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Wii U GPU base specs: 160 ALUs, 8 TMUs, 8 ROPs; Rumor: Wii U hardware was downgraded

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S

Starfish Hero

Member
Argyle said:
So if I am understanding this right it's basically straight up less powerful than the Xbox 360, both CPU and GPU :(
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It isn't less powerful. The Wii U isn't any more or less powerful than we thought it was yesterday. Even the camp that thought the Wii U had 320 ALUs probably won't be shocked by bg's finds.

Mercury Land-Snake said:
There is some secret sauce in the machine, weaksauce.
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You'd want a colon, not a comma.
 
O

opticalmace

Member
artist said:
capturedspupn.png
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Damn. I assume the y axis is arbitrary units just for comparison?
 
L

lwilliams3

Member
bgassassin said:
No problem. A different way to say it is that they had both a power target and a case size target from the beginning. Once they realized the power target would not work with case size target, the latter was given priority or may have always had priority. Hopefully that clears up that misunderstanding.
Click to expand...

So, it probably went something like this:

- 1st Dev-kits: Original power (unable to use full power due to the heat issue)

- 2nd-3rd Dev-kits: Full power now reachable in dev kits, but it is downgraded from Nintendo's orginal plan. Its power may or may not be on par or greater than the reachable power of the original dev kits, so that may be why there was no gossip about the system being degraded.

- Later Dev-kits: Clockspeed for downclocked GPU increased by ~40%.

opticalmace said:
Damn. I assume the y axis is arbitrary units just for comparison?
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Correct. Latte has more modern architecture and the Wii U apparently more efficiency made. Those two factors makes a difference. The actual performance for all of those systems will be different than what that chart is showing.
 
A

artist

Banned
bgassassin said:
Nah. This info pretty much for me confirms the J blocks in the GPU die shot are Interpolators and those were dropped with the 5000 series because interpolation was handled by the shaders if I remember correctly.
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Gotcha, makes it even more .. meh.

maquiladora said:
Is this accurate? Wow.
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Yes, feel free to point out any errors and I will fix them.

Poetic.Injustice said:
Source?
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All public information, Wii U numbers being this thread as the (verified) source.

opticalmace said:
Damn. I assume the y axis is arbitrary units just for comparison?
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Yes, used Wii U as the baseline.
 
M

MilkBeard

Member
Not that it matters, I'm already impressed with some of the games that Nintendo has put out already. They games will still look good, and we've already gotten used to the fact that Nintendo has used seriously gimped hardware this gen, like last time.

..is why I'm gettin a PS4 baby. Best of both worlds.

Also, I think that Zelda tech demo was pretty unimpressive. It was just a general demo made to show WiiU could handle basic HD visuals. I doubt it was really pushing the system, even the newly 'downgraded' form, if that is true.
 
R

RM8

Member
Uh, the Zelda tech demo was impressive? I find X and Mario Kart 8 much nicer looking, honestly.
 
L

lwilliams3

Member
Sipheren said:
Seems a little confusing because wasn't this a thing at E3 in 2011?

Wii U - Garden Demo had better graphics on E3 show floor

So, it got better and they improved stuff, then had to back it up a bit. The visuals in MK8, WW, 3dLand, Pikmin, X, etc seem to look fine and on par with this demo so it must not have been a huge change.
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The original dev-kits overheated and crashed if you pushed the GPU to a certain point, so those demos more than likely wasn't using the system's full power anyway.

It is interesting how this info has been leaked once more impressive games have been shown.
 
balgajo

balgajo

Member
I was expecting some big secret sauce from the die photo thread conclusion and all we've got is a relevant downgrade of specs. Now all we have is a decent amount of memory and eDRAM pool. Feeling down...
 
L

lwilliams3

Member
Argyle said:
Not sure I agree on the memory architecture, I don't suppose we have any idea on how much bandwidth the edram has?
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If I recall correctly, it is rumored to be around either 70 or 140GB/sec. Even the worse number is more than 1/3rd of XBO's ESRAM theoretical bandwidth, so it has decent speed in comparison to its other specs.
 
L

lwilliams3

Member
balgajo said:
Is this official or just speculation?



I was only hapiness on this thread. Shouldn't have come here. XD
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As "official" as this thread's info, if not more so. Other confirmed insiders have stated that the CPU and GPU's clockspeeds were changed from 1GHz and 400MHz to 1.25GHz and 550MHz respectfully.
 
E

ecosse_011172

Junior Member
Utterly depressing and why they need a Management clearout.
There is no need at all for the machine to be that small, it's completely pointless, the machine isn't even quiet with it's small, high speed fans running all the time.
Cripple the machine so that that the box can be smaller, having a small box doesn't matter a fuck, think the size of the Xbone will have any bearing whatsoever on sales? not a jot.
 
balgajo

balgajo

Member
lwilliams3 said:
As "official" as this thread's info, if not more so. Other confirmed insiders have stated that the CPU and GPU's clockspeeds were changed from 1GHz and 400MHz to 1.25GHz and 550MHz respectfully.
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This "official" that I wanted to know. Thanks for the info. Btw, didn't we had a clock boost in one of these updates?
 
L

Lucifon

Junior Member
Proof that numbers don't matter. We've seen some fantastic looking WiiU titles. Hell, Windwaker HD looks gorgeous and that's not even truly a current gen game. Art style > horsepower.

It's not the size of the power that matters, it's how you use it :D
 
K

KingSnake

The Birthday Skeleton
I don't see the full logic of the rumor. The case size was decided early in the product design phase probably, according to the quote. The overheating issues on devkits appeared probably in 2012. And we don't know how late in 2012. Could they have decided really to go for a bigger case (and probably a different ventilation system) so late in the process without putting the release date in danger?
 
B

Biker19

Banned
Tripon said:
Why the heck would Nintendo pick a small case over a better running console? That makes no sense.
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Wolves Evolve said:
Small and kinda unobtrusive is what it is.. but completely bland in an image-conscious tech culture as well. Boggling.
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pa22word said:
Why did they severely bottleneck their console by going with a CPU solution apparently pretty much entirely for easy backwards compatibility?

Trying to make sense out of Nintendo decisions is sometimes almost a game in itself lol...
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EatinOlives said:
I sincerely hope that this isn't the case. Them gimping their own console for the sake of shaving a couple of cubic inches off the console's size is immensely stupid.

I hope they gimped the console due to the added cost of the gamepad, because them doing it for console size would make me shake my head so hard my face would fly off my skull.
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I agree with all of you. It's just stupid for Nintendo to do what they did. Now they'll be stuck with a very underpowered console for the next 4-5 years.

They should really find someone to develop their hardware in USA, like Sony did with PS4.
 
O

Outtrigger888

Member
ecosse_011172 said:
Utterly depressing and why they need a Management clearout.
There is no need at all for the machine to be that small, it's completely pointless, the machine isn't even quiet with it's small, high speed fans running all the time.
Cripple the machine so that that the box can be smaller, having a small box doesn't matter a fuck, think the size of the Xbone will have any bearing whatsoever on sales? not a jot.
Click to expand...

They created an image with the wii, which sold 100million.

I cant blame them for trying to retain that image that became such a big success.

I can see a larger console stear away moms and other people that the wii reached out to.
 
N

NingenJanai

Member
Biker19 said:
I agree with all of you. It's just stupid for Nintendo to do what they did. Now they'll be stuck with a very underpowered console for the next 4-5 years.

They should really find someone to develop their hardware in USA, like Sony did with PS4.
Click to expand...

Unless they kill the Wii U soon and release a new console in a couple years.
 
Reallink

Reallink

Member
Vampirolol said:
This doesn't change what he said
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Comments like that are too often used to suggest a game couldn't more enjoyable with better graphics, or that you can't have
fun
without inferior hardware. To be fair to the poster, he may not have intended it as such (though the spoiler gives me pause), but it's a go to apologist remark that deserves to be called out.
 
balgajo

balgajo

Member
Lucifon said:
Proof that numbers don't matter. We've seen some fantastic looking WiiU titles. Hell, Windwaker HD looks gorgeous and that's not even truly a current gen game. Art style > horsepower.

It's not the size of the power that matters, it's how you use it :D
Click to expand...

Absolutely. But I would prefer more raw power than a smaller box.
 
D

dark10x

Digital Foundry pixel pusher
Lucifon said:
Proof that numbers don't matter. We've seen some fantastic looking WiiU titles. Hell, Windwaker HD looks gorgeous and that's not even truly a current gen game. Art style > horsepower.

It's not the size of the power that matters, it's how you use it :D
Click to expand...
Well, we've all known that, but I think it's fair to want improved specs after so many years. We've had the 360 around for 8 years now and there is still more that could be done with it, no doubt, but I know I'm excited to see what more powerful hardware leads to.
 
E

EatChildren

Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
Chiming in to say I can't fully confirm the specs because I don't have access to that information, but what I was shown seems believable, so whatever.

The hardware downgrade is purely rumour/discussion.
 
E

ecosse_011172

Junior Member
Outtrigger888 said:
They created an image with the wii, which sold 100million.

I cant blame them for trying to retain that image that became such a big success.

I can see a larger console stear away moms and other people that the wii reached out to.
Click to expand...

The success of the Wii had nothing to do with it's size, it was all about the controller.
 
A

AzaK

Member
If that rumour is true, then that's just utter, utter craphouse. BG, do you know if the hardware was actually changed (as in shader counts or something), or was it just something like the clocks were downgraded from the original level (i.e 700GHZ GPU or something)?

I can believe the new information though. After seeing this thread, I fired up WindWaker HD again, and it looks about 1/2 as good as it did yesterday - suck.


I guess we all need to buy Fourth Storm a beer or something now. How depressing, 1/10th the power of the PS4 <shakes head>
 
Reallink

Reallink

Member
Outtrigger888 said:
They created an image with the wii, which sold 100million.

I cant blame them for trying to retain that image that became such a big success.

I can see a larger console stear away moms and other people that the wii reached out to.
Click to expand...

Ironically retaining that image is one of the more likely reasons for the U's relative failure (consumer confusion and a generally negative stigma stemming from Wii's botched twilight years).
 
P

Perkel

Banned
Tripon said:
Why the heck would Nintendo pick a small case over a better running console? That makes no sense.
Click to expand...

Because they needed to create console with pad that has touch sensitive screen and they wanted to sell it for reasonable price.

Nintendo didn't skimp on hardware because they hate people here. They skimped on it to have WiiU controller.
 
A

AzaK

Member
Perkel said:
Because they needed to create console with pad that has touch sensitive screen and they wanted to sell it for reasonable price.

Nintendo didn't skimp on hardware because they hate people here. They skimped on it to have WiiU controller.
Click to expand...

And backwards compatibility, and a low power usage and make a profit, and...and....pretty much everything except what enthusiast gamers want and care about.
 
K

KingSnake

The Birthday Skeleton
How is the rumour justifying the specifications? There were overheating issues with the devkit and they changed completely (if we are to believe the previous official info from bgassassin) the chipset several months before launch? That seem really unbelievable. Downclocks, yes.Disabling parts of it, yes.But the info in the op states that it is confirmed based on the chip photo, so we are talking about a different chip as a downgrade. Sorry, this is unrealistic unless they had already this chip as an alternative in the design.
 
balgajo

balgajo

Member
Perkel said:
Because they needed to create console with pad that has touch sensitive screen and they wanted to sell it for reasonable price.

Nintendo didn't skimp on hardware because they hate people here. They skimped on it to have WiiU controller.
Click to expand...

Just imagining Iwata saying: Let's skimp on hardware cause I hate that GAF people. lol
 
S

SmokyDave

Member
I said it from the reveal. That case was always the biggest clue that it was no powerhouse. Impressive for the size and power consumption though.
 
S

Some Nobody

Junior Member
So for someone who's not a big tech junkie, break it down in caveman terms: How big of a downgrade was this in comparison to say...the PS4/XBone? Would this have brought it closer to being considered "next gen" by some people, or are we just splitting hairs here?
 
balgajo

balgajo

Member
Sage Shinigami said:
So for someone who's not a big tech junkie, break it down in caveman terms: How big of a downgrade was this in comparison to say...the PS4/XBone? Would this have brought it closer to being considered "next gen" by some people, or are we just splitting hairs here?
Click to expand...

I don't think that it would be so relevant in comparison with then(Note that is just my pov). I was just a bit sad because Nintendo could make good improvements with a small increase on raw power.
 
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