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[tranciful]

Edit:

The physics in HL2 are nice but I wouldn't say the game itself really needed it to progress. Especially for what appears to be a FPS at heart.

...what? Gravity gun. Hello? It was a KEY part of the game.

edit: And what's with people thinking "modern shaders" are the only thing that held the Wii back? Shaders aren't particularly integral to a game and on older hardware you can just fall back to simpler shaders. Wii ports would have required a lot more reworking than just the shaders.

 

[Log4Girlz]

Oh boy, the collective meltdowns would be so strong it would change Earth's orbit if that turns to be true.

As stated earlier it would probably be rubbed in the Wii U's detractor's faces as if the only issue we have with the cpu is its clock speed and not the combination of ancient architecture and clock speed.

 

[Apophis2036]

Interesting. I'm not going to lie that gets me really hyped for built from the ground up Wii U games.

The Wii's GPU was 243MHz so imagine what Nintendo can do with a modern GPU with 550MHz

The Wii GPU was 12 GFLOPs, WiiU's GPU is around 350 - 500 GFLOPs = ~ 30x as powerful.

The Wii's Ram was 88MB's, WiiU's Ram is 2GB's.

The Wii's CPU was a single core 729 MHz CPU, WiiU's CPU is a Tri Core 1.2 GHz CPU.

WiiU has 32MB's of eDRAM and a Dedicated Audio chip.

Built from the ground up exclusive WiiU games are going to look incredible, whatever happens with third parties .

 

[Teletraan1]

Ok so the Wii U gets PS4/720 ports. These end of cycle console games on PS360 are an embarrassment in terms of IQ and frame rate. Releasing a game that runs 15-20 FPS is not acceptable and I don't wish that on anyone. If developers refuse to trim back graphics for the main platforms enough now to provide acceptable frame rates what makes you think they will do it for these hypothetical Wii U ports. Star Wars 1313 running at 15FPS isn't worth the disc it is printed on.

 

[gregor7777]

Edit:

The physics in HL2 are nice but I wouldn't say the game itself really needed it to progress. Especially for what appears to be a FPS at heart.

This doesn't happen too often. But every now and then you get a poster acting like he's played a game and can thus comment on it's gameplay in a manner that tells the rest of us he has most certainly not played the game and shouldn't be commenting on it.

 

[Log4Girlz]

Built from the ground up exclusive WiiU games are going to look incredible, whatever happens with third parties .

Though I am not impressed with new mario bros. Wii u, I fully expect the next galaxy game to melt my fucking face.

 

[shinra-bansho]

This doesn't happen too often. But every now and then you get a poster acting like he's played a game and can thus comment on it's gameplay in a manner that tells the rest of us he has most certainly not played the game and shouldn't be commenting on it.

Must have been too busy counting the polygons.

 

[ArynCrinn]

Whether it's theoretically possible to port from 720/PS4 is irrelevant. It comes down to money, effort and targeting. Pub's will surely be hedging strongly on 720/PS4 main demo's, the Wii U is still seen as a risk (technical limitations aside) due to demographics and history. Nintendo still simply doesn't have a strong basis and platform for strong third-party relations, the hardware deficiency doesn't help. I don't see any evidence of that changing whatsoever, even the Wii's install base and money printing didn't change it. Anyone thinking otherwise is wishing upon a star and not thinking empirically.

Besides, while we're arguing about Wii U getting inferior ports...who really wants to buy them?

 

[FLEABttn]

I mean, do you guys also think ps360 could get toned down versions of next gen games as well? They've got CPU's and GPU's and RAM and all that good stuff, too.

It depends entirely on the circumstances. A Voodoo2 could run Doom 3. Terribly ugly yes, but not like id even tried to make that happen.

If the profit is there to do it, expect it to be done.

 

[Jinfash]

Speaking of next-gen 3rd party games: I have no doubt that we'll be seeing a high number of them on all three systems, but if some pubs decide to push the as of yet unannounced consoles harder for their AAA/big-budget title, I wonder how will they handle marketing and release of media. Will we run again into cases of screen/coverage scarcity until a couple of weeks before release?

 

[Meelow]

The Wii GPU was 12 GFLOPs, WiiU's GPU is around 350 - 500 GFLOPs = ~ 30x as powerful.

The Wii's Ram was 88MB's, WiiU's Ram is 2GB's.

The Wii's CPU was a single core 729 MHz CPU, WiiU's CPU is a Tri Core 1.2 GHz CPU.

WiiU has 32MB's of eDRAM and a Dedicated Audio chip.

Built from the ground up exclusive WiiU games are going to look incredible, whatever happens with third parties .

Is it wrong that I still have hope for a 600GFLOP GPU from what BG said?

And yes, Wii U exclusive games are going to look beautiful, I feel 3D Mario will definitely compete and possibly look better then some PS4/720 games, I say that because to me Mario Galaxy was already competing with the earlier 360 games.

And if Nintendo does realistic Zelda then Hyrule Field will look amazing, and the top of the line third party exclusives.

This gen graphics on all systems

I do have a theory about why Nintendo didn't show top Wii U games yet and only the games we've seen, I think that Nintendo doesn't want Sony/Microsoft to know how good a Wii U game can be so Sony and Microsoft will have go go they're own way with the PS4/720 tech demos so at E3 2013 if Nintendo shows a Wii U game that looks almost as good as a PS4/720 game then it will look better on Nintendo.

I could be very wrong though and just having high hopes.

I am also really excited to see what Halo 5 and Uncharted 4? will look like.

 

[Oblivion]

Posted this in the Wii-U tech thread. There are some new Nano Assault videos that were released this week:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkoHOGCc66E

Looks pretty good, right? My only problem is that the light emanating from the stars looks like bloom lighting rather than the more modern HDR.*

*I have no idea what I'm talking about.

 

[Insane Metal]

Yeah, people forget that technology advancement is more important than Ghz. The first processors to get to 3Ghz were the P4. That was back in 2002 IIRC. 10 years later, how further have we gone? 4Ghz? But if you compare the 22nm microarchitecture of today with the 130nm of that time you know what happens.

 

[MoonLightWave]

Yeah, people forget that technology advancement is more important than Ghz. The first processors to get to 3Ghz were the P4. That was back in 2002 IIRC. 10 years later, how further have we gone? 4Ghz? But if you compare the 22nm microarchitecture of today with the 130nm of that time you know what happens.

Something slow will always be something slow even with new tech.

 

[Insane Metal]

Something slow will always be something slow even with new tech.

Uh... ok then

 

[Orayn]

Something slow will always be something slow even with new tech.

Gekko/Broadway/Espresso isn't slow by nature. The architecture is really fast compared to many other CPUs on the clock for clock basis. The remaining questions are where the Wii U stands compared to the 360, and how much of a limiting factor it will be when Durango and Orbis come out.

 

[A More Normal Bird]

Something slow will always be something slow even with new tech.

This is a pretty pointless statement. A slow processor is still slow even if it's new? Right, but the point is that clockspeed isn't the sole determinant of what makes something slow. The Wii U's CPU has a significantly lower clock speed than the 360's. It is not a significantly slower processor. This isn't even because it's new, it's more that the Xenon and Cell aren't great at general purpose code.

 

[Oblivion]

The Wii GPU was 12 GFLOPs, WiiU's GPU is around 350 - 500 GFLOPs = ~ 30x as powerful.

The Wii's Ram was 88MB's, WiiU's Ram is 1 GB.

The Wii's CPU was a single core 729 MHz CPU, WiiU's CPU is a Tri Core 1.2 GHz CPU.

WiiU has 32MB's of eDRAM and a Dedicated Audio chip.

Built from the ground up exclusive WiiU games are going to look incredible, whatever happens with third parties .

Fixed.

Though agreed with your overall point. I'll say it again, as of this point I really don't give a shit if Wii-U will get downgraded ports of Durango/PS4/whatever. The main thing I'm waiting for is to see what kind of crazy shit the likes of EAD Tokyo, the Zelda team and Retro can do with this new power. The SMG games look gorgeous even on ma new 1080p HDTV, so SMG3 is gonna be sensory overload.

 

[Takuya]

Fixed.

Though agreed with your overall point. I'll say it again, as of this point I really don't give a shit if Wii-U will get downgraded ports of Durango/PS4/whatever. The main thing I'm waiting for is to see what kind of crazy shit the likes of EAD Tokyo, the Zelda team and Retro can do with this new power. The SMG games look gorgeous even on ma new 1080p HDTV, so SMG3 is gonna be sensory overload.

Downgraded? I'd probably think it won't get ports of most of those games. Ports of current gen games? No doubt, next-gen? Depends if the developers think it'll even be worth having their engines support WiiU.

 

[LeleSocho]

Something slow will always be something slow even with new tech.

So my 2.2Ghz i7 is slower than my old Core2Duo at 3.0Ghz and that was slower than a Pentium4 at 4Ghz? well it sure seems like a flawless logic.

 

[AmFreak]

Gekko wasn't slow by nature. The architecture was really fast compared to many other CPUs on the clock for clock basis.

Fixed.

 

[teh_pwn]

Edit: What ^ posted. I mean Apple ditched power970 in 2004(?). Innovation continued.

Gekko/Broadway/Espresso isn't slow by nature. The architecture is really fast compared to many other CPUs on the clock for clock basis. The remaining questions are where the Wii U stands compared to the 360, and how much of a limiting factor it will be when Durango and Orbis come out.

Based on what exactly? Granted I'm venturing into areas I'm not too familiar with, but comparing the MIPS per MHz of an i7 2600K versus Broadway:
1. i7 2600K: 37.7 per MHz
2. Broadway: 2.5 per MHz or I guess 7.5 for 3 cores.

If my understanding or source is faulty, please correct me.

 

[test_account]

Aren't Sony and Microsoft essentially locked into some version of the prisoners' dilemma? If they both build big beastly machines, third party support will inevitably gravitate towards the 2/3 machines with similar power. But if only one of them bets on a huge loss leading behemoth but the other hedges and sticks to a moderate U styled upgrade, the one who went with power gets shafted, no?

Obviously this is of more concern to Sony.

I dont think this would be the case. Having more power would mean that porting is even simpler, since you dont have to think that much about optimizing the port for it to run good.

 

[Apophis2036]

Though I am not impressed with new mario bros. Wii u, I fully expect the next galaxy game to melt my fucking face.

NSMB U was originally developed for Wii and rushed out for launch, the game is fantastic fun imo but if people are actually judging what the system can do on that or Nintendo Land or Pikmin 3 they are nuts imo .

What we have seen if first party games 'up ported from Wii', a mass market Wii Sports type experience and a bunch of fast, cheap PS360 ports.

I will be right behind you if second generation ports are just as bad and the big exclusive Nintendo games are a disappointment but people are too fast to judge the console imo.

Like i said im waiting on E3 2013 before i judge the system and in the meantime there are around 10 great looking exclusives to enjoy and a ton of PS360 multi plats and exclusives, im in no hurry .

 

[KojiKnight]

Edit: What ^ posted. I mean Apple ditched power970 in 2003. Innovation continued.



Based on what exactly? Granted I'm venturing into areas I'm not too familiar with, but comparing the MIPS per MHz of an i7 2600K versus Broadway:
1. i7 2600K: 37.7 per MHz
2. Broadway: 2.5 per MHz or I guess 7.5 for 3 cores.

If my understanding or source is faulty, please correct me.

Unfortunately, he left out a part before that, which is per watt. i7 eats a lot more power than broadway which is something along the lines of 5-10 watts and on much older tech. I wouldn't be surprised if the Wii U CPU uses even less power than that.

 

[Meelow]

NSMB U was originally developed for Wii and rushed out for launch, the game is fantastic fun imo but if people are actually judging what the system can do on that or Nintendo Land or Pikmin 3 they are nuts imo .

What we have seen if first party games 'up ported from Wii', a mass market Wii Sports type experience and a bunch of fast, cheap PS360 ports.

I will be right behind you if second generation ports are just as bad and the big exclusive Nintendo games are a disappointment but people are too fast to judge the console imo.

Like i said im waiting on E3 2013 before i judge the system and in the meantime there are around 10 great looking exclusives to enjoy and a ton of PS360 multi plats and exclusives, im in no hurry .

Wait what?

 

[Apophis2036]

Is it wrong that I still have hope for a 600GFLOP GPU from what BG said?

And yes, Wii U exclusive games are going to look beautiful, I feel 3D Mario will definitely compete and possibly look better then some PS4/720 games, I say that because to me Mario Galaxy was already competing with the earlier 360 games.

And if Nintendo does realistic Zelda then Hyrule Field will look amazing, and the top of the line third party exclusives.

This gen graphics on all systems

I do have a theory about why Nintendo didn't show top Wii U games yet and only the games we've seen, I think that Nintendo doesn't want Sony/Microsoft to know how good a Wii U game can be so Sony and Microsoft will have go go they're own way with the PS4/720 tech demos so at E3 2013 if Nintendo shows a Wii U game that looks almost as good as a PS4/720 game then it will look better on Nintendo.

I could be very wrong though and just having high hopes.

I am also really excited to see what Halo 5 and Uncharted 4? will look like.

I don't think anyone knows the answer to that mate apart from developers working on the console who are all under strict NDA's until at least E3 next year i would imagine.

I do trust BG and loved reading his posts, i hope it hits 600 GFLOPs just to annoy the stream of people who like to attack him now that he doesnt post.

Im going for 450 - 500 GFLOPs tops, (roughly 2x Xenos) but im pretty clueless on in depth tech analysis .

 

[Apophis2036]

Wait what?

No confirmation but i read on here it was 6 - 9 months into development for Wii (Pikmin 3 was far further into development, over a year i believe), just last week, will try find the link tomorrow its late here .

Go look at NSMB Wii videos on Youtube, it really is the same game in HD with a few affects added here and there.

 

[teh_pwn]

Unfortunately, he left out a part before that, which is per watt. i7 eats a lot more power than broadway which is something along the lines of 5-10 watts and on much older tech. I wouldn't be surprised if the Wii U CPU uses even less power than that.

Power efficiency is great with appliances that do the same job as less efficient ones, but if it doesn't do the job at all then why care?

At least from my perspective, power efficiency takes the back seat to specs, especially considering how low power Wii U already is. I've got a 220W plasma, audio system that peaks around 500W, and I'm to worry about a CPU taking up another 40W? Why?

 

[Meelow]

No confirmation but i read on here it was 6 - 9 months into development for Wii (Pikmin 3 was far further into development, over a year i believe), just last week, will try find the link tomorrow its late here .

Go look at NSMB Wii videos on Youtube, it really is the same game in HD with a few affects added here and there.

Yeah it pretty much is, nothing on it really looks "next gen" it does look better then what the Wii could do of course with the lighting, and some of the textures.

I don't think anyone knows the answer to that mate apart from developers working on the console who are all under strict NDA's until at least E3 next year i would imagine.

I do trust BG and loved reading his posts, i hope it hits 600 GFLOPs just to annoy the stream of people who like to attack him now that he doesnt post.

Im going for 450 - 500 GFLOPs (roughly 2x Xenos) but im pretty clueless on in depth tech analysis .

Yeah, I'll put my expectations for 450-500 just in case.

 

[Instro]

No confirmation but i read on here it was 6 - 9 months into development for Wii (Pikmin 3 was far further into development, over a year i believe), just last week, will try find the link tomorrow its late here .

Go look at NSMB Wii videos on Youtube, it really is the same game in HD with a few affects added here and there.

Regardless of whether it actually went into development on the Wii, the game is clearly built from the Wii engine. There's certainly a lot more going on visually and in the backgrounds, but much like Pikmin you can tell where it came from.

 

[McHuj]

I think people are too fixated on the clock speeds. Yes, it's 1.2 GHz (allegedly), I think the bigger factors indicating that it's a weak CPU are: power consumption of the WiiU (majority will be used by the GPU) and the tiny size of the chip itself. It's only 33mm^2 and on an old 45nm process.

Assuming that the GPU consumes 20-25 watts of the typical ~40W load, that leaves what 5-10W for the CPU?. Not much room to do a lot of work there.

The typical densities for AMD and Intel on 45nm were 2.6~3 million transistors per mm^2. Assume that IBM was capable of getting 2X that (and that's super generous) thanks to the lower clock and EDRAM for L2 caches, 6 million transistors per mm^2 only gets you a 200 million transistor CPU.

 

[FyreWulff]

I don't know they have to think about it not me... but even if they make games that fully uses Move or Kinect they will not be replicable on wiiu...
I'm talking about games that uses that kind of thing as the main core of gameplay not old games genre with those features... and even if i was talking about those should i remind you how Half-Life 2 is considered one of the best game ever also thanks to its advanced (for the time) physics... all of those things are not possible on weaker or different hardware and yet some people continue to say that only Nintendo consoles are capable to change gameplay.

I can give you a very concrete example on how power can make evolution in gameplay... Dead Rising, it handles a shit-ton of characters at the same time and it is its main mechanics to gameplay, when you try to port it to something less powerful you have... well... Dead Rising Wii.

Half Life 2 ran on the original Xbox. Havok was also supported on the GameCube. Physics won't be a problem.

 

[shinra-bansho]

Is it wrong that I still have hope for a 600GFLOP GPU from what BG said?

IIRC, BG and/or his sources were part of the reason a tricore Broadway was initially dismissed as a possibility because he was told that there would be two hardware threads...

I do have a theory about why Nintendo didn't show top Wii U games yet and only the games we've seen, I think that Nintendo doesn't want Sony/Microsoft to know how good a Wii U game can be so Sony and Microsoft will have go go they're own way with the PS4/720 tech demos so at E3 2013 if Nintendo shows a Wii U game that looks almost as good as a PS4/720 game then it will look better on Nintendo.

I could be very wrong though and just having high hopes.

People really need to apply Occam's Razor, because some of these theories are a bit tinfoil hat. It's like in Vita threads where some people think there's a secret deluge of unannounced games in development that are being held back for some reason.

 

[Insane Metal]

So my 2.2Ghz i7 is slower than my old Core2Duo at 3.0Ghz and that was slower than a Pentium4 at 4Ghz? well it sure seems like a flawless logic.

LoL pretty much. That's why I just said "ok then".

 

[KojiKnight]

Power efficiency is great with appliances that do the same job as less efficient ones, but if it doesn't do the job at all then why care?

At least from my perspective, power efficiency takes the back seat to specs, especially considering how low power Wii U already is. I've got a 220W plasma, audio system that peaks around 500W, and I'm to worry about a CPU taking up another 40W? Why?

It's not the fact that they are saving energy, but the other benefits that come with it... Smaller form factor, less cooling needed, lower chance of hardware failure. It's not like Nintendo's engineers were sitting in an office somewhere trying to decide how best to upset consumers.

No one is saying that you personally have to care. You don't. It's your perogative... But that was Nintendo's choice for their hardware, if you don't like it don't buy it... no reason to be on the offensive about it.

 

[Meelow]

IIRC, BG and/or his sources were part of the reason a tricore Broadway was initially dismissed as a possibility because he was told that there would be two hardware threads...
People really need to apply Occam's Razor, because some of these theories are a bit tinfoil hat.

Wait what?

That's why I said "I could be very wrong though and just having high hopes."

 

[teh_pwn]

It's not the fact that they are saving energy, but the other benefits that come with it... Smaller form factor, less cooling needed, lower chance of hardware failure. It's not like Nintendo's engineers were sitting in an office somewhere trying to decide how best to upset consumers.

No one is saying that you personally have to care. You don't. It's your perogative... But that was Nintendo's choice for their hardware, if you don't like it don't buy it... no reason to be on the offensive about it.

If I'm irritated it's directed at Nintendo for choosing what I believe is bad hardware. I'm going to get a Wii U next year. I just would have preferred it to be a Dreamcast compared to 360.

 

[Apophis2036]

Fixed.

Though agreed with your overall point. I'll say it again, as of this point I really don't give a shit if Wii-U will get downgraded ports of Durango/PS4/whatever. The main thing I'm waiting for is to see what kind of crazy shit the likes of EAD Tokyo, the Zelda team and Retro can do with this new power. The SMG games look gorgeous even on ma new 1080p HDTV, so SMG3 is gonna be sensory overload.

WiiU has 2GB's of Ram, the Wii OS took up some of the 88MB's of Ram and so did PS360's OS take up part of their 512MB's of Ram.

The 720 will prob have something mental like 6GB's of Ram but you can bet at least 2GB's of that will be OS / Social features, it won't stop people saying (quite rightly) the system has 6GB's of Ram though.

 

[bobeth]

Wait what?

That's why I said "I could be very wrong though and just having high hopes."

So just because you say you have high hope means he can't call you on your conspiracy theories?

 

[cartman414]

Something slow will always be something slow even with new tech.

Ever heard of IPC? Might wanna look it up.

 

[Mastperf]

PS4 / 720 will be 10x the power of WiiU ?.

Current rumours / leaks put them at 6-7x PS360 and WiiU is roughly 2x 360 so your looking at 5x at most, no where near even 10x or a 20x (fantasy land) graphical leap.

PS4 / 720 =

Lower clocked but more efficient CPU's, much more Ram (take 1GB off for the OS / social aspects), much, much more powerful GPU's compared to PS360.

Not likely at this point.

 

[Apophis2036]

If I'm irritated it's directed at Nintendo for choosing what I believe is bad hardware. I'm going to get a Wii U next year. I just would have preferred it to be a Dreamcast compared to 360.

A console that sent one of the big 3 (at the time) out of business rather than a console that will soon hit 80 million sales... Ok lol.

 

[Apophis2036]

Not likely at this point.

Very likely, 2011 CPU architecture > 2005 CPU architecture, 2011 GPU architecture and features > 2005 GPU, 20 MB's more eDRAM, a dedicated sound chip, 1.5GB's more memory and a more powerful GPU.

It could well end up 3 or 4x a 360 depending on the final GPU FLOP count.

 

[teh_pwn]

A console that sent one of the big 3 (at the time) out of business rather than a console that will soon hit 80 million sales... Ok lol.

I meant power difference. N64C::360:WiiU.

I don't understand how that wasn't obvious given the context of specs. I guess you have to win some argument, whatever it is.

 

[Mastperf]

Very likely, 2011 CPU architecture > 2005 CPU architecture, 2011 GPU architecture and features > 2005 GPU, 20 MB's more eDRAM, a dedicated sound chip, 1.5GB's more memory and a more powerful GPU.

It could well end up 3 or 4x a 360 depending on the final GPU FLOP count.

3-4X? Yeah, ok.

 

[teh_pwn]

3-4X? Yeah, ok.

Seriously, alternate universe sort of reality he's living in. In that reality, it is a DC sort of jump. But in my universe I remember DC's launch and ports running higher res, more textures, faster framerate. Take Soul Calibur versus Soul Edge.

 

[theman5141]

Not likely at this point.

In generic, global multiplier terms, you're probably correct. However, I find it far more sensible to draw comparisons for individualized components - particularly if said components have a very profound impact on the resulting image.

GPU could very likely still give us raw performance 2-3x 360 depending upon the number of stream processors. Not to mention, the DX 10.1 + feature set should take a significant burden off of the GPU in performing certain shader-related tasks.

 

[JaseMath]

I've been following the back and forth, yes-it-does-no-it-doesn't in this thread and I need someone to just give it to me straight in terms I can understand.

As a ranking...if WiiSports is a 1 and The Last of Us is a 10, what's the number we can expect Wii U to produce on the high end? Can we expect Wii U to produce visuals at least on par with the peak of what we've seen this gen or is that asking too much?

 

[Mlatador]

Though I am not impressed with new mario bros. Wii u, I fully expect the next galaxy game to melt my fucking face.

Of course you're not. That game is not meant to impress visually. The New Super Mario Games come with simplistic graphics, since they have to appeal to many different types of gamers. It's no-convoluted graphical style is one of the things that makes it such a beloved "classic" Mario Platformer.