My guess is something around these specs but I am hoping for a higher SPU count (considering relatively low clocks). I think I read somewhere (Beyond3d?) that the GPU part will be around 1GFLOPS, but maybe this number is also for the whole system (which would still be quite above the upcoming AMD Trinity APUs (~700 MFLOPS)
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Wii U Speculation Thread of Brains Beware: Wii U Re-Unveiling At E3 2012
- Thread starter bgassassin
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My guess is something around these specs but I am hoping for a higher SPU count (considering relatively low clocks). I think I read somewhere (Beyond3d?) that the GPU part will be around 1GFLOPS, but maybe this number is also for the whole system (which would still be quite above the upcoming AMD Trinity APUs (~700 MFLOPS)
Nuclear Muffin
Banned
They've already said that Wii games will only run in 480p (so it probably includes the original Wii GPU/CPU)
This doesn't affect your working framebuffer. Triple buffering comes after you've already rendered the scene.
This was Bungie's (and Metro 2033's) method for HDR on 360 because of certain costs of utilizing FP16 (64bpp) over FP10 (32bpp) - Bungie wanted alpha blending support, which Xenos does not have when using FP16 render targets. Also they output two different colour ranges from the pixel shader and combine them, not render the whole thing (geometry etc) twice.
You need depth for a lot of things, the least of which is being able to render the scene correctly (order of opaque objects, since alpha blended items aren't part of this, alpha test can take advantage of the z). Then there's shadowmapping, some post-processing (depth of field for example).
He is also assuming a particular setup of the framebuffer - depth+ 1 render target. Deferred shading requires a lot more.
Yeah I thought so too. Embedding the Wii CPU/GPU/1T-SRAM would guarantee 100% backwards compatibility, plus they could use Broadway for running the background OS and Hollywood to optionally render the tablet graphics in demanding games. Hollywood is well suited for running decent 854x480 resolution graphics, and that way they could save precious framebuffer time and space on the main GPU.
The tessellator in the R700 series is 100% useless. It's too weak to do anything. They'll either replace it or remove it if they stick with R700, which is part of why I think they won't.
I think it does not work this way. There's only one framebuffer and you can decide where to it is rendered. So if you just want a copy of the mainscreen (X) on the tablet the code would look like this:
RenderXToFramebuffer();
RenderToScreen();
RenderToTablet();
If you want to have something different (Y) on the tablet it would look like this:
RenderXToFramebuffer();
RenderToScreen();
ClearFramebuffer();
RenderYToFramebuffer();
RenderToTablet();
If it is that way you wouln't need any more framebuffer, "just" more rendering speed.
Could someone please validate this? Thx.
Well, if you would toss us a bone....
I'm guessing you won't answer this, but has the RAM type or amount changed since E3? If so, in the positive or negative direction?
I see. *thinks*
crazy monkey
Banned
just tell us it is teh awesome and people will calm down haha
Nuclear Muffin
Banned
That tablet screen resolution is surely not just a coincidence...
Hint, it's 480p widescreen. Exactly the perfect resolution for displaying GCN/Wii/VC games and Hollywood produced graphics...
Does that include the CPU and GPU as well, or is it just the RAM that has remained the same since E3 2011?
dr_rus
Member
There is no DX12 and there certainly won't be by the time Wii U hit the market. Windows 8 will bring DX11.1 (which is more or less a software update and will be avialable to some extent on all DX10+ h/w).
As I've said previously, the only reason to use something like RV770/5830 today is because the final GPU will have the same feature set - meaning DX10.1 plus some kind of a tesselator. If this GPU would have support for DX11 then why use such old h/w as RV7x0 GPUs? Perfomance wise there are GPUs in current AMD's DX11 line up which are on par with RV770/5830 - why not use them?
Really? That implies that after rendering the framebuffer is then copied to some other place in order to be displayed. Wouldn't it be better to just have enough memory and then effectively point the display hardware at the correct buffer?
The one's you have probably....i assume not everyone gets the new kits at the same time...
V2 and below hw is deprectated in the sdk's ... so what do you think?
Are you claiming that EA (like Capcom) decided to make a Dead Space on-rails spinoff on the Wii because of technical limitations?
I'd argue it was a purely marketing choice instead: they thought this way it would have been a better fit for the audience (guess it wasn't - also, let's not forget the PSP, hardly as powerful as the Wii, got Assassin's Creed, Split/Second... I think this is further confirmation that the issue was not a technical one if they really wanted to exploit brands)
And that's ultimately what I believe is one of the primary reasons for less-than-stellar 3rd party support, which funnily enough, is somewhat similar to what you said about PC: thin margins.
Even assuming straight downporting from PS360 was not technically possible, a properly made ( = with decent budget and teams ) Wii spinoff probably required companies to spend too much money.
In a word, it wasn't worth it, at least from their point of view: they could do those, but decided not to mostly because it was a risky/unproven market and, most of all, it required dedicated efforts. But dedicated efforts does not equal to technically unfeasible.
That's my point. That's why I believe that, talking about "serious" 3rd parties support, even a comparatively (to PS4/Xbox720-Loop-whatever) specced WiiU would guarantee nothing but easy/cheap ports.
blu
Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
It would be better in a world where edram is a cheap resource, or target resolutions are small. In a world where edram is this precious little resource, and the target resolutions are "HD" and up, all GPUs that use said memory for their framebuffer, tend to use it for their backbuffer alone (and sometimes not an *entire* fb at that) - the front buffer from any double/triple buffering schemes is sitting in UMA. The (small) latency from the resolution of the embedded fb to UMA is usually hidden by the fact that the next frame starts with some 'break' for GPU's ROPs
lherre's laughing at us, knowing there will be breakdowns abound once the final specs are leaked.
So, are the parts still off-the-shelf?
Well he's yet to talk about the eDRAM right?
blu
Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
It's entirely off-the-shelf, edram included. In fact, the entire WiiU will be sold in the form of a drm'd pdf containting the shopping list for the correct parts that new customers will then buy on their own.lherre's laughing at us, knowing there will be breakdowns abound once the final specs are leaked.
So, are the parts still off-the-shelf?
Be amazed at what we can discuss when we do get it
Now give us more.
We're onto something here...Nuclear Muffin said:
It's a weird choice though. The RV770LE is a faulty RV770 chip that consumes more power on a larger die for the same performance as many alternatives (I'm especially looking at the RV740 here). There's also nothing really stopping Nintendo from using actual 2011 tech for this. I have a theory as to why they're maybe using the RV770 here.dr_rus said:
lherre's laughing at us, knowing there will be breakdowns abound once the final specs are leaked.
So, are the parts still off-the-shelf?
The only spec bump the Wii U ever got from the more credible rumor mill was that they increased the clock speed of the GPU I believe. We got some good rumors/sources on that when they didn't show it much at E3 because of the overheating issue. They fixed that, removed the hardware lock on the clock speeds and went from there. They're not going to change the architecture at this point if the R770LE is what they were gunning for(Radeon 4000-series) than that's what you'll get.
They've certainly optimized the hardware and increased performance software wise. Which is why the support for multiple Wii U Pads was rumored to have been added recently. They also likely replaced the off the shelf parts with the actual Wii U silicon at this point(which was rumored to be a SOC like the Xbox 360 Slim / 3DS) or will soon.
Nintendo is probably more focused on ease of development, the features of their new controller and their first party games than they are about keeping up specs wise with the competition. There's nothing to gain in that field when Zelda HD looks as good as the tech demo they showed.
Saint Gregory
Member
Why would Nintendo include Broadway/Hollywood in the WiiU for BC? Wouldn't in be a lot more efficient to have the new CPU and GPU place themselves in a "Wii" mode to achieve the same result?
Whatever method they use I hope that you still retain access to the OS while in BC mode because the hassle you had to go through to attach contollers and memory cards to the Wii everytime you wanted to play GC games was a big reason why I rarely did it.
Whatever method they use I hope that you still retain access to the OS while in BC mode because the hassle you had to go through to attach contollers and memory cards to the Wii everytime you wanted to play GC games was a big reason why I rarely did it.
That's...not going to happen.
Wii U does not read GC disks, so there will be an OS, and this one supports all Wii peripherals. So, the Wii BC will be much easier to use.
In, fact, this would be great. It's just a bit more than a bit better than expected... if you understand...
Saint Gregory
Member
It would match their 3DS philosophy pretty closely at least. While it's nowhere near the Vita's specs I haven't had a single problem with the power level they chose for it.
Nuclear Muffin
Banned
Tell that to Xbox Ten...
Still, I doubt they'll go with GDDR3. If there's anything Nintendo are absolutely adamant about with their hardware design, it's RAM speed. They always go with the fastest RAM available at the time (GCN= 1T-SRAM, Wii = 1T-SRAM & GDDR3, 3DS = FCRAM), even at the expense of RAM quantity. They hate loading times with a passion!
I think Power7 has "only" 4MB/core, so I guess 12 (3 core) or 16 MB (4 core) is more likely.
32MB are more likely on the GPU side I guess.
bgassassin
Member
It's like multi-quote was made just for me.
Azure? Why be concerned about researching too much? That's part of the purpose of this thread.
With stew saying 32MB, there's really no need to guess unless they change it.
And I hope it has way more power than that. That's not even a Gamecube. That rumor came from a Japanese website and that the kit had an AMD GPU that was "beyond 1TFLOP", but wasn't a 4890. The 4870 is the only one beyond 1TFLOP and could definitely explain early overheating. If it were a 4870 clocked down to 500Mhz, then it would be 800GFLOPS and have a fillrate of 8GP/s and 20GT/s. Compare that to other cards:
4770(RV740) - 896/12/24
4830(RV770LE) - 736/9.2/18.2
4730(RV770CE:750Mhz) - 896/6/24
4670(RV730XT) - 480/6/24
On paper it would be outperformed by some of these. It could be used to explain why Digital Foundry came to the conclusion they did.
Ok. Yeah I remember the tiling part since that's why I wanted to learn about the calculation. I guess the (32bpp Z) is what I still haven't grasped totally. But like luigiv
And be fair, MS meant well on that. They just, well, messed up pretty badly trying to rush the launch.
Final design. Those devs/pubs are a console maker's business partners since they are using the console to sell their games. You don't do that to business partners. They tell them what the plan is for the console. Things can always change, but even when they do change you let them know. And one thing about Nintendo when looking back at how they've worked, that kind of perception won't matter because they will focus more on how it looks on screen.
32MB of eDRAM.
Which is why when I first did my own calculations I think you and blu were talking about the amount needing to be much larger to do it "properly"?
He said they had the ugly version of the retail case so maybe they've gotten to prototype parts. Just a guess.
My guess was that they were going to use a VLIW4 GPU, but since there are none available with a lower ALU count that they used a GPU that would be close to it.
Azure? Why be concerned about researching too much? That's part of the purpose of this thread.
With stew saying 32MB, there's really no need to guess unless they change it.
And I hope it has way more power than that. That's not even a Gamecube.
That rumor came from a Japanese website and that the kit had an AMD GPU that was "beyond 1TFLOP", but wasn't a 4890. The 4870 is the only one beyond 1TFLOP and could definitely explain early overheating. If it were a 4870 clocked down to 500Mhz, then it would be 800GFLOPS and have a fillrate of 8GP/s and 20GT/s. Compare that to other cards:4770(RV740) - 896/12/24
4830(RV770LE) - 736/9.2/18.2
4730(RV770CE:750Mhz) - 896/6/24
4670(RV730XT) - 480/6/24
On paper it would be outperformed by some of these. It could be used to explain why Digital Foundry came to the conclusion they did.
Ok. Yeah I remember the tiling part since that's why I wanted to learn about the calculation. I guess the (32bpp Z) is what I still haven't grasped totally. But like luigiv
And be fair, MS meant well on that. They just, well, messed up pretty badly trying to rush the launch.
Final design. Those devs/pubs are a console maker's business partners since they are using the console to sell their games. You don't do that to business partners. They tell them what the plan is for the console. Things can always change, but even when they do change you let them know. And one thing about Nintendo when looking back at how they've worked, that kind of perception won't matter because they will focus more on how it looks on screen.
What? You guys are going back to old posts now?
this thread is madness!
New leaks please
32MB of eDRAM.
Which is why when I first did my own calculations I think you and blu were talking about the amount needing to be much larger to do it "properly"?
lherre's laughing at us, knowing there will be breakdowns abound once the final specs are leaked.
So, are the parts still off-the-shelf?
He said they had the ugly version of the retail case so maybe they've gotten to prototype parts. Just a guess.
My guess was that they were going to use a VLIW4 GPU, but since there are none available with a lower ALU count that they used a GPU that would be close to it.
There's also the strong hint that the eDRAM is its own RAM pool courtesy of wsippel's speculation and a "wink" on it from brain_stew.
Tesselation seems to be the next big thing, so it would be stupid to kill the units.
bgassassin
Member
That is true. I've been giving more credence to GDDR5 as time has passed.
I agree about the GPU. If they copy Xenon's design they could do three cores and have 16MB of L2 cache.
And I hope it has way more power than that. That's not even a Gamecube.
Holy s***. Thx, sure I meant 1 TFLOPS instead of 1GFLOPS and 700 GFLOPS instead of 700 MFLOPS.
Given that they seem to be working around latency issues by putting a lot of EDRAM on the CPU, the "GDDR3 has lower latency" argument gets less relevant. GDDR5 and even XDR2 might be a real possibility.
With lherre implying that it has more than 1 GB of memory, I'm wondering where the rest is coming from. 2 GB unified seems less feasible because of motherboard complexity (8 memory chips are needed for that), so it must me some other memory type? I'd say they could put in 128+MB 1T-SRAM there, but lherre has stated none was present in the devkits. Perhaps it's a seperate pool of DDR3?
Shin Johnpv
Member
I think tessellation will be there. It's heavily used in most modern games isn't it? Plus didn't we already go over that, and show how pointless it would be for them to completely remove it?
JoshuaJSlone
Member
There's the thing--if they go into a "Wii mode" like Wii does with GCN games or 3DS does with DS games, any extra stuff might be out the window; and that would especially be a big problem if they hope to sell downloadable GCN and Wii games.Saint Gregory said:
lherre's laughing at us, knowing there will be breakdowns abound once the final specs are leaked.
So, are the parts still off-the-shelf?
If Iherre's in a position to know about the Wii U's specs, and i think we all pretty much expect he is in such a position he must be in that position because he WANTS to be, no one is forced to make games etc. so he must not be totally unhappy with it.
Although in fairness I suspect WHATEVER the actual specs of the Wii U (and frankly I find the speculation on the hardware more annoying because it's more important how the games look and how they play than what exact hardware it being used, at least in my view) there will be breakdowns. Same is true of the Loop/Ten/NeXtBox and the PS4/Whatever they call it (I still say it won't be "4" because of Japan's cultural tetraphobia). People always over or under inflate their expectations based on what PCs are doing and what they think of the competition and other pre-conceived notions and the truth is, when the system and the games are actually released none of it will matter because it will come down to the experience of playing them.
bgassassin
Member
Yes. It would be akin to Nintendo removing their hardwired mapping options from the TEV unit. I expect them to use the 8th gen. unit before anything else.
I definitely agree that how the game looks and plays are very important, but you can't completely separate that from what's under the hood. The debates about the Link and bird demos (I thought they looked great for all things considered), are proof of that. And that's just what we are trying to find out.
I agree with you on the first part, though I get the feeling XDR2 might be too expensive. Comparing the launch BOMs for the PS3 and 360, MS paid a little over $8 per 512Mbit GDDR3 chip while Sony paid $12 per 512Mbit XDR chip. MS did order twice as many per console, but I would believe that even if the order were increased at that time Sony would barely be able to get them for $10, let alone $8.
As for the memory type(s), one of my more recent speculations (I think before you were cleared to join) had a split pool and he shot that down. After all GC had PC-100 memory in it so I figured there was some plausibility of U have DDR3.
They could do eight since the 360 had eight at least at launch (4 on top of the MB, 4 on the underside). Wii also has chips on the underside. Cost might prevent 2GB though. I could see 1.5 GB of GDDR5 with a 3/3 split.
Interestingly after everything we've heard recently, my current thought isn't that far from my original one. The main changes would be GDDR5 instead of DDR3, and maybe the GPU clock and ALU count.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=30236063&postcount=5354
I don't even remember why I said 32MB, but that seems to be correct. I'll have to look at some of my other posts to see why.
When it comes to clocks, I really think Nintendo is waiting to see if they can get the GPU at 28nm. I believe they have their targets in mind though. I think 607.MHz would be for 40nm. And not long ago on B3D I guessed that the clock could be 729Mhz or possibly even 810Mhz at 28nm. Those numbers are based on multiples from the CPU since Nintendo likes doing that. I doubt it would be those exact number, but just something to get an idea of what Nintendo might do. At one point I was basing my memory clock on those leaked 7000 series specs, but I've recently seen it said that they were fake. I heard there were fake ones, I just didn't know it was those. So I'm going with either 911.25Mhz or 1215Mhz.
And finally I still think there's a possibility we could see at least a 12-cluster VLIW4 GPU (14 max). I'm still stuck on Nintendo wanting the transistor savings.
I still can't wrap my head around why Nintendo is choosing POWER7. I sure hope it is more than "that's what the competion is using", because that is catching up with current technology, not bringing any improvement.
I'm trying to read up on POWER7, but I'm having a hard time finding actual data and/or information about it. I sure hope the final chip uses 32 nm rather than 45 nm technology.
What I can tell, IBM seem to boost the power efficiency angle. Agressive OoOE technology and also a new memory interface for accessing the DRAM.
Anyone has any good information on POWER7? I'm really curious about it, since it's is one of the reliable information tidbits we have, hence my interest in it
I'm trying to read up on POWER7, but I'm having a hard time finding actual data and/or information about it. I sure hope the final chip uses 32 nm rather than 45 nm technology.
What I can tell, IBM seem to boost the power efficiency angle. Agressive OoOE technology and also a new memory interface for accessing the DRAM.
Anyone has any good information on POWER7? I'm really curious about it, since it's is one of the reliable information tidbits we have, hence my interest in it
I'm not sure how GDDR5 prices and XDR2 prices combine. From what I can Google XDR2 has a (minor) power advantage, a performance advantage (guess that's mostly marketing though), but importantly it seems that there are 4 GBit XDR2 chips available. With those chips they could accomplish 1GB of memory with only two chips. That would be attractive to Nintendo, I think.
DDR3 has no real disadvantages compared to GDDR3 (right?), and also comes in 4 Gbit chips. Each type of memory (GDDR3, GDDR5, DDR3 and XDR2) has something going for it, I'm not sure we can say anything sensible about it at this time. GDDR3 seems to have been in use in the devkit, but that could be a stopgap solution much like the CPU and GPU could be.
Wouldn't that imply a 192-bit bus though? That increases CPU, GPU and motherboard complexity.
1T-SRAM on the GPU instead of EDRAM is an interesting thought. I'm curious whether 1T-SRAM is still a competitor to EDRAM nowadays.
Why would Wii clocks still be relevant in the Wii U? They could just choose a custom clock in BC mode if it is necessary at all?
12 VLIW4 clusters implies a 960 shader GPU like the Barts Pro. I'd say that's too much... 6 to 8 is more realistic I think, especially when compared to the RV770LE.
There are not many high-end architectures to choose from anymore. There's IBM Power, and there's Intel/AMD x86. Other architectures are usually focussed on mobile use or highly parallel servers. Since Nintendo likes the Power architecture because they used it in GC and Wii, they chose that. IBM has four offerings in that area, POWER6, POWER7, PowerPC A2 and Power Processor Element (used in PS360). Both POWER6 and PPE are in-order designs, are considered inefficient compared to the others, and are fading into irrelevance. PowerPC A2 is again focussed on highly parallel tasks, and probably not ready yet. The only one left is POWER7, which is more comparable to traditional high performance CPUs. It should be a good gaming architecture.
Fourth Storm
Member
So if we are speculating that it is an APU, then what? CPU and GPU both at 45nm, right? I doubt Nintendo are targetting a 28nm GPU. Any real or imagined "delay" of the system has more to do with software support and market conditions I'm guessing. Holding out for the 28nm process to work out its kinks is way too risky. The Wii was fabbed at 90nm at a time when 45nm was just starting to come into its own, iirc. I don't believe this time will be any different.
Can anyone (wsippel? blu) speculate as to how AMD could get the TDP of the GPU down without drastically shrinking the chip (most 700 series chips seem to have been made at 55 or 40nm)? If they are targetting 640spus and 500Mhz, how could they get it to run cool enough?
Can anyone (wsippel? blu) speculate as to how AMD could get the TDP of the GPU down without drastically shrinking the chip (most 700 series chips seem to have been made at 55 or 40nm)? If they are targetting 640spus and 500Mhz, how could they get it to run cool enough?
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