it's use.

I don't disagree with your central point, but I have to say that Rare was able to do some amazing things with that console even without the use of the Expansion Pak.

Several titles (the Factor Five stuff, Turok franchise, whatever) detected the Pak and apparently used it to tighten up the graphics on level three, or whatever, but in Rare's case, while Perfect Dark was mostly-crippled without the Pak, Conker didn't require it and that game was packed with material. And while Conker wasn't exactly a graphics powerhouse of a game, I will note that Jet Force Gemini had some of the best draw distance I've seen through the entire history of that console, often with other effects like reflective surfaces going on.

[bomblord]

Some of you guys also seem to be missing the point that the Wii U is DESIGNED BY NINTENDO. And the Wii U features a GPGPU-SOMETHING THAT HAS ONLY BEEN PIONEERED AROUND 5 YEARS AGO. I'm sorry, but the Wii U does not have old technology by any standards. That's like saying a Core 2.2GHZ i7proceessor is a step backwords compared to a 3.8GHZ Pentinium III. I mean not only does the Wii U have more RAM than the Xbox 360 and PS3, it' featuresa parallel processing GPU. And Nintendo smartly placed the GPU really close to the CPU so they can cut down on the 'lag'. I'm not sure what's bad about that. Note that Nintendo is rumored to use the POWER7 architecture for the CPU and the Radeo HD 7000 series for the GPU.

Nintendo is the company that worked wtih IBM and ATI to respetively make the Dolphin and Gekko processing units. With teh GCN, Nintendo built many of the instructions in to the GPU. In many ways, Nintendo is smarter than SONY. Sony decided to use the Cell-Chip techonloogy. Arguably it's one of the best if not the best processor you can use in the world. But the problem is they took a 'powerhouse' CPU made for....Supercomputers and less suitable for gaming (still a great CPU once you can use it by the way). Nintendo knows the most important part and the heart of a gaming console is the GPU.

To me, if Nintendo wanted to make a terrible console, the would have taken the Xbox specs with no changes or R&D spending. Even then, the Xbox and PS3 still have pretty good specs. What killed them a lot was the sheer memory in the system itself. Had they had 2GB or so in the CPU and GPU we would probaly waiting until 2016 for consoles.

Besides, I think Nintendo is purposely looking or a shorter console life span. I mean, that's more money. Look at what a 1 year cycle has does to Apple. This could work if done correctly.

The GPGPU does give you the ability to offload some tasks from the CPU to the GPU, but it seems like this still only brings performance up to 360 level and doesn't really trump it. The CPU is "newer" but it's still very likely a 3 core CPU like the 360's but with fewer threads, not a 6 core like an i7. There are also different classes of CPU's, like the mobile CPU's in laptops that are crippled to save power (increase battery life), and seeing as the Wii U only sips power it would be a good educated guess to conclude that the Wii U CPU is akin to a Power 7 mobile CPU, not a desktop CPU like the 360 is. The 360 is also very likely (all but confirmed to be) clocked faster.
As for the GPU, it's thought to be an R7xx series GPU, which is not a Radeon HD 7000 series GPU. The R7xx is again akin to the ATI mobile laptop GPU and not like the desktop GPU, the Radeon 1950 that the 360 is modeled after. Nintendo is on record saying they went with these chips (CPU & GPU) because they got a very good price on them, not just because they were the best chips to use. Yes the Wii U does also have more RAM, but it's clocked much slower then the 360's RAM, which is causing problems in games like longer load times, and instances of chugging frame rates.

Don't get mad at the messenger, I also wish this wasn't the case.

Ram has absolutely no effect on loading times the data is read from the disc and loaded onto the ram the only way that the ram could affect loading times would be if the disc drive or hard drive was reading data faster than the rams write speed (which is impossible in any real world situation). Also, to be blunt we don't need a very powerful CPU in any consoles a high end Core 2 Duo will run any game on the market today at maxed out settings with the exception of a few experimental or extremely physics heavy ones. The wiiU's CPU coupled with the GPU will have adequate power to run any game you can think of unless the developer wants to do something insane like have 5,000 enemies onscreen at once each running their own separate AI.

So what is causing Darksiders 2 to load slowest on the Wii U when changing areas?http://www.gonintendo.com/?mode=viewstory&id=191044 Is that not being caused by the RAM, if not then what is causing it?
Maybe the CPU can be overcome with good programing, but the fact that games like Batman run with glitches and no anti aliasing suggests it's having trouble keeping up to the 360.

My best guess on the slow load times is the fact that the discs hold 25gb of data makes it take longer to seek and read data.

On games running worse, glitches in most cases have nothing to do with the power of the console and the reason for no anti aliasing is a toss up, AA is usually handled by the GPU and it's been confirmed to be more powerful than the 360's, it could be that the 360 has a dedicated pipeline for AA and the wiiU doesn't or it could just be a lack of optimization within the engine as all of these are 1st gen ports. The fact these games are running at all let alone running comparably the ps360 versions, going off of an engine and code built for the 360 (in most cases 360 is the main platform because of its similarity to the PC, this isn't always the case though) and being ported in what I've heard to be under a year, while also streaming a second video stream to the gamepad is frankly amazing in my opinion.

I'm going to call this now, the best looking wiiU game will be one that abandons the gamepad screen. Going off the fact that running two gamepads will half the framerate if a dev were to out the video stream entirely they could potentially free up a ton of resources making a significant graphic leap very possible.

[MrWu]

So what is causing Darksiders 2 to load slowest on the Wii U when changing areas?http://www.gonintendo.com/?mode=viewstory&id=191044 Is that not being caused by the RAM, if not then what is causing it?
Maybe the CPU can be overcome with good programing, but the fact that games like Batman run with glitches and no anti aliasing suggests it's having trouble keeping up to the 360.

I thougt it was obvious? The 360 version is installed + disc. The Wii version was played on the disc?

Unless I misunderstood that comparison video which surfaced.

Has anyone played it from an HDD digital download?

[RD3AV5]

Assuming what the devs of Metro, Battlefield and Orichi said about the CPU being "horri***, slow" (yes, it's a bad word now) are correct, Nintendo will struggle, yet again, to have the third party support they deserve because of CPU bottlenecking. So, a possible solution would be to double the clock speed of it's CPU in the near future. It is not the first time Nintendo has done this, since the DSi has double the clock speed of the original DS, according to this comparison.

Maybe, when the next playstation and xbox come out in 2014 or so, Nintendo can find ways to increase, or double the CPU's power, regardless if the GPU has to do the rest of the work or not, that can comply with their newfound "power efficiency" policy, and without overhauling the hardware. They can call this the Wii Ui, or Wii U plus, whatever.

So, do you think Ninty would do this to at least attract some third party devs with their "cpu intensive" games, or will it be the Wii/Dreamcast saga all over again?

There are multiple problems with what you just suggested. The biggest one being: it would be incredibly impractical, and certainly not cost effective for Nintendo OR the consumer, to have them feel like they have to buy "upgraded" versions of the console, just to "compete" with the other systems when they come out. So how else would you suggest Nintendo up clock speed? It's not like they could just provide a downloadable update to do such a thing, it's a hardware issue.

Furthermore, as someone else pointed out in a different thread, it isn't so much an issue of allegedly "Slow ram", or "weak CPU" power. It's more an issue of "understand how the hardware is specifically meant to work, and then learn how to get the most out of that hardware". You can't copy/paste code for a game from one console to the next and expect it to work exactly the same (which is likely why you see so many multi-console ports where one version is fine and the other one, which features almost the exact same content/graphics/etc., kind of sucks). You have to program a game to work WITH the hardware, not just shove your code up it's....processor, and expect it to work exactly as it would on a different platform with vastly different hardware. Wii U's issue with the CPU/GPGPU set-up, is not too dissimilar, as that same poster pointed out, from the way the PS3's Cell processor works. Fundamentally speaking, as I understand it, the PS3 doesn't really have six processors that work in tandem. Most games probably only ever use one or two of them, tops. The others are simply meant to help pick up any excess slack from the GPU, etc. That's basically what the Wii U's setup seems to be for.

So the TRICK is, for developers to actually bother taking the time to learn how to program for Wii U, and then learn how to really get the most out of the system. My guess is, the console is a lot more powerful, at least speaking in terms of potential, than most people seem to be letting on, or perhaps even know about, but to REACH that power, you have to really work within the hardware. Which, again, is really the case for any console. We're not talking about PC's here, after all. You look at the PS2, which absolutely had the weakest hardware of it's generation (not counting the Dreamcast), yet certain (not all) developers found ways to really make it hum, and produced games on it that I'm sure some people would have thought wasn't possible. The same could probably be said for The Gamecube producing games like Metroid Prime and Twilight Princess, which were honestly on par or better than most (graphically superior) Xbox games. There were also developers who managed to do some really great stuff with the "very limited" Wii hardware, and not just Nintendo, not just Retro, but a few third parties as well.

Anyways, as I've myself pointed out many times in the past over this same basic conversation, I don't think anyone who is being practical and sober-minded would ever argue that the Xbox3 and PS4 AREN'T going to be more powerful than the Wii U, in terms of raw statistics. But I would argue that I don't think it's going to be anywhere NEAR the kind of disparity that you saw with the Wii. And even then, there were some developers who bothered to actually try making ports of multiconsole games for Wii, or even a few exclusives, that got a lot out of the system and made some pretty strong, good looking games. So considering that the "power gap" will inevitably be much shorter this time around, because even the PS4 is NOT likely going to wind up being as ridiculously powerful as some on here seem to want to imagine (it's just not cost effective, ask Sony how doing that with PS3 worked out for them for the first 3-4 years), I'd think that developers who actually bother trying, and know what they're doing, will still be able to make multi-console ports to Wii U that look great, function great, etc.

Completely agree on all accounts @Devil_Rising. Beautifully said. I am just so TIRED of LAZY devs not taking the time to understand and engineer properly and accordingly to the Wii U. The easy way out is to say, "Hey! This is only 3 GHz compared to 3.2 GHz, it's too slow and won't work." Right... a 2.2 GHz sandy-bridge i7 is WAY slower than a 3.8 GHz Pentium 4... Sure if a program isn't DESIGNED to utilize the "newer" tech, then yeah a program built for a faster pentium 4 and LAZILY ported to a newer CPU that's clockspeed is "slower" won't perform as well. Give it a year or two and these complaints will be behind us.

[Devil_Rising]

I don't really see the things I've said as blind faith, though I don't know if you were referring to me.

I see what I've said as practical common sense. The Wii U is not "OMG AMAZING" hardware. But it IS good hardware, that I think will over time show itself to be fundamentally better than PS3 (which is better than 360) hardware. And I think that, in the end, it's going to have games that look gorgeous enough, that you'd be hard pressed to say "YEAH, this looks way worse than the PS4", because I don't think that's going to be nearly as much of the case come this gen. If Sony and MS take that route again, they're going to regret it, because many devs have already complained about the ever-rising costs of "Great looking HD blockbuster games".

I think the Wii U will be just fine, as I've continued to say. It may indeed by the "PS2 of it's generation", but that is, after all, no bad thing to be compared to.

[linkgx1]

Completely agree on all accounts @Devil_Rising. Beautifully said. I am just so TIRED of LAZY devs not taking the time to understand and engineer properly and accordingly to the Wii U. The easy way out is to say, "Hey! This is only 3 GHz compared to 3.2 GHz, it's too slow and won't work." Right... a 2.2 GHz sandy-bridge i7 is WAY slower than a 3.8 GHz Pentium 4... Sure if a program isn't DESIGNED to utilize the "newer" tech, then yeah a program built for a faster pentium 4 and LAZILY ported to a newer CPU that's clockspeed is "slower" won't perform as well. Give it a year or two and these complaints will be behind us.

Again, an i7 is a 6 core processor, a Pentium 4 is a one core processor, this isn't the same situation. A Wii U has a three core CPU and the 360 has a three core CPU. Yes there is newer architecture in the Wii U, yes, but a 2013 Chevy Volt still won't outperform a 2007 Mustang, the 360 being the Mustang. The 360 is believed to be clocked faster and has more threads, the Wii U is clocked slower with fewer threads and is based off of a low power laptop CPU, while the 360 is based off of a desktop CPU.
Enter the GPGPU, yes it will be able to compensate in some ways but it will need to walk in lock step with the CPU to do what the 360 CPU does on it's own. Maybe it will be able to achieve 120-150% more performance, but will it be worth the trouble? The Wii could run a lap around the PS2 yet the top tear PS2 games look better in most cases then the top tear Wii games because the AAA developers actually cared about PS2 games. What I'm saying is that like the Wii, even if there is more power to squeeze out of the Wii U developers will be reluctant to take the time to tailor games to it, as they were for the Wii, or the PS3 for that matter. When the other guys get their systems out and game development shifts gears the Wii U will be left behind just like the Wii was after it's initial strong PS2/Xbox ports like Scarface, Godfather & Bully 2 leaving only the exclusives (some good, some awful) and watered down ports (mostly garbage).
I'm just trying to counter blind faith with logic here, so don't get up in arms.

I think you are the one with blind faith and quite honestly-your analogies suck.

To the Chevy Volt vs Mustang example. What the heck were you thinking? A Telsa roadster will kick the ass of a Mustang, any year, any time, any day.

Again, it's up to the developers, not the console itself. You talk about these strong ports, but that is the developers fault. Super Mario Galaxy looked great to me.

Developers saw money and got lazy.

Notice how the Wii was about twice as powerful as the GCN but didn't look anywhere as good (or shall I say, it didn't push any hardware).




Not many Wii games looked as good as the image above.

[bomblord]

Completely agree on all accounts @Devil_Rising. Beautifully said. I am just so TIRED of LAZY devs not taking the time to understand and engineer properly and accordingly to the Wii U. The easy way out is to say, "Hey! This is only 3 GHz compared to 3.2 GHz, it's too slow and won't work." Right... a 2.2 GHz sandy-bridge i7 is WAY slower than a 3.8 GHz Pentium 4... Sure if a program isn't DESIGNED to utilize the "newer" tech, then yeah a program built for a faster pentium 4 and LAZILY ported to a newer CPU that's clockspeed is "slower" won't perform as well. Give it a year or two and these complaints will be behind us.

Again, an i7 is a 6 core processor, a Pentium 4 is a one core processor, this isn't the same situation. A Wii U has a three core CPU and the 360 has a three core CPU. Yes there is newer architecture in the Wii U, yes, but a 2013 Chevy Volt still won't outperform a 2007 Mustang, the 360 being the Mustang. The 360 is believed to be clocked faster and has more threads, the Wii U is clocked slower with fewer threads and is based off of a low power laptop CPU, while the 360 is based off of a desktop CPU.
Enter the GPGPU, yes it will be able to compensate in some ways but it will need to walk in lock step with the CPU to do what the 360 CPU does on it's own. Maybe it will be able to achieve 120-150% more performance, but will it be worth the trouble? The Wii could run a lap around the PS2 yet the top tear PS2 games look better in most cases then the top tear Wii games because the AAA developers actually cared about PS2 games. What I'm saying is that like the Wii, even if there is more power to squeeze out of the Wii U developers will be reluctant to take the time to tailor games to it, as they were for the Wii, or the PS3 for that matter. When the other guys get their systems out and game development shifts gears the Wii U will be left behind just like the Wii was after it's initial strong PS2/Xbox ports like Scarface, Godfather & Bully 2 leaving only the exclusives (some good, some awful) and watered down ports (mostly garbage).
I'm just trying to counter blind faith with logic here, so don't get up in arms.

Well let me get this out the way IBM doesn't make laptop components and newer architecture makes a much larger difference than you think. Unless the wiiU doesn't actually have newer architecture (considering the cpu uses half of the 360's voltage when it's at full load and is still being compared favorably to it it has to) we are looking at a CPU that is either on par or marginally better than the 360's (based on developer comments) and easier to work with than the PS3's. It's confirmed to have 4x the ram of the 360 or ps3 and a considerably more powerful GPU, in other words the system isn't underpowered. I used to run skyrim on a 1.6ghz ulv (ultra low voltage laptop component) core 2 duo and achieved a solid 35-40fps, considering that the wiiU's cpu is guaranteed to be considerably better than this on top of the fact we can squeeze much much more power out of a game that's been optimized for a specific architecture and components I can guarantee games will continue to get better looking just like they did on the 360 and ps3 if you look at a launch 360 game some of them are worse looking than the gamecubes best looking games.

Moving on yes it does all come down to dev support and whether they are willing to learn the wiiU and work in or around it's limitations however even if every 3rd party dev ignores the system I can guarantee Nintendo will push it to the point that the ps360 crowd will wonder if the system was ever underpowered. Nintendo has been pushing 3rd parties to work with their system this generations which is a really good thing. I also have a feeling that Nintendo's courting of the indie crowd is going to pay off for them.