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Wii U development units supposedly underclocked; games pulled from E3 by Nintendo

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pirata

Member
Edge said:
A Wii U white paper published by Hit Detection - the consulting company founded by former Edge columnist N'Gai Croal - claims that Wii U developer hardware does not reflect the system's true power. "Developers have underclocked development kits, and worked hard to deliver titles running on hardware to demonstrate live at E3," it reads. "However, due to titles not looking much better than what is currently available on Xbox 360 and the PS3, Nintendo decided late in the game to not show those titles and focus instead on tech demos."
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via Edge



To those who are knowledgeable about hardware stuff, are the underclocked dev kits a common occurance? Is this an indicator that Nintendo will eventually increase the amount of horsepower available to devs closer to launch, or that the final hardware will be underclocked for less power consumption, noise, etc.?
 
pirata said:
via Edge



To those who are knowledgeable about hardware stuff, are the underclocked dev kits a common occurance? Is this an indicator that Nintendo will eventually increase the amount of horsepower available to devs closer to launch, or that the final hardware will be underclocked for less power consumption, noise, etc.?
Click to expand...

360 and PS3 went through this. For PS3 it was bad because the gpu was downgraded in to the rsx while devs were making tech demos it could never live up to.
 
LCGeek said:
360 and PS3 went through this. For PS3 it was bad because the gpu was downgraded in to the rsx while devs were making tech demos it could never live up to.
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Which is the complete opposite of the situation the OP's story hints at.
 
Frankenstein kits use similar to final parts but without all the advantages of the final parts.

Its very likely they are having issues with the off the shelf versions of their custom components so have to scale power back until they can send out the Kits with final parts
 
Scalemail Ted said:
So much more information needs to be revealed... i hope we dont need to wait until next E3
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I have a feeling we will. I dont think they'll be really ready to update with much in October or before E3 next year.
 
Relix said:
360 originally had 256MBS of RAM
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And the first 360 dev kits were Apple Mac G5s because they were Power PC based.

Also this news is old but I'm not sure if anyone made a thread about it, I think it was just in the Engadget RV770 thread.
 
pirata said:
To those who are knowledgeable about hardware stuff, are the underclocked dev kits a common occurance? Is this an indicator that Nintendo will eventually increase the amount of horsepower available to devs closer to launch, or that the final hardware will be underclocked for less power consumption, noise, etc.?
Click to expand...
Seems to me it's more common for early dev kits to be huge and have big 'n' loud air cooling to mitigate for silicon that runs hotter than the shipping launch hardware.

Didn't Sony require shipping PSP launch titles to underclock the hardware for a long time for battery life reasons?
 
antonz said:
Frankenstein kits use similar to final parts but without all the advantages of the final parts.

Its very likely they are having issues with the off the shelf versions of their custom components so have to scale power back until they can send out the Kits with final parts
Click to expand...

Don't know how reliable the info is but some gaffer said it was because the kits were overheating at full power and it caused them to freeze.
 
The thing I find most interesting is that Nintendo pulled games based on visuals, suggesting that Nintendo expects developers to be able to make noticeably better-looking games on Wii U, even with the currently underclocked hardware.
 
Scalemail Ted said:
So much more information needs to be revealed... i hope we dont need to wait until next E3
Click to expand...

If what Sega said was right then WiiU looks to be launching this Spring, probably April. I tend to believe that otherwise ports like Darksiders 2, Arkham City, etc. would be just too late. So if it's coming out in April then wouldn't they need like 3 months at the very least prior to have it finalized? That gives them around 6 months from now. I don't think Nintendo is going to increase or change anything drastically between now and then.
 
Jin34 said:
Don't know how reliable the info is but some gaffer said it was because the kits were overheating at full power and it caused them to freeze.
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Which would be a very real possability. A stock GPU from the 4XXX family is likely 55nm still and full power sucking in the early devkits.

Once the customized chips come out that are 40nm or 32nm its gonna make a world of difference.
 
Nappuccino said:
God... imagine what the original, unworthy, demos must have looked like.
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Nintendo pulled actual games from the E3, not tech demos. The demos Nintendo had were meant to demonstrate new control methods not graphical prowess.
 
antonz said:
Which would be a very real possability. A stock GPU from the 4XXX family is likely 55nm still and full power sucking in the early devkits.

Once the customized chips come out that are 40nm or 32nm its gonna make a world of difference.
Click to expand...

As someone with a 4850 I can say it is not a card to be a put in a small case with little ventilation. And seeing as the first dev kits are supposed to be the size of the 360 this would be a problem.
 
Jin34 said:
As someone with a 4850 I can say it is not a card to be a put in a small case with little ventilation. And seeing as the first dev kits are supposed to be the size of the 360 this would be a problem.
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Nintendo made the GameCube. I am sure they can make some miracle.
 
NBtoaster said:
So were the tech demos from underclocked dev units?
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Yes. Including the Garden demo. Reggie even stressed the fact that it was running on early prototype hardware, implying that the final system would be noticeable more powerful.
 
Jin34 said:
As someone with a 4850 I can say it is not a card to be a put in a small case with little ventilation. And seeing as the first dev kits are supposed to be the size of the 360 this would be a problem.
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Assuming Nintendo goes with a 4850, the newer ones would probably be a custom version and be much smaller and run cooler.
 
I don't mind if the Nintendo WU sees a size increase larger than the prototype case shown at E3.

As long as it isn't OG PS3 or XboX 1 big that is.
 
Relix said:
Nintendo made the GameCube. I am sure they can make some miracle.
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Oh I'm not commenting on the final hardware, merely on the first dev kits which are usually some frankenstein taped together to get devs to start running code on them, not exactly feats of engineering. I would love to have seen devs reaction when MS sent devs Macs to start making 360 games hehe.
 
antonz said:
The Mii based demos were nothing more than proof of concept demos for the controller to show potential.
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What about Zelda/the Bird demo? If they were we can probably expect even better visuals in the final product.
 
NBtoaster said:
What about Zelda/the Bird demo? If they were we can probably expect even better visuals in the final product.
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I would assume they were running on the same kits as everyone else. Thats info we wont know though since Nintendo refuses to address who made the japanese garden demo.

Never forget:
10gwiz4.jpg
 
Damn, the kits that made the garden tech demo were underclocked?

It's looking like the final Wii U system is gonna have some serious horsepower, as far as consoles go.
 
It'd be pretty cool if Retro did the garden demo, but I guess it really doesn't look like their style.
 
goomba said:
So why did the Mii tech demos look like Wii games in HD?
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Because Nintendo was focusing almost solely on the controller with these demos, not the system or its horsepower. When Nintendo showed off the Wii remote for the first time, one of the tech demos they had the press play was described as looking like it was made in MS Paint.


Jin34 said:
Also this news is old but I'm not sure if anyone made a thread about it, I think it was just in the Engadget RV770 thread.
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I saw the story there, searched a bit for a thread about it, couldn't find one. I think a lot of people might have missed the news in the other thread.
 
It's gotta be because of overheating like you guys are saying. That's the only explanation that makes sense. Hopefully a smaller process will solve this; I'd sure hate to see Nintendo go through a fiasco like the RRoD.
 
Dali said:
Which is the complete opposite of the situation the OP's story hints at.
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I mentioned two systems one of which 360 went through or did your forget 2k5 and it's debut. The ps3 in no way was full realized because not many things pc end could even begin to deal with cell's cpu.

The situation is clear devs kits aren't matching final performance.
 
Jin34 said:
As someone with a 4850 I can say it is not a card to be a put in a small case with little ventilation. And seeing as the first dev kits are supposed to be the size of the 360 this would be a problem.
Click to expand...

That's because they aren't using 4850 chips or any chips that was released back then, what the sources are saying that the wii u gpu is "based" on the RV770. It will probably also be a 32nm parts or something so that it will run at a much lower TDP, therefore much cooler. If it is based on RV770, then the wii u gpu is 2 generation higher than the xbox 360 xenos gpu.

edit: It's like saying the XBOX360 has a Radeon x1900 or that the PS3 is using a Geforce 7800 chip, they are not. They are "based" on R520 and NV47 chips respectively.
 
games were on par with ps3/360 games so they decided to show ps3/360 games instead. this doesnt make any sense.
 
DR3AM said:
games were on par with ps3/360 games so they decided to show ps3/360 games instead. this doesnt make any sense.
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It does if they want peoples first impression to be... impressed by the visuals over the other consoles.
 
antonz said:
I would assume they were running on the same kits as everyone else. Thats info we wont know though since Nintendo refuses to address who made the japanese garden demo.

Never forget:
10gwiz4.jpg
Click to expand...
I love that custom made dev kit, I wonder how long it took them to put the thing together.
 
DR3AM said:
games were on par with ps3/360 games so they decided to show ps3/360 games instead. this doesnt make any sense.
Click to expand...
A bit better actually, according to the report. I guess it still kinda makes sense not to show them if they were not up to snuff yet. No impression is better than a wrong impression.
 
DR3AM said:
games were on par with ps3/360 games so they decided to show ps3/360 games instead. this doesnt make any sense.
Click to expand...

The three options were not showing anything at all, showing what was currently running on the Wii U and completely confusing everyone of what the system's capabilities were, or run videos from other consoles and having some benefit of a doubt.

Naturally, the best choice would be not revealing the entire thing at such an early stage, but given these options they went with the one that gave them some leeway.
 
DR3AM said:
games were on par with ps3/360 games so they decided to show ps3/360 games instead. this doesnt make any sense.
Click to expand...
They just showed some brief footage; the games weren't on the floor for E3.
 
antonz said:
Never forget:
10gwiz4.jpg
Click to expand...


What is this? I swear I saw it when I went on some sort of boy scout trip to nintendo when I was younger. Or something like it. It had Super Mario World running on it.

EDIT: Ok. Maybe not. But I saw something similar there. I just don't know what it was. Probably an early GBA model.
 
PigSpeakers said:
What is this? I swear I saw it when I went on some sort of boy scout trip to nintendo when I was younger. Or something like it. It had Super Mario World running on it.
Click to expand...
Original dev kit for the DS.
 
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