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Wii U has 2GB of DDR3 RAM, [Up: RAM 43% slower than 360/PS3 RAM]

Eusis

Member
What "other half"? From the quote in the OP, that's it. 4 * 4Gbit = 2 GB.

What we don't know yet is how fast the eDRAM is.

... either I am confused or the majority of people in this thread are. Wii U does not have split memory pools, except for the eDRAM.
Ah, should've figured that, looked at the tl;dr version without even trying to put it together in my head.

Well, I kind of expect having MORE can, when used appropriately, balance out being a bit slower, but it will almost certainly not be much help against the next Xbox/PS.
 
What "other half"? From the quote in the OP, that's it. 4 * 4Gbit = 2 GB.

What we don't know yet is how fast the eDRAM is.

... either I am confused or the majority of people in this thread are. Wii U does not have split memory pools, except for the eDRAM.

I don't think he mean literally half in terms of capacity, like those in the speculation thread who thought there would be physically separate memory buses for games (GDDR5) and the OS (DDR3). I think he's just saying the main memory bus is only half the story when you consider the embedded memory's contribution to the overall design.
 
Durante is right, OP amended. Wii U uses 2GB of DDR3 at a max speed of 17GB/s. Ignore what was previously posted, will get a mod to change the title.
 

AniHawk

Member
interesting, because i thought nintendo was big into having fast parts in their console even if they weren't the most powerful. kind of harkening back to the n64 and the supposed reason of choosing carts over discs due to load times.
 

AlStrong

Member
it is "gDDR3," note the lower case 'g' -- I'm not sure what that means.

It's listed under gDDR3, there's a seperate category for GDDR3. What's the difference?

It just means it's DDR3 for graphics board integration (i.e. 1:1 tracing from DRAM to processor) rather than DIMMs. There are PC graphics cards that use DDR3, which would actually be considered "gDDR3", but hey... there's the naming confusion and all.

"GDDR3" is a separate technology altogether.
 
interesting, because i though nintendo was big into having fast parts in their console even if they weren't the most powerful. kind of harkening back to the n64 and the supposed reason of choosing carts over discs due to load times.
Let's hope they haven't cheapened out on their eDRAM and that it's more flexible than the type in the 360.
 

Perkel

Banned
But whats being talked about is the system ram is it not not video ram?.

wasn't there information that there is no vram in system ? 2GB is shared memory between games and system.

If this is true i don't see anything different for second 1GB.
 

Ydahs

Member
interesting, because i though nintendo was big into having fast parts in their console even if they weren't the most powerful. kind of harkening back to the n64 and the supposed reason of choosing carts over discs due to load times.
The setup's also important but yeah, odd choice of RAM.
 

Instro

Member
interesting, because i thought nintendo was big into having fast parts in their console even if they weren't the most powerful. kind of harkening back to the n64 and the supposed reason of choosing carts over discs due to load times.

We'll have to see what they are doing with the edram, as this is a fairly different choice for them as far as RAM is concerned.
 
The eDRAM will only be large enough to store the render buffers (frame buffer, some textures, vertex buffers, etc), 99% of the game will be on this slow as hell main memory.
Like many people said already, the difference to whatever Sony and Microsoft put into their new consoles will be brutal.
 

cyberheater

PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 Xbone PS4 PS4
If this is correct. And the rumours on the CPU speed are also correct. Basically the only thing saving WiiU is the GPU.

The Xbox360 and PS3 out performs it otherwise.
 

iammeiam

Member
This is very discouraging. I thought you could always count on Nntendo for fast memory, even if they weren't spec obsessing.
 

Durante

Member
So what effect does RAM speed have exactly? Faster texture loading?
First of all, there are 2 separate metrics of interest for memory (well, there are even more, but these are the most important): bandwidth and latency. Both of those impact a huge variety of algorithms and general things a CPU or GPU might do. Generally, bandwidth mostly affects the speed of streaming computations (like those you might find on a GPU or n a CPU using SIMD), while latency mostly affects code that traverses data structures in memory (e.g. lists or trees) -- which is a lot of what any program does. Basically, almost everything is affected to some degree by memory speed.
 

Chiggs

Member
Come on, folks...acting as if eDRAM is going to be the savior of this system is a little absurd. The memory is gimped. Utterly gimped.

I can't believe what a mess this is.
 

Oblivion

Fetishing muscular manly men in skintight hosery
If this is correct. And the rumours on the CPU speed are also correct. Basically the only thing saving WiiU is the GPU.

The Xbox360 and PS3 out performs it otherwise.

Well, the RAM amount at least is more than the PS360, so there's that.
 

Doc Holliday

SPOILER: Columbus finds America
If this is correct. And the rumours on the CPU speed are also correct. Basically the only thing saving WiiU is the GPU.

The Xbox360 and PS3 out performs it otherwise.

I thought the 360 used gdddr3 ram aswell? Why are people saying its ddr3? On the samsung page it says it's GDDdr3 not ddr3.
 

wsippel

Banned
So what effect does RAM speed have exactly? Faster texture loading?
Nope. Textures don't require much bandwidth. Regular setups need fast RAM for shit like render targets, but those should be stored in eDRAM on Wii U as far as we know, so I don't think the bandwidth will be an issue. If developers use it correctly that is.
 

Perkel

Banned
So what effect does RAM speed have exactly? Faster texture loading?

How much data can be used by game for example textures and how fast can it display.

For example Gta4 without mods on high with 1600x900 resolution takes more than 1GB of Vram.

What this mean is that Wii U can't play GTA4 on very high settings and games like Crysis2 on high is also out of question.
 

Chiggs

Member
I think it's almost impossible to call the Wii U more powerful than the 360 or PS3. Clearly it's worse in a major category. Is this even happening? Lol

I'm starting to get that flop feeling.
 

Oblivion

Fetishing muscular manly men in skintight hosery
First of all, there are 2 separate metrics of interest for memory (well, there are even more, but these are the most important): bandwidth and latency. Both of those impact a huge variety of algorithms and general things a CPU or GPU might do. Generally, bandwidth mostly affects the speed of streaming computations (like those you might find on a GPU or n a CPU using SIMD), while latency mostly affects code that traverses data structures in memory (e.g. lists or trees) -- which is a lot of what any program does. Basically, almost everything is affected to some degree by memory speed.

Nope. Textures don't require much bandwidth. Regular setups need fast RAM for shit like render targets, but those should be stored in eDRAM on Wii U as far as we know, so I don't think the bandwidth will be an issue. If developers use it correctly that is.

How much data can be used by game for example textures and how fast can it display.

For example Gta4 without mods on high with 1600x900 resolution takes more than 1GB of Vram.

What this mean is that Wii U can't play GTA4 on very high settings and games like Crysis2 on high is also out of question.

Ah, thanks.
 
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