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Wii U has 2GB of DDR3 RAM, [Up: RAM 43% slower than 360/PS3 RAM]

wsippel

Banned
Could it be flash storage?
Maybe. Hynix manufactures both RAM and flash. But why would there be two different flash chips, and why would one of them be so close to the MCM? The guys doing the teardown promised high res photos of all the chips, but I don't think they're available yet.


They went the cheaper route pretty much
Pretty sure faster RAM and no eDRAM would have been quite a bit cheaper, actually. There's more to this decision.
 

codhand

Member
6369805157_c552ec9482_z.jpg

They should have gone with this mid century modern ram.

There's still hope though, maybe this is what the edRam looks like

 

sTeLioSco

Banned
To be honest, I didn't think any of the console manufacturers were stupid enough a year and a half ago to use strictly DDRx ram. I was wrong. I'll be glad to admit I was wrong. For the worse. I guess people like hearing big numbers, even if it's slow (hence MS putting 8gb of DDRx into the next Xbox, for example). 2GB of GDDR5 was on the PS4's spec sheet, but that's likely out the window now thanks to Sony probably wanting approximate parity with MS' box.

thats sad.
 

StevieP

Banned
advantages: videoochating while playing games?

What Microsoft "presumably" has in store for non-gaming stuff is astounding, actually. Think what the expensive PVRs from your cable/sat co can do, but more. Surface, Kinect, Windows 8 boxes, all of these things will interface simultaneously and the plan is to have a lot of "family"/"wife" draw to the box. At least that's the "theory"... That takes a lot of memory amount-wise and why there are persistant rumours about a large chunk of memory being unavailable to use out of the 8GB of DDRx (currently DDR3).

Stuff like that is why amount is more important than raw speed, in any case. Graphics chips like faster memory. Everything else just wants more.
 

mrklaw

MrArseFace
Bookmark your own post. It's not going to be standard.



1080p was already a PR goal this gen, if you recall. You can't play that card twice.


I think it will be, but '1080p' so either dynamic resolution or something like 1280x1080 or even 960x1080.
 

beril

Member
How does the latency compare between GDDR3 and DDR3? That's what nintendo has always focused on, not the bandwith. I can only find information about DDR3
 

1-D_FTW

Member
What Microsoft "presumably" has in store for non-gaming stuff is astounding, actually. Think what the expensive PVRs from your cable/sat co can do, but more. Surface, Kinect, Windows 8 boxes, all of these things will interface simultaneously and the plan is to have a lot of "family"/"wife" draw to the box. At least that's the "theory"... That takes a lot of memory amount-wise and why there are persistant rumours about a large chunk of memory being unavailable to use out of the 8GB of DDRx (currently DDR3).

Stuff like that is why amount is more important than raw speed, in any case. Graphics chips like faster memory. Everything else just wants more.

Isn't the latest rumor just HDMI pass-through? I'll agree it's got a place under the TV (unlike other consoles of the future) if it's got cablecard 2.0 built in. But that's looking like a false rumor it seems.
 

StevieP

Banned
Isn't the latest rumor just HDMI pass-through? I'll agree it's got a place under the TV (unlike other consoles of the future) if it's got cablecard 2.0 built in. But that's looking like a false rumor it seems.

Eh. We could have multiple SKUs with more functionality. Who knows. In either case, there will be a standard feature list on the box that's very "family oriented".
 
Based on the rumoured set ups for the nextbox/PS4 (I know nothing is nailed down), are we talking about those consoles outperforming the Wii U by 4, 5, 6 , 7 times the Wii U in this particular aspect?

I'm not knowledgeable in the tech side of things.
 

zoukka

Member
Based on the rumoured set ups for the nextbox/PS4 (I know nothing is nailed down), are we talking about those consoles outperforming the Wii U by 4, 5, 6 , 7 times the Wii U in this particular aspect?

I'm not knowledgeable in the tech side of things.

Forget "times x" comparisons. I think it's safe to say they are going to be roughly in similar distance to each other as Wii and 360/PS4 were.
 

Blades64

Banned
I'm confused. Don't have enough time to catch up on the thread, but from what I'm reading the Wii U (in terms of RAM) doesn't seem that much more powerful than current gen, which is sad because of the third parties. If someone was only going Wii U next gen, I think they will miss out on a lot of games. Hence why I'm going Wii U/PC.

Still though, It's kinda sad on Nintendo's part. Put something at least clearly better than what's offered in the current generation. I guess I'll wait until I see some of that 'Nintendo magic' to give final judgement on the entire system specs wise.
 

StevieP

Banned
Based on the rumoured set ups for the nextbox/PS4 (I know nothing is nailed down), are we talking about those consoles outperforming the Wii U by 4, 5, 6 , 7 times the Wii U in this particular aspect?

I'm not knowledgeable in the tech side of things.

Multipliers are useless. Let's try to stay away from those. They're going to be a lot better. Not high end PC better, but quite a bit stronger than the Wii U in every aspect.

With that said, at least the Wii U isn't in the same situation as the Wii in regards to *running* the same engines. Sadly, most publishers probably won't give a damn in regards to porting content. Minimal time, budget, and effort if any.

I think it's safe to say they are going to be roughly in similar distance to each other as Wii and 360/PS3 were.

Eh... I don't think that much.
 

Thraktor

Member
Maybe. Hynix manufactures both RAM and flash. But why would there be two different flash chips, and why would one of them be so close to the MCM? The guys doing the teardown promised high res photos of all the chips, but I don't think they're available yet.

I remember a rumour a long while back saying that the OS had its own 512MB of flash memory, distinct from the 8/32GB of advertised flash. It's possible that that's it, and if it was TOR or PCM it would explain why it's separate. That said, I've no idea why the OS would need something like that when it's got 1GB of RAM to play with.

Fake edit: Was the Wii's flash TOR? Maybe it's necessary for BC.
 

wsippel

Banned
Forget "times x" comparisons. I think it's safe to say they are going to be roughly in similar distance to each other as Wii and 360/PS4 were.
That is extremely unlikely for a number of reasons so obvious that I won't even bother mentioning them.
 
Forget "times x" comparisons. I think it's safe to say they are going to be roughly in similar distance to each other as Wii and 360/PS4 were.

I see. I was only talking in terms of the 17GB quoted in the OP. I know performance depends on a lot of things, I was just wondering whether those consoles would have an 'on paper' value of 100GB+ for this particular aspect.

By the sounds of it then, we could potentially have a 3rd party situation similar to the Wii after a few years then. 3rd party support will likely remain strong while the PS3/360 software sales remain high but as they decline we'll likely see more 3rd parties focus on PC/Nextbox/Orbis.

It would be interesting to hear the logic on Nintendo's decision on this matter. If the next gen is the last proper generation of home consoles and Sony and Microsoft will try and extend that last generation as long as possible. . .will Nintendo jump ship from the Wii U in 5/6 years and release a console that could compete with the Nextbox/Orbis in terms of performance to get two generations out of Sony/Microsoft's one?
 

wsippel

Banned
I remember a rumour a long while back saying that the OS had its own 512MB of flash memory, distinct from the 8/32GB of advertised flash. It's possible that that's it, and if it was TOR or PCM it would explain why it's separate. That said, I've no idea why the OS would need something like that when it's got 1GB of RAM to play with.

Fake edit: Was the Wii's flash TOR? Maybe it's necessary for BC.
Maybe. I guess we have to wait for photos.
 
It is a measurement of mental age vs chronological age.

Tell me, what is the difference between how a 30 year old and a 40 year old think?

That is why it is irrelevant at a certain age.
In usage these days of the term "IQ" people are generally, afaik, referring to performance in tests of "intelligence" benchmarked to a standard curve with mean of 100.
 

Thraktor

Member
I don't see main memory bandwidth in MS or Sony's next consoles exceeding 70GB/s or so, on the basis of GDDR5 being infeasible at the quantities they're planning, and 256 bit being the maximum feasible bus width in a console.

Edit: Of course, I'd expect MS's console to have eDRAM on the GPU. Not sure if Sony will go that route.
 

radcliff

Member
It would be interesting to hear the logic on Nintendo's decision on this matter. If the next gen is the last proper generation of home consoles and Sony and Microsoft will try and extend that last generation as long as possible. . .will Nintendo jump ship from the Wii U in 5/6 years and release a console that could compete with the Nextbox/Orbis in terms of performance to get two generations out of Sony/Microsoft's one?

5/6 year console cycle is typical for Nintendo, so I would say "yes." The way I always saw it, by time 3rd parties really start to take advantage of XBX3/PS4 specs so that ports wouldn't be possible/justified on Wii U, Nintendo would be gearing up for their next console which would slightly outclass those systems. Probably closer to 5 years than 6, but Nintendo may want to stretch out this gen a little longer to try and recoup r&d costs.
 

Izcarielo

Banned
Im not a very technical guy at all, so i dont get why Ps3 got 120Mb of ram reserved to its OS at launch and Wii U is getting 1GB. Isnt that too much of an overkill?
 

DSN2K

Member
good luck to the developers who have to scale games built for 6GB+ ram to this. Personally dont see it happening.
 
So, what is the current stand on the situation, is it shit or not?

Like all hardware threads we appear to have moved from 'pretty shitty' to 'need more information but still likely shitty'.

Basically its cheap RAM and Nintendo may or may not be making up for it somewhere/someway. As far as am reading this. But its possible they just went cheap.

Im not a very technical guy at all, so i dont get why Ps3 got 120Mb of ram reserved to its OS at launch and Wii U is getting 1GB. Isnt that too much of an overkill?

Its just not optimised yet so this might be reduced in future or not. Its a bigger OS than the PS3 had but from the stuff I've seen so far its very clunky atm, often loading the Nintendo Network multiple times through multiple apps.

Gamepad is also a large function I think that the OS deals with.
 

zoukka

Member
That is extremely unlikely for a number of reasons so obvious that I won't even bother mentioning them.

Bare in mind, I was only talking about pure tech specs here, I know Wii U is in much better situation that Wii, now that it basically supports all modern engines and standard methods of developing graphics, unlike the Wii did.
 

z0m3le

Banned
Bare in mind, I was only talking about pure tech specs here, I know Wii U is in much better situation that Wii, now that it basically supports all modern engines and standard methods of developing graphics, unlike the Wii did.

You were giving us an opinion of what you think future consoles will look like based on rumors, and then exaggerated them grossly to fit your above statement. Wii U's specs (at least the most important ones) are still unknown, but even if they only matched last gen's hardware, the difference you are talking about still wouldn't exist.
 
So in this thread people is quoting a memory comparison without BUS WIDTH, and overreacting against some engineers giving more system RAM because it is 'slower' than PS360 GPU RAM.

1. CPUs loves low latency, it's GPU who needs higher bandwidth.
2. PS3 system RAM BUS is 64bit, and 360's 128 bits bus is shared between CPU and GPU.
3. If right now OS is slow have nothing to do with slower RAM. Any smartphone have pityful bandwidth and their OSes fly.
4. 32MB eDRAM should be enough, if my math don't fail, to 1080P x2 AA.

As far as I understand, this memory setup is MUCH better than PS360 ones.
 
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