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Wii U has 2GB of DDR3 RAM, [Up: RAM 43% slower than 360/PS3 RAM]

gtj1092

Member
I'm equating the relationship of region locking between 3DS and Wii U to the relationship of region locking between 3DS and PS3. (In that there is no relationship)



Do you guys even read posts at all before replying to them? (Hint: they key word is "other")

Lets see wii u and 3ds are made by the same company.
 
I'm equating the relationship of region locking between 3DS and Wii U to the relationship of region locking between 3DS and PS3. (In that there is no relationship)



Do you guys even read posts at all before replying to them? (Hint: they key word is "other")
It's more that you have a very selective understanding of things.

The post that has you shitting bricks doesn't say "WiiU sucks because of 3DS", the guy just explains to you the current state of region locking across platforms, since you're apparently unfamiliar with the issue given your earlier post:
Think you might be Meltdown #2. Heres hard numbers: 3DS and Wii U are 100% region locked. None of the other consoles or handhelds are. Except the Wii I guess? Three strikes! Blammo. But RAM! Hard numbers on RAM! Which are also bad. Hrrrm.

If you look at the past 2 pages, it's essentially you raging because someone brought up region locking, and then making up a Byzantine debate about 3DS/WiiU to obfuscate the fact that Nintendo is currently the most conservative platform holder on these issues by far.
 

Margalis

Banned
If you look at the past 2 pages, it's essentially you raging because someone brought up region locking, and then making up a Byzantine debate about 3DS/WiiU to obfuscate the fact that Nintendo is currently the most conservative platform holder on these issues by far.

It kind of looks like you are a raging now.

See what I did there?

This isn't XBL - "u mad bro" is not an argument. Nobody is raging or melting down. This is a message board and I'm posting on it. Shocking!
 

Risette

A Good Citizen
It's more that you have a very selective understanding of things.

The post that has you shitting bricks doesn't say "WiiU sucks because of 3DS", the guy just explains to you the current state of region locking across platforms, since you're apparently unfamiliar with the issue given your earlier post:

If you look at the past 2 pages, it's essentially you raging because someone brought up region locking, and then making up a Byzantine debate about 3DS/WiiU to obfuscate the fact that Nintendo is currently the most conservative platform holder on these issues by far.
Heres hard numbers: 3DS and Wii U are 100% region locked. None of the other consoles or handhelds are. Except the Wii I guess? Three strikes!
Read this all together.
 
Interesting. Does architecture impact this greatly? Since the GPU and CPU are on the same board, does it in anyway make up for the relatively lower bandwidth?

Its the reason why stuff like AA and anisotropic filtering are so shit on current consoles. The 360 tried to make up for it with the EDRAM but 10mb isn't enough.
 
Crew: Hey boss, We have a big problem, people are complaining on the lack and quality of memory we used for our Next Gen Wii U system, developers are mad angry and all the 3rd party games are choppy as hell, what are we do Boss?
Iwata: Is it really that bad?
Crew: Yes it is Boss, we won't last long.
Iwata: Let's do it again then, release the Kraken...

N64-Expansion-Pak.jpg

:D

...
 

roddur

Member
i was out all day, wasn't able read any thread, picked up the system.

i'm going by OP here, and making me so sad. serious question, what is good about this console at all hw wise?

if third parties are going to ignore like they did for the wii bcos of inferior hw, i really dont know what will be nintendo's excuse on that matter.

really sorry for my jibbar jabber, i'm just sad.
 
Guys, you can't compare console RAM with PC RA.. oh..

If I had a dollar for every time this was posted in the last 18 months, I could buy a Vita.

As it turns out, it looks like at least 2 of 3 manufacturers are using "lol Newegg" RAM in their consoles. I've really, really tried to welcome Nintendo back into my good graces, but unless the next game by Retro is off the freaking wall I can't see myself investing in a Wii U for the next 5 years.
 

DonMigs85

Member
Don't know what Margalis has trouble understanding...
-Nintendo's consoles have always been region locked, be it through plastic tabs or a soft lock (GameCube onwards).
-Their handhelds have been region-free until DSi (but only games that took advantage of DSi-specific features were locked).
-All 3DS games are region-locked.

Now in Sony's case they stopped region-locking games beginning with PSP, then PS3. Microsoft didn't really enforce it that much either starting with Xbox 360.
 

NBtoaster

Member
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6465/nintendo-wii-u-teardown

There are four 4Gb (512MB) Hynix DDR3-800 devices surrounding the Wii U's MCM (Multi Chip Module). Memory is shared between the CPU and GPU, and if I'm decoding the DRAM part numbers correctly it looks like these are 16-bit devices giving the Wii U a total of 6.4GB/s of peak memory bandwidth. That doesn't sound like a lot, but the Wii U is supposed to have a good amount of eDRAM for both the CPU and GPU to use.

That's extremely slow. Hope Nintendo didn't skimp on eDRAM..

edit: though AlStrong thinks the math might not be right on beyond3D
 

tenchir

Member
Like I said in the other thread, I expect the eDRAM has to be in the neighborhood of 32MB(24MB minimum), otherwise it couldn't emulate the Wii's 1T-SRAM with it's really low latency(6ns?) with the 1GB DDR3. I also thing that the embedded RAM have pretty high bandwidth to compensate for the low BW of the main RAM.
 

beril

Member
Like I said in the other thread, I expect the eDRAM has to be in the neighborhood of 32MB(24MB minimum), otherwise it couldn't emulate the Wii's 1T-SRAM with it's really low latency(6ns?) with the 1GB DDR3. I also thing that the embedded RAM have pretty high bandwidth to compensate for the low BW of the main RAM.

this memory should have very low latency as well


http://www.skhynix.com/products/graphics/view.jsp?info.ramKind=27&info.serialNo=H5TQ4G63MFR
Programmable CAS latency 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10,11 and 12supported

5/800MHz = 6.25 ns
 
12.8 GB/s?

Gotdamn.
I'm glad I didn't expect the Wii U to be anything but a 1st party/select 3rd party exclusive games focused console, because this is seriously bad.
The Wii U games shown in the Giant Bomb stream have bad Wii U pad usage in addition to equal to worse visuals.
 
Late to the WTF. Geez, they really went with DDR3. Great googly moogly.

So the Wii U has 2GB of ram. I can't believe last year tons of GAFers actually thought the 720/PS4 would launch with 2gb of ram.

Well some of us seriously didn't think they would go with something as slow as DDR3 ram, since graphic card RAM is traditionally far faster than DDR3 which is for main OS uses on PC (just look at the prices and sizes of graphics cards with 2GB and above), but well...here we are.
 

Osiris

I permanently banned my 6 year old daughter from using the PS4 for mistakenly sending grief reports as it's too hard to watch or talk to her
Seems not.

The PCPer teardown found Samsung RAM that can run at three different speeds 800/933/1066.

800MHz = 12800 MB/s, 933 MHz = 14928 MB/s, 1066 MHz = 17056 MB/s

So if it used the fastest speed you get the 17GB/s.

But the Anandtech teardown found 800Mhz Hynix RAM. So the common speed is 12.8MB/s

Did the Anandtech article have the Hynix part number?

Hynix H5TQ4G63MFR (You can just about read it off the motherboard pics from the article.)
 

syko de4d

Member
"There are four 4Gb (512MB) Hynix DDR3-1600 devices surrounding the Wii U's MCM (Multi Chip Module). Memory is shared between the CPU and GPU, and if I'm decoding the DRAM part numbers correctly it looks like these are 16-bit devices giving the Wii U a total of 12.8GB/s of peak memory bandwidth. "

Now DDR3-1600 and not 800 anymore?
 

tenchir

Member
Seems not.

The PCPer teardown found Samsung RAM that can run at three different speeds 800/933/1066.

800MHz = 12800 MB/s, 933 MHz = 14928 MB/s, 1066 MHz = 17056 MB/s

So if it used the fastest speed you get the 17GB/s.

But the Anandtech teardown found 800Mhz Hynix RAM. So the common speed is 12.8MB/s

Did the Anandtech article have the Hynix part number?


The part number is H5TQ4G63MFR.

edit: beaten. The lowest speed grade I am seeing is 667mhz, 800mhz, and 1066mhz, where did you see 933mhz?
 
Well some of us seriously didn't think they would go with something as slow as DDR3 ram, since graphic card RAM is traditionally far faster than DDR3 which is for main OS uses on PC (just look at the prices and sizes of graphics cards with 2GB and above), but well...here we are.
WiiU spec thread had been talking DDR3 for months. The type wasn't a mystery. Clock speeds were though. Most speculating on the upper end of speeds.

And honestly once I realized density limits hadn't changed for GDDR3 or 5 DDR3 made sense. It would have taken 8 chips of GDDR3 or 5 to hit 2 gigs instead of the 4 chips of DDR3 the system is using. Not only does it make the entire thing cheaper, but it should also help with stability.
 

beril

Member
Yeah, I just did :p

Here it is: https://www.skhynix.com/products/computing/view.jsp?info.ramKind=19&info.serialNo=H5TQ4G63MFR

It actually has multiple speed grades like the Samsung RAM. So 12.8 GB/s may not be the final word. It's capable of 933MHz, so it could be 15GB/s.

Unfortunately the 12C speed grade bin on the chip isn't listed in the PDF i'm looking at.


He just fixed his mistake.

the chips also say 12c, where 12 is the speed grade (1.2 ns per clock), so yes it's 800 MHz
 
WiiU spec thread had been talking DDR3 for months. The type wasn't a mystery. Clock speeds were though. Most speculating on the upper end of speeds.

And honestly once I realized density limits hadn't changed for GDDR3 or 5 DDR3 made sense. It would have taken 8 chips of GDDR3 or 5 to hit 2 gigs instead of the 4 chips of DDR3 the system is using. Not only does it make the entire thing cheaper, but it should also help with stability.

Perfectly sound, though I was a bit more inclined in the reasoning why people were doubting more RAM on PS4 and Xbox next. I was thinking traditional GPU speeds ala GDDR3, etc, for those consoles, though DDR3 is used in really low end graphics cards too.

Still, DDR3-1600 is horrendously bad.
 
Perfectly sound, though I was a bit more inclined in the reasoning why people were doubting more RAM on PS4 and Xbox next. I was thinking traditional GPU speeds ala GDDR3, etc, for those consoles, though DDR3 is used in really low end graphics cards too.
Those same density limitations present themselves to Sony and MS as well. While Sony was rumored to be using 2 gigs of GDDR5 that'd be 8 chips. The largest amount of chips a system has had is the 8 chips of GDDR3 the 360 launched with. Getting more than 2 gigs of GDDR5 unified (unless launching after 2013 when higher density chips are available) is going to take anywhere from 12-16 chips.

That's a pretty damn busy board.

So either Sony and MS go with DDR3 in massive quantities, or they go with a smaller amount of much much faster.
 
12.8GB/s, as aforementioned.

Thanks, missed it :p.

So it has twice as much memory for games as PS360 but the Ram is almost half the speed, lolwut !.

Ah well my WiiU was for exclusives anyway, first party games should look unreal on a console around 30 times more powerful than the original Wii :D.
 

tenchir

Member
4th page of the PDF in the OPERATING FREQUENCY chart. What are you looking at?

Man, for some reason I am confusing frequency with the rating. I thought DDR3-1066 means 1066 Mhz, I forgot about the double part. Hope that the eDRAM of the Wii U make this issue a moot point. The 10MB eDRAM of the XBOX 360 had a lot of bandwidth.

From XBOX 360 spec Wiki:
256 GB/s eDRAM internal logic to eDRAM internal memory bandwidth
32 GB/s GPU to eDRAM bandwidth (2 GHz × 2 accesses per clock cycle on a 64 bit DDR bus)
 
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