Frankfurter
Member
Yeah, no doubt about that. But, if anything, shouldn't that make the comparison even more unfavorable for Wii?
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WiiU technical discussion (serious discussions welcome)
- Thread starter blu
- Start date
Couple of queries for the techs:
The 3GB (+-) SSD which is dedicated to the system: how feasible is it that WiiU can utilise it for more than, say, streaming data from the Blu-Ray drive; that is, could the system be designed in such a way (depending on bandwidth) that that 3GB could be used to boost MEM2?
Also, last year, it was suggested that certain functions that TEV had been enhanced to provide much better lighting/shadowing - would this be 'cost free', per se, as a direct hardware feature?
The 3GB (+-) SSD which is dedicated to the system: how feasible is it that WiiU can utilise it for more than, say, streaming data from the Blu-Ray drive; that is, could the system be designed in such a way (depending on bandwidth) that that 3GB could be used to boost MEM2?
Also, last year, it was suggested that certain functions that TEV had been enhanced to provide much better lighting/shadowing - would this be 'cost free', per se, as a direct hardware feature?
I think the main issue with the RAM is a question of bandwidthn not of size. I doubt the SSD is going to solve that problem. It would be much more logical to trim the OS so that it doesn't use up 1GB for itself. I think an additional 512MB would be much preferred over an additional 1-3GB on the SSD, even at the supposed low bandwidth it faces.
Nothing is cost free, from what i gather. But if your question is whether using TEV functions means reducing the total amount of SPU's available in the GPU or lowering the full amount of Gflops at its disposal, i don't think so. See Wsippels answer above.
Captain Smoker
Member
From Nintendos Q&A (translated by Ruliweb, should be out in English soon). http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=47206646#post47206646
Thanks; Wsippels' post wasn't, em, posted when I posted my post.
That's a dreadful number of the word 'post' and sequitors!
I'm just curious if 'extra' TEVs have been added, thus the rumours of hardware-based 'free' DX11-equavlent might have been added by Nintendo.
Again, ta for the answers.
tkscz
Member
Like I said in the previous thread. This proves that:
3rd party developers have not had the WiiU dev-kits long enough to make use of it's hardware.
Nintendo themselves don't know how to use programmable shaders, questioning their ability to use computer ones as well.
Pachterballs
Banned
well, 7 years late, you'd expect it to outperfom. but it hasn't yet
tkscz
Member
what?
Interceptor
Banned
Obviously it will at some point and it comes with freaking expensive tablet. But that´s not the topic of this thread.
This isn´t obvious at all.
Translated by loycuter. He is not affiliated with ruliweb. Just an oldtime user (and neogaffer i think)
ColdBlooder
Banned
Its illegal to lie to your investors. No ones gonna take that risk... So theres no reason not to believe him.
Interceptor
Banned
I am not sure why you are fighting so hard to deny the obvious. This thread exists to understand the tech behind the Wii U. Not to argue in a fanboywar who has the most polygonz.
tkscz
Member
It's AOC83, just be happy it isn't UFC-fan.
This is untrue. Of course, it's not comparable to a Wii situation, but it's still an older GPU architecture. If you look a few pages back you can see some speculation as to its per-FLOP disadvantage compared to GCN, which is what's likely being used in Orbis/Durango.
ColdBlooder
Banned
I did.
Yes this gets you excited. He basically said the console is memory intensified design.
And the GPU is "fairly mature and goinf the same direction as competitors" is also good, but not surprising.
ColdBlooder
Banned
So what graphical features does GCN bring that R7XX could not replicate?
No rumor has pointed to Durango being closer to Wii U than Orbis.
He's talking about efficiency.
ColdBlooder
Banned
Im taking about features. Also with what he quoted...
And yes 1200 gflops of the Durango rumor ( http://www.vgleaks.com/world-exclusive-durango-unveiled-2/ )
vs
Orbis 1843 gflops of Orbis ( http://www.vgleaks.com/world-exclusive-orbis-unveiled/ )
brings 720 closer to Wii U. And since both are supposed to be GCN based, the flops numbers of Orbis and Durango are even comparable.
Talking about "graphical features" detracts from the point. You were comparing GFLOPs and stating that there is no architectural disadvantage for Wii U. Since, however, Wii U GFLOPs are presumably "VLIW5 FLOPS" and the other consoles' numbers are "GCN FLOPS", there is an architectural disadvantage that comes into play for this particular comparison: the higher per-FLOP efficiency of GCN.
ColdBlooder
Banned
Where was i taking about efficiency?
Yeah thats one downside for Wii U. But the featureset is basically complete and comparable through all 3 consoles.
Any links?
Is that you iamshadowlark?
Why would you just look at the GPU FLOPS??
Durango: 8GB DDR3 (68GB/s) + 32MB ESRAM vs Wii U: 2GB DDR3 (12.8GB/s) + 32MB eDRAM
Durango: 1.23TFLOPS GCN GPU vs Wii U: 0.3-0.6GFLOPS VLIW5 GPU
Durango: 8 jaguar cores @ 1.6GHz vs Wii U: 3 Espresso cores @ 1.2GHz
Durango is far closer to Orbis than it is to the Wii U.
Cheesemeister (@Cheesemeister3k) tweeted at 5:42 PM on Sat, Feb 02, 2013:
Genyo Takeda: I don't think that the #WiiU CPU and GPU are imbalanced in favor of the GPU. It depends how you measure. GPU chip is bigger.
(https://twitter.com/Cheesemeister3k/status/297746798385172480)
Cheesemeister (@Cheesemeister3k) tweeted at 5:44 PM on Sat, Feb 02, 2013:
Genyo Takeda: In modern CPUs, the math logic portions are rather small. In new PCs and servers, the CPUs may be big, but the logic is small.
(https://twitter.com/Cheesemeister3k/status/297747369645187073)
Cheesemeister (@Cheesemeister3k) tweeted at 5:48 PM on Sat, Feb 02, 2013:
Genyo Takeda: It's common for the surrounding SRAM cache memory in CPUs to be bigger. From that viewpoint, you wouldn't see them imbalanced.
(https://twitter.com/Cheesemeister3k/status/297748259177365504)
Amazing up think they are only now hiring people with experience in modern graphics.
1- That's lazy
2-Do their devs not care about their work and keep abreast and up to date with technologies.
Captain Smoker
Member
I think this is not realistic. They're hiring more of them.
lwilliams3
Member
I don't think he is arguing that. He was saying that if Durango < PS4, then it is closer to the WiiU than the PS4 is.
Thanks for posting that. Very interesting.
ColdBlooder
Banned
Yes thats exactly what i wrote... But thanks for clarifying while i was reading other threads
Thanks for that
lwilliams3
Member
Yes. If you look at Nintendoland, you can see that Nintendo were already experimenting with different variations of advanced shaders and lighting.
Have there been other systems that would be labeled as having a "memory intensive" architecture?
What does "memory intensified" even mean? I think something is being lost in translation here. In the context he said it in I assume he's saying they found it more important to increase the CPU cache than other aspects of it?
As for the GPU part of course they're going to be using programmable shaders, that's all that's being made outside of mobile now.
edit:
I guess that clears it up a bit, he's saying since it doesn't use SRAM for L2 it's not as imbalanced as the raw size would imply since eDRAM is I think 1/3rd as large per memory.
The more I hear about the GPU, the better it seems, but then I look at some of Nintendo's own efforts like NSMBU and Nintendo Land, and while they're definitely good looking games, neither of them are complex enough to make 1080p impossible. But both are 720p. True, the NSMB team was never part of Nintendo's A team when it came to graphics, but still.
Forsaken82
Member
What do you even mean when you say this? Graphical Complexity does not dictate screen resolution.
It doesn't?
I should probably clarify. I know that Wii-U is capable of 1080p (Rayman and Sribblenauts do that), what I'm saying is that you would think something like NSMBU would be able to do everything it's doing right now while also being in 1080p.
I think Nintendo really just wanted to make sure NSMBU was a launch title that they didn't really try to do anything to push the graphics or make it have a higher resolution, I think NSMBU could of easily been native 1080p on the Wii U.
So wouldn't "neither are complex enough to make 1080p impossible" make more sense? The more graphically complex something is, the more the GPU has to do, and the more likely you have to fall back to a lower resolution to maintain acceptable framerates.
Cosmonaut X
Member
I think - and it may be backed up by an interview, IIRC - that Nintendo targetted 720p for their first round of games for ease of development and to ensure solid performance.
freezamite
Banned
The main reason GCN is better than VLIW5 is because it's a simpler architecture to optimize drivers for on PC, where games are programmed upon much more abstract layers than on consoles (and also GPGPU I presume, but I don't know how a modified VLIW5 would perform in that regard).
VLIW5 in a console makes a lot of sense because EVERYTHING will be programmed towards this architecture, which is more efficient per mm^2 than GCN.
Forsaken82
Member
Pretty much this. And even still, no matter how complex your graphics are, you can render them out at whatever resolution you want. Whether or not it runs well is a different story however. If EA wanted Battlefield 3 to run at 1080p on PS3 or 360, they could have, but the game would likely run at sub 20fps at best. Killzone 2 at that 4k resolution? Entirely doable...
if you enjoy watching slideshows as opposed to play video games...
chaosblade
Unconfirmed Member
I haven't seen anything that has convinced me you can get more performance out of VLIW5 than GCN, even though it's theoretical performance is better. But maybe I'm mistaken, I brought this up before but didn't really get a direct response.
I remember discussions on VLIW5 vs GCN in a console from months ago, in the WUST threads, where the same point was being made, that unlike for PC, the advantage for GCN was nihil. But that was back when BG was still around. Don't know how accurate this is, but it has been brought up before.
lwilliams3
Member
At the very least, the GCN architecture did boost the FLOPS/sp compared to the VLIW5 architecture. Durango's GPU has at most only twice the sp count of Wii U's GPU, for example, but the difference in FLOPs will be a bit wider.
You mean it gained more FPS per actual flop (see Durante's remark). But this is in PC context, is it proven/known that this is the case without the "software layer" known as windows? Meaning, in a dedicated console? Or does the formula to calculate flops differ for GCN architecture (which is somewhat what you are saying)?
Right, but this is all in a windows environment. The argument was whether the same discrepancy holds up in a console environment.
The Abominable Snowman
Member
The difference is much more pronounced than flops
http://ht4u.net/reviews/2012/amd_radeon_hd_7700_test/index4.php
HD5770 vs 7700 clocked the same. The 5770 has more raw FLOPS by 20+% but is outperformed in almost every task by as much as 37%
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