Twenty7KVN
Member
I wounder how close it would get at 1.2ghz.
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Wii U clock speeds are found by marcan
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Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
... and the closer CPU and GPU are, like Wii U as well as Durango and Orbis should all sport (CPU's and GPU's talking over lower latency and higher bandwidth channels compared to the previous generation of consoles), this should work quite well.
The problem with using the GPU as co-processor to the CPU is that the more you use it for non graphical tasks in the stream processing friendly portions of your code the less you can use it for purely graphical tasks.
Flachmatuch
Member
This is Nintendo's strategy, and imo they're doing it right business-wise. They definitely cannot compete on Microsoft's battlefield (even Sony couldn't) and so they shouldn't. They may not get next gen ports though, but I don't know how much that counts for them. Developer relations and support (both technical and business) are much more important issues than this. That said, this may be a bit too cheap. I don't know whether they used the power and silicon budgets they had well, but maybe they should have had somewhat bigger ones.
And on SIMD code, it wouldn't even win at the same clock speed. Of which it's removed by more than a factor of 2.
You better hope those developers manage to GPGPU everything and still have enough GPU performance left over for graphics.
Those are good questions. Especially the second one, I really don't get why that demo is held to such a high standard by people.
Skyrim and games like it need CPU performance to run all the scripts for all the actors in the cell. Basically, your "handful of active enemies/npcs" assumption is off.
I didn't see that tweet, was just going by what was quoted here. Still, Xenon IPC is really, really terrible.
test_account
XP-39C²
Is your avatar from Dundersalt?
The CPU is a space alien, not terribly similar to Xenon, Cell, or the x86 chips Durango and Orbis supposedly use.
Tears For Fears
Banned
I'll buy one if it gets homebrew. Still Nintendo going to Nintendo.
Nintendo isn't trying to achieve anything. This would be one thing if nintendo was a pure tech company like intel, amd, nvidia, and the likes. The money nintendo spent on R&D for that cpu is probably much less than sony loss on cell.
There's nothing special to the zelda demo except it's easily one of the best looking 3d zelda they made. Are you against zelda looking better? You're own statements lead me to believe that you wouldn't want a gc looking zelda in 20XX either.
Jackben
bitch I'm taking calls.
Aw, man that is just awful.
Has good animation, lightning and shaders imo. Lights are especially good. Focuses on GPU stuff really. Also demo is what, 2 years old now? Probably using an off the shelf PC to make it or a real early version of the devkit
But nothing mind-blowing, same demo could run on PS360
Still looks great though imo
It may be easier to get good utilization out of the Wii U architecture that way, but better utilization alone won't gap a 5x+ performance difference.
Saint Gregory
Member
Direct PS360->Wii ports were impossible except for 2D games like Rayman Origins.
Direct PS4/720->WiiU ports shouldn't be impossible but the question is if it will be worth the effort to devs.
Zelda demo only had good lightning, everything else was nothing special or bad, low polycount, only 720p and a lot of aliasing.
People wowed only because it's the first time they see a nintendo game in hd.
Why would you do that?
Member
I don't think piracy will have any significant effect on the system and what games are released on it. The Wii and especially DS had a large and fairly early piracy scene, yet they're both home to many of the best selling games of all time and many successful 3rd party games. The PS2 and Xbox also had their share of piracy IIRC, and the PSP was pretty much hacked day one.
That's speaking from an American perspective, though.
Gemüsepizza
Member
So Nintendo's way to achieve Third-Party support is, to force them to change all their code and put them on the GPU? Wouldn't it be much easier to just increase the case a little bit and go with a slightly more powerful CPU? I don't even think this would increase costs by much.
No, just no. If they are more powerful (and they certainly will be more powerful), then Devs still need to change their code and put it from the CPU to the GPU. And if there is a big amount of additional code running on the GPU, devs have even less power for actual graphics at their disposal. I hope you don't think those graphics will be anywhere close to what PS4/Xbox 3 can achieve. It will probably be Wii all over again.
Kai Dracon
Writing a dinosaur space opera symphony
The problem Nintendo has is their market aims. It seems to be a conscious choice.
To the enthusiast gamer, everything that's not as powerful as current technology allows is "gimped". It's a bit like an auto enthusiast who rails that a mass market consumer minivan is a piece of crap because somewhere in the world, there are Ferraris. It's true that the minivan is no Ferrari, so the enthusiast has a point - but he's also missing the point that the minivan's job is not to be a Ferrari. And in some ways, it's better... like cargo capacity, fuel efficiency, etc.
It's hard for me even with this news to see the Wii U's hardware as "Nintendo cheeps out on j00 suckers". Because Nintendo's goal was not to make a $500 console that was way more powerful than PS360 plus included an iPad. Again, their self-chosen path and problem is that they deal with the mass market. A $300 console (the base model) sounds like their absolute upper limit for MSRP, to not scare away the authentic mainstream audience. Within that price, their concept for the system included an expensive to develop, and not cheap to produce touch screen / motion sensing interface device.
Nintendo doesn't seem to have "gimped" on anything within the price range they had to remain within, considering the total components that make up the system. If the Xbox 360 had ha a cheaper CPU, it could have had more ram, for example. But there were specific priorities and they were followed. Wii U was designed with specific priorities and this is what we got.
The joke with the FUD being spread is that you still have ports like ACIII at launch, made in a rush, that effectively look and run about like the PS3 version of the same game. If people stopped and thought for a moment, they'd see that clearly, something in Nintendo's design strategy for the console is working. Otherwise that game would not exist on Wii U and if it did, never with that kind of port parity.
Edit: I would add that the most questionable thing in the entire matter IMO is Nintendo's very obvious entreaties to 3rd parties about Wii U being friendly towards them from a development and power standpoint. Obviously, working on the console involves some major strategic shifts and while that doesn't mean the hardware is bad, it probably does make Nintendo's official PR line sound like damage control. But then we have all those months and months of some 3rd parties saying the hardware is great, some griping it sucks, etc etc. Opinions, woohah!
You've answered yourself there. It's Zelda in HD and it looks nice. It's not technically impressive, but it still looks nice.
As far as I know Skyrim runs pretty much everything on a single thread on PC, so it's very heavily clockspeed-limited.
TheLegendOfMart
Banned
Good lord the amount of morons in this thread is ridiculous. Go look up In Order and Out of Order execution, phone ARM processors are In Order, the WiiU is Out of Order.
Enough with the "omgzzzzz my phone is faster than the WiiU"
Enough with the "omgzzzzz my phone is faster than the WiiU"
Considering how well Ubisoft did with the AC3 port, I think it's clear what can be done with a little more dev time. Given that Ubisoft had early access to the Wii U's hardware and are on the in with Nintendo.
Just my assumptions. Either way I couldn't give a damn. I bought the Wii U for Nintendo games.
Just my assumptions. Either way I couldn't give a damn. I bought the Wii U for Nintendo games.
test_account
XP-39C²
Does Dundersalt still excist? It reminds me of my childhood =)
What ??? People are calling Zombie U and Nintendoland amazing looking graphically in an attempt to defend this ?
I mean they are both solid games with good visuals but they are far from amazing
graphically.
My question about it is comparing with games that are out there. There is nothing that couldn't be achieved in ps360 systems, this is why I ask why is so special, not that the game is irrelevant or not interesting for me. I'm speaking strictly about the tech involved in that demo. I saw a lot of claims that it is the best "thing" they saw and that it is not posible in ps3/x360. My question was about this.
If the fact that it's good only because is zelda is another question that is not tech related.
direct ps4/720>wiiu wont be possible, they would have to downgrade them hugely
Tell me the last time anything ever needed to be updated in real-time in any room other than the one you're currently present in in a Zelda title.
Zelda rooms have *always* been pretty much standalone.
Father_Brain
Banned
Would I be wrong to think that Nintendo's extremely low TDP target was more of a factor in any "gimping" than the price target?
This is basically the one and only question which matters.
iamshadowlark
Banned
You say this, but its by design. It's either or. You either sacrifice clock speed for IPC, or sacrifice the clock for the IPC. It would be prohibitly inpractical to try and build a CPU with the best of both. Especially a consumer grade.
How would we know? It's not about what the demo does, it's about how it does it. And this we don't know. You can't really look at the results and say, "yes, that's obviously DX9/ 10/ 11". You'd need to look at the code. Almost everything can be faked/ approximated on pretty much any hardware.
Interview with Iwata from July 2012
"Staying with graphics but going back to the idea of getting third parties involved, have you approached Epic with the specs of the Wii U to try to make sure that third-parties using Unreal Engine 4 can easily port their games to Wii U?

"
I was pretty content that I only owned a Wii this generation despite its lack of hardware power and multiplatform support. Wii U will be my first HD machine and I doubt Sony and Microsoft's next-gen machines would make me regret it. I expect Iwata's gamble will hurt the Wii U just as it did with the Wii, but I'll be okay with that as long as the good games make it a worthwhile platform to own.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-s...-now-on-to-compete-over-graphics-7936301.html
"Staying with graphics but going back to the idea of getting third parties involved, have you approached Epic with the specs of the Wii U to try to make sure that third-parties using Unreal Engine 4 can easily port their games to Wii U?

"
I was pretty content that I only owned a Wii this generation despite its lack of hardware power and multiplatform support. Wii U will be my first HD machine and I doubt Sony and Microsoft's next-gen machines would make me regret it. I expect Iwata's gamble will hurt the Wii U just as it did with the Wii, but I'll be okay with that as long as the good games make it a worthwhile platform to own.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-s...-now-on-to-compete-over-graphics-7936301.html
Is this supposed to be the console's GPU?
Phoenician_Viking
Banned
No, it´s never been like that with regards to technology and never will be. WiiU is current gen, barely.
Combichristoffersen
Combovers don't work when there is no hair
I think it does, yeah. Hit me up with a PM and I could set you up with some Dundersalt after Christmas
Relaxed Muscle
Member
I was thiking that Zelda may go out for a more big open world game or at least more open and big areas with lots of details. Yeah, we should take the same cubicular rooms over and over again.
Remember when IGN made their own PROJECT CAFE?
http://www.ign.com/articles/2011/05/14/we-built-nintendos-project-cafe
They used a 3.2GHZ CPU.
CPU: 3.2GHz Triple Core AMD Athlon II X3 450
GPU: XFX Radeon HD 4850 GPU with 1GBs of VRAM
Motherboard: BIOSTAR A780L3L Micro ATX
RAM: 2GBs of Kingston DDR3
Power Supply: Rosewill RV350 ATX 1.3
Hard Drive: 80GB WD Caviar Blue 7200RPM
WRONG.
http://www.ign.com/articles/2011/05/14/we-built-nintendos-project-cafe
They used a 3.2GHZ CPU.
CPU: 3.2GHz Triple Core AMD Athlon II X3 450
GPU: XFX Radeon HD 4850 GPU with 1GBs of VRAM
Motherboard: BIOSTAR A780L3L Micro ATX
RAM: 2GBs of Kingston DDR3
Power Supply: Rosewill RV350 ATX 1.3
Hard Drive: 80GB WD Caviar Blue 7200RPM
WRONG.
KungFucius
King Snowflake
This could be a security thing. The WiiU may be running a ton of security checks every time a program is loaded. There is no way in hell that switching from one app to another should take over 10 seconds even on a 1.2 GHz machine. All of these apps are stored on the internal flash. I suppose this internal memory could be extremely shitty and error prone so loading anything from it is taking ages, but I think the real reason is that Nintendo put in some shoddy anti hacking checks that are killing the user experience for everyone.
metalslimer
Member
It was likely both. They are losing money right now.
DimmuBurgerKing
Member
marcan said:
Quoting because I'm sure it's already lost in the shuffle among cell phone CPU clock speed comparisons.
what current gen system has a screen based controller with such quick streaming?
technology is more than just gpu/cpu based visuals. technology is many things.
DonMigs85
Member
It very likely could be, and it's still powerful enough to beat RSX easily with the PC games I've seen. The eDRAM should also give it a boost over Xenos.
That said, having to render another framebuffer to the Gamepad will definitely sap some juice.
Technological improvement is a double-edged sword for innovation. It pushes up the costs of producing the games, which means that taking risks is more financially unsound, and thus produces homogenisation. I think that insisting that technological improvement either unequivocally improves heterogeneity in game design or unequivocally worsens it is over-simplifying the situation.
A comment like that isn't practical for a title that has never seen the light of day on sony or ms system. Rather I don't bother with apples to oranges when it's blantant. I don't think it can be achivied not because of power but merely because of the image and who it belongs too. We have seen high res and high qualitiy attempts on zelda done on youtube and while it's nice to add tech into series the one thing I hate about things like that is how it misses the atmosphere nintendo tends to give zelda titles.
Outside of maybe lighting and that's due to hardware things I don't agree with that comment ever.
Kindly present a cohesive argument as to why you feel that Monster Hunter - a game that has had its most successful iterations on the PSP and 3DS, and most successful in the west on the Wii - will suffer from the speed the Wii U's CPU is clocked at.
Use diagrams if you wish.
really good point here. Thanks sir, I'm ok now.
Except, you know, ARM CPUs haven't been in-order since the Cortex A9.
I always love it when people call posters "morons" while posting fundamentally wrong information to correct them.
There's more factors to it than that. A core i7 is relatively highly clocked and has better IPC than anything else out there by a country instruction.
I'd say it's more like "low power, high IPC, high clock, cheap" -- chose 2, or 3 if you're Intel.
I'm not saying those systems were all at the same level of technology, just that they "lived" in a common timeframe. You know, like a "generation" of people.
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