XtremeXpider
Member
But Wii U will do multitasking, aka more than an app in ram. OS and system services will need some ram (less than 1gb), and the rest for apps (like Netflix, web explorer and so).
A thread, each core (of three) have 2 threads.
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Rumor: Wii U final specs
- Thread starter EatChildren
- Start date
But Wii U will do multitasking, aka more than an app in ram. OS and system services will need some ram (less than 1gb), and the rest for apps (like Netflix, web explorer and so).
A thread, each core (of three) have 2 threads.
PS2 was a 6GFLOPs console, XBox was a 21GFLOPs console, the difference is greater than we are hearing from Wii U to PS4, which is ~600GFLOPs to 1843GFLOPs. So while we can't say anything for sure (we still don't know even Wii U's performance atm) it's about the only thing we can talk about since we have to take these rumors as the base for our speculation.
Indeed. That would be poor use of resources; a single hardware thread makes sense, but an entire core dedicated to sound is wasteful. Especially given that a single core has much more processing power than the Gamecube or Xbox CPU.
6Gflops is the PS2 CPU, very bad comparison
this type of comparison isn't possible on old gen
Really... Has it been confirmed that you can multi task whilst running games. E.g. pausing a game to check something on the web?
If any console ever needed to have upgradable RAM, its the Wii U. That worked really well with the N64 you could double the on board Ram with relative ease. No one has ever tried that idea again since.
Refreshment.01
Member
It would be cool if someone making a cheap underpowered machine like this one will support multi gpu rendering by connecting 2 consoles.
Since maybe they don't lose money in each machine sold the feature could be sustained, only hurdle i see is launch time because of the hardware availability.
They have a more similar architecture than ps2 and xbox as well. ram was 32mb to 64mb as well, I'm not sure how you could compare these consoles then. How exactly would you compare them then? beyond you know one is Nintendo and another is Sony.
XtremeXpider
Member
More flops, yes, but with contemporary architecture. It is like comparing 2 DX10 GPUs, low end and high end, more resolution, better framerate, some extra polygons, some better textures, but the "same" architecture.
It will depend if MS and Sony make a higher level architecture than Wii U, If PC, Xbox 720 and PS4 can do a higher jump "together" (DX11++/DX12), those 1843GLOPS will not mean anything.
If Xbox 720 and PS4 are "current DX11" (actual PC level), I guess Wii U will get most ports.
Xbox used "DX8" while PS2 was more in line with DX7. So I'm not sure what you are talking about...
How'd you hook them up? Using ethernet cables or something.
MadeInBeats
Banned
The butt hurt man, I've never seen so much in one place at one time. I'm new to NeoGAFii but has anyone ever seen it like this or maybe even worse?
TheLaughingMan
Banned
I'm happy with these specs 
Refreshment.01
Member
That would be the least of the problems. But i was thinking since the hypothetical unit would be small (and the target is a power user) a sort of really nice looking rack with some fans for extra cooling, sold with a good profit margin. Just look how nice some of the multi HDD enclosures look. Or the cheap way with a cable like with AMD crossfire.
This can be really cool, because if the asoptionrate was high enough. Maybe some years down the line they could release the multi GPU system in the same box, sort of as a relaunch and keep the brand fresh.
Right, and shots in the complete dark about this is better than the rumors we have? we can speculate on a lot of things, but saying that the Samsung game console that comes out in 2014 will make all 3 obsolete is pointless.
gundamkyoukai
Member
Not sure how you can compare X box and PS2 to begin with .
Since the PS2 also used both of parts for GFX.
That 6 GFLOPS you talking about for the CPU .
the 6GFLOPs is the calculations the entire console produced.
Source?
gundamkyoukai
Member
One thing for certain is that it going to be easy to compare GPUs for all 3 systems .
Yeah each one going to get some tweaks but they all made by AMD .
Yeah each one going to get some tweaks but they all made by AMD .
no, is the CPU only
300mhz x (8flops VU0 + 8flops VU1 + 4 flops R5900 FPU) = 6Gflops
you can't compare flops for old-gen. old gen rendering don't really use flops for pixels
By 'many use a third" you mean 1, a game I might add that had over 200 sounds sources at the same time.
NO!
SM4.1 is not the same as SM5!
All GPUs have things that exceed the DX Shader Model they support!
That does not mean they support a higher SM level.
GPGPU has been done for years!
OpenCL is supported by DX10 cards.
DX compute shaders work on DX10 hardware.
Folding@Home has even used GPU acceleration on old ATI x1900s!
The 360 support using the GPU as a GPGPU via the memextport.
ect.
DonMigs85
Member
The Reality Synthesizer was more of a graphics accelerator and couldn't do floating point on its own. Still a big jump from Dreamcast which had a theoretical max of 1.4 GFLOPs.
GameCube was also sandwiched right between PS2 and Xbox in this aspect (10.5 GFLOPs, 1.9 of which is from the Gekko CPU).
The Reality Synthesizer is the PS3's GPU.
You are thinking of the "Graphics Synthesizer".
read that post slower, YES compute graphics card is nothing new, and gpgpu functionality can be found in older cards, but unified shaders for compute was done in DX11. Tessellation was another that was moved over to unified shaders, both of these pretty much cover the change from DX10.1 and DX11, of which the Wii U uses neither.
And I didn't say it was SM5, I said it exceeded shader model 4 (via antonz), you are the one jumping the gun and declaring what that means.
Probably if a dev needs it. The disc drive should be able to read dual layer discs anyway.
The Floppers are flopping in this floppity flop of a thread!
Fourth Storm
Member
2 gigs of RAM, huh? I'll have my crow medium rare please.
I still believe the reports that it's clocked low. I'm going with a 1440 Mhz processor, 480 Mhz gpu, and 720 Mhz DDR3 configuration.
The big question is that eDRAM. The console seems to rely heavily on it. What's the bandwidth to the cpu and gpu? What kinda latencies are we talking? Below 2ns?
I still believe the reports that it's clocked low. I'm going with a 1440 Mhz processor, 480 Mhz gpu, and 720 Mhz DDR3 configuration.
The big question is that eDRAM. The console seems to rely heavily on it. What's the bandwidth to the cpu and gpu? What kinda latencies are we talking? Below 2ns?
XtremeXpider
Member
PS2 is not "DirectX". PS2 don't have "shaders" as Xbox, but it can be programmable for things like selfshadows or motion blur.
http://teamico.wikia.com/wiki/Graphics_and_post-processing_effects_used_in_Shadow_of_the_Colossus
bgassassin
Member
Thanks. I'd like to thank all the messageboard posts I've read this past year. I wouldn't be here without you.
LOL. Same thing I was thinking. Those were rather specific mentions.
Not me. From the get go I surmised 2GB, and no one believed me
Yep you were. At the time it didn't dawn on me that the info I was seeing back then referred to 1 or 1.5GB being for games, not total.
I agree on both accounts. This gives them future flexibility, but hopefully not the distant future.
Very.
And thanks bg for stayin' cool and calm and doing the detective work on all this Wii U stuff. Gave us many hours of reading and speculation.
Perfect lol
Xbox used "DX8" while PS2 was more in line with DX7. So I'm not sure what you are talking about...
What I meant was that PS2 effects were in line with what we saw from DX7, compare PS2 games to XBox games and you will see effects missing on a constant basis, sometimes it's because the PS2 wasn't powerful enough for it, and other things were simply only possible thanks to the nearly 2 extra years that Xbox spent in development.
Thunder Monkey
Banned
Equating the PS2 architecture with anything DX is insane in the first place.
If you wanted pixel-shading beyond simple emboss or glossy maps it was almost purely software oriented. But because of that versatility was also much higher than the DX8+ GPU of the Xbox. Depending on the ops performed though you really could cap your poly count.
nordique
Member
possibly
but just to point out we've heard from some people like wsippel that, at the bare minimum the Wii U CPU is "at least" as capable as the 360 CPU
It is getting a lot of criticism because it has a purportedly lower clock than the 360, but by all accounts, it is still quite capable and efficient
Barack Lesnar
Banned
What about his post was "butthurt"? The specs really are that bad. He's probably right about that being the reason they've put so much focus on the controller as it's the centerpiece of the system.
Thunder Monkey
Banned
Bad is not quantifiable.
Disappointing sure. But you could call Orbis specs bad in comparison to potential.
XtremeXpider
Member
No, you can´t say PS2 was "DX7 like", Dreamcast was DX7-like, but PS2 can do a lot of things that DX7 can't, and it can do a some things that Xbox can, even without shader language.
Hcoregamer00
The 'H' stands for hentai.
Heck, the Wii U is the first Nintendo console to have a fully programmable GPU, Even the 3DS doesn't have that. That alone should mean that ultimately the console will not be locked out of 3rd party multiplat games like last generation.
You really don't know what WiiUs CPU is. PS3 had 392MB of RAM for games on release (can't remember 360s). Oh and finally r700 which the GPU is based on was released 4 years ago not 5. At least get the facts straight if you're going to post this kind of thing.
I'll also remind you that plenty of new hardware is based on older hardware, most of it in fact. There's no reason for Nintendo to advance the GPU to an exact DX11 specification since a lot of that may not suit how they want the GPU to work, they wont even be using DX. Instead they've took a DX10.1 GPU as a starting point and added features they want, it's a custom GPU now. For instance if you think any GPU 4 years back had 32MB of super fast embedded RAM then I'd love for you to point it out.
Right, that was what the second paragraph was describing, PS2 wasn't capable of a lot of effects that Xbox was, the entire point of what I was saying is that is exactly like the situation people are painting about Wii U and PS4/XB3, except DX10.1 can do vitually everything DX11 can.
He's referring to the GPU though. GS was really very basic as far as its feature set goes so basic in fact its not even really accurate to call it a GPU. Since it couldn't perform hardware T&L. That said it was created to compliment the EE (CPU) so HW T&L wasn't a big necessity given that EE was very good at geometry processing. But still GS lacked a lot of features beyond DX6. Where it did do well was brute force work. Massive bandwidth in the internal frame buffer and a quite insane pixel fillrate for the time allowed some nice effects for developers that were prepared to really put the work in. But feature set wise for GS I'd say DX7 like is being very generous.
Are the specs you're referring to the ones you've imagined? Because enhanced Broadway cores isn't a spec. Based on a certain GPU isn't a spec.
I assume some of that is to make sure the OS has plenty of memory to begin with (before they trim it down as they decide on its final features) and the rest is for apps. PS3 used about 25% of its memory for the OS on release. Now it uses something like 8%. So hopefully a good portion of that 1GB ends up being freed up for games.
A console usually doesn't release with such exceptionally primitive hardware.
bgassassin
Member
I enjoyed doing it. Trying to learn what the console could be and could do while waiting on Nintendo to give us (some) real info really helped pass the time. Hard to believe over a year has passed. Seems so quick. I think today has shown it was worth the wait.
Agree on all accounts. PS4 target specs have already indicated this.