• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

WiiU "Latte" GPU Die Photo - GPU Feature Set And Power Analysis

Status
Not open for further replies.
L

LeleSocho

Banned
BrokenEchelon said:
So...theoretically it's between a 360 and PS3, while the Durango and Orbis will be 8x~ more powerful at least?

In terms of FLOPs? Did I get that right?
Click to expand...

No.
The Wiiu GPU is an heavily customized one with a lot of parts in it that are not "standard" that are very difficult to calculate however this GPU also have standard parts the same one you likely find in any modern gpu for consoles and pc and so easy to calculate, these parts are a very small part of the Latte and so when calculated they give an even lower number than those of ps3 and 360 but when added to those non-standard parts (the so called fixed functions) they give more power than a PS3 or a 360.
That said since those are non standard parts only the ones who works exclusively on these will gain from their advantages so that makes the work for third parties very hard to porting a title on it and that's probably the reason that multiplatform titles (will) look bad or will not ported at all to the Nintendo console.

TL;DR
Nintendo games will look better than any ps3/360 game, multiplatforms will look the same as ps3/360
 
W

wsippel

Banned
netBuff said:
Read the Op: Chipworks provided a more detailed photo for free - http://www.chipworks.com/blog/technologyblog/2013/02/04/looking-at-the-wii-u-graphics-processor/
Click to expand...
It's not "more detailed", it's showing something completely different. The one they have on sale is only showing the metal layer above. They've sent us that photo as well, it would have been completely worthless. Chipworks went back to the lab and made "real" die shots showing the actual silicon for us. I'm really grateful for that, as what I suggested to buy would have been a huge waste of money. That would have been quite embarrassing...
 
J

joesiv

Member
Lonely1 said:
Well, we learned a lot. For start, is not just a down-clocked r700 GPU. 400+ SP counts seem to be extremely unlikely. it appear to have an additional pool of 3MB of EDRAM, worst case is just for BC purpose and non accessible while in Wii U mode.
Click to expand...
I wonder if the 3MB's of ED RAM is a framebuffer for the gamepad... 480p just like the GC/Wii?
 
B

Biggzy

Member
McHuj said:
On the bright side, it does show you how dated the architectures of PS3/360 are when the WiiU can get comparable (and I;m sure better performance in some case) in such a small power envelope and die size.
Click to expand...

Honestly, some people don't realise how ancient the PS3 and 360 are by today's standards.
 
T

tipoo

Banned
I have to ask again: Can anyone show me where all this fixed function logic is? The non-shader/tmu/cache parts look the same size as any standard GPU to me, and some of that has to be used for BC.
 
L

Lonely1

Unconfirmed Member
wsippel said:
It's not "more detailed", it's showing something completely different. The one they have on sale is only showing the metal layer above. They've sent us that photo as well, it would have been completely worthless. Chipworks went back to the lab and made "real" die shots showing the actual silicon for us. I'm really grateful for that, as what I suggested to buy would have been a huge waste of money. That would have been quite embarrassing...
Click to expand...

So, you guys almost bought a high res photo of the package? :D
 
P

pestul

Member
Thanks for your efforts in doing this. Chipworks was mighty nice doing what they did too. Quite confused and slightly disappointment by the actual chip, so the mystery continues.. but this certainly did a lot of good.
 
H

Herb Alpert

Banned
ABANDON THREAD!!!

tothebatmobile.gif


(well, too much tension here)
 
M

Mr_B_Fett

Member
Hello chaps, long time listener, first time caller etc.

Forgive my ignorance but why do half size SIMDs (20 rather than 40 shaders) take up so much space?
 
Alexios

Alexios

Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
Bruno MB said:
Wii U is not even getting current multiplatform titles, why bothering about next-gen ports?
Click to expand...
Because it may not have an install base many millions inferior to those and the software sales to match when that time comes?

Just a thought.
 
Y

ymmv

Banned
McHuj said:
On the bright side, it does show you how dated the architectures of PS3/360 are when the WiiU can get comparable (and I;m sure better performance in some case) in such a small power envelope and die size.
Click to expand...

What a difference eight years make. But I don't really see the point of creating a console with outdated, weak specs just to keep power usage down. I suspect gamers care more about visuals and performance than power usage - as long as game play isn't spoiled by a fan gearing up.
 
Meesh

Meesh

Member
LeleSocho said:
No.
The Wiiu GPU is an heavily customized one with a lot of parts in it that are not "standard" that are very difficult to calculate however this GPU also have standard parts the same one you likely find in any modern gpu for consoles and pc and so easy to calculate, these parts are a very small part of the Latte and so when calculated they give an even lower number than those of ps3 and 360 but when added to those non-standard parts (the so called fixed functions) they give more power than a PS3 or a 360. That said since those are non standard parts only the ones who works exclusively on these will gain from their advantages so that makes the work for third parties very hard to porting a title on it and that's probably the reason that multiplatform titles (will) look bad or will not ported to the Nintendo console.
Click to expand...
I just find it hard to believe that with all the emphasis on gaining third party support...they would do a 180 whoopsie doodle and throw a wrench into all their "hard work". Surely there's something we're missing here...
 
Portugeezer

Portugeezer

Member
LeleSocho said:
No.
The Wiiu GPU is an heavily customized one with a lot of parts in it that are not "standard" that are very difficult to calculate however this GPU also have standard parts the same one you likely find in any modern gpu for consoles and pc and so easy to calculate, these parts are a very small part of the Latte and so when calculated they give an even lower number than those of ps3 and 360 but when added to those non-standard parts (the so called fixed functions) they give more power than a PS3 or a 360. That said since those are non standard parts only the ones who works exclusively on these will gain from their advantages so that makes the work for third parties very hard to porting a title on it and that's probably the reason that multiplatform titles (will) look bad or will not ported to the Nintendo console.
Click to expand...

Or they could overcome this like they did with the Cell on PS3... but if 720/PS4 are similar again they might just overlook Wii U.
 
O

Orayn

Member
Relaxed Muscle said:
Nah, just look at Crysis 3 console shots vs PC shots....
Click to expand...

PS3 and 360 have done a remarkable job of keeping up with fancy DX9-equivalent effects and maintaining the overall look of high-end PC games, but it's come at the expense of resolution, framerate, and IQ.
 
D

DragonSworne

Banned
With this design, can the fixed function units and the shader units be used to process separate tasks?

The SIMD units can be used to process physics while the fixed function units be used to process graphics?

That's seems like a pretty good design advantage to me.
 
L

LCGeek

formerly sane
Relaxed Muscle said:
Nah, just look at Crysis 3 console shots vs PC shots....
Click to expand...

No you just get the people who go well it doesn't look as good as the exclusive on the hd twins. Either way they ignore bad porting always hurts the audience and continue to by from bad publishers who support these tactics. Hey my version doesn't suck, sucks to be you. Unfortunately PS3 fans are now learning what sega and nintendo fans had to put up with during the 16 bit era.
 
R

Relaxed Muscle

Member
ymmv said:
What a difference eight years make. But I don't really see the point of creating a console with outdated, weak specs just to keep power usage down. I suspect gamers care more about visuals and performance than power usage - as long as game play isn't spoiled by a fan gearing up.
Click to expand...

I think it comes down to costs, BC priorities rather than just power usage. Power usage is just the consequence of looking for a customized setup that keep the costs very low.
 
cyberheater

cyberheater

PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 Xbone PS4 PS4
wsippel said:
It's not "more detailed", it's showing something completely different. The one they have on sale is only showing the metal layer above. They've sent us that photo as well, it would have been completely worthless. Chipworks went back to the lab and made "real" die shots showing the actual silicon for us. I'm really grateful for that, as what I suggested to buy would have been a huge waste of money. That would have been quite embarrassing...
Click to expand...

It's good you got lucky and Chipworks did a good thing. I wonder how long it will take folks to fully decode it.
 
R

Raist

Banned
guek said:
Putting all the pointing and laughing aside, I don't understand this info.

For all the people who are laughing it up, how is Wii U able to run ME3, AC3, BlopsII, etc? How is it able to run X?

And don't be jackass and say "poorly lol," that's not the goddamn point. Those games, for the most part run fine and I'm not sure how that's possible.

As a layman, I don't understand what's going on here one bit.
Click to expand...

Ports are generally worse, on par at the very best. X doesn't look like something that could never run on PS360.

It seems hard to make direct comparisons in terms of numbers. But it doesn't look like that GPU is that much more advanced than last gen's HD twins'. Also keep in mind that this thing has to feed 2 screens, and that's not cheap.
 
L

LCGeek

formerly sane
Orayn said:
PS3 and 360 have done a remarkable job of keeping up with fancy DX9-equivalent effects and maintaining the overall look of high-end PC games, but it's come at the expense of resolution, framerate, and IQ.
Click to expand...

FOV as well. Smaller FOV less to render. Which is something crytek does to make it run more smoothly on the console.

Raist said:
Ports are generally worse, on par at the very best. X doesn't look like something that could never run on PS360.

It seems hard to make direct comparisons in terms of numbers. But it doesn't look like that GPU is that much more advanced than last gen's HD twins'. Also keep in mind that this thing has to feed 2 screens, and that's not cheap.
Click to expand...

The fact we know it has DX10 or 11 features seperates it. The ram as well which even in early WiiU exclusives look to be allowing for things HD twin game never enjoyed with or without sacrifice.
 
N

NotLiquid

Member
EuropeOG said:
Or they could overcome this like they did with the Cell on PS3... but if 720/PS4 are similar again they might just overlook Wii U.
Click to expand...

Durango's GPU isn't that impressive judging from the recent VGLeaks topic and is weaker than Orbis so I'm left wondering just how wide the spec gap is going to be this gen between the big three.
 
W

wsippel

Banned
Lonely1 said:
So, you guys almost bought a high res photo of the package? :D
Click to expand...
Technically, it would have been a "die shot". But the die is made of several layers, and the top most (metal) layer is apparently what most of Chipworks' customers are interested in. From that layer, you can identify the manufacturer and process, but you can't see the actual logic.
 
nordique

nordique

Member
Zombie James said:
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.
Click to expand...

Its a custom card, so it can't solely be equated like this


I fear this thread will have lots of similar assumptions...so far going by the first 3 pages, its turning out to be so.
 
M

Meelow

Banned
FourMyle said:
Why does Nintendo go through so much effort to obscure, deflect and hide info about their console hardware?
Click to expand...

Because there could still be info we don't know about the GPU and that it could look bad on paper but it might not even that bad.

Didn't the Xbox specs look much better on paper than GameCube even though the GameCube could output pretty much the same graphics?
 
L

Lonely1

Unconfirmed Member
wsippel said:
Technically, it would have been a "die shot". But the die is made of several layers, and the top most (metal) layer is apparently what most of Chipworks' customers are interested in. From that layer, you can identify the manufacturer and process, but you can't see the actual logic.
Click to expand...

Are we certain in the process yet?
 
N

netBuff

Member
wsippel said:
It's not "more detailed", it's showing something completely different. The one they have on sale is only showing the metal layer above. They've sent us that photo as well, it would have been completely worthless. Chipworks went back to the lab and made "real" die shots showing the actual silicon for us. I'm really grateful for that, as what I suggested to buy would have been a huge waste of money. That would have been quite embarrassing...
Click to expand...

I know literally nothing about how chips are built: Thanks for the clarification ;)
 
J

joesiv

Member
Relaxed Muscle said:
I think it comes down to costs, BC priorities rather than just power usage. Power usage is just the consequence of looking for a customized setup that keep the costs very low.
Click to expand...

It also might have to do with developer tools, and how going with Wii native support for CPU/GPU, but have additional functionality for further performance (like multi thread and modern GPU features), allows for developers to get their project up and running using mature tools, and improve on it in the future. I donno just a thought.
 
P

phosphor112

Banned
NotLiquid said:
Durango's GPU isn't that impressive judging from the recent VGLeaks topic and is weaker than Orbis so I'm left wondering just how wide the spec gap is going to be this gen between the big three.
Click to expand...

Durango would still be at least 3.5x the power if you just go by FLOP count. Durango also has faster RAM, more TU's, double the ROPS, etc.
 
T

televator

Member
LeleSocho said:
No.
The Wiiu GPU is an heavily customized one with a lot of parts in it that are not "standard" that are very difficult to calculate however this GPU also have standard parts the same one you likely find in any modern gpu for consoles and pc and so easy to calculate, these parts are a very small part of the Latte and so when calculated they give an even lower number than those of ps3 and 360 but when added to those non-standard parts (the so called fixed functions) they give more power than a PS3 or a 360. That said since those are non standard parts only the ones who works exclusively on these will gain from their advantages so that makes the work for third parties very hard to porting a title on it and that's probably the reason that multiplatform titles (will) look bad or will not ported at all to the Nintendo console.

TL;DR
Nintendo games will look better than any ps3/360 game, multiplatforms will look the same as ps3/360
Click to expand...

That's it. My curiosity is largely satiated. Thanks for explaining.
 
L

LeleSocho

Banned
Evilink said:
I just find it hard to believe that with all the emphasis on gaining third party support...they would do a 180 whoopsie doodle and throw a wrench into all their "hard work". Surely there's something we're missing here...
Click to expand...
I think it really is pretty much it, that's Nintendo for you...

EuropeOG said:
Or they could overcome this like they did with the Cell on PS3... but if 720/PS4 are similar again they might just overlook Wii U.
Click to expand...

Overcome this situation would mean putting more work (more money) on wiiu titles thing that won't happen since it won't be the leading platform for development
720/PS4 are essentially full standard hardware and very similar to each other... even if a little of power is there it would pretty much be wii and ps360 all over again.
 
K

kinggroin

Banned
AzaK said:
Not really. We don't know if the SIMD's have 20 shaders or 40 per block.


We got the money back, Chipworks did it for free.



Are you assuming 170ish GFLOPS is weak or 340? Because we don't know which it is.



It'd be really nice if not all threads on a forum went to shit. This is why the GTTV piece will be interesting (The threads will be sublime for that) because, well NeoGAF is full of shit stirrers. It's a reputation well deserved.
Click to expand...

I'm still looking for info on how we arrived at 20 ALUs. I just want this shit cleared up as much as possible with concrete links to where the stuff we DO know about, is coming from.
 
L

LCGeek

formerly sane
Schnozberry said:
They've been pretty gunshy ever since Microsoft ran ad campaigns misrepresenting the power of the Gamecube.
Click to expand...

This but during this gen it became clear after that nintendo has nothing to gain with misleading ads and media who can never tell people what specs really mean. 3 gens now and it's gotten worse I wouldn't give in to this crowd you can never please them even with the best. Look at how people are turning on the next gen consoles from ms or sony especially as we are getting more concrete ideas about performance.

LeleSocho said:
Overcome this situation would mean putting more work (more money) on wiiu titles thing that won't happen since it won't be the leading platform for development
720/PS4 are essentially full standard hardware and very similar to each other... even if a little of power is there it would pretty much be wii and ps360 all over again.
Click to expand...

It's not though.

Considering how devs scale between the pc end and the hdtwins I don't want to see this argument come from a single major dev. You don't want to do a WiiU title that is fine you make the effort either bother to make a real title or don't waste consumers or your company's time on a meager effort. The WiiU actually has clear standards it's following and is far more up to date than Wii was vs the HD twins. if devs don't want to port properly they should be criticized for their reasons why. They don't get to hide behind this power argument considering examples we have not in this current gen but the last.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

  • Poll
PLAYSTATION 6: Potential Innovations, Features, Business Strategies & More (Speculation)
Opinion Analysis Platform 2 3 4
181
13K
hussar16 replied
  • Poll
Why Xbox Abandoning The Traditional Console Business Model, Makes Business Sense
Business Analysis Platform 2
72
5K
WitchHunter replied
AMD Oberon PlayStation 5 SoC Die Delidded and Pictured
Hardware 8 9 10 11 12
595
59K
Polygonal_Sprite replied
[Power Analysis] What happens if you spec a PC like a PS5?
Analysis 2 3
101
13K
rofif replied
  • Poll
(SONY/MICROSOFT Hardware & Services) We WILL Get Mid-Gen Refreshes, But Not What You Might Think...
Opinion Analysis Hardware 2 3 4
170
20K
Kazekage1981 replied
Top Bottom