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[cyberheater]

Sounds pretty weak. Wouldn't be surprised if ps3 still has the edge.

We're talking GPU here. You must have meant the 360.

 

[Shadow of the BEAST]

how many flip flops are rsx?

 

[amaron11]

The whole thing does explain the ports problems though. It could take a while for devs to push the chip.

They won't.

 

[The Abominable Snowman]

How did you figure out its power from that photo? The OP doesn't really provide any insight to that for me... And why edit?

Good lord... I'm not nearly tech savvy enough to understand the photo but... Come on.

I edited because the WUST went from 1TF for months, to 800TF, to 600GFLOP (And this was 'accepted' before a few weeks ago), to 400, to today.

 

[DeviousAngel]

Sounds like a typical Nintendo Chip. Tons of custom metal, lots of WTF and in the end surprisingly good looking games.

That's what it sounds like to me.

 

[inHallways]

Fascinating stuff, kudos to Chipworks for being so generous.

I look forward to reading an explanation of some of the finer details from those more knowledgeable on the topic than I.

FAKE EDIT: You were not joking when you said this picture was really large 0_0

 

[Lovely Salsa]

He must be wrong. Xenos in Xbox 360 is 240 GFLOPS.

lol

I sure as hell hope so

 

[Paracelsus]

They won't.

They won't push the chip or port?

 

[z0m3le]

Don't worry, FLOPS are a useless metric anyway and two platforms cannot be compared in such a way.

Honestly, I'm quite surprised that Nintendo went this low. I'm actually impressed what they did... I figure it is still more capable than the 360, but obviously this isn't being achieved on paper, it's more about the crazy customizations with this processor... I'm actually amazed. I figured minimum it would be twice this, but it does give me some relief, I don't have to defend Wii U > 360 anymore, it is certainly an interesting design and I'll have to think of it in a vacuum, since that is the only way it makes sense to me at all.

 

[Shadow of the BEAST]

Like i always said.

The games never lie.

 

[Yamauchi]

The only developers who will be pushing this chip are Nintendo's 1st parties and a perhaps a few 3rd parties they are publishing for / collaborating with.

 

[TheGreatMightyPoo]

Sounds like a typical Nintendo Chip. Tons of custom metal, lots of WTF and in the end surprisingly good looking games.

Without knowing anything about this shit, I'm going with this post.

 

[kinggroin]

Like i always said.

The games never lie.

So more powerful than GameCube?

 

[KillerMan91]

So how in the hell Nintendo is actually losing money with this machine?

 

[amaron11]

I edited because the WUST went from 1TF for months, to 800TF, to 600GFLOP (And this was 'accepted' before a few weeks ago), to 400, to today.

Today: a number that no one can reliably calculate because this is not some off the shelf board.

So how in the hell Nintendo is actually losing money with this machine?

So custom boards are CHEAP now? Good lord, why do I even read these threads?

 

[tipoo]

The smaller orange block above it seems to be about 3MB of eDRAM. This might be the framebuffer for Wii mode, or the L2 texture cache, or something else, we're not 100% sure at this point.

This is probably a quack theory, but the L2 of the CPU was supposed to be exactly 3MB too, is it possible it would be on the GPU die since they are so physically close to each other? As close as they are that would introduce unnecessary latency though. Just a crazy idea.

But yeah...Looks like a LOT less shaders than even a 4870, but with more dedicated hardware.

 

[Schnozberry]

He must be wrong. Xenos in Xbox 360 is 240 GFLOPS.

Direct comparisons in FLOPS are pretty worthless with all the custom fixed function stuff.

I can still remember how doomed Microsoft was when it was revealed that Xenox had 240GFLOPS and somebody at Sony managed to arrange a hypothetical situation where RSX could hit 1.8TFLOPS, and their PR department (and fanboys) ran with it.

 

[AOC83]

Like i always said.

The games never lie.

Of course they don´t. But people don´´t want to hear that.

 

[Kimawolf]

Yeah it's obviously as I've said Nintendo still believes in playing things the old school way, custom silicon, nothing as obvious as the others. It will make any kind of comparisons with numbers skewed because they aren't playing by the same rules.

 

[Lonely1]

I did a quick google search for Wii?s Hollywood die and only found this. Isn't very helpful, :/

Like i always said.

The games never lie.

Lie on what exactly?

 

[D-e-f-]

It weirds me out that there's already a bunch of people in here waiting for confirmation that Wii U is a weak piece of garbage.

Seriously, what's the deal with this nonsense?

Also, you guys are crazy for spending 200 bucks on a photo just to analyze a chip

 

[Neff]

The numbers mean nothing, particularly when comparing hardware manufacture/engineering agendas 6 years apart.

The architecture, which is still a relatively unknown entity, is what's important.

It weirds me out that there's already a bunch of people in here waiting for confirmation that Wii U is a weak piece of garbage.

Seriously, what's the deal with this nonsense?

People have constipated themselves to the point of agony waiting for the green light to authoritatively unload a massive dump on Nintendo and Wii U.

 

[cyberheater]

So... How about them next gen ports then...?

 

[Stet]

Buying a game IS a better use of money than getting the Wii U board under an X-Ray just so people can find out how "weak" it is.

Pretty sure they wanted to buy it because they're interested in the die, not in putting down the Wii U.

 

[amaron11]

It weirds me out that there's already a bunch of people in here waiting for confirmation that Wii U is a weak piece of garbage.

Seriously, what's the deal with this nonsense?

Also, you guys are crazy for spending 200 bucks on a photo just to analyze a chip

 

[wsippel]

This is what I currently have:

http://www.abload.de/img/c10234f5_d813301_13195mk1y.png

Red are the (presumed) shader clusters. Blue are the (presumed) TMUs.

The rest of the colorization are simply self-similar components that may not be layed down exactly in square blocks, but are still recognizable.

On the left of the upper green area are two identical blocks as well.

I also don't think the thing in the bottom left is the DSP.

 

[TheGreatMightyPoo]

Yeah it's obviously as I've said Nintendo still believes in playing things the old school way, custom silicon, nothing as obvious as the others. It will make any kind of comparisons with numbers skewed because they aren't playing by the same rules.

Iwata: ~laughs~

 

[AzaK]

IMGUR

Thanks.

The only developers who will be pushing this chip are Nintendo's 1st parties and a perhaps a few 3rd parties they are publishing for / collaborating with.

I think you might be right. And in fact, it might end up being "The only people that can get games that hit parity with 360/PS3" are Nintendo's 1st parties and collaborations.

Also, you guys are crazy for spending 200 bucks on a photo just to analyze a chip

 

[NateDrake]

So... How about them next gen ports then...?

Porting may be a little harder than originally speculated but should still be possible.

 

[japtor]

I joked about this about a week ago in the specs thread:

Watch it end up being completely foreign looking without any recognizable components.

Well I guess I was partially right so far.

 

[bachikarn]

I edited because the WUST went from 1TF for months, to 800TF, to 600GFLOP (And this was 'accepted' before a few weeks ago), to 400, to today.

That bgassassin guy was full of it, wasn't he?

 

[Schnozberry]

Pretty sure they wanted to buy it because they're interested in the die, not in putting down the Wii U.

And it is pretty interesting. Makes we want to purchase the CPU die to see WTF they did there.

 

[amaron11]

Pretty sure they wanted to buy it because they're interested in the die, not in putting down the Wii U.

I might believe your explanation if I hadn't read just about every Wii U thread here.

 

[Hero of Legend]

But can it make me Tea?

Some next-gen console, it can't even render Tea. :/

 

[JJD]

Congrats on everyone that chipped in.

I hope you guys get credit when every single gaming site out there reports these pictures.

 

[hammster]

Porting may be a little harder than originally speculated but should still be possible.

THAT ISN'T THE ANSWER HE WANTED, DRAKE. WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO PULL HERE?!

 

[cyberheater]

That bgassassin guy was full of it, wasn't he?

Yes he was. And what about that french guy?

 

[The Abominable Snowman]

Today: a number that no one can reliably calculate because this is not some off the shelf board.

Are we all jumping on the 'fixed-function' bandwagon now?

That bgassassin guy was full of it, wasn't he?

That and his 'Developer friend' should have listened to what every other source was saying.

 

[Coolwhip]

Haha, people with absolutely no clue how the tech works are already jumping to conclusions on page 1. Good job!

 

[Interceptor]

Makes you wonder if the bill was actually paid by sony or microsoft to have some nice pr against the competition. ^^

Spoiler

just kidding

 

[Nothing1016]

That bgassassin guy was full of it, wasn't he?

No one could've predicted the amount of fixed-functions and customization this GPU supposedly has. Ill give him the benefit of the doubt.

 

[alr1ght]

zoom and enhance

 

[japtor]

Porting may be a little harder than originally speculated but should still be possible.

I figure it makes the developer tools and whatever middleware optimization that much more important. Closer to the metal they try to get the harder it's likely going to be if there is indeed a bunch of custom stuff on there. If the dev software can abstract it enough then it might not be that big of a deal.

 

[Schnozberry]

Are we all jumping on the 'fixed-function' bandwagon now?

It's no panacea, but it does make direct comparisons difficult, since we don't even know what it does yet.

 

[Glorified G]

So custom boards are CHEAP now? Good lord, why do I even read these threads?

People who are too emotionally invested in Nintendo shouldn't.

 

[Relaxed Muscle]

I might believe your explanation if I hadn't read just about every Wii U thread here.

Fourth Storm, wsippel, Blu, Durante and myself

Some of these posters are big Wii U defenders...so you're wrong. And I know Durante is not that type of poster.

Haha, people with absolutely no clue how the tech works are already jumping to conclusions on page 1. Good job!

Enlighten us, please.

 

[tipoo]

So everyone falling back to "fixed function logic makes it incomparable", it seems to me that the uncore (not sure if that term applies in GPUs, but everything that isn't a shader, eDRAM, TMU etc) parts are about as large as other GPUs. Where is all this fixed logic that will save it?

 

[Proelite]

zoom and enhance

I see what you did there.

 

[The Abominable Snowman]

It's no panacea, but it does make direct comparisons difficult, since we don't even know what it does yet.

Accounting for the GCN/WII T&L fixed function pipelines, what area do you suppose is left over for new functions?

 

[Zombie James]

8 shader units with 20 alus in each = 160ALUs @ 550mhz = 176GFLOPs

Yikes... in the R700 family that would put it ahead of the 4550 and below the 4650. The 4770 (the card everyone assumed it was based on, iirc) is rated at 960 GFLOPS.