Nintendo Wii GPU More Powerful Than We Think!? >

	2006/06/02 20:07:35: Posted by vividbreeze
	A question that frequently crosses our minds these days is, "how much power can the Nintendo Wii really put out, graphically?" While at E3, GameDaily Biz has had the chance to catch up with an ATI representative who explained that what we saw was just the "tip of the iceberg of what the Hollywood chip can bring to the Nintendo Wii". Developers have reported in the past that the Wii's GPU will be 2-2.5 more times powerful as the Gamecubes, and judgin by what the Gamecube did with RE4, we may be in for a treat. >Link
	Labeled With  nintendo wii hardware Comments [41]  | Rate this article: -- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10  | Avg. rating of 4.5

Basically the Wii is capable of Xbox 1 graphics.

show me an Xbox 1 game better than RE4/Metriod/cel shaded Windwaker gfx wise? Etc Etc....360 is a xbox 1.5.....

We're not talking about art direction, we're talking about processing power. Specs. And the Xbox 360 is actually more capable than the PS3, so does that make it a PS2.5?

Metroid and Zelda were not impressive at all. Personally I'd thank the talented programmers for RE4, not the system.

Vivid.. 4 words Mass Effect, Lost Planet. If you're going to be a pitiful fanboy atleast have something more to say than what you just did to back up your claim oh thats right you can't back up your claim that the 360 is an "xbox 1.5" Oh thats right there are xbox games comparable to Mass Effect or Lost Planet? The sheer amount of action that Lost Planet manages to handle with no fps drops is impressive in itself.

First you go off on some rant about the original xbox then you come back to calling the 360 xbox 1.5 when the wii sure as hell wont be able to match it. Chaos Theory looks amazing on the xbox 1... so does Ninja Gaiden and many other games. Most importantly you go praise re4 and don't even take notice that a major part of the re4 team is working on lost planet for the 360. Metrod was a joke, zelda gets respect for the game that it is not its graphics.

yeah Wii games will have a lot of graphical detail, when i saw Red Steel i was suprised it actually looked great graphically. Its just Wii won't be able to do the 1000 soldiers on screen battle, lol. Processing power isn't that great, even though it will have 512 MB of RAM which is really good. Forgive me if it isn't 512 MB, Gamespot might be wrong idk.

Oh i was wrong about the 512 MB of RAM thing, my bad. lol

Hey everyone. Long time no see.

1. Agree with worm.

2. Nintendo is always most honest about their system specs. In the DS case they dont even talk about them, ever. Same with Wii, no spec talk. Its all about the games. Some people will never understand that. And thats fine.

3. RE4 won a boatload of awards. Its better than any game on xbox including the Halo series; and im talking gameplay and graphics wise.

4. All those games opta keeps bringing up will sell well on release then tank. Thanks how things work when theyre over hyped. Fanboys buy them up.

Halo 2 won boatloads of awards as well and resident evil missed the show where it should've received awards and god of war received them.

Oh so all xbox360 games are overhyped and will tank, but ps3 games wont? Again you guys are blatant fanboys the funny part is I say I like the 360 better and back up my reasons for saying so, but you 2 especially worm are fanboys in denial and worm I'm glad I pissed you off enough that you gotta resort to cursing at someone on a forum that could care less. Why would I be insulted by some 16 year old? RE4 better than halo series eh? Shame it didn't sell as well to validate your claim. A hit and miss there buddy. The fact that you are even attempting to compare RE4 to a game like halo is laughable at best. Back to worm you are the biggest fanboy on here and its obvious you just don't admit to being a sony fanboy.

Smarty fanboy #2 (#1 belongs to worm) Your #4 claim is a joke Halo 3 will sell well on release then tank? Its one I always mention so will GTA 4? Mass Effect.. Kotor ring a bell? That game is guaranteed to sell, Lost Planet #2 most downloaded thing during E3? Enough said. Blue Dragon look who's making the game. Gears of War will sell well on release then tank? Oh... thats right Gears of War was amazing at E3. Ghost Recon hasn't tanked yet, neither has COD 2, Nor has elder scrolls. Don't get mad at me for speaking the truth go cry on somone elses shoulder that the ps3 flopped miserably at E3 2006. Funny how bad it does without CG videos eh? :)

1. New Super Mario Bros.

2. Dance Dance Revolution: Mario Mix

3 Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter

4 Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day

5 The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

6 The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion - Collector's Edition

7 Rockstar Games presents Table Tennis

8 Madden NFL 06

9 Call of Duty 2

10 Kingdom Hearts II



US console sales charts: May 21-27 Hmm funny ghost recon didn't tank yet? What is that is BOTH versions of Elder Scrolls on the top 10 sales chart? Even Table Tennis is doing well. Madden NFL 06 the 360 version is still doing well Call of Duty 2 is still selling and you fanboys expect the most anticipated 360 titles that everyone has been waiting for like gears mass effect, halo, lost planet to flop????

Let me know you guys get a brain alright?. I'm glad I piss you 2 off cause I'll continue saying what the hell I want whether you and worm like it or not so you either accept it stfu. 6 360 games on that list.. why haven't these games TANKED yet? Ghost Recon and elder scrolls have YET to leave the top seller charts since they released....

Worm hit me with another one of your unintelligent rants. Curse some more I like that I piss you off. Come on.. admit you're a sony fanboy and tries to find every excuse he can to trash the 360 and when someone makes you look like an idiot because you have no idea what you are talking about you get mad and say what you just said LOL. Smarty I wasn't surprised you'd agree with everything worm says cause you are one of the other well known ps3 fanboys on this site that never back up your claims with anything solid. :D

Smarty do you have a reason for why these titles haven't "tanked" yet? Of course you don't.... LMAO I'm done probably went overboard. Curse at me some more worm please?

*Edited: Watch the Language.*

Nothing is as scary as a fanboy in denial. Only one PS3 game has got me interested so far - Final Fantasy XIII which isn't a launch title. I already have lots of 360 games and there are quite a few I'm looking forward to.

I couldn't care less about Halo 2 or RE4 - both looked pretty crap to me.

Actually opta you giant penis wart I have never owned a Sony console ever. Under my TV is an xbox360 and a nintendo gamecube. I love them both but you talking like the 360 is the greatest thing since tits really pisses me off.

optavious funny you call wormy and smarty fanboys when ur blaintently one urself , u always deny it but u know its true....

remember when ted price(acorrding to optavious) "comletely denies halo 3 is there competition and tries to advertise a sony game"

remember that after even more babbling garbage coming out ur fanboy mouth, bill nye explains adactly what ted price says and you get ass proven WRONG and u retreat dosent even say he was wrong either pathectic

The sales rankings are scalar values, ie. relative positions; you have to look at the actual sales numbers. Its all relative, so, if every game bombs then the relative sales position of each game stays the same. Next time do a time series chart from release date with actual numbers.

And, btw, its what Nintendo calls the sales drive. Over-hyped famboy games sales spike in the first week or so then drop rapidly. Games like Brain Age may start off slow, but, sales pick up and plateau for a longer time.

Im betting that New SMB sold more carts than 2-10 combined. Pretty good for a game running on N64 comparable specs. And, Brain Age beating out Rockstar Ping Pong on its release week is funny. And GRAW is a good game.

-Smarty P. aka. fanboy number two

The moderators is going to have a feel day with you guys. I'm glad I'm back.

I meant Field Day

How about... You all sound like a bunch of females fighting over lip gloss.

I agree with optaviusx, after trying out the Lost Planet Demo you can be sure the 360 is definitely not xbox 1.5. I can't believe they achieved this kind of quality within 6 months of the console's release. Too bad we have to wait until 2007 for the full game.

I also agree with Wormgerm that the 360 is more about the WOW factor while the Wii focuses on gameplay WOW. After I saw the Mario gameplay vids I am anxious to own a Wii. In the end these two consoles will probably be the best of both worlds.

Fact is "tha l" I tell it like it is I like the xbox360 BETTER than I like the ps3 and I don't know how many different ways to say it. Will that mean I wont buy a ps3? Of course not, but people really need to get their facts straight. Its funny how many ORIGINALLY thought the ps3 was 2 times as powerful as the 360 even some misinformed on here and because I prove that statement incorrect with facts people get bitchy and go OMG because he isn't sold on the hype machine that is the ps3 he's a fanboy!! Microsoft tried to bs people by telling them the 360 has 1 teraflops worth of computing power by adding up a bunch of meaningless numbers then sony 1 upped em by adding up their bunch of meaningless numbers for 2 teraflops.

When I see worm's name I'll just ignore him completely he never says anything with any substance just remarks remniscent of a 16 year old so I will start ignoring him like I use to. This is only in response to smarty do you doubt that elder scrolls, cod2, graw are having great success? Of course not. Now why would you expect the games EVERYONE is waiting for like mass effect, gears of war, lost planet, blue dragon not to sell well? It has me baffled that 360 owners would be as stupid as to support every good title that comes our way right now then ignore the big guns like mass effect, gears... I think its pretty much a guarantee those games will sell well. If you don't see it that way then we just have differing opinions, but the games I mentioned will be top sellers its impossible for them to be otherwise.

There are many games on the 360 that are beyond just pretty graphics... elder scrolls, mass effect is coming from BIOWARE for god sakes. Just because nintendo managed to successfully market the wii at E3 all of sudden means everygame that is being made and has awesome graphics suddenly isn't as good? I'm sorry thats taking nintendo a BIT TOO literally. Mass Effect wont have much to offer because of its graphics? It'll just be a shallow game with great graphics as will all other 360 games? Graphics will be the last thing carrying games like Gears, mass effect, lost planet, blue dragon and many others. Games that are all flash no substance never amount to shit. I'm excited about the games coming from developers that can deliver substance. Now people may disagree, but I could care less.

haha opta continuously owns you guys and i laugh...

optaviusx: I understand you like x360 more than PS3, but one thing is personal preferences and other is raw power. If you put x360 CPU and CELL side by side, CELL is a vastly superior arch (pretty much expandable, highly parallel, etc), the only "drawback"

with CELL is that developers needs sophisticated programming techniques but at same time that is the point that makes PS3 such a beast, you have a extremely powerful CPU but you need to develop properly. I dont know how much more powerful is PS3 over x360 as a gaming machine but they are no the same as many of you want to say. That systems CAN NOT have the same power because they are totally different machines, time will tell. See you.

I know what you are trying to say, but let me say something that may shock people here. The ps3 and Xbox360 are closer in terms of power than the original xbox and ps2 were. The ps2 had a processor that was easily more than 2 times better than what the xbox had. Yes the ps2 had a cpu that was literally 2 times better than the xbox's.

The xbox360 CPU and Cell side by side the cell has an IMPRESSIVE streaming floating point advantage and there is more raw theoretical power on there, BUT the spes are severely stripped down cpus far more stripped down than each powerpc core on each console. The 360's 3 identical powerpc cores are more fit for game programming than the spes on the cell. General purpose processing power is a very big deal and the 360 has 3 times what the cell has in that regard.

In terms of overall capability the ps3's processor can't claim the same type of performance advantage over the 360 processor as the ps2 could claim over the original xbox. Remember sony hyped that emotion engine? It ACTUALLY had power... but very few developers managed to get the power out of it. The ps3 is even harder to program for than the ps2 was. Multi-threading is NOT easy. It even gives john carmack hell. Both the 360 and PS3's cpu is HALF the speed of a typical high end pc cpu. An athlon 64 3500+ is twice (yes twice) as fast as both. They are both stripped down in order processors whereas desktop cpus are out of order much more complex cpus.

Had the cpu in the ps3 and 360 been as complex as what you normally buy for a high end pc we'd pay about A $700-$800 starting price for both these consoles. If we actually got a TRUE to life cell processor that would be going inside ibm servers we'd likely pay well over $2000 or more for a ps3. Anyway you know what things are as carmack says EMBARASSINGLY easy to make parallel and thread? Ray Tracing (the same ray tracing you see in warhawk or tomb raider for the 360) Simply put if anyone wants to know EVERYTHING there is to know about just how much sony and microsoft overhyped these processors just go to google or msn and type in John Carmack Quakecon 2005. He tells all about how impossibly hard it will be for developers to properly mutli-thread the cpus. Multi-threading for the cpus is an attempt to get them to match what you'd see on a high end pc.

In a nutshell the 360 and ps3 in terms of overall power are alot closer than the ps2 and xbox were and carmack says it word for word. I don't think I need to tell anyone that Carmack's opinion of all people is VERY valid in this regard as he's quite possibly the best in the world at what he does.

Look up his Quakecon 2005 speech and just read it (its on beyond3d full transcript) and you'll come away knowing a great deal more about the 360 and ps3.

No single developer regardless of what they may say will max out any of these console's gpus unless some miracle compiler is designed. Tons of developers have claimed to have gotten the most out of the ps3's processor the 360's processor and thats not true in the least. To max out the potential on these processors there needs to be a miracle and Microsoft is a software company first and foremost the miracle is most likely to happen for Microsoft (not hating on the ps3 here just stating the obvious) Carmack praises the 360's development environment a couple times in the quakecon speech. His feelings about the ps3? Sony put alot of power in there without taking into consideration how in god's name they expect developers to make use of it. Microsoft put as much power as they could while making it very accessible to get to the available power. Microsoft's situation for lack of a better term stands at "We can have our cake and eat it too"

Sorry for the long post, but anyone that reads it might find it informative.

I also made a mistake I meant no single developer will ever max out any of these console's CPUS not gpus.

omg. that post defintely takes the cake!

ummmmmm. i dont have an hour to write a reply.

xbox360 is da bomb.

happy?

Not at all I didn't really talk up the 360 at all during that post. It was more a post bringing things a bit more down to earth on where the processors in both these consoles truly stand. In terms of performance the 360 and ps3 are alot closer than the xbox and ps2 were. The ps3's cell has a theoretical performance advantage, but the advantage isn't nowhere near the advantage the ps2 had on the xbox's cpu.

I summarized it and check out carmack's quakecon 2005 keynote to get ALOT of info on the ps3 and 360 especially the cpus.

I did mention cake in my post though so you got some of it :P

Let me get back on topic the wii gpu should ATLEAST be the equivalent of an x800. If not that then no less than a 9800XT.

Opta, I'm not really familiar with ATI cards, how would you compare wii's GPU to an Nvidia card? Would you say its on par w/ a 6600GT? 7800GT? Etc.? Thanks man, don't let the Sony girls make you deaf from all the whinin i'm seeing from'em, laterz man.

Maybe the equivalent to a 9800 pro then again Nintendo has been a master’s at creating great games with less to nothing in hardware.

Wii games can EASILY have incredible graphics that surpass the best from either the ps2 or xbox. All it would take is a 9700+ calibur gpu. (and even gpus weaker than a 9700+ can beat the ps2 and xbox in a very big way) Keep in mind the wii isn't targeting hi def resolutions its still going for standard definition so a 9800 calibur gpu at standard def is quite a force to reckon with.

In regards to the wii's gpu's nvidia equivalent I highly doubt it would be equivalent to a 6600 or 7800GT based on the rumored amount of power available to the console itself. First off the cpu would need to a bit more powerful and memory would need to be more to properly pair up against a 6600 or 7800GT. Sure it could work, but it isn't recommended.

Personally... the BEST I think one can hope for out of the wii is an x800 or 6600, but what might be more realistic is something in between a radeon 9200-9800. Which I guess would be between an fx5200-fx5800 type gpu for nvidia. Lets face it the BEST we will see out of the wii is a FX5900 or Radeon 9800XT type gpu which STILL trounces anything on the original xbox or ps2.

Personally though I'm suspicious if the gpu is even 9700/fx5800 calibur at all considering the low amount of memory and seemingly weak cpu. You know what could be funny guys? If the wii somehow has anything close to a 1.5GHZ out of order cpu.. its cpu could outperform the ps3 and 360 in single threaded game code lol. All games ever to have been released are single threaded game titles even attempts at anything along the lines of multi-threading has never truly seen any major success. Nintendo hasn't mentioned official specs yet , but either way close to 1GHZ and an out of order cpu its close in performance to the 360 and ps3 cpu in single threaded game code.

Keep in mind its a possiblity not a guarantee. Make no mistake the 360 and PS3 has substantially more power, but the wii having an out of order processor could pull some upsets in single threaded game code.

optaviusx: I agree with about Ps2 CPU being much more powerful than xbox (for god sake xbox 1 has a merely tweaked PII, nobody can think that thing has any power)

Regarding PS3vsX360, you can not say that 360 is 3x CELL because everything is up to developers, 7 SPES is a good number to begin with, parallel programing is a difficult one but is the way forward. There are some sites that shows that PROPERLY ported programs can run many times better on CELL than on general porpuses cpus. Anyway, everybody and his sister, are making DualCores and mobos QuadCores that are more like 360 cpu than CELL, that may means that 360 cpu is better for word-processing than games, unlike the CELL that can use any of their SPES in physics+AI+graphics+sound+etc, much more grained control.

Putting GPUs in comparison, probably 360 is more powerful and capable, but probably too, CELL and RSX are more integrated than we know, producing something that is better than the sum of it parts.

About Wii, it is stupid to think that it is as like ps2 or xbox 1, that doesnt make any sense. Wii obviusly have much power than that, but people of kidtendo (sorry I couldnt resist :) knows where Wii limits are and they are making Wii pretty powerful for Standar Television era but incapable of any HD. I see this situation: a pretty awesome "Zelda ..." in a 21' TV (maybe at 480p)

for the kids (12-) and adults (21+) running a PS3 with 32' at 720p, meanwhile teenegers are playing pacman on their mobile :D

You are 100% correct Rasta and making alot of sense it will truly be up to the developers and keep in mind when I say 3 times the general purpose processing capability that doesn't mean it will outperform the cell in every regard. Its just that the 3 power pc cores is a VERY good thing all things considered and will produce results in many areas of a game's code. The spes on the cells yes can be ordered by the main power pc core to work on specific programs or aspect of a game such as collision, physics, animation, water surface simulation, particles etc but when it comes to things such as AI, scripting, game control ALL of that will to stay right there on the one power pc core on the ps3's cell since the spes aren't really fit for accelerating those things.

This becomes an advantage for the 360 gpu in that ai, scripting, game control doesn't need to be stuck on the single power pc core because the 360 has 3 of them so it can be spread out however the developer sees fit. Power PC cores are more versatile than the spes which are much more stripped down (I'm not talking about power right now, talking about depth of what it can handle) As I'm saying this I understand considering the sum of all parts the ps3's cpu has more power on there than the 360's cpu, but it isn't that simple.

An interesting way of putting this is to say the cell is a car that can go 180MPH and the 360 CPU is a car that can go 120MPH the objective is to bring as many people from one destination to the other till gas runs out. (In this situation people represent game code and gas represents the limits of how much each cpu can handle) The cell is a 2 door car whereas the 360 CPU can seat a car of 4. The 360 cpu has more space to handle all sorts of differing aspects of game code acceleration. The cell is much more specialized in nature game control, ai, scripting stays on the power pc core and offload the rest of the work to the spes. It would be nice if that game control, ai and scripting didn't need to stay stuck on just the 1 ppe. There are upsides and downsides to both processors, but I understand the cell has higher peak power.

When I say 360 cpu has more space I'm not referring to the number of cores I'm referring to the fact that it isn't only capable of handling a specific type of code they can (if they want) run collision, physics, animation, water surface simulation, particles, along with ai, game, control and scripting on anyone of the scores without having to worry about a thing. The powerpc core on the cell has to be programmed one way and the work offloaded to the spes have to be handled in a COMPLETELY different way altogether. 360 developers wont run into such roadblocks as all 3 power pc cores are symmetrical and can be programmed the same because all 3 cores are exactly the same.

Basically as developers have told peter moore they and sony are both riding in ferraris it'll come down to the developer and the software. There will be games on the ps3 where people will think can the 360 do that? There will be games on the 360 where people say can the ps3 do that? In many cases the answer will be yes the other can do that, but in some specific situations the answer will be no that specific thing caters to that console's strength.

Such as the 360 gpu drawing 12,000 enemies on screen simultaneously with no fps drop during kameo's development and it performing 1 million interactive lit particles again with no fps all on the gpu with no help at all from the cpu. GPU run particle systems and geometry rendering are a strength of the 360 gpu. The ps3 will be able to do it, but not as extensively.

There are game situations in which the 360 could choke at and the ps3 will excel at.

Holy crap thats long. A problem I have is I tend to wanna say too much at once to cover all bases. Leaving things incomplete can sometimes lead to confusion like what the hell did he REALLY mean?

This becomes an advantage for the 360 CPU in that ai, scripting, game control -- I accidentally put gpu meant cpu.

You wet the bed

BURNNNNNNNN

Seriously why do you bother typing all that crap out?

good writer

Haha that was terrible I made so many annoying mistakes couple mispellings, calling the cpu a gpu, calling cores scores etc lol.

Well I actually like to write I was an english major until I switched to computer science, but what is written up there is a complete disregard for any sort of proper conventions when it comes to writing. An english professors nightmare lol :) Probably could've made a long story short by saying the difference between cell and 360 cpu is while code for both need to be parallel the cell needs certain types of code to be handled by certain parts of the cpu and it presents a problem because from ppe to spe you have to COMPLETELY change how you do things as if you are coding for 2 entirely different processors in the same box.

Whereas on the 360 developers can make any type of code be handled by any part of the processor without worrying if it can handle it or not and they can do everything the same all the way through no need to change how they do things since all 3 of the cores are identical.

Thats a sloppy explanation it gets more detailed, but if I were to get into that I could see it turning into another life story :P

haha

what sucks about the 360 CPU though, is that it tends to overheat while it is processing. They are even making intercoolers for the thing lol. If the Cell processor is a beast at processing, then it might face the same problems as the 360.

You fanboys really ruin the comment threads on this site.

It'd nice be nice if a statement made here could be both accurate and non-inflammatory.

Well.. the cpu doesn't overheat for the majority of 360 owners. Its only a select few and to be honest its expected the usual 3-4% defective models is something that plagues every major electronics release ESPECIALLY a console with as many complex parts as the 360. In many ways the ps3 might end up having it worse.

Currently the yields for the cell processor for the ps3 aren't good at all meaning of the chips manufactured alot of them are turning out to be defective. This happens with EVERYONE though (it happened to microsoft as well when they were starting production on the 360) eventually they'll produce alot more good chips than bad ones. If a cell cpu turns out to have 2 defective spes its tossed if it has 1 defective spe then its no big deal as they plan to use 7 spes anyway.

Bob your an idiot! PS3's Graphisc is more capable then Xbox 360 so Xbox 360 is actually more like Xbox 1.5 like Sony said everyone know's Microsoft is a monopolizing company that gets sued all the time when they keep monopolizing another software company

and plus the graphics on the Xbox 360 isn't as powerful unlike the PS3 which it is way more powerful then that piece of junk heap! and plus seeing the graphics of MotorStorm and WarHawk and MGS4 is more proof that PS3 is way more powerful in the Graphics department!

and in some other things to in the PS3.

Lol like the PS3 might have it worse your just a PS3 hater you retarded moron! optaviusx you would just say that to convince other gamers to buy an Xbox 360 instead of what they were planning on getting PS3 or Wii for that matter infact your not even a spokesman of anykind to say like that,the PS3 will have it worse

your more of a role model for nimrads everywhere.

Infact those are rumors that there saying if it turned out to be true retard optaviusx are you that much of a beliver about everything that you hear about PS3 your much of a dumbass then I thought to think that even everybody know's its just another rumor from another Sony hater such as yourself knowing

that they know the PS3 will succseed like its predecessor did or just like to spread more lies about the PS3 Cell.

optaviusx you would belive every bad news about the PS3 even though some of them turned out not to be true such as this one are you that much golibale to think that some of the false rumors are just from other Xbox 360 gamers that would just do anything to make it seem like Xbox 360 has no flaw's and better well of course they would knowing they know the PS3 will win

over Xbox 360 and plus its not like its a popular system Playstation has been around longer then that retarded console and of course it wont have that much of fans I mean come on who would be a fan of a company that would get sued more then Sony Microsoft is just another greedy ass bastard that would not at nothing to

buy other company software's and of course to fail and to get sued again and to lose more money that way only morons that are a fan to Microsoft would be dumb enough to think that there system is better when it actually isn't.

"No single developer regardless of what they may say will max out any of these console's gpus unless some miracle compiler is designed" by optaviux

ibm is already developing a octopiler , which will permint divide the code by the 8spes , funny cos they said that just 7 of the spes will work,

hxxp://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060225-6265.html

hxxp://domino.research.ibm.com/comm/research_projects.nsf/pages/cellcompiler.index.html