Didn't the Toki Tori developers say that they found a secret function on the Wii U that gave them some extra RAM? I think it was on twitter.
Increased memory bandwidth if I'm remembering right.
Didn't the Toki Tori developers say that they found a secret function on the Wii U that gave them some extra RAM? I think it was on twitter.
Shin'en mostly uses procedural textures, which means they can store infinite terabytes of textures in a few lines of code. You're confusing them with Two Tribes. And as you said, they probably didn't even try to use several gigabytes of textures in the first place. For all we know, that tweet could have been about squeezing 220MB down to 20MB. The whole game is only 536MB as it is.
WayForward also managed to shrink Mighty Switch Force substantially after release, but I believe that was audio related.
Didn't the Toki Tori developers say that they found a secret function on the Wii U that gave them some extra RAM? I think it was on twitter.
Interesting claim. Care to support it with evidence?
this clearly shows that most of the effort was put into the 360/PS3 versions.
How do people watch that video and get the impression the Wii U version is worse? The guy playing says the Wii U version is smoother, quicker, sharper and just all around better.Even the PC version has those issues.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-resident-evil-revelations-face-off
They even state the 3DS version performs better than Wii U. I doubt the in any component in the 3DS is more powerful than something in the Wii U. As much a I despise Eurogamer's intentionally insulting, presumptuous, fanboy baiting writing, this clearly shows that most of the effort was put into the 360/PS3 versions.
Inconsistent stutter is always the result of poor optimization, especially when you have instances of the frame rate exceeding the cap like we have here.
I'm not seeing the Deus Ex stutter though. Animations are jerky sometimes, but other than that it looks pretty solid.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7rkeYwH1Fg
Today we discovered a new hardware feature of the Wii U that shaves off 100 megabytes of texture memory usage in Toki Tori 2! #joy #happy
it means we spend less time loading and have more memory available when the game is running.
I hope this analysis has been helpful to some. It is my opinion that from the TMU count alone we can extrapolate that Latte contains 160 shaders. Anything more would be unbalanced and nonsensical. Once we get past the hangup that the SPUs and the TMUs are not in direct contact with one another, it becomes quite easy to see that Wii U features two fairly standard SIMD engines/cores. We must give up any pretense of a dual setup engine, and it should be remembered that the only GPUs to necessitate such a configuration were absolute behemoths with many times the shading capability of even high estimates for Latte.
As for the shaders themselves, I never claimed to have all the answers and I can't name exactly why they are so much larger than would seem to be necessary for 160 40nm SPUs. I've thrown out a few guesses in previous posts and I am sure that there have been a few modifications/shortcuts made especially for the Wii U hardware. Wsippel linked to an interesting article on thread interleaving - could be, but who knows? We could speculate forever (and that might be fun), but there's nothing else we can really say about them without actual Wii U developer insight. At this point, I don't know if I have much else to say about the Wii U GPU. I have attempted to analyze to the best of my abilities, without bias. People can believe or disbelieve as they please, just as I am sure that new game footage at E3 will have various folks claiming that the Wii U is both more and less capable than PS360. Ok, I think I'm going to go play some games now.
I hope the rest of you read stuff like this and chuckle, then sigh, which is what those of us with first hand experience shipping titles on these platforms do when we read stuff like this.
Interesting as always, thanks. For all that backlash over just the suggestion of 160 shaders, it seems to me our most reasonable guess now. It's funny, in a sort of way, that the 8th gen consoles will have 8, 16, and 32 ROPs, each doubling the last. I wonder how important that will be. I suppose it only makes sense with relative shader counts, no point in lots of either without both, shaders and ROPs.
I hope the rest of you read stuff like this and chuckle, then sigh, which is what those of us with first hand experience shipping titles on these platforms do when we read stuff like this.
My common sense tells me it makes no sense for a modern GPU, with a low power draw, taking into consideration heat and older GPU's on the same process, to have MUCH larger SPU's. If someone can give me an explanation as to why this would make sense for Nintendo, then i might buy it. Until then, it's bogus to me. Nintendo doesn't jus do shit like this for no reason. So either the premise is plain wrong, or there has to be a good reason for it.
Shit if I know, really. But as Fourth said, why have so many more pixel shaders with so few texture mapping unit, or ROPs? Maybe they're bulked up for compute. But a higher count doesn't appear to make sense.
I hope this analysis has been helpful to some. It is my opinion that from the TMU count alone we can extrapolate that Latte contains 160 shaders. Anything more would be unbalanced and nonsensical. Once we get past the hangup that the SPUs and the TMUs are not in direct contact with one another, it becomes quite easy to see that Wii U features two fairly standard SIMD engines/cores. We must give up any pretense of a dual setup engine, and it should be remembered that the only GPUs to necessitate such a configuration were absolute behemoths with many times the shading capability of even high estimates for Latte.
It certainly could be, but it's not like 130k would be all that outlandish to begin with:Not sure why this is being quoted. Especially when it could easily be a high resolution mesh never used in game.
The model is even being shown as quads whereas video games typically render out triangles (unless you're a Sega Saturn).
123k polygons. And yes, it's the ingame model.
You're making huge assumptions here without any real evidence. For all we know, the game could be CPU limited, which is why there is so more slow down. Even Lego City, which is Wii U exclusive, has slow down and pop up issues according to many reviews.As much a I despise Eurogamer's intentionally insulting, presumptuous, fanboy baiting writing, this clearly shows that most of the effort was put into the 360/PS3 versions.
Not sure why this is being quoted. Especially when it could easily be a high resolution mesh never used in game.
The model is even being shown as quads whereas video games typically render out triangles (unless you're a Sega Saturn).
The Two Tribes tweet was:
...which they followed up with:
They were asked whether it was related to texture compression or streaming but said they couldn't say - presumably because discussion of hardware features like that is under NDA.
snip
That makes no sense whatsoever. You do realize that the 3DS only has a dual core 266MHz ARM11, with half a core reserved for OS functions? Espresso is a completely different animal.You're making huge assumptions here without any real evidence. For all we know, the game could be CPU limited, which is why there is so more slow down. Even Lego City, which is Wii U exclusive, has slow down and pop up issues according to many reviews.
My common sense tells me it makes no sense for a modern GPU, with a low power draw, taking into consideration heat and older GPU's on the same process, to have MUCH larger SPU's. If someone can give me an explanation as to why this would make sense for Nintendo, then i might buy it. Until then, it's bogus to me. Nintendo doesn't jus do shit like this for no reason. So either the premise is plain wrong, or there has to be a good reason for it.
Bravo fourth storm. Have you try to contact df to see if they can correct their story?
Richard might give us so more insight on this.
But it also doesn't make sense for the ALU's in the Wii U GPU to be significantly larger. You have two extremes of things not making sense which to me means trying to make any claim on shader count is folly.
They wouldn't just make them larger for the hell of it, it makes very little sense.
We don't know, because we don't really know what to count. My guess is 2048bit, so 131GB/s for MEM1. MEM0 could be anything. Doesn't help that it's split in two, either. And it's apparently managed by the OS - we don't know what it's used for, so it might not even matter to begin with.I remember seeing here that 70.4GB/s is the bandwith for 32MB eDRAM. Is that confirmed?
Sorry for ask, but are too many pages to read.
I remember seeing here that 70.4GB/s is the bandwith for 32MB eDRAM. Is that confirmed?
Sorry for ask, but are too many pages to read.
As others have stated, we all appreciate Fourth Storm's analysis, but as he states it is not conclusive as the size of shaders has no explanation as of now. So no, no conclusions must be made imo.
As an outsider looking in, he seems to be one of only a few people that's trying to determine what the Wii U is rather than dream about what they want it to be. His posts are way more conclusive then half the things I'm seeing in this thread.
It only "makes no sense" if you assume the 3DS version is running the exact same code.That makes no sense whatsoever. You do realize that the 3DS only has a dual core 266MHz ARM11, with half a core reserved for OS functions? Espresso is a completely different animal.
How exactly is it "different"? It's the exact same game with higher resolution maps and textures. It's not like they introduced some high end physics calculations or throw a hundred enemies with vastly improved AI at you all of a sudden. Nothing in the game would explain why a CPU that's at least 10 to 20 times more powerful suddenly runs into problems.It only "makes no sense" if you assume the 3DS version is not running the exact same code.
The console version is different , if it was simply an up-scaled version of the 3DS release, it would be running closer to full HD at 60hz.
M°°nblade;59551313 said:Lower framerate -> doesn't count
Missing trees -> doesn't count
Missing cars -> doesn't count
Launch game -> doesn't count
Stutter -> doesn't count
I think you couldn't possibly be more selective with your criteria to exclude the cases that don't fit with your opinion while avoiding any evaluation of the cases that do fit with your opinion.
How do people watch that video and get the impression the Wii U version is worse? The guy playing says the Wii U version is smoother, quicker, sharper and just all around better.
Frankly I'm not convinced ; ) I'll elaborate when I get home tonight.Finally, I come back to the subject of the TMUs and L1 texture cache. What I previously identified in the Llano die has once again been confirmed with the Brazos annotation. I have even used my skills at MS Paint to make it crystal clear for you all.
On Brazos, we see the same basic SRAM configuration which I previously used to link the L1s in Llano to the S Blocks in Latte. We have the 2 longer rectangular banks + a much smaller squarish bank (In Brazos, the long banks are strangely staggered, with one slightly longer as well. This is a slight variation and hardly enough to discount the similarities). Right next to these, we have the 16 other small SRAM banks. I have speculated that these might be the cache tags. Whether they are exactly this or not, it is pretty obvious that they are cache related. I bet that if we were to get a more clear picture of the RV770 die, we would see these 16 banks in the TMUs, as they are on Latte. These variations exist across the different architectures. In the Llano photo linked to in the OP, for example, those 16 banks are on the right side of the L1 blocks while the other aforementioned banks are on the left. The bottom line is that this SRAM configuration is indicative of being texture cache and TMU related. The common number of banks points directly to there being 8 TMUs on Latte, just as on Brazos.
As an outsider looking in, he seems to be one of only a few people that's trying to determine what the Wii U is rather than dream about what they want it to be. His posts are way more conclusive then half the things I'm seeing in this thread.
How exactly is it "different"? It's the exact same game with higher resolution maps and textures. It's not like they introduced some high end physics calculations or throw a hundred enemies with vastly improved AI at you all of a sudden. Nothing in the game would explain why a CPU that's at least 10 to 20 times more powerful suddenly runs into problems.
130k isn't the norm though. And Wii U has alot to prove that it's even 2x better than PS3/360 (or better yet, what does the game look like to consider 130k impressive? It was PS3/360 at one point so what if that's even the same model?).It certainly could be, but it's not like 130k would be all that outlandish to begin with:
123k polygons. And yes, it's the ingame model.
Who cares about completely baseless speculation like that? The Bayonetta model had far fewer polygons, so there is nothing to even suggest this. I assume next we will be trying to figure out if its beyond xenos as far as feature set right? Or as powerful as vita? 130k polygon model isn't outside the realm of ps3 or 360 but Wii U does allow benefits that those consoles were simply not capable of or had to work much harder to fake.130k isn't the norm though. And Wii U has alot to prove that it's even 2x better than PS3/360 (or better yet, what does the game look like to consider 130k impressive? It was PS3/360 at what point so what if that's even the same model?).
Do you really believe Platinum has to reuse the same model? Sequels can change/improve assets all the time.Who cares about completely baseless speculation like that? The Bayonetta model had far fewer polygons, so there is nothing to even suggest this.
And we have yet to see how far these capabilities can take Wii U.z0m3le said:I assume next we will be trying to figure out if its beyond xenos as far as feature set right? Or as powerful as vita? 130k polygon model isn't outside the realm of ps3 or 360 but Wii U does allow benefits that those consoles were simply not capable of or had to work much harder to fake.
What else would a 130k model be used for exactly? It's extremely low for a cut scene model, and you also suggested that the game might have a high poly character model at the sacrafice of everything else, but as far as we know, that boss at the end of the trailer was also in game and looked pretty impressive. Just the modern sharers and extra memory would make the Wii U games look better than 360 games ever could, I mean more than double the ram, triple the cache, taking the gpu performance out of the equation and you still come to the same conclusion, Wii U has more to offer the gamer from a visual stand point than last gen consoles.Do you really believe Platinum has to reuse the same model? Sequels can change/improve assets all the time.
And we have yet to see how far these capabilities can take Wii U.
Just saying for people not to use the 130k model as being conclusive when we know little about the game.
It's clearly using more detailed 3d character models, improved lighting, AA and completely upgraded shaders. That alone would require rewrites to many parts of the engine. And honeslty it's not the exact code therefore you can't really make 'like for like' comparisons with the 3DS build. You can however compare the PC and console versions because they are all running off the updated build of the game.How exactly is it "different"? It's the exact same game with higher resolution maps and textures. It's not like they introduced some high end physics calculations or throw a hundred enemies with vastly improved AI at you all of a sudden. Nothing in the game would explain why a CPU that's at least 10 to 20 times more powerful suddenly runs into problems.
I said the game might be CPU limited purely as an example. The main point I was making, was that unless you know exactly what's going on under the hood, you can't be so certain the Wii U build isn't very optimized. We know that Lego City Undercover which is a Wii U only exclusive has frame rate issues. And a large number of the multi-platform games also have more slow down on the Wii U. Also NFS which has updated graphics on Wii U, but supports less players online.Exactly. If you were going to point the finger at a component to "blame" for the stuttering in RE:R, surely it would be the GPU rather than the CPU?
It's clearly using more detailed 3d character models, improved lighting, AA and completely upgraded shaders. That alone would require rewrites to many parts of the engine. And honeslty it's not the exact code therefore you can't really make 'like for like' comparisons with the 3DS build. You can however compare the PC and console versions because they are all running off the updated build of the game.
I said the game might be CPU limited purely as an example. The main point I was making, was that unless you know exactly what's going on under the hood, you can't be so certain the Wii U build isn't very optimized. We know that Lego City Undercover which is a Wii U only exclusive has frame rate issues. And a large number of the multi-platform games also have more slow down on the Wii U. Also NFS which has updated graphics on Wii U, but supports less players online.
Are we going to start making assumptions that all these people are just shoddy coders too lazy to optimize for Nintendo?
It's clearly using more detailed 3d character models, improved lighting, AA and completely upgraded shaders. That alone would require rewrites to many parts of the engine. And honeslty it's not the exact code therefore you can't really make 'like for like' comparisons with the 3DS build. You can however compare the PC and console versions because they are all running off the updated build of the game.
I said the game might be CPU limited purely as an example. The main point I was making, was that unless you know exactly what's going on under the hood, you can't be so certain the Wii U build isn't very optimized. We know that Lego City Undercover which is a Wii U only exclusive has frame rate issues. And a large number of the multi-platform games also have more slow down on the Wii U. Also NFS which has updated graphics on Wii U, but supports less players online.
Are we going to start making assumptions that all these people are just shoddy coders too lazy to optimize for Nintendo?
You mean the same boss that was on screen for no more than 3 seconds surrounded by pitch black?What else would a 130k model be used for exactly? It's extremely low for a cut scene model, and you also suggested that the game might have a high poly character model at the sacrafice of everything else, but as far as we know, that boss at the end of the trailer was also in game and looked pretty impressive.
I never said Wii U was not better than Xbox 360. I'm only against point blank judgements off what is clearly circumstantial evidence.z0m3le said:Just the modern sharers and extra memory would make the Wii U games look better than 360 games ever could, I mean more than double the ram, triple the cache, taking the gpu performance out of the equation and you still come to the same conclusion, Wii U has more to offer the gamer from a visual stand point than last gen consoles.
This is not circumstantial. It clear, verified photographic proof.I never said Wii U was not better than Xbox 360. I'm only against point blank judgements off what is clearly circumstantial evidence.
Can I borrow your copy of Bayonetta 2, Krizzx? I didn't know there was gameplay with Bayonetta in it.
If not, then it is circumstantial.
That's all GPU stuff, not CPU stuff. If anything, the Wii U port should even free CPU resources, because it enables things like GPU skinning.It's clearly using more detailed 3d character models, improved lighting, AA and completely upgraded shaders. That alone would require rewrites to many parts of the engine. And honeslty it's not the exact code therefore you can't really make 'like for like' comparisons with the 3DS build. You can however compare the PC and console versions because they are all running off the updated build of the game.
That "lazy" shit ruins discussions all the time. The main reasons for inferior ports are the lack of familiarity with the architecture and tools and - most of all - RoI. If the RoI isn't there, no publisher will assign their A team and give them enough time to figure everything out and do a proper job. It's just not going to happen.I said the game might be CPU limited purely as an example. The main point I was making, was that unless you know exactly what's going on under the hood, you can't be so certain the Wii U build isn't very optimized. We know that Lego City Undercover which is a Wii U only exclusive has frame rate issues. And a large number of the multi-platform games also have more slow down on the Wii U. Also NFS which has updated graphics on Wii U, but supports less players online.
Are we going to start making assumptions that all these people are just shoddy coders too lazy to optimize for Nintendo?
Krizz, net code and whatnot is run off the cpu. That is what we are talking about, no? Online multiplayer? I don't think the actual issue is rendering more cars.
Looking forward to what blu has to say regarding the TMUs. Just to clarify, except for some of the acronym identifications on Brazos, all thoughts/conclusions were my own. Tried to word my post carefully, but it doesn't hurt to restate that. I know everyone has their own thoughts.
Glad people enjoy the analysis. It's a fun passtime.
Is net code general purpose or floating point?
Krizz, net code and whatnot is run off the cpu. That is what we are talking about, no? Online multiplayer? I don't think the actual issue is rendering more cars.
Looking forward to what blu has to say regarding the TMUs. Just to clarify, except for some of the acronym identifications on Brazos, all thoughts/conclusions were my own. Tried to word my post carefully, but it doesn't hurt to restate that. I know everyone has their own thoughts.
Glad people enjoy the analysis. It's a fun passtime.
Is net code general purpose or floating point?
Most Wanted U must have had some extra sloppy net code then, because those problems are not present any other Wii U online game.
All of the first hand reports I've seen for Black Ops 2 state no issues. The same with Sonic and SEGA All-Stars racing.
I'm not a prof dev per say, but i have experience with net code. You can make it floating point or general purpose if you wish, though most of the work is done by the server, not the client.
Ok, elaboration time.Krizz, net code and whatnot is run off the cpu. That is what we are talking about, no? Online multiplayer? I don't think the actual issue is rendering more cars.
Looking forward to what blu has to say regarding the TMUs. Just to clarify, except for some of the acronym identifications on Brazos, all thoughts/conclusions were my own. Tried to word my post carefully, but it doesn't hurt to restate that. I know everyone has their own thoughts.
Glad people enjoy the analysis. It's a fun passtime.