Fourth Storm
Member
I'm going to take a stab in the dark and come to believe that the RAM amount is the biggest thing that will see the 4x/5x multiplier.
CPU: IBM POWER7 (Derivative) Tri-Core/2-Way SMT OoO Processor @ 3.0GHz
RAM: 2GB GDDR3/5 Unified + 32MB eDRAM Secondary Pool
GPU: Efficient 640SPU part that performs closer to a AMD Radeon HD 7770 than a 4830 (On a scale of 4830 - 5770/6770 - 7750 - Wii U[?] - 7770) on a 32nm process; 128bit Bus.
I won't rule out a higher clocked CPU but I won't go higher than this for this guesstimate simply because I don't understand the consoles innards and airflow strategy yet. On the GPU side, I still think that the performance of the mentioned 7770 from AMD sets a good performance/wattage precedent for a console designed to be a good bump up from current gen while not breaking the bank or nuking itself. In actuality, the card I'd reference back to if possible would sit somewhere between the 7750 & 7770 in performance, but as no card exists like that at current, I made a small scale above. GDDR3 vs 5 is still all about the power envelope vs. Nintendo's stance on latency with a potential price aspect playing in the consideration as well, but with the eDRAM basically acting as a Super Saiyan Pikmin fetching from the lesser pool of Pikmins, GDDR3 might be the actual choice.
IdeaMan's post has made me believe more in this idea I have in my mind. The numbers all look weird and match the strange 2x lower bound of general multipliers but the performance puts it in that higher bound of speculated multipliers.
I can actually agree with these specs, except the issue of whether they use GDDR3 or GDDR5 is huge, I think. I've read that GDDR5 will make more sense pricewise in the coming years, but that will require more chips at the present (2GB would be a wopping 8 chips) so it may be out of the realm of possibility. But who knows? It's not impossible and Nintendo did use GDDR3 in the Wii, which was modern for the time, after apparently learning from the Gamecube mistake of including the so-called ARAM, which was so slow it was practically useless for most tasks. The extra bandwidth on the GDDR5 would be enticing in the eyes of Nintendo, as this is something that directly effects gameplay. 800 vs 640 spus, on the other hand, is more like splitting hairs.
Actually, if I were to take a guess, at 32nm, they could get a 640 spu part running at 729 MHz. That's a 3x multiplier from the Wii. Similarly a 5x multiplier for Wii's CPU would be 3.645 GHz, something a POWER7 derivative (slimmed down for on 2 Way SMT) should be able to hit easily and at a moderate wattage.