phosphor112
Banned
True, but keep in mind, we had, I think one or two threads that maxed out all just speculating those fantasty Wii U specs. =P
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Rumor: Wii U final specs
- Thread starter EatChildren
- Start date
True, but keep in mind, we had, I think one or two threads that maxed out all just speculating those fantasty Wii U specs. =P
lightchris
Member
When/where was this confirmed exactly?
phosphor112
Banned
I thought it already was confirmed. Maybe I'm wrong. Having less than 32 would be trash though...
Saint Gregory
Member
Everything in the OP has been confirmed as coming directly from Nintendo's WarioWorld development site.
I believe that the 32MB eDRAM may also have been mentioned in an Iwata Asks.
The rookies comment was sarcasm as Wii U's poor performance was being attributed to several dev teams. Wii U launch games are running horrible. Most launch Xbox 360 games looked good for their time and the machine had no trouble with last gen ports. The Wii U on the other hand, has little room for growth. Its trouble running current engines is indicative of that. If it was significantly more powerful than the Xbox 360 in anyway, it would run modern engines with no problem, much like the 360 did during its launch.
In other words, the Wii U is at best slightly more powerful than the Xbox 360. It will be crushed by its competitors graphically. This is a repeat of the Wii. See, there was some hope that the Wii U could have the muscle to run next-gen engines but perhaps at 720 p. Well its not even running modern engines at 720 p when most hoped that they'll be running at 1080.
lightchris
Member
Ah yes, I forgot somehow. My fault. I don't remember that it was talked about in Iwata asks though.
Grampa Simpson
Banned
You and Thunder Monkey had a mutual co-operative meltdown, didn't you?
There's enough evidence that the Wii U has to be optimized for differently than the 360 and PS3 that future multiplat titles (PS360U) should have equal or better image quality an performance on the Wii U as compared to the other platforms once developers learn how to optimize for them. I expect to see this in next years multiplatform titles.
Additionally, I would be rather surprised if we saw multiplats shift too much towards PS4/720 (as opposed to PS4/720/PS3/360/WiiU) until 2014, at which point the Wii U should have a fairly sizeable install base.
Wii U may not be the powerhouse that you were hoping it would be, but I can't believe that it's flatly beaten out by the PS360.
Your conclusions are only true if the Wii U has a comparable architecture. It doesn't. The HD twins greatly leverage the CPU, whereas the Wii U will move a lot of the CPU based tasks over to the GPGPU (as will the Durango and Orbis). This is why the Metro dev said their game would not be coming to the Wii U, as the engine for the game was made for this gen; The weak CPU would not be a good fit for their game as it is very CPU intensive. Fair enough. So, it is true that the Wii U has a "weak" CPU, but this is for a reason, not just because Nintendo is "cheap", as some want to use as a proof of why the CPU is weak.
The people claiming that, "The Wii U is just an Xbox360.5", continually fail to grasp that the Wii U ports of AC3, BO2, etc., are all built for a 360 / PS3 type architecture (the Cell is a good correlating example of why 360 ports for the PS3 have always sucked). Wait for fall of 2013 when the next gen system wars heat up between the big three. Then we will have our new engines for the new architectures to pass judgment and do our comparisons.
The conclusions that you have made above are way too premature, to say the least.
I honestly can't wait to see something on the level of Uncharted or Last of Us or Halo 4 on the Wii U. Do you think by E3 we'll get a preview of holiday titles that come close? Would be nice to see that by Wii U's first birthday.
There is no reason to exclude a decent CPU from hardware other than to skimp on the BOM. The next TWINS will have CPU's generally more powerful or at the very least equal to this gen's CPU's. What theN?
Equal to Intels 3570K CPU?
shinra-bansho
Member
Are people actually expecting the same degree of improvement over the course of this coming generation as during the lifetime of the 360/PS3. Is that the new entry for the chalkboard?
That doesn't seem particularly realistic.
That doesn't seem particularly realistic.
That's something of a false dichotomy.
See the PS3 launch price....
Grampa Simpson
Banned
With any luck we'll see what Retro and EAD Tokyo have been up to. I think we're talking about different visual styles though.
Why is there this constant insistence that there's a problem with the CPU? This is why optimization is so important. With the Wii U, Nintendo's moved audio processing and SIMD off the CPU and on to a DSP and the GPU respectively. It's going to take time for developers to learn how best to take advantage of that.
As far as the Orbis and 720, who says that they'll be twins?
Exactly.
When someone describes the CPU has "horrible and slow", there's a problem...no matter what the intent with the decision was. If the CPU was decently capable it wouldn't be a bottleneck. There have just been too many people saying its slow.
Having said that, I refer to the next machines as the twins just because they are the remaining two competitors and its easier to type out than Orbis/Durango. Though, I do believe they'll be extremely similar to the point of being purposely identical. They'll have very similar AMD CPU's, similar if not identical amounts of RAM and similar if not identical GPU's.
shinra-bansho
Member
I would agree. I envisage them essentially differentiating themselves via brand and services (LIVE, PS+/Free online, Gaikai, Kinect 2.0, W8 synergies).
It really benefits both Sony and Microsoft to have similar enough hardware for easy cross-platform development.
And why is that? I don't think anyone is denying that the Wii U CPU is slow. The reason that "so many people" (a few select devs) have been saying this, is because, well, it is true for them. BUT, only true in regards to their current games (game engines), for the current systems. Context of why things were said are key. The CPU is "horrible" for them. Devs need, and will, update their engines as needed. We will not see this transition until the Durango and the Orbis are out.
My previous points still apply about the Wii U GPU taking on many CPU tasks, thus why the CPU is not a monster. It doesn't need to be.
grimshawish
Banned
The CPU is slow though.
This doesn't mean there aren't other aspects to the system though.
It is after all proprietary hardware.
This doesn't mean there aren't other aspects to the system though.
It is after all proprietary hardware.
That was sarcasm? No shit! I know what you were saying, that's why i responded. And i made my point very clear, yet again you chose to ignore it because you can not respond.
What is "good for their time"? What is that? We are talking about two sets of hardware, according to you, about equal in strength. Then explain to me why on launch, dedicated exclusives on 360 look like garbage compared to fast 3rd party ports on WiiU. What exactly is not clear? We are comparing launch games of systems supposedly equal in power. No need to talk about PS2 games or whatever, these are completely besides the point, i even let you name exclusive games because of that very reason. What amount and sort of general development knowledge has surfaced over the past 7 years that is generally applicable across the board, on all platforms, that can not be attributed to gaining experience on one particular piece of hardware? Somebody mentioned shaders. Seriously? The Chronicles of Riddick, Wreckage, Half-Life 2... they didn't use any shaders? Aw come on man. What exactly happened that it is so "normal" for WiiU games to basically step in after 6 years and match PS3 ports of 360 games if the hardware is no more powerful, while it took the other systems so long to mature up to that level. I'm really wondering. I'm lying. I'm not wondering. But i am tired of the BS though.
Processing node and number of SPU's would be one of the things. Together with a ballpark guess based on Matts hints concerning the clockspeed of the GPU (presumably between 500 and 575 Mhz if his words are to be interpreted like i think they are supposed to), you would have your range of flops for the GPU.
It would benefit one of them more to be able to say they have the superior hardware. Unless they don't consider hardware power a strong selling point anymore, in which case people probably shouldn't expect the consoles to be a very big leap anyway.
shinra-bansho
Member
Hardware power is a strong selling point - for driving a generational transition. It traditionally has been despite people being willfully ignorant of that notion.
It benefits them to be able to show a significant improvement from their own hardware predecessors.
It also benefits them, releasing a year later than the Wii U, to be able to tout superior hardware.
If the GPU is currently needed to make up for a deficit in CPU capability porting last gen games, that wouldn't to me bode well for future porting from Durangorbis. Unless the current prevailing assumption is that Durangorbis will similarly have "slow, horrible" CPUs.
You don't get it. It's not "making up" for anything. This is how things are trending with the tech today. GPU's are now being used for things that used to be assigned to the CPU. So, in the past, it was not done this way, faster CPU's were needed. Now, especially in the console space, they are not going to need to be as "fast" in comparison to previous generations. The GPU does more of the work now. This is a GOOD thing. The Orbis and the Durango, will be setup the same way. Again, you need to read "slow and horrible" in context of current gen architecture vs the new ones. As long as you ignore this, you will continue to go round and round with everyone who understands what I am saying.
Do yourself a favor and look up GPGPU on Wikipedia.
shinra-bansho
Member
I don't know if this will suffice for an answer?
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1682111&postcount=3476
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1682115&postcount=3478
Is it really the case that nothing that's been learned over the past 7 years can be applied to Wii U game development?
There's 6 SPEs in the PS3. What exactly do you think that WiiU DSP at a purported 121MHz is able to do that even single SPE can't do ten times over with its hands tied to its back?
There's now six years+ of history full of forumites trolling every single idea behind Cell. "Impossible to program for". And now I'm supposed to believe that either a DSP, and/or a "GPGPU", the former with no hope of competing on performance, and both of them with far more restrictive programming models and memory models, are A Good Thing all of a sudden? A viable replacment for fast, benign CPU cores? How come?
JordanN
Banned
Yeah, and they look like shit. I never said these effects are new but rather the extra memory allows all those things to be used more extensively and at higher resolutions. Not every game is free to have them or else why the need to fake them or exclude them entirely? Not enough RAM.
When every object in a scene has them and at high resolution (i.e, no artifacts).
RurouniZel
Asks questions so Ezalc doesn't have to
I think what's happening isn't necessarily that the Wii U is less capable, it's that it requires a bit of unlearning to use.
It's like when a business changes their computer systems and programs in order to make them more efficient. The people who've been working there for some time and the old system has become second nature to them complain that it's not as fast or efficient as the older way. But that's not necessarily true. It's only true to these people at the time because they're just not used to how the new system is allocating resources. Once they are trained on the new system and use it for a bit, they soon realize that it is actually faster and more efficient.
I'm not saying the Super Wii is secretly a beast, that would be absurd. I'm saying that it's probably more capable than the current HD Twins... once you learn to not reply on the CPU to do fucking everything.
It's like when a business changes their computer systems and programs in order to make them more efficient. The people who've been working there for some time and the old system has become second nature to them complain that it's not as fast or efficient as the older way. But that's not necessarily true. It's only true to these people at the time because they're just not used to how the new system is allocating resources. Once they are trained on the new system and use it for a bit, they soon realize that it is actually faster and more efficient.
I'm not saying the Super Wii is secretly a beast, that would be absurd. I'm saying that it's probably more capable than the current HD Twins... once you learn to not reply on the CPU to do fucking everything.
Batman Armored edition, Epic Mickey 2, Ninja Gaiden, Tekken, all have serious issues on the Wii U as compared to the Xbox 360.
Plinko
Wildcard berths that can't beat teams without a winning record should have homefield advantage
Tekken? Really? I thought the reviews said it held up pretty well.
And the argument goes full circle... unbelievable.
What's wrong with Tekken?
Running at lower resolution and fewer details than the competition.
I'm pretty sure many of the things you mentioned is very GPU dependent, having a lot of ram might not help, and while CPU isn't the most important part of a gaming system it is fully possible for it to be CPU limited at higher resolutions and frame rates.
Won't people be surprised when the Orbis and Durango don't even have CPU's.
JordanN
Banned
How can you be so sure? Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask both ran on the same hardware but when one got a RAM boost, the later saw increased draw distance, motion blurring, more characters on screen etc.
lol stuff is just too funny. People really believe this stuff.
You are completely wrong. Few thing can even be run on compute shaders. Both next gen console are reported to have beast of cpu also.
What resolution is it at?
GhostTrick
Banned
GPUs are better suited for both physics and AI for starters, two of the most demanding tasks in games. And I wouldn't call Piledrivers or Jaguars "beasts".
Dreamwriter
Member
We know almost nothing except the main system RAM, and a bit about the eDram.
The game has variable resolution. The top resolution is when there are only 2 characters on screen. Supposedly this top resolution appears to be lower than with the competition. Supposedly.
Out of curiosity, what would you call them? What manner of creature would the Wii U CPU be then in comparison?
Trevelyan9999
Banned
I guess that means you haven't played the game. Gotcha.
I have the game on Wii U and besides it not having AA, it looks clean as hell. If it is running at a lower resolution, I'm not noticing it at all. I can't imagine it running at an even higher resolution on the other systems. I suggest picking it up though, it's a great game.
a specialist processor will always be more efficient than a general purpose one for the one task it is designed to do. That is why modern CPUs like the Sandy/Ivy Bridge series has a dedicated video transcode unit for example.
Not that trading raw CPU power for a dedicated DSP is really a good trade in all or even most cases.
I haven't played any Wii U games or any of the newer Xbox 360 games. I also haven't played the majority of the best PC games. I am confident when I say Halo 4 looks better than anything on Wii U. I am confident in saying that Batman: Arkham City Armored Edition runs like shit. All without playing them.
phosphor112
Banned
The Last of Us?
TheChewyWaffles
Member
The denial in this thread would be comical if it weren't so sad.
JordanN
Banned
Maybe. But that game (along with Naughty Dog's other games) are so corridor like it's not funny.
Edit: Nope, no grass.
Is that a PS4 game?