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[Durante]

Not for being sceptical.

What then? I mean, his argument was based on a pretty simplistic analysis of the facts, but if conclusions based on simplistic analysis were bannable, then this forum would only have a few dozen members at best.

Anyway, I don't believe in a 600 GFlop Wii U GPU either.

 

[frankie_baby]

Well, I think WiiU's GPU will be more in the 200-250GFLops ballpark. I mean, Xenos on Xbox360 is more or less 240GFLops, and can run the same games that can be found on the WiiU but at much better framerates, so it has to be inferior to that.

Regards!

Trine 2 says hi

 

[freezamite]

Well, trine 2 surely does say hi, but it's only one game between lot's of them that do worse on wiiU.
Maybe in one or two years I'm proven wrong and its clear that WiiU has an edge over current gen, but for the moment, I only speak about what I can see.

 

[gamethriller]

How about compare launch games side by side....Xbox 360 launch games side by side with Wii U's launch games....see which are better..
Then is 7 years will face them off side by side again.....

 

[Elfforkusu]

I believe you'd have to go back 10 pages or so for the fancy maths, but IIRC the most plausible number for Wii U GPU Gflops is in the ~400 range (396?).

Arbitrary X looks better than Y comparisons are not scientific or in any way useful in hardware comparisons, since architecture invariably changes.
(this also means that Gflops comparisons are also inherently flawed in a way, but at least we're starting out with objective facts there)

 

[Fourth Storm]

Well, trine 2 surely does say hi, but it's only one game between lot's of them that do worse on wiiU.
Maybe in one or two years I'm proven wrong and its clear that WiiU has an edge over current gen, but for the moment, I only speak about what I can see.

You do realize that there are many variables which affect game performance other than FLOPs, right? RAM bandwidth or the CPU's lack of VMX seem much more likely suspects for the somewhat disappointing results we've seen thus far.

I think the descriptions of Wii U's GPU being about 1.5x Xenos and also 90% PS3 in FLOPs are pretty good estimations. So somewhere between 352 and 440 GFLOPs. I'd ban bet on it.

 

[TAS]

Well, trine 2 surely does say hi, but it's only one game between lot's of them that do worse on wiiU.

Even if it's only 1 game (for now) it still negates your argument. If it was in fact inferior, it wouldn't be able to do anything better.

How about compare launch games side by side....Xbox 360 launch games side by side with Wii U's launch games....see which are better..
Then is 7 years will face them off side by side again.....

Nah..by that time this argument will have been swept under the rug and new complaints will arise.

 

[TalesOfWin]

anyone else dropping the wifi a little now and then.

 

[lightchris]

So depending on clock speeds PS4 gpu will be 2-3 times more powerfull

The difference should be greater, especially in actual game performance.

Let's assume Latte is RV730 based (HD 4670/50). RV770 (HD 4870/50) is about 2.5 times RV730. HD 7850, in turn, is roughly 2 times as fast as a 4870 (benchmarks). And then we have improvements like SM 5.1 over SM 4.1.
Of course these are only approximate estimations, but at the very least we'd be at 5x RV730 (and likely more than that, imo).

 

[phosphor112]

anyone else dropping the wifi a little now and then.

Yes. There are complaints. Someone made a thread because everything else in his house (including his 3DS) worked on the Wifi except for his Wii U, which required being moved closer to the router.

How about compare launch games side by side....Xbox 360 launch games side by side with Wii U's launch games....see which are better..
Then is 7 years will face them off side by side again.....

But the Wii U came out late last year... and the 360 in 2006. You can't compare the two launch games because that's just stupid. Wii U is still using the same API's and techniques that PS3 and 360 devs used in 2012. The ones that have progressed.

 

[Shin Johnpv]

WiiU is a DX10.1 programmable unified shader architecture. PS4/XBox3 will be DX11 programmable unified shader architectures. WiiU will have less features but it won't be anywhere near the kind of difference we saw from Dreamcast to XBox.

Plus the fact that DX10.1 cards could do everything DX11 does, except for the way DX11 handles it's tesselation. The difference there being the RV700 line did have a tesselator just wasn't very good or efficient. The other 2 major changes added by DX11 though are fully supported on the RV700 line. Feature set wise they're going to be damn near identical, even though power wise they won't be.

 

[JordanN]

They're systems a full generational leap in hardware ahead of the Wii U.

Make no mistake. I'm one of the people who believe PS4/720 are going to be powerful. But literally suggesting a gen leap? I dunno, there's something about that statement that sounds highly flawed. Maybe because of how impractical it sounds?

Like, how would you make these games a "gen" worse?

For Rayman, maybe if it was running at 4k and @ 120fps. For Wonderful 101, prehaps more cleaner shadows and higher precision motion blur? Both don't sound like a "gen" behind to me.

A gen behind would only make sense if the console was literally coming from another gen and that it was highly crippled in feature set. But the Wii U seems far to advance to be classified with any previous gen.

Or as wsippel said, we'd have to go back and group Dreamcast with PS1 and Xbox in its own gen over PS2.

 

[ozfunghi]

What then? I mean, his argument was based on a pretty simplistic analysis of the facts, but if conclusions based on simplistic analysis were bannable, then this forum would only have a few dozen members at best.

Anyway, I don't believe in a 600 GFlop Wii U GPU either.

What facts would suggest any of the assumptions he has been making since he entered the topic? Maybe you should read them before commenting.

He states as fact that WiiU falls somewhere in between xbox and xbox360. He states the gap between WiiU and next xbox will be larger than the one between Wii and 360. He takes the unconfirmed leaks of the twins as fact, but does not pay the same respect to WiiU's eDRAM... right. Those "facts"? Or you mean the WiiU launch PORTS of lead developed 360 games after a 7 year hardware cycle being "facts" that lead to his conclusions? I thought this was the "serious discussion" topic, clearly one of us is misinformed.

 

[Moral Panic]

FACT: 360's Xenos GPU is ~240GFLops

FACT: The Xbox360 has better framerates in some games than the WiiU

"conclusions based on simplistic analysis": The difference in framerates is indicative of the relative "strength" of the consoles

 

[Rolf NB]

Wii U GPU < 4770 -

4770 - 640 sp @750 Mhz

4770 is 90W@40nm. The whole WiiU is 35W. Think about that for a moment.

 

[frankie_baby]

FACT: 360's Xenos GPU is ~240GFLops

FACT: The Xbox360 has better framerates in some games than the WiiU

FACT: said games were low effort ports

 

[Moral Panic]

ASSUMPTION: Games where 360 outperforms WiiU were low effort ports

 

[ozfunghi]

FACT: 360's Xenos GPU is ~240GFLops

FACT: The Xbox360 has better framerates in some games than the WiiU

"conclusions based on simplistic analysis": The difference in framerates is indicative of the relative "strength" of the consoles

That's no simplistic analysis. That's not even an analysis. That's ignorance, stated as fact.

 

[JordanN]

If you want the best conclusion, wait till 2017 and compare Wii U games to Xbox 360.

I'm 99.9% sure the Wii U will destroy them.

In fact, all these current comparisons are going to look worthless once we see Wii U's true power unveiled (where the difference will easily be described as night and day).

 

[frankie_baby]

ASSUMPTION: Games where 360 outperforms WiiU were low effort ports

FACT: black ops 2 made by small number of staff
FACT: Mass effect 3 ported by different company
FACT: Assassins creed 3 ported by different team
FACT: Batman ported by different company

 

[bobeth]

FACT: said games were low effort ports

No, that is an opinion

 

[Fourth Storm]

Let's bring the level of discussion here up a notch, people. It's clear that Wii U and Xbox 360 are different beasts. They each have strengths and weaknesses relative to one another. Saying one is "more powerful" than the other is just assinine. Read the OP for starters and make a constructive argument.

 

[tkscz]

ASSUMPTION: Games where 360 outperforms WiiU were low effort ports

Fact: your ASSUMPTION that the hardware is the issue is no better than his assumption that they are lazy ports.

 

[freezamite]

Well I'm not trying to seem rude or anything so if my statement seems bad I can retire it with no problem. As I said, if in the future I see things on the WiiU that make me say "this is impossible on 360 no matter how you look at it" then I will say it with no problem.

 

[ozfunghi]

Well I'm not trying to seem rude or anything so if my statement seems bad I can retire it with no problem. As I said, if in the future I see things on the WiiU that make me say "this is impossible on 360 no matter how you look at it" then I will say it with no problem.

To be clear, i personally have no problem with you being sceptical, thinking WiiU is inferior to 360. I don't think time will prove you right, but you are entitled to your opinion. I do have a problem with the way you present your opinion though.

 

[HolyBaikal]

ASSUMPTION: Games where 360 outperforms WiiU were low effort ports

As is, of course, the statement to the contrary.

This is what's not fun about all this lockdown that big consoles have. It would be much easier to run some performance Benchmarks that computer operating systems are loaded with.

 

[TalesOfWin]

Yes. There are complaints. Someone made a thread because everything else in his house (including his 3DS) worked on the Wifi except for his Wii U, which required being moved closer to the router.

well my wii u is like 30 cm from the router. My PS3 works fine.

 

[Moral Panic]

I don't think the WiiU is weaker than the 360. I was just setting out the reasoning why someone would, hence the "simplistic analysis".

Amazing how the simple setting down of facts gets people's blood pumping though, eh?

 

[Spongebob]

Let's bring the level of discussion here up a notch, people. It's clear that Wii U and Xbox 360 are different beasts. They each have strengths and weaknesses relative to one another. Saying one is "more powerful" than the other is just assinine. Read the OP for starters and make a constructive argument.

Though its a bit pathetic that we even have to debate whether a next gen console is even more powerful than one of the previous generation.

 

[HolyBaikal]

Scratch that. Just get a good PC.

And miss out on all of the fantastic console exclusives the PlayStation 4 will likely have?

I don't plan on it.

Though considering I already have a gaming PC this isn't much of a decision.

I have to assume that the Wii U is at least every so slightly more powerful than the XBOX 360. If even then, I'm a little disappointed. But not all that much, considering what I really wanted out of the Wii U was to just play more first party Nintendo games, and in higher resolution.

 

[Thunder Monkey]

I don't think the WiiU is weaker than the 360. I was just setting out the reasoning why someone would, hence the "simplistic analysis".

Amazing how the simple setting down of facts gets people's blood pumping though, eh?

Half the time they make me wonder how the fuck they can type.

I thought my post on the prior page covered it. If it really was that much weaker than the 360 the games would have trouble running at anything approaching parity. Given the CPU alone if the GPU was just at parity these ports would have turned out a fuckton worse.

Saying the entire system is at parity with a few extra bells (not enough to make a world of difference) is the much safer bet.

 

[JordanN]

Though its a bit pathetic that we even have to debate whether a next gen console is even more powerful than one of the previous generation.

Eh, it was never a debate. We knew since 2011 the Wii U was next gen.
People arguing otherwise are just doing it for their own times sake.

 

[DjRoomba]

I like alot of people talking bout underperforming ports and underwhelming graphics who clearly have not actually seen the Wii U in action but are listening to innacurate second hand reports or early reviews that were done while downloading stuff which really fucks up performance.

- Mass Effect 3 runs identical to Xbox 360..That is considerably better than the PS3 with frame rate problms.

- Batman runs identical to 360 when you switch to 720p like the 360 version is.

- Sonic Racing runs considerably better than ps3 in 1080p - good framerate/no screen tearing

- Nintendoland, when you have all the trophies and your plaza is fully populated and it still runs at 60fps/1080p, looks more impressive and 'next-gen' than anything on ps360 which would not be able to run this.

 

[Coolwhip]

I like alot of people talking bout underperforming ports and underwhelming graphics who clearly have not actually seen the Wii U in action but are listening to innacurate second hand reports or early reviews that were done while downloading stuff which really fucks up performance.

- Mass Effect 3 runs identical to Xbox 360..That is considerably better than the PS3 with frame rate problms.

- Batman runs identical to 360 when you switch to 720p like the 360 version is.

- Sonic Racing runs considerably better than ps3 in 1080p - good framerate/no screen tearing

- Nintendoland, when you have all the trophies and your plaza is fully populated and it still runs at 60fps/1080p, looks more impressive and 'next-gen' than anything on ps360 which would not be able to run this.

Are Nintendo land and Sonic 1080p? Don't think so.

 

[JordanN]

Are Nintendo land and Sonic 1080p? Don't think so.

Nintendoland is 720p + 480p. I think Sonic is just 720p.

 

[shinra-bansho]

Good point. An example of this is that the ESRAM in Durango (which may actually be used the same way the eDRAM in the Wii U) is also reported as 32MB too.

Durango will purportedly have 5-7x the quantity of RAM, and even using DDR3 it's expected that it will be ~5x the bandwidth, alongside 32MB of fast ESRAM. How comparable are the situations really?

 

[bobeth]

I like alot of people talking bout underperforming ports and underwhelming graphics who clearly have not actually seen the Wii U in action but are listening to innacurate second hand reports or early reviews that were done while downloading stuff which really fucks up performance.

- Mass Effect 3 runs identical to Xbox 360..That is considerably better than the PS3 with frame rate problms.

- Batman runs identical to 360 when you switch to 720p like the 360 version is.

- Sonic Racing runs considerably better than ps3 in 1080p - good framerate/no screen tearing

- Nintendoland, when you have all the trophies and your plaza is fully populated and it still runs at 60fps/1080p, looks more impressive and 'next-gen' than anything on ps360 which would not be able to run this.

There are no native 1080p games on the wiiU so far..

 

[DjRoomba]

Not to mention thats its all running simultaneosly in another screen btw
(My tv says its 1080p, usually it will say input 720 if thats the case - so i think it is)

 

[wsippel]

What then? I mean, his argument was based on a pretty simplistic analysis of the facts, but if conclusions based on simplistic analysis were bannable, then this forum would only have a few dozen members at best.

Anyway, I don't believe in a 600 GFlop Wii U GPU either.

Me neither. On the other hand, the chip is most likely 40nm and it's quite a bit bigger than an off-the-shelf RV740 - which would be ~600GFLOPS at 550MHz.

4770 is 90W@40nm. The whole WiiU is 35W. Think about that for a moment.

Stock 4770s are also running at a higher clock and (probably) voltage. Think about that for a moment. Latte is bigger and therefore most likely has quite a few more transistors. We actually know that because we've seen the die. Again, I'm not saying it's 600GFLOPS or anything, but just looking at the wattage doesn't really tell us all that much.

 

[JordanN]

There are no native 1080p games on the wiiU so far..

Mighty Switch Force HD, Scribblenauts Unlimited, Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate and some others are all native 1080p.

 

[snowdog1971]

Me neither. On the other hand, the chip is most likely 40nm and it's quite a bit bigger than an off-the-shelf RV740 - which would be ~600GFLOPS at 550MHz.



Stock 4770s are also running at a higher clock and (probably) voltage. Think about that for a moment. Latte is bigger and therefore most likely has quite a few more transistors. We actually know that because we've seen the die. Again, I'm not saying it's 600GFLOPS or anything, but just looking at the wattage doesn't really tell us all that much.

One thing that people are also forgetting is that there's probably more going on under the hood that we're unaware of. We already know from the Toki Tori 2 developers that there's something going on to save memory for textures and I'd put money on there being another feature giving 'free' use of depth of field, it wouldn't surprise me if they have a similar feature for 'free' AA too.

And I still have the opinion that some of that 5GB taken up by that first update has been set aside for swapspace. We've heard Ancel talk about almost unlimited RAM and it didn't sound to me that he was just talking about the RAM size difference between the Wii U and the previous gen consoles. Not too sure how they'd do that tbh, using the onboard flash would be pretty slow but in large open world games this would be a boon for developers.

We simply know bugger all about the system even after a few teardowns. But one thing we do know for certain - it has 4 times the RAM than the 360, a more modern GPU capable of DX11-equivalent functions (according to one of the guys from Unity), it has more than 3 times as much eDRAM than the 360 which is on-die to boot, the CPU has 3 times more cache and the CPU is more efficient thanks to the system having dedicated silicon to deal with sound and IO.

Anyone with the opinion that the Wii U is on par with or even more ridiculous less powerful than a 360 is more than a little insane lol.

 

[Moral Panic]

The Wii U reserves 1GB of ram for OS leaving 1GB for games. The 360 uses 32MB for OS apparently, leaving 480MB for games. So there's only a 2x increases there.

We also know that the WiiU's ram is 12.8GB/s, vs 22.4GB/s on 360. So half as fast here.

We also know that WiiU's CPU is single threaded, and that 360's are dual threaded. We also know that Metro 2033 devs think the CPU is "horrible, slow".

There are a lot of things we know and a lot of things we don't know.

 

[Ryoku]

The Wii U reserves 1GB of ram for OS leaving 1GB for games. The 360 uses 32MB for OS apparently, leaving 480MB for games. So there's only a 2x increases there.

We also know that the WiiU's ram is 12.8GB/s, vs 22.4GB/s on 360. So half as fast here.

We also know that WiiU's CPU is single threaded, and that 360's are dual threaded. We also know that Metro 2033 devs think the CPU is "horrible, slow".

There are a lot of things we know and a lot of things we don't know.

In the article from the other thread:

3 – We also must take into account several intricate concepts of bus and direction of RAM. For starters, the 22.4GB/s bandwidth of current gen systems buses is often an aggregated rate, distributed between reads and writes with the RAM. In the case of Xbox 360, the CPU doesn’t reach this speed as its access to the RAM is bound by the FSB, the interface connecting it with the GPU where resides the memory controller. And this FSB bandwidth is 10.8GB/s for read and 10.8GB/s for write.

Source

 

[Fourth Storm]

In the article from the other thread:


Source

I won't claim to have a full grasping of the situation here, but I believe the most pressing matter at hand is keeping the GPU fed with texture data. In that area, Xenos has access to the full ~22 GB/s of bandwidth.

 

[lwilliams3]

Durango will purportedly have 5-7x the quantity of RAM, and even using DDR3 it's expected that it will be ~5x the bandwidth, alongside 32MB of fast ESRAM. How comparable are the situations really?

You are missing the context of my statement. I was only comparing the concept behind the Wii U and Durango's memory system. Durango is being directly compared to the PS4, which has 4GB of GDDR5. Compared to GDDR5, DDR3 is potentially a lot slower. The 32MB of ESRAM in the 720, however, is supposively in the system to more than make up for the slower main RAM.

So, despite Durango much bigger pool of RAM, the most important and fastest RAM bank apparently only has 32MB like the Wii U. As Wsippel said eariler, MEM1 for a console's memory set-up doesn't have to be very big in comparison to MEM2 to be effective, and its look like the Wii U and Durango was developed with that same concept in mind.

 

[axisofweevils]

The Wii U reserves 1GB of ram for OS leaving 1GB for games. The 360 uses 32MB for OS apparently, leaving 480MB for games. So there's only a 2x increases there.

We also know that the WiiU's ram is 12.8GB/s, vs 22.4GB/s on 360. So half as fast here.

We also know that WiiU's CPU is single threaded, and that 360's are dual threaded. We also know that Metro 2033 devs think the CPU is "horrible, slow".

There are a lot of things we know and a lot of things we don't know.

THQ did later say though that the comment was based on a very early dev kit.

"Our look at the Wii U extended to a very early look at some very early kits. We... we did some work on it, but we made a decision fairly early on that we weren&#8217;t going to commit further resource to it. So yeah, we didn&#8217;t go too far. Take any of the comments you&#8217;ve seen attributed with a pinch of salt - it&#8217;s certainly not been based on any kind of analysis of final hardware."

http://www.nintendolife.com/news/20...p_thq_from_bringing_metro_last_light_to_wii_u

 

[HolyBaikal]

Monster Hunter 3

Having those others in 1080p aren't a big deal.

But this one sure is.

In fact I don't believe there is another Monster Hunter game in existence than runs in 1080p. Well, unless one counts emulated in Dolphin, which doesn't count.

I can't imagine this game as anything other than fairly demanding to run in 1080p.

 

[Fourth Storm]

Having those others in 1080p aren't a big deal.

But this one sure is.

In fact I don't believe there is another Monster Hunter game in existence than runs in 1080p. Well, unless one counts emulated in Dolphin, which doesn't count.

I can't imagine this game as anything other than fairly demanding to run in 1080p.

It's a Wii game. With Wii level geometry and effects. 1080p shouldn't be impressive. It should be expected!

 

[ugoo18]

There are no native 1080p games on the wiiU so far..

Yes there are

Toki Tori
Monster Hunter Tri Ultimate
Skylanders Giants
Scribblenauts Unlimited
Dragon Quest X
Transformers Prime
Rayman Legends

There are several others (Mainly Eshop titles) that are 1080p as well (As stated by the developers).

 

[deviljho]

Having those others in 1080p aren't a big deal. But this one sure is. In fact I don't believe there is another Monster Hunter game in existence than runs in 1080p. Well, unless one counts emulated in Dolphin, which doesn't count. I can't imagine this game as anything other than fairly demanding to run in 1080p.

Anyone playing this game for this graphics is not only missing the point, but will also be left sorely disappointed.

Anyway, how does the disc drive read speed affect the system's performance? Or is that really a "load time" issue?