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[Pachinko]

The CPU is 2 generations behind a ps4/xbox one and just a little worse then a 360. The GPU set up though, is basically a much weaker version of what's in a ps4/xb1. Max it out and it can probably produce visuals on par with the best PS3/360 games but it's not easy to do so. It has access to better shaders and more memory though which kind of compensate in some ways. There's really nothing to fix the crappy CPU though. I should say, it's crappy in terms of computational output for games but it's very energy efficient and it still works well enough.

I've used this scale before -
1-10, with 1 being an xbox 360 or a ps3 and 10 being a ps4.

1-2 are actually shared by 360/ps3 depending on the game
2-3 are the wii U's hot spots
9 is an xbox 1
10 is a ps4.

Basically, in the right hands I'd expect the average game will always look and run just a hair better then the best the other 2 systems can muster but it takes almost as much work as a PS3 game. The userbase just isn't there so you don't see that kind of effort being used. Also, if a game makes heavy use of the gamepad at TV at the same time with out simply cloning the screen it uses up a decent chunk of that extra power and ends up with games that look a bit worse then on 360/ps3.

 

[Otakumegane]

Isn't it like 2.5x 360 in terms of what it can do?

Last time I was in the chipworks thread that's what I heard.

 

[Madness]

Okay maybe "significantly" was a knee-jerk reaction to all of the Wii U skeptics but I still think there's no question Wii U games are more technically impressive than PS3/360 games.

I don't know if I agree. Nintendo games tend to use smoke and mirrors to hide how limited some of them are, and often times, technical limitations are brushed aside in favor of "art direction". A game like GTA V is so technically precise, I have yet to see a game on Wii U rival it in scope, Zelda Wii U included.

Play a Red Dead Redemption with full weather effects, long range horse riding, you'll see that when you see some of the scenery, and the NPC's and animals, Zelda U having Link ride from the grass to Death Mountain isn't as impressive. I mean keep in mind, Wii U had the benefit of being as new as 2012 and it's hardware is barely ahead of stuff from 05/06.

Its just hard to compare say Zelda U to Assassin's Creed II/Red Dead/Skyrim, just like it's hard to compare the technical aspects of Mario Kart with Forza Horizon, Gran Turismo, Need for Speed games.

 

[Mastperf]

Need for speed most wanted , rayman legends, bayo 2 , mario kart 8, super mario 3d world, project cars....Anything built on the Wii U from the ground up looks and runs very well in comparison.

60 fps with vsync on without drops om most all first party games... 360 and ps3 never had this many games that ran so smooth at 60fps... most games werent even native 720p / 1080p outside of a handful of titles.

The majority of 360/ps3 titles were 720p.

 

[SolidSnakex]

what about 60 fps?

anyway, the size difference between a 360 and a wii u is hugeeeeee, im more impressed that the wii u is on par/slighly better than a 360 at that size.

There are quite a few on both. Certainly from a first party perspective Nintendo targets that framerate far more than Sony or MS, but when you include third party devs you end up seeing quite a few 60fps games on both platforms.

 

[bobbytkc]

Isn't it like 2.5x 360 in terms of what it can do?

Last time I was in the chipworks thread that's what I heard.

2.5x? It sure doesn't look it from the games. Just eyeballing the games, WiiU is maybe 20-30% better than PS360 level at best. Although comparison is difficult because no real direct comparisons can be made.

 

[SmokeMaxX]

2.5x? It sure doesn't look it from the games. Just eyeballing the games, WiiU is maybe 20-30% better than PS360 level at best. Although comparison is difficult because no real direct comparisons can be made.

Are you talking about a PS360 game like 7 years into its life cycle vs a 1-2 year old WiiU game? If so, I'm not really sure if that comparison holds any weight...

 

[neurosisxeno]

Let's focus on the Expresso CPU. CPU seems to be the sticking point since the GPU (Radeon HD6000 class) and RAM (2GB) are obviously better than PS360. But what about the CPU?

- Three cores at 1.243125 GHz
- Symmetric multiprocessing
- Each core can output up to 3 instructions per clock
- 32-bit integer unit
- 64-bit floating-point
- 3MB L2 cache
- L1: Core 0: 512 KB, core 1: 2 MB, core 2: 512 KB
- 4 stage pipeline
- 5 Execution Units per core (15 EUs total)


Apparently they are very different. X360 xenon is three Cell PPE, while Broadway is a custom based on PPC7.

Some corrections. The Wii U GPU is a mixture of the HD5000/6000 line, since they were largely the same. Xenon is based on Cell PPE, which is a portion of the Cell processor used in the PS3 (which has 1 PPE and 7 SPE's), and Broadway is a custom version of PowerPC G3 or PowerPC 7xx, not the much newer POWER7. Even Espresso isn't an actual POWER7 CPU, just shares a minimal number of similarities--so minimal that the Xenon and Cell share about the same amount. The Espresso CPU is much more power efficient, but probably noticeably weaker than the Xenon and Cell. All are based on the Power Architecture and function very similarly. Anyone who says the Espresso CPU is "very different" from Xenon is wrong.

Are you talking about a PS360 game like 7 years into its life cycle vs a 1-2 year old WiiU game? If so, I'm not really sure if that comparison holds any weight...

Nintendo doesn't introduce new tech like Sony and Microsoft. Usually it takes time for Developers to work out interesting ways to get lower level access to the hardware, but Nintendo's hardware hasn't changed all that much over the years so they tend to reach their peak a lot quicker than the other two. Cell on the other hand was drastically different than anything before it and up until the end was a nightmare to program for. For all we know it still has some tricks developers could work out if other factors weren't limiting them more (RAM largely).

 

[Smiles and Cries]

Bayonetta 2 looks pretty nice it would have been a better game to choose to compare since the art style is not so much a new thing as Zelda U

 

[burst]

Three pineapples.

 

[Carlius]

I think you're just caught up in the hype. I don't see anything from that reveal that couldn't be done on 360/PS3. Sure it has decent art direction but from the limited footage we've seen it's not a technical marvel.

"WOW I can go to those mountains?!!"

troll post. the wii u can do a LOT more than the ps3 and 360, come on dude. enough with these kiddy arguments, you have absolutely no proof its weaker. In fact, everything weve seen just proves that its more powerful.

 

[Mr Swine]

Isn't Bayoneta 2comparable to late PS3/360 games

 

[Kariodude]

What's interesting to me is that the jump from Wii to Wii U is much larger than the jump from the 360 to the Xbone.

Don't forget that when Need for Speed came out on Wii U, 360 and PS3, the developers themselves said that the Wii U version was the better version because it was able to use the PC textures while the PS3 and 360 versions had to have their textures down-scaled.

 

[ShineALight]

I don't know if I agree. Nintendo games tend to use smoke and mirrors to hide how limited some of them are, and often times, technical limitations are brushed aside in favor of "art direction". A game like GTA V is so technically precise, I have yet to see a game on Wii U rival it in scope, Zelda Wii U included.

Play a Red Dead Redemption with full weather effects, long range horse riding, you'll see that when you see some of the scenery, and the NPC's and animals, Zelda U having Link ride from the grass to Death Mountain isn't as impressive. I mean keep in mind, Wii U had the benefit of being as new as 2012 and it's hardware is barely ahead of stuff from 05/06.

Its just hard to compare say Zelda U to Assassin's Creed II/Red Dead/Skyrim, just like it's hard to compare the technical aspects of Mario Kart with Forza Horizon, Gran Turismo, Need for Speed games.

We don't really know what the experience of riding a horse from a grassy field to Death Mountain is going to look like in Zelda U though. Maybe it will be obviously less impressive from a technical perspective than RDR when we do, but there's an ongoing debate about if we even know what gameplay looks like in that game so it seems like a bizarre point of comparison.

It's also not necessarily true that an unrealistic artstyle is smoke and mirrors meant to cover up technical shortcomings. It's possible for there to be a stylized game that's also taxing of whatever hardware it's on.

 

[neurosisxeno]

Isn't Bayoneta 2comparable to late PS3/360 games

Better textures with a lower poly count I'd imagine.

What's interesting to me is that the jump from Wii to Wii U is much larger than the jump from the 360 to the Xbone.

That's because the Wii was so far back compared to the PS3/360 that it was almost laughable. The 360 and PS3 were pretty impressive hardware when they launched, and the XBOne and PS4 are only mid-range hardware when they launched.

 

[Sub_Level]

PS3 has the Cell. 'nuff said.

 

[BananaSprinkles]

These are the numbers I had saved in regards to the GPUs:

0.19 TFLOPS - PS3
0.24 TFLOPS - 360
0.35 TFLOPs - Wii U
1.31 TFLOPS - Xbone
1.84 TFLOPS - PS4

I'm not sure if they are completely accurate, but I either got them from here or from some other site that seemed accurate at the time.

 

[rokkerkory]

like yaye big |------------------------|

 

[Windom Earle]

I believe the biggest advantage the Wii U has is in GPU architecture being more modern, and having (significantly) more RAM. Outside of those I believe the raw horsepower of the system is comparable to the PS3/360. Nothing on the Wii U yet (even Mario Kart 8) looks like a generational leap graphically.

Yep, reasonable summary.

 

[Discomurf]

The fact is the Wii U is at least slightly more powerful - period.

By how much?

By at least the graphical difference between Need for Speed: Most Wanted On Wii U vs. the PS3/360 versions.

 

[EightBitNate]

Are DBZ comparisons banned yet?

 

[ugoo18]

Its just hard to compare say Zelda U to Assassin's Creed II/Red Dead/Skyrim, just like it's hard to compare the technical aspects of Mario Kart with Forza Horizon, Gran Turismo, Need for Speed games.

Xenoblade Chronicles X should serve as a better measuring stick considering its artstyle isn't as out there as Zelda U's.

 

[DR2K]

Great looking games. Solid 60fps in HD(720p). It's good enough for that, which are few and far between elsewhere.

 

[HTupolev]

Apparently they are very different. X360 xenon is three Cell PPE, while Broadway is a custom based on PPC7.

Astronomically different.

Espresso isn't oriented toward any particular sort of task, and uses a short pipeline complete with a decent-sized cache and some basic out-of-order execution capabilities and other things that keep pipelines running smoothly. It's a very small design, for a modern CPU. Peak performance isn't huge, but it'll do an alright job keeping its shit together if you start throwing funky shenanigans at it.

Xenon is an insane design which uses a very long pipeline and a massive computational block to achieve enormous theoretical peak performances in certain respects. But to achieve this within the size and price range Microsoft wanted, many corners were cut in terms of massaging the pipeline. If you have a very carefully-written set of patterned floating-point computations Xenon could perform impressively, but it's not going to be stellar at a lot of things, and it's going to be difficult to get a processor like that to not suffer from frequent massive stalls.

I wouldn't be surprised if Espresso could beat out Xenon at some tasks. On the other hand, Xenon is probably going to completely leave Espresso in the dust when it comes to tasks that Xenon is good at, at least supposing the programmer knew what they were doing.

 

[cybroxide]

As someone who has worked with the memory limits of PS3 and 360 for the last 3 years, 1 gig of ram dedicated on Wii U is a significant upgrade. Its just not nearly as major as 4-5.5Gigs from X1 and PS4. Everything is relative.

2-2.5x seems a reasonable off the cuff assessment but it's never black and white like that.
6005 more polygons more per krundle would be more accurate.

 

[MrCunningham]

It has more RAM and a more powerful GPU. I don't know much about the CPU.

Well the Wii-U has 2GB of DDR3-1600 + 35 MB of eDRAM compared to the 512MB's of GDDR3 + 10 MB of eDRAM in the XBox 360 and 256 MB of XDR DRAM and 256 MB of GDDR3 in the PS3. The Wii-U has 1GB of memory dedicated to the OS and 1GB dedicated for gaming, so it does have more, but from what I understand the DDR3-1600 is clocked slower than the GDDR3 and XDR, so there's a trade off there.

The GPU is obviously a lot newer and uses either shader model 4.1 or 5.0 in comparison to SM 3.00 in the 360 and PS3. I remember reading somewhere that the Project cars people are using OpenGL 4.3 on the Wii-U? It has newer feature sets anyway.

The CPU is... three Broadway cores, each one clocked at 1.24Ghz, but with a larger cache of 2MB? I have no idea how that would compare to the XBox 360 or PS3 CPU's.

The Wii U would be like a last generation console with some newer GPU effects, I guess.

 

[Fracas]

Maybe it's just the incredible art styles but basically all of the Wii U's first party games look loads better than anything on 360 and go toe to toe with the best of PS3's offerings.

 

[DirgeExtinction]

I'm sorry if this is a dumb question, but I keep seeing that the Wii U has 2GB of RAM. How much of that is available to devs? 1.5? 1? Less?

 

[QuartKat]

That's the point I think. A lot of people have no issues admitting the PS3 is more powerful than than the 360 based on just specs, but almost everyone doesn't want to give credit to the Wii U even though it has considerably more RAM and a much more modern and powerful GPU. Some people just lump it with the previous Gen but have no issues separating the PS3 and 360.

360 >>> PS3 >>> Wii-U in terms of graphical output from what I know
But what do I know...

 

[Hermii]

I'm sorry if this is a dumb question, but I keep seeing that the Wii U has 2GB of RAM. How much of that is available to devs? 1.5? 1? Less?

1 at launch. We don't know if and how much that changed.

I think its obvious the Wii U is more powerful than last gen. It has 32mb edram like the xbox one, at least dx 10.1 equalent gpu, more ram available for games and devs have commented it punches above its weight. Just compare the 60fps games on last gen with the 60fps games on Wii U.

 

[tensuke]

These are the numbers I had saved in regards to the GPUs:

0.19 TFLOPS - PS3
0.24 TFLOPS - 360
0.35 TFLOPs - Wii U
1.31 TFLOPS - Xbone
1.84 TFLOPS - PS4

I'm not sure if they are completely accurate, but I either got them from here or from some other site that seemed accurate at the time.

Well on one hand you can't always just compare FLOPS (PS4/Xbone architecture is the same so in that case they're more or less directly comparable) because you have to look at other aspects of the GPU, and on the other you also had the Cell performing certain graphical computations which makes such comparisons much less prescient. But, in general, the Wii U should be graphically more capable than 360/PS3 at its peak, but it still falls short of PS4/Xbone.

Not sure how updated this thread is, but a good reference for resolution/frame rates of WiiU games: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=736354

The fact that the WiiU is running 1080p/60fps games means that some developers should go back to basics and figure out how to optimize their games so they don't run like shit. No reason games should be shipped with unstable frame rates or shitty resolutions if the games don't demand it.

lol come on dude. Most of the games on that list are 720p/sub 720p and a handful are listed as 60fps with heavy framedrops or just 30fps. Only a few are 1080p (although most newer Wii U games are hitting 1080p/60 which is very nice). But the ones that are hitting 1080p/60 aren't as graphically or computationally expensive as the "sub 1080p/60" games you're talking about. They look great, sure, because the art direction is fantastic. But don't assume that because the Wii U can have good looking games running at 1080p/60 that devs not hitting those standards on other consoles are lazy or incompetent.

Spoiler

Although I will agree that if a dev is releasing a game with sub 30fps they should bring it down a notch to keep it at a stable 30fps at the very least.

 

[erawsd]

What's interesting to me is that the jump from Wii to Wii U is much larger than the jump from the 360 to the Xbone.

Don't forget that when Need for Speed came out on Wii U, 360 and PS3, the developers themselves said that the Wii U version was the better version because it was able to use the PC textures while the PS3 and 360 versions had to have their textures down-scaled.

Of course it does, the Wii was sub HD, which helps WiiU feel like a massive step up.

 

[HolyBaikal]

PS3 has the Cell. 'nuff said.

It doesn't quite seem like enough said, because I don't know what you mean.

Are you saying that the cell CPU is really good? Because it seems really outdated by now.

 

[Kurt]

No game of ps3 or xbox 360 came close to :

or

or

or

mario kart 8

And so on...

The gap is bigger then expected.

However if we looking it at a global scale, both 3 next gen consoles did not blow me away with next gen gfx. The gap between the wii and wii u is large. but the gap between xbox 360 and ps3 to xbox one and ps4 is verry small.

 

[DirgeExtinction]

1 at launch. We don't know if and how much that changed.

I think its obvious the Wii U is more powerful than last gen. It has 32mb edram like the xbox one, at least dx 10.1 equalent gpu, more ram available for games and devs have commented it punches above its weight. Just compare the 60fps games on last gen with the 60fps games on Wii U.

Thanks. So at the very least, about half of the total RAM is available to devs.

From what I've seen of Wii U games, the Wii U is definitely a bit more powerful than the PS3/360. I mean, it kind of has to be, considering it came out near the last years of said consoles. If it was on equal footing, it'd be pretty pathetic.

 

[Hermii]

These are the numbers I had saved in regards to the GPUs:
0.176 TFLOPs - Wii U
0.19 TFLOPS - PS3
0.24 TFLOPS - 360
1.31 TFLOPS - Xbone
1.84 TFLOPS - PS4

I'm not sure if they are completely accurate, but I either got them from here or from some other site that seemed accurate at the time.

Fixed it. Flops isn't everything though.

 

[Loofy]

This grass is next gen to me. Did PS3/360 have anything comparable? Apart from the game that only focused on grass(flower)

 

[Kurt]

The title should be, how large is the gap between xbox one and wii u.
That's a more intresting to compare.

In the end did we already compare this with one game?

Let's see the differents between watchdog.

This grass is next gen to me. Did PS3/360 have anything comparable? Apart from the game that only focused on grass(flower)

No, feel free to compare...

 

[PaulLFC]

troll post. the wii u can do a LOT more than the ps3 and 360, come on dude. enough with these kiddy arguments, you have absolutely no proof its weaker. In fact, everything weve seen just proves that its more powerful.

Show me where in that post you quoted it says "weaker" - and then define this "everything we've seen" that is supposed proof of more power.

 

[chinto20]

These are the numbers I had saved in regards to the GPUs:

0.176 TFLOPs - Wii U
0.19 TFLOPS - PS3
0.24 TFLOPS - 360
1.31 TFLOPS - Xbone
1.84 TFLOPS - PS4

I'm not sure if they are completely accurate, but I either got them from here or from some other site that seemed accurate at the time.

This, of course 1st party devs are gonna pull some good graphics with the wii u but right now we have to stick with these specs.

I like to think that the Wii U is comparable to last gen consoles with a better and newer GPU.

The gap between Wii U and PS4 and Xbone is big though.

 

[hodgy100]

360 >>> PS3 >>> Wii-U in terms of graphical output from what I know
But what do I know...

Seeking not much. Especially being that your more the s should most definitely be less thans:

WiiU > PS3 > x360

 

[dazzlerazzle]

More RAM slightly better GPU but 3 cores at 1.24 GHZ

 

[neurosisxeno]

This grass is next gen to me. Did PS3/360 have anything comparable? Apart from the game that only focused on grass(flower)

I refuse to believe actual gameplay will look anything like that. I imagine that's an in-engine "cinematic" if you will.

 

[Ushojax]

Wind Waker was pushing grass like that on the GameCube, it's nothing mind- blowing.

 

[Synless]

I refuse to believe actual gameplay will look anything like that. I imagine that's an in-engine "cinematic" if you will.

Mario Kart and Donkey Kong are more impressive to me than most anything (GTA V) last gen at a near flawless 60fps and 720p. There is so much color, so much going on compared to the drab brown and grey colors of most last gen games. This is all within the first year of the console coming out.

 

[foxuzamaki]

As someone who has worked with the memory limits of PS3 and 360 for the last 3 years, 1 gig of ram dedicated on Wii U is a significant upgrade. Its just not nearly as major as 4-5.5Gigs from X1 and PS4. Everything is relative.

2-2.5x seems a reasonable off the cuff assessment but it's never black and white like that.
6005 more polygons more per krundle would be more accurate.

Im taking your word for it the most out of everyone in this thread since you have claimed to have experience with the consoles.

 

[Cuburt]

The title should be, how large is the gap between xbox one and wii u.
That's a more intresting to compare.

In the end did we already compare this with one game?

Let's see the differents between watchdog.

This is what I want to see.

Here's one comparison:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftQmHpPJrsc

Besides some more particle effects in certain scenes, a little more vegetation (not as much compared with the PS4), and slightly better textures on the Xbox One, it's pretty comparable.

There may be some additional lighting effects with the Xbox One but it's hard to tell what is due to the sharpening filter that was on many of the Xbox One games at launch.

This may just be one game but these are not worlds apart like people like to assume.

 

[foxuzamaki]

I refuse to believe actual gameplay will look anything like that. I imagine that's an in-engine "cinematic" if you will.

Nintendo doesnt bullshit when they're actually showing what the game will look like.

 

[Kodaman]

Wind Waker was pushing grass like that on the GameCuve, it's nothing mind- blowing.

how much for your gamcu... oh.. I see.. GameCuve...

 

[Kataploom]

I refuse to believe actual gameplay will look anything like that. I imagine that's an in-engine "cinematic" if you will.

I see you don't know Nintendo, if anything, it will look even better or the same way you see it in the trailer.

I don't know how can people still compare Wii U with last gen consoles since the graphics we've seen on the games built from the scratch look, at least, slightly better (Pikmin 3) or MUCH better (Mario Kart 8) with a locked 60 fps. I just wonder how far could the Wii U go in graphics if they just do them at 30fps and improve the IQ. Doubling the frame rate is not a matter of "20% to 30% more powerful" but twice at least, let alone 1080p in some games with self-shadowing like Smash.