Wii U’s processor and graphics speeds are slower than Xbox 360 and PS 3

[Metal Ghost]

Being reported by Dean Takahashi over at Gamesbeat. Of course I would agree with those that raw power isn't what Nintendo consoles are about these days, nor has it been for quite some time. However, given that the Xbox 360 and PS3 have been on the market for 7 and 6 years, respectively, I would have expected at least on par performance, so I am actually quite a bit surprised here. Eh, guess you have to save money somewhere in order to offset the costs of the tablet controller.

 

http://venturebeat.com/2012/11/29/the-wii-us-processor-and-graphics-speeds-are-slower-than-xbox-360-and-ps-3/

[twoquickcapri]

There's a quote in the article that sum this up pretty well. ” He also said “clock for clock” comparisons with the older Xbo 360 chip aren’t strictly valid."

[MagitekAngel]

I would say that even if you insist on going clock for clock, a state if the art processor running at X MHZ will have comparable performance to a 6 year old processor running at 2, or even 3X. Both the hardware and software are more efficient.

[onlysublime]

yes, clock frequencies cannot directly be used to determine speed. but once the other parts are known, then it's simple math with the clock frequencies to get absolute performance numbers.

[+Gemintronic]

I would say that even if you insist on going clock for clock, a state if the art processor running at X MHZ will have comparable performance to a 6 year old processor running at 2, or even 3X. Both the hardware and software are more efficient.

 

This would be more valid if they weren't both PowerPC chips. I have yet to see any specs that would explain how the performance parity would come about with such a ghz difference.

[GrizzLee]

Is the Wii U fun to play?

 

Just askin... :-)

[GKC]

Is the Wii U fun to play?

 

Just askin... :-)

 

It's Nintendo. Need anymore be said?

[JamesD]

But clearly Nintendo has made sacrifices. One of the big drawbacks is that the processor/GPU combination is too slow to power the displays for a TV and for two tablets at the same time, when running high-speed games. Right now, Wii U games make use of only a single tablet controller played with a TV. To run a game with two tablets used at the same time, Nintendo will reportedly have to scale back the frame rate of a game, running it at perhaps 30 frames per second instead of 60 frames per second.

That certainly means that the Wii U performance leaves something to be desired. But Nintendo has been able to keep the cost of the console relatively low. The Wii U debuted with a high-end model price of $349, compared to $399 for the Xbox 360 and $599 for the PS 3.

I think that puts a damper on the idea of using multiple tablet controllers. At the very least it limits how you could use 2 tablet controllers in a game.

I figured that would be best for things like picking plays in a football game anyway rather than high speed animation anyway.

Edited November 30, 2012 by JamesD

[BillyHW]

What a bunch of FUD.

[onlysublime]

it's not FUD. uncertainty is not knowing the specifications and believing only in marketing speak.

 

nothing wrong with actually knowing the hardware. sure, ignorance is bliss for some but not for everyone. much better than the fake information being passed around the Nintendo sites prior to the release of the Wii U.

[bennybingo]

it's not FUD. uncertainty is not knowing the specifications and believing only in marketing speak.

 

nothing wrong with actually knowing the hardware. sure, ignorance is bliss for some but not for everyone. much better than the fake information being passed around the Nintendo sites prior to the release of the Wii U.

 

That goes for all of the consoles out in the marketplace...same thing has been going on with the Xbox720 and sony orbis...there is so much bad intel floating out there. If I were to believe half of what the Xbox fans are saying about the 720 in the forums, I would be just as disappointed with the reality of the specs on that console once it has launched. It happens every time new hardware drops...no matter who is manufacturing it.

[Shannon]

I think that puts a damper on the idea of using multiple tablet controllers. At the very least it limits how you could use 2 tablet controllers in a game.

I figured that would be best for things like picking plays in a football game anyway rather than high speed animation anyway.

I wondered about this and my suspicion is/was true. However it is probably possible to run 2 tablet controllers assuming they are displaying something other than the environment you are seeing on the TV. I think it is only fair to point out that the 360 and PS3 would probably have the same limitation if they were capable of communicating with a tablet.

 

Also the tablet must have some form of a cpu in it.. not sure what it is used for. But when I did the system update it updated the tablet as well.

[HammR25]

The 360 can already communicate with a tablet. I don't have any idea if it works with more than one at a time though.

 

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57556411-75/xbox-smartglass-android-app-now-supports-7-inch-tablets/

 

Then again I don't care what the specs of the Wii-U are. If the games are fun they're fun. The graphics looked pretty good on Rayman.

[+wood_jl]

Hard to say if this matters. Nintendo has been one to not take such a loss (a real beating) on hardware sales, compared to the other guys. If, indeed, the Wii U is slower than the 6-year-old PS3 and 7-year-old X360, then it's probably CHEAP for Nintendo to manufacture. Similar thing could probably be said for the older Wii, just an overclocked Gamecube. As long as the games kick ass, it probably won't matter.

Edited November 30, 2012 by wood_jl

[JamesD]

By now the 360 and PS3 shouldn't be anymore expensive to produce than the Wii U... and they don't come with a tablet.

[cimerians]

Let's end this discussion now:

 

http://www.destructoid.com/wii-u-is-blatantly-better-than-ps3-and-xbox-360-combined-239580.phtml

[GKC]

Let's end this discussion now:

 

http://www.destructoid.com/wii-u-is-blatantly-better-than-ps3-and-xbox-360-combined-239580.phtml

 

I'm convinced.

[Tr3vor]

There's a quote in the article that sum this up pretty well. ” He also said “clock for clock” comparisons with the older Xbo 360 chip aren’t strictly valid."

 

yeah its like comparing a P4 @3.8Ghz to a single core of my Core i5-2400 @3.1Ghz, of course, the i5-2400 will wipe the floor with the p4. I don't think we will find out for sure until a year or two into the console, when people figure out how to program for it and we really see what its capable of.

[onlysublime]

again, of course you can't compare clock frequencies. but once you know things like how many instructions per cycle and things of that nature, then it's simple math to determine the true performance numbers. For example, to calculate texture fill rate: Texture Fill Rate = (# of texture mapping units) x (Core Clock)

 

so rather than remain ignorant and just throw up your hands and say, "that since the architecture is different, it's impossible to compare...", it's better to understand that all it takes is to know the other variables to complete the calculation. and it's up to the hackers to figure out what the hardware really is so we can get the numbers needed to calculate performance. it'd be easier if Nintendo would just release the information. It's what Microsoft, Sony, and every other computer maker does with their hardware.

 

the reason why a Pentium 4 uses high clock frequencies to get its performance is it uses really long pipelines. the advantage is that you can go really fast. think of it as a long freeway where you have the room to build up speed. the disadvantage is with a really long pipe is it takes longer to load the instruction. so if there's a "mistake" or an incomplete load of the instruction, you have to flush out that pipeline and reload which wastes significant time and thus performance suffers. so think of it as a long freeway where there's very few exit ramps. If you miss the exit ramp, then you have to go a long way to the next ramp to get back to where you were. By using long pipelines, they HAD to ramp up clock frequencies in order to make up for lack of freeway exits. This is why Pentium 4 was terrible. In order to get great performance, you had to really increase the clock frequency in order to compensate for missed executions. When it executed perfectly, it was extremely fast but in the execution of a program, things don't always go perfectly.

 

The team from Israel had a totally different design and its implementation began in with the Core processors and evolved into the Core i3/i5/i7 line. I'm not going to try to oversimplify the explanation for the current Core processors.

 

The main advantage of the Wii U CPU is it's an out of order processor. Out-of-order processors are what most programmers grew up with and are great because it reduces the amount of planning a programmer has to do. Intel Pentiums and AMD Athlon/Phenom processors were traditional out-of-order processors.

 

I'll quote Wiki as they have a good explanation:

 

The key concept of OoO processing is to allow the processor to avoid a class of stalls that occur when the data needed to perform an operation are unavailable. In the outline above, the OoO processor avoids the stall that occurs in step (2) of the in-order processor when the instruction is not completely ready to be processed due to missing data.

 

OoO processors fill these "slots" in time with other instructions that are ready, then re-order the results at the end to make it appear that the instructions were processed as normal. The way the instructions are ordered in the original computer code is known as program order, in the processor they are handled in data order, the order in which the data, operands, become available in the processor's registers.

 

The benefit of OoO processing grows as the instruction pipeline deepens and the speed difference between main memory (or cache memory) and the processor widens. On modern machines, the processor runs many times faster than the memory, so during the time an in-order processor spends waiting for data to arrive, it could have processed a large number of instructions.

 

 

Now, the Xbox 360 and PS3 had in-order processors. The reason why was in-order processors allow you to have extremely high performance but still keep costs relatively low. On a cycle-by-cycle basis, the 360 and PS3 had amazing processors that outperformed PC CPUs that were much more expensive. The disadvantage of the in-order processor was that it was up to the programmer to plan their workflows correctly to keep the CPU from "stalling" whereas the out-of-order processor, the CPU used techniques such as branch prediction to determine the best way to keep the CPU busy. So in essence, the out-of-order processor has circuitry that does the stuff that a programmer has to do manually with an in-order processor. And since the 360 and PS3 were heavily multithreaded in order to have high performance, that increased the amount of planning that a programmer had to do in order to keep everything moving fast.

 

So that's the Wii U's CPU advantage over the 360 and PS3. If rumors are correct, both the next Xbox and PS4 are also going back to out-of-order CPUs as well.

 

That said, there's no way the Wii U CPU passes the 360 and PS3 CPUs in terms of performance. And then you factor in the other things like system and memory bandwidth... well, it's not pretty...

 

But again, rather than trying to BS and say that the Wii U is more advanced than it really is, the fans should be focusing on how you now have Nintendo-quality games in HD. Because ultimately, it's the games that matter.

[Tr3vor]

one of the issues I have with the Wii U right now is that from what I've heard none of the games run in 1080p. even New Super Mario bros Wii U isn't doing 1080p. I think thats sad considering that its 2012.

 

as far as processing goes I'm not that impressed at all. also there is only one game that would make me want to buy a Wii U at this point, Zombie U. the other ones are just ports from the 360 and ps3.

 

idk. Ever since switching to my PC, I don't really see the upsides to a console, besides the price and ease to use, but for me there is a lack of flexibility.

[Andromeda Stardust]

Let's end this discussion now:

 

http://www.destructo...ed-239580.phtml

Wow. Reading that blog post is like being the carnival ride operator getting hit in the face by the flying chunks of some unfortunate patron's former lunch. Clearly, this guy's an anti-Nintendo fanboy.

 

Quite frankly, I want to play games that are fun. If the visuals "Wow" me, then that is just a bonus. If I really gave three dangs what graphics technology are capable of achiving in 2012, then why am I still gaming on a Atari 2600?

 

That said, I look forward to unwrapping my Wii-U deluxe model this Christmas holiday, not because of graphical prowess, but because Nintendo = fun games!

[Tr3vor]

Wow. Reading that blog post is like being the carnival ride operator getting hit in the face by the flying chunks of some unfortunate patron's former lunch. Clearly, this guy's an anti-Nintendo fanboy.

 

Quite frankly, I want to play games that are fun. If the visuals "Wow" me, then that is just a bonus. If I really gave three dangs what graphics technology are capable of achiving in 2012, then why am I still gaming on a Atari 2600?

 

That said, I look forward to unwrapping my Wii-U deluxe model this Christmas holiday, not because of graphical prowess, but because Nintendo = fun games!

 

more like nintendo at this point = rehashes of the same games you have been playing since '85.

[TheGameCollector]

more like nintendo at this point = rehashes of the same games you have been playing since '85.

 

That's basically what keeps Nintendo fans having fun. We want more levels / music / characters and graphical enhancement to the games we're addicted to. When 3DS came out, one of the first games I bought was Bust-A-Move Universe because I just love playing Bust-A-Move games. They are all very similar, but equally fun to play and it's cool to pop new puzzle arrangements, hear new music and see new backgrounds while playing. Haking old games can give us some of that, but the one thing it can't give us are the technological enhancements and more comfortable controllers. (Wii Classic Pro controller is very comfortable)

[Shannon]

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/General-Tech/Nintendo-Wii-U-Teardown-Photos-and-Video

[Tr3vor]

http://www.pcper.com...hotos-and-Video

 

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6465/nintendo-wii-u-teardown

 

anandtech is a bit more detailed in their teardown.