Thunder Monkey
Banned
Is cool.
The espresso leaker at B3D must have some good green if he thinks in any way that it would have similar performance at it's 1.2 GHz vs the 3.2 GHz Xenon though.
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Wii U clock speeds are found by marcan
- Thread starter Pooya
- Start date
Is cool.
The espresso leaker at B3D must have some good green if he thinks in any way that it would have similar performance at it's 1.2 GHz vs the 3.2 GHz Xenon though.
It makes me question the reliability of his information. He either knows what he is talking about or he doesn't.
It could be about the same/better in some ways and worse in others.
Thunder Monkey
Banned
Well yes, modern designs have forsaken certain benefits for just pure power. That's a hell of a clock difference to see it going any way but bad for WiiU under most conditions though.
lwilliams3
Member
Actually, lherre or arkam recently told us that the CPU clockspeed increased by 25% between third and fourth version devkits, so the cpu he was talking about was only about 1GHz.
It has been calculated before that broadway performs surprisingly well in at least some tasks against xenon despite the clockspeed difference (except in SIMD, of course.) There was one person that claimed that in real-time performance, Broadway was only 20% weaker than a Xenon core. If we use those calculations, that would go along with espresso's statements.
Isn't that what the core duos were? Intel ditching the Pentium 4 design and running with the Pentium M design?
I remember reading about how much developers hated the 360 and PS3 CPUs when they first came out. Considering there were no G5 PowerPC chips clocked that high back then, or that had that many cores (like you said, major players ditched PowerPC, no G5 Powerbook and the Power Mac only went up to two dual cores at 2.5Ghz), the console design must have been really lobotomized in order to reach those clocks.
lwilliams3
Member
Yes, and it should be noted that the 750 series (including Gekko and Broadway) max clockspeed was under 1GHz due to its limitation in design. The fact that Wii U's CPU is clocked over 1GHz means that those cores are not "real" 750 CPUs, but are designed to behave the same as them.
TheFLYINGManga_Ka
Member
So basically, the Wii U is like a budgeted gaming laptop: it can technically play Witcher 2 on full blast, but it'll be a slide show.
Thunder Monkey
Banned
No, but it should run a competent port of the 360 version.
Was that limitation a design or process size issue?
I believe that the clockspeed bump came after the die shrink, but maybe that die shrink also included some new design. That was around the time 3rd parties sources reported a jump in performance, maybe it wasn't all related to clockspeed increase.
It is possible the B3D source above had access to the previous chip and it was just 3 broadway cores, but that then changed. It still wouldn't explain why he believed it to have the processing power of a Xenon when the calculations show it shouldn't even be close.
A
A More Normal Bird
Unconfirmed Member
It could be that the calculations you're employing are next to useless for determining what you think they do. A tri-core Wii CPU at ~1.2GHz is in fact exceptionally close to a Xenon, as both estimates (by informed folks such as the hacker whose exploits are featured in the OP and the B3D source you refer to) and real world results show. Neither Xenon nor Cell are the monster CPUs their floppage suggest.
Edit: This post comes across as a bit grouchy. I don't know how much technical knowledge you have, but many in these threads are very confident in spouting hyperbole without any reason to be. The Wii & Wii U CPUs were both faster clock for clock than the Xenon, except maybe in SIMD (lack of VMX or similar). Nintendo fans seem to have latched onto the notion that rewriting code for the Wii U will solve all of its problems, and to some degree they're correct. However, it may involve making some sacrifices alongside any improvements and will not involve somehow writing for OoOE. As far as CPU tech goes, the unit seems right in line with the rest of the system. It's not Nintendo being cheap (or at least not excessively more than usual) but their obsession with power draw seems to have played quite a large role in making it what it is. Even an extra 15-20 watts could have placed the Wii U more clearly ahead of the 360/PS3.
Edit: This post comes across as a bit grouchy. I don't know how much technical knowledge you have, but many in these threads are very confident in spouting hyperbole without any reason to be. The Wii & Wii U CPUs were both faster clock for clock than the Xenon, except maybe in SIMD (lack of VMX or similar). Nintendo fans seem to have latched onto the notion that rewriting code for the Wii U will solve all of its problems, and to some degree they're correct. However, it may involve making some sacrifices alongside any improvements and will not involve somehow writing for OoOE. As far as CPU tech goes, the unit seems right in line with the rest of the system. It's not Nintendo being cheap (or at least not excessively more than usual) but their obsession with power draw seems to have played quite a large role in making it what it is. Even an extra 15-20 watts could have placed the Wii U more clearly ahead of the 360/PS3.
EatChildren
Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
Honestly, that GPU core is clocked higher than I cynically expected.
Well to be honest that's what my ex told me when I first...you know what let me not finish that statement.
Yeah, I was expecting 400 mhz to get that low low 40 watt power draw. I wonder how many gigaflops it can spare to do any general computing.
Thunder Monkey
Banned
Me as well my Aussie.
Well, at least higher than I expected after the crushing reality of the platform's ineptitude's came to light.
This would be my guess. My own gut tells me this little machine, in total, is about 1.5 360's, but I'm not sure if 3rd parties will spend the time/money on cross platform games unless the Wii U gets a large player base.
Not the least little bit. Fun fact: I was once offered a job as a chip tester in an ibm fab. That was a long time ago ('98) and my career when in a very different direction. Things being different I could be leaking you guy information! My electronic engineering skills are very out of date.
Yeah, each system has it's highlights and bottlenecks.
And I'm sold on the Wii U, but I've always appreciated power efficient designs
.I really don't think we can know the motivations of Mr. Nintendo. But a more likely reason than power draw is cheapness. That extra 15 or 20 watts would have added substantially to their bom. You know, like having a 7 or 8 hour battery.
But it is always a trade off between heat/noise/reliability and more power. Supposedly the Japanese market likes small things. I'm not sure we can just put it down to cheapness, but obviously finding the right price point was important to them, and they are not likely to ever go in with a heavy loss leader. It's just not their style and considering that they are still around with a mountain of cash it is hard to argue with that mindset.
Wasn't that a weight issue? They needed a controller that kids/old people could comfortably hold.
Computer engineering is so weird. The fact that a tri-core 1.2 ghz modified broadway CPU can compete on ANY level with a 3.2 ghz Xenon is (in my opinion) utterly startling. This would mean that the 2.4 ghz numbers being thrown around all the way up until a few weeks ago would have utterly devastated Xenon.
Refreshment.01
Member
It's not "obsession" is called "marketing". Btw, i don't use this to desqqualify your post A More Normal Bird, becuae it might well be the case.
Maybe im not remembering correctly, but MS didn't have much alternatives when setting up with Xeon. The procesor is more focused for general code, so maybe Nintendo did a better job optimising the Esspresso for game code, hence the claims they are close even with the great clock difference. IIRC, it happened the same thing to MS CPU wise as it happened to Sony GPU wise, they had a schedule to satisfy and had to go with a quick stop gap solution.
GhostTrick
Banned
If Wii U's GPU is clocked at 550Mhz, I can't see it having more than 320SP.
That's really bad. If Nintendo wasn't obsessed with low power drawing... They could have done something better than PS360, and really easily. Worst thing is that even 60W would have been considered low power consumption.
This is sad.
That's really bad. If Nintendo wasn't obsessed with low power drawing... They could have done something better than PS360, and really easily. Worst thing is that even 60W would have been considered low power consumption.
This is sad.
lightchris
Member
If you read up a bit on pipelining, branch prediction, superscalar execution and out-of-order execution you won't be that surprised about such differences anymore.
Though I wouldn't be too optimistic about Espresso's efficiency. There is a reason that some developers complain about the CPU.
Espresso should have advantages at branchy integer code, which is still important in games. On the other hand, Xenon exceeds at floating point performance and has quite powerful vector units. It heavily depends on the situation how big the performance gap between the two is.
320SP @ 550MHZ would be better than PS360, plus newer design/features adding more performance.
BTW die size doesnt suggest 320SP.
GhostTrick
Banned
Power consumption doesn't suggest otherwise.
Also, that would be as some people said, 1,5x Xbox 360 GPU.
Actually, Wii U seems to be on par with PS360, with newer design/features. And that's it, nothing more, nothing less.
It's good considering it's drawing 30W. And that's it, don't expect magic when drawing 30W. If it was something like 60W, sure, Wii U would be easily capable of outperforming PS360. But for now ?
You can't compare a 7 year old GPU against a GPU built/ derived from 4 years ago. Even if Wii U GPU had as many shaders as the 360 GPU it would still outclass it by a margin
Thrillhouse
Member
This has been said before, but to whom is a low power draw a strong selling point? It's not like the power consumption of gaming consoles is a big cost or has any substaintial enviornmental impact. It's not like Nintendo is touting it in advertising either. So why make huge comprimises for something that you don't even use as a selling point? It's just beyond me.
Refreshment.01
Member
Yes, this is pretty much what leaks and sources suggests.
Regarding power draw, is not the main focus really. Cheap hardware is, but once they settle for the relative low power spec they do try to optimize as much as possible. If Nintendo was so much into power savings there are other better alternatives performance/consumption ratio than that power PC derivative.
I rather have a console that is quiet and runs cool than having one that sounds like a plane because of how hot it runs
I could've sworn I saw it used more, weird.
The point still stands that most games are already made at a higher poly count than what we're already seeing, so I doubt much will change from a technical standpoint to the budget.
If it was about cheap hardware, Nintendo would have used 476FPs and called it a day.
TheChewyWaffles
Member
I still think it's more than a little sad that we're all lounging around here arguing about whether or not the Wii U can keep up with a seven year old console. That's the pathetic part of Nintendo's offering.
Refreshment.01
Member
You are a minority. There's a sort of "treshhold" after which things like size and power consumption don't matter.
The Wii could have been the size of a PS2, for example, and it would have been the succes it was anyways.
Doesn't change what im trying to convey here, because they do balance the system and have minum performance goals. And it is about cheap (don't get why the "cheap" adjective ruffles feathers), cheap that also includes lowering R&D costs and probably fewer tools revisions, I.E. isn't the CPU architecture closely related to what they have been using for 3 generations now?
I've said this before, but I don't understand wht this is so hard to see.
With Wii Nintendo started a strategy of making consoles that are inconspicuous, blend in and don't "scare" non-gamers. This was a fundamental part of their strategy. It's why the Wii was small, cheap, silent (except for the drive at times, but still more silent that the competition), didn't consume much, didn't have a lot of power and had a simple, remote-like controller. This worked big time. People on forums may like to whine that Nintendo abandoned them or whatever, but it's a fact: they hit gold.
Now, they might be going less agressively after the non-gaming crowd this time, but completely abandoning a successful strategy doesn't strike me as inteligent. They want a system that's cheap (people say it's expensive, yet it's cheaper than what 360 and PS3 were, most likely than what Orbis and Durango will be and 50 bucks more expensive than Wii and being sold at a loss), silent, small, reliable(the jury's still out on that one) and inconspicuous. Low wattage in itself isn't the goal, it's not that many people care about that (it's a good marketing bullet-point though and Japanese might care), what matters here is that to build a small durable console it can't generate heat, if it can't generate heat it has to be low powered, especially if you don't want it to be noisy due to fans.
Now, you might not care about the console being small, I don't either (I like it though), but it's incredibly obvious what the logic behind it is and while the Wii's size wasn't what made it a huge success, it might have helped and since it's clear power doesn't dictate sales, Nintendo isn't throwing away cards that could win them the game. Whether or not they're right, that's yet to be seen.
Power consumption doesnt suggest 320SP. AMD e4690 is 320SP @600mhz on 55nm with 128bit 1.4GHZ GDDR3, its 25w. Drop down to 40nm, downclock core 8% and swap RAM to 64bit DDR3 and you'll be closer to 15w than 20w. WiiU GPU + RAM should be over 25w.
WiiU will use more than 33w at full load, a 2D game is using 33w but WiiU is very GPU-centric, test a better looking game and power usage will increase.
476FP is done. It's an off-the-shelf 45nm core, and designed for SMP. No R&D costs at all. 750 on the other hand was never available in 45nm and simply doesn't support SMP. Not to mention no 750 ever used eDRAM. The chip Nintendo uses might be cheap to manufacture as it's small (though still a lot bigger than three 476FPs), but it came with significant R&D expenses as it's very different from any off-the-shelf design.
People have claimed that Nintendo was catering to the Japanese who seem to like small, low power devices. This could have been a reasonable excuse if it wasn't for the fact that Sony was a Japanese company too.
Makes no sense even if you ignore Sony. Nintendo is world player and is focused world wide success, not to mention Japan is focused on handheld devices in which Nintendo is already active in.
The perception of graphics is completely subjective. And, as far as I can tell, very few people have (this subjective perception of) graphics as a deciding factor when buying software, or indeed hardware.
Great post! It says exactly what I'm thinking.
test_account
XP-39C²
Ah ok, like that, i understand
Yeah, if a 3rd party should work that close to Nintendo (or Microsoft and Sony for that matter), i guess that they would their share of the control as well, indeed.
TAS
Member
Iwata stated at the Nintendo Direct that the Wii U consumes 75w of power under full load. So why are certain individuals stuck on the 33w number from NSMBU as the maximum? Are we ignoring facts here or am I missing something?
And in the tech world 2 years in an eon. We are discussing if the wii u can keep up with a centenarian in a marathon.
lightchris
Member
lunchwithyuzo
Banned
The local development community doesn't consider SCE Japanese. They've decentralised their game unit so much, and fixated so much on western development, support and partnerships, that the head of Square Enix actually said Nintendo was the last Japanese hardware maker.
I for one am glad nintendo is so focused on the japanese console market. Perhaps they feel they have the power to resurrect that which has died, been cremated, and whose ashes have been shot into space to orbit the sun somewhere between saturn and uranus.
Interesting if true...
https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/274856397915697152
Hector Martin
‏@marcan42
If you want more evidence that MHz isn't everything, a little birdie points out that Durango (Xbox 720) is specc'ed to have a 1.6GHz CPU.
https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/274856397915697152
Hector Martin
‏@marcan42
If you want more evidence that MHz isn't everything, a little birdie points out that Durango (Xbox 720) is specc'ed to have a 1.6GHz CPU.
So what does this mean?
Nintendo loves cheap things.
Barack Lesnar
Banned
Yep, this is what I've been saying. NA & EU are bigger console markets than Japan. This whole strategy makes little sense other than a way to cheap out on the hardware and then use this low power draw / size thing as an excuse for PR reasons. It makes no sense to cater to the Japanese market.
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