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Metro Last Light dev: 'Wii U has horrible, slow CPU' [Up: DICE dev comments]
- Thread starter PrivateRyan
- Start date
Not to be a downer but what can we truly expect? We got new Mario in hd basically, power wise can we expect more than Wii galaxy and zelda in hd? Or will there we a noticeable leap?
That's one of the theories. I don't know what happened, but going from "unprecedented support" to one launch game with one game in the pipeline... i think it's safe to assume something happened. Maybe they just got wind of the horribly slow CPU, lol.
Or something along those lines. That relationship flip flopped completely within that year.
Sexually Aggressive Uncle
Member
Unannounced Wii U game is my favorite game. Can't wait.
Combichristoffersen
Combovers don't work when there is no hair
Better third party support than the N64, NGC and Wii combined.
Barack Lesnar
Banned
Damn that's rough
We all know EA loves it's "unprecedented support" they are giving to Nintendo.
Quite possibly bickering in this thread is more fun than many will have playing WiiU!
Amirite?
BurnOutBrighter
Banned
Says it all really. There'll be even fewer Wii U games than that once they realise they can't possibly port PS4/720 games to hardware that doesn't even match up to the PS3/360.
Sexually Aggressive Uncle
Member
Quite possibly. But I'm at work right now so I can't test that theory out. I'll let you know when I get home.
I can say that it's unequivocally more fun than entering in pathology reports.
Glorified G
Member
Surprised we haven't heard anything about Tiger Woods on the Wii U since it worked so well on the Wii. Hopefully EA will announce something at next e3.
Of course the Wii U isn't next gen, the Wii U isn't a 9th gen console duh.
See what I just did?
Combichristoffersen
Combovers don't work when there is no hair
Chronologically it is definitely 'next-gen'.
In terms of hardware I frankly have no idea if it's sub-current gen, current gen or current gen+. It's a weird piece of hardware like that.
Battlefield Reflex U
Quinton McLeod
Banned
Lets be friends! I totally think the same way
Well to contribute to the topic, since I'm not terribly knowledgeable about development-processes and hardware itself I might appear very stupid with that question and I'm sure it has been asked before though from what I read the Wii U has much more "standardized technology" than the Wii even though it lacks raw power so wouldn't it be possible to port PS4/720 games in the same way I can still run BF3 on a Dual-Core CPU with a 4770 and it just wouldn't look pretty but would be playable?
You're a good example to what I've been saying for awhile.
People appear to like comparing consoles to PCs and you just can't.
1) PCs have a lot of overhead. The OS, other applications, the API and etc. So, it takes beefier specs to get some serious visuals on a PC. Plus, not every PC is the same, so developers have to develop software that would work for most PCs and not just one universal piece of hardware.
2) Consoles are specifically designed for games. So, their architecture is slightly different than a PC. Plus, there isn't as much overhead. Also, since consoles are the same among everyone who buys one, developers can use tricks which are guaranteed to work with every console (See Halo 4 for example). Not only that, but developers have direct access to the hardware which could push out even better visuals.
Don't compare your desktop PC to a console. You'll just confuse yourself.
I understand that DICE and the Metro people probably aren't happy with the Wii U since they might need to cut the numbers of players in multiplayer and have other shortcomings with their games and I also understand that porting games to the Wii was a sheer impossible task thanks to the vastly different architecture and setup though shouldn't Wii U (down)porting be a much smaller effort now compared to then and this time actually turn out profitable for publishers when they add Wii U game sales to the other two platforms?
I don't want to troll, these things just really make me curious
That's called BS.
The GPU is capable of instructions commonly done on the CPU. This alleviates a lot of work from the CPU. So, if you look at it, it's like running a quad core APU. So, taking players away from multiplayer or doing stupid stuff like that is unnecessary.
Also, it's not impossible to port games from 7-6 year old hardware to something more modern. It's just that developers have been so used to offloading a ton of crap to the CPU and are totally new to programming to a GPGPU. Now, I believe the CPU in the WiiU is slow. However, I believe it was intentional to get developers to program for the much superior GPGPU. However, developers get lazy and don't want to do it. They want to simply ignore the GPGPU and simply copy and paste their games to the WiiU for a quick buck.
pieatorium
Member
Dragon Age 3?
SapientWolf
Trucker Sexologist
GPUs are terrible at running general purpose code, and it's only worth it for massively parallelizable problems like physics, video processing, or raster graphics.
TUROK
Member
Yep. Stream processors and CUDA cores still aren't anywhere near as good as running general purpose code like CPU's can.
BobTheFork
Member
It's next iteration hardware. I never thought time alone defined a hardware generation. I thought it was more about a generation leap in tech as in a gap. The WiiU doesn't have a tech gap on anything right now.
Stumpokapow
listen to the mad man
Occam's Razor:
The "unprecedented support" remark was a bit of premature marketing buzz, John Riccitiello being on stage didn't mean shit
The Origin stuff is totally bogus and based on hysterical fan wishes and ambiguities in how Nintendo mentioned "flexibility for third parties to implement online services" and "working with third parties to meet online needs"
Osiris
I permanently banned my 6 year old daughter from using the PS4 for mistakenly sending grief reports as it's too hard to watch or talk to her
Nevertheless, even Wii got more EA support iirc. And i don't think it was only PR.
Agent Icebeezy
Welcome beautful toddler, Madison Elizabeth, to the horde!
Tiger is typically a March title.
Quinton McLeod
Banned
Not necessarily true (unless you're referring to nVidia, which I'm sure you're not).
Here's a good link which explains why:
http://graphics.stanford.edu/~mhouston/public_talks/R520-mhouston.pdf
Nothing too detailed, but GPGPUs excel at processes gaming applications utilize the most.
Doc Holliday
SPOILER: Columbus finds America
Cloud gaming is a huge money sink, Nintendo would be the last company to get into that business.
You kind of can.
That is not completely true, sure the DX API can take up more CPU time than it should and yes you can not program to the metal on PC GPUs, but OSs take up just about nothing other than RAM, same with other programs unless they have been told to do something.
No, what you just stated is the BS.
GPUs are only good at a small subset of code .
A lot of devs are not new to GPGPU programming.
In both the PC space and the 360 (due to it also having a GPGPU) (and Cell is also not far removed from the idea), it is just that it is not good for anything that is not easily parallelizable code.
No matter what, slow CPU = cutdowns or poor performance
Devs are not lazy!
You should just stop talking about things you do not understand.
Vermillion
Banned
How did we find out about exactly how terrible it was only this launch week?
By that, I mean, where were the dev comments saying "this system is shit, nothing runs properly" (hyperbole) before now?
By that, I mean, where were the dev comments saying "this system is shit, nothing runs properly" (hyperbole) before now?
I feel I should note that same year JR started the EA press conference stating that they didn't need awkward celebrity appearances, and then 15 minutes later they brought out awkward football stars.
Outside of the first year Wii U won't be part of this ecosystem.
You'll see X360/PS3/Wii-U titles sure but those big AAA 3rd party games will be developed for the high-end consoles and PC in mind.
Wii U doesn't have a weird architecture... It basically uses the equivalent of parts you can buy at new egg sans their controller. It just has a weak GPU and CPU compared to what's out today on the PC market. I don't know if anyone has seen actual gameplay of Metro: Last Light, but to get that game to run on 360 and PS3 is a miracle enough and Far Cry 3 is suffering from low frame rate and screen tearing. These systems are on their last leg. When their new iterations are released and everyone is using DirectX 11 and whatever Sony's equivalent to that is going to be, then, unless the Wii U is the basis for development, you're going to see some horrible downports or no ports on the console. Developers shouldn't have to be forced to downgrade their game just because a company decided to release a product that's targeted to families who are just looking for a fun experience and not so much a graphical tour de force.
Some of the comments on here are so ignorant that I don't know if people are being sarcastic or if they are really that low on the intelligence scale or that naive about technology.
Some of the comments on here are so ignorant that I don't know if people are being sarcastic or if they are really that low on the intelligence scale or that naive about technology.
Quinton McLeod
Banned
This isn't true.
The OS takes up more resources than just RAM and a few cycles from the CPU. It's one of the reasons why several games run faster in Windows XP than in Windows 7 (outside of drivers).
That small subset of code extends further than you think. I'm not saying the GPGPU is a complete replacement of the CPU.
I'm saying it can take off a lot of stress from the CPU. I've said this already.
The GPU inside the Xbox 360 is an R520 based on the ATI Radeon X1800. AMD didn't start adapting GPGPU coding until a few years after the Xbox 360 was released. Therefore, the GPU inside the Xbox 360 wasn't designed from the ground up to support general purpose processing. To imply that developers are suddenly gurus at GPGPU is a bit silly. It's fairly new to all of us. Some developers _ARE_ lazy.
Don't quit your day job.
1) Hmm... Where can I buy a CPU and GPU from two manufacturers on the same silicon on Newegg? I'm not talking about an APU either.
2) Weak GPU? Dunno about that. No one knows what it is for sure, but we've got a few guesses.
3) You think Fary Cry 3 is demanding too much of the consoles? That's why it's doing all of that? Well, explain Halo 4 please.
4) Sony's equivalent to Direct X is OpenGL ES.
5) Down ports from the PS4 and X720? Somehow, I doubt it.
6) Some of the comments are ignorant? Does that also include your own?
Just watched the IGN review of NFL 13 and looks like the much touted "Infinity Engine" is missing.
Wii U version haz no physics. Another sloppy copy pasta job for quick cash grab. Meh, it's a video game of a game with collisions and a ball; who needs physics in it anyways? Fun>Attempted untenable realism.
Wii U version haz no physics. Another sloppy copy pasta job for quick cash grab. Meh, it's a video game of a game with collisions and a ball; who needs physics in it anyways? Fun>Attempted untenable realism.
This argument should be used to describe why consoles are allowed to achieve superior visuals to PCs with identical specs. It has no relevance to the Wii U, which, while is of an uncertain composition, certainly does not contain anything resembling modern PC specs.
This is an incredible leap of logic. You're saying that they intentionally gimped parts of their hardware to steer development in a certain direction?
lwilliams3
Member
In the case of the Wii U's CPU, though, one of its strength may actually be its ability to run general code efficient if its an upgrade of Broadway. The 360/PS3's CPU are apparently bad at running general code, and Broadway was only a little slower than a single core of the other systems in some things despite the significant clock frequency difference.
I know, RIGHT?! I should totally spend $350 on a console that's likely less reliable than one 6 months from now with a larger battery for games that are unannounced!
I've hated Nintendo's PR since after N64. Remember Nintendo ULTRA 64? They actually showed stuff off, specs AND games
Quinton McLeod
Banned
No, windows versions have very little speed difference when running programs.
No it does not!
It can not take off anything that does not map well to it!
No it is not!
It is very dissimilar to the R520!
It is closer to the R600!
If the GPU in the WiiU is based off the rv740 then it is also not designed from the ground up for it! Only GPUs based on GCN are!
But Nvidia GPUs have been for sometime and devs do know what they are doing!
Calling devs lazy because they are telling the truth about a system you have a childish attachment to says a hell of a lot about you!
Don't quit yours!
Unknown Soldier
Member
I thought that the GPU in the Wii U was already demonstrated to be a thinly disguised R740, not unlike the RSX in PS3 which is pretty much just an NV47 with half the memory bandwidth. I doubt there is a bunch of customization in it.
Fourth Storm
Member
My guess is that the eDRAM provides some benefit to using compute shaders. And that's probably the extent that it's a GPGPU any more than the others in the R700 line. It's certainly not going to be modified to the extent that it's comparable to Southern Islands at GPGPU. Way too many SRAM registers on those cards to duplicate at 40nm.
SapientWolf
Trucker Sexologist
A GPU is designed to take in a huge data set and run one instruction on each piece of data in the set. The amount of speed up that can be gained by running an algorithm on a GPU is a function of the size of the data set and how parallelizable the algorithm is. For example, UE4 uses the GPU to render over a million of particles without impacting game performance. That is a typical example of offloading work to the GPU. But if the CPU is clocked too slow to run the main game thread fast enough then the GPU won't help in that case.
The 360 GPU started out as R400, which was put on hold/put aside and eventually became the R500 with the development of Xenos. Didn't really have anything to do with the R520.
Also in an industry where budgets are a concern, I find it hard to believe any studio worth mentioning would keep a lazy dev employed. =P
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