Hardware WiiU's CPU weaker than 360/PS3

[Foxi4]

Sounds more like you just described it as striving to be adequate.

Adequate is a good word, given the fact that the Wii was gravely inadequate as far as supporting its contemporary games was concerned, tossing it into the bottomless void of watered down ports, first and second party CPR and shovelware. Now, don't get me wrong - there's a lot of good Wii games, but overall, the console wasn't for mainstream gaming - it was for Wii gaming. Ever heard the phrase "the *insert feature* is spectacular for a Wii game" - implying that otherwise it would not be as mind-blowing? We want to avoid a repeat of that. Nintendo wants the WiiU to be mainstream, or how people call it nowadays, "core".

 

[tronic307]

I'm not suggesting that it's not a Broadway derrivative, I'm saying that currently we don't know what Espresso is, and we probably shouldn't follow rumours until a "live speciement" is analyzed.

That happened several months ago.

Really? I'm guessing it's around 20 GFLOPS, am I close?

 

[Deleted_171835]

Adequate is a good word, given the fact that the Wii was gravely inadequate as far as supporting its contemporary games was concerned, tossing it into the bottomless void of watered down ports, first and second party CPR and shovelware. Now, don't get me wrong - there's a lot of good Wii games, but overall, the console wasn't for mainstream gaming - it was for Wii gaming. Ever heard the phrase "the *insert feature* is spectacular for a Wii game" - implying that otherwise it would not be as mind-blowing? We want to avoid a repeat of that. Nintendo wants the WiiU to be mainstream, or how people call it nowadays, "core".

While I agree with most of what you said, I have to disagree when you relegate a game to secondary status or put it in a different category from games on other consoles simply because it was on the Wii. Yes, the platform may have been underpowered compared to the PS360 but there are still plenty of games on the system that stand toe to toe with games on other platforms in terms of quality.

 

[Maxternal]

That happened several months ago.

Of course it's obvious developers have had a look at it for a while but I think they're under contract to mostly shut up about it.
( I loved the comments in the "Iwata asks" made by Nintendo employees about how much fun it's been for them to play Wii U with their kids. )
If someone else has got their hands on one, though, that'd be cool.

 

[Foxi4]

Yes, the platform may have been underpowered compared to the PS360 but there are still plenty of games on the system that stand toe to toe with games on other platforms in terms of quality.

I did mention that the console had a good few highlights and I'd be hypocritical to conveniently forget about them, but overall, the system was too weak for its times and fell short when it came to developer's expectations.

 

[tronic307]

Sounds more like you just described it as striving to be adequate.

Adequate is a good word, given the fact that the Wii was gravely inadequate as far as supporting its contemporary games was concerned, tossing it into the bottomless void of watered down ports, first and second party CPR and shovelware. Now, don't get me wrong - there's a lot of good Wii games, but overall, the console wasn't for mainstream gaming - it was for Wii gaming. Ever heard the phrase "the *insert feature* is spectacular for a Wii game" - implying that otherwise it would not be as mind-blowing? We want to avoid a repeat of that. Nintendo wants the WiiU to be mainstream, or how people call it nowadays, "core".

Nintendo really wants to convert the casuals they brought in with the Wii into core gamers.

 

[Maxternal]

Nintendo really wants to convert the casuals they brought in with the Wii into core gamers.

That's sneaky
It's like hitting up weed smokers with crack. The Wii was just an entry drug.

 

[Coto]

I don't read single-core into that statement, more like multi-Wii-core, and what would be wrong with that? Power7 cannot run Wii code, there is no support on the silicon for Broadway's floating point method. Plus it's huge and power hungry.

Power 7 runs x86 registers eax,ebx,ecx vs ppc being r0-r31? I see a starlet project translating registers there.

Or are you referring to custom cpu instruction sets? (ldi, addi, mflr,mtlr)

 

[tronic307]

I don't read single-core into that statement, more like multi-Wii-core, and what would be wrong with that? Power7 cannot run Wii code, there is no support on the silicon for Broadway's floating point method. Plus it's huge and power hungry.

Power 7 runs x86 registers eax,ebx,ecx vs ppc being r0-r31? I see a starlet project translating registers there.

Or are you referring to custom cpu instruction sets? (ldi, addi, mflr,mtlr)

From what I gather, Altivec (or VMX) replaces Broadway's paired-single instructions, and reserves the same opcode range, while being incompatible. You can emulate paired-singles on a CPU with Altivec, but you'll only get like 1 FLOP per clock. Espresso would have to be clocked at 2916MHz to emulate Broadway's floating point performance if it had Altivec.

 

[Coto]

I don't read single-core into that statement, more like multi-Wii-core, and what would be wrong with that? Power7 cannot run Wii code, there is no support on the silicon for Broadway's floating point method. Plus it's huge and power hungry.

Power 7 runs x86 registers eax,ebx,ecx vs ppc being r0-r31? I see a starlet project translating registers there.

Or are you referring to custom cpu instruction sets? (ldi, addi, mflr,mtlr)

From what I gather, Altivec (or VMX) replaces Broadway's paired-single instructions, and reserves the same opcode range, while being incompatible. You can emulate paired-singles on a CPU with Altivec, but you'll only get like 1 FLOP per clock.

But altivec was one of PPC's main features since, like last decade or so on IBM cpus (broadway included), (apple using ppc and all dat)

edit: aside from that, even using an improved fpu, registers should be the same (hence why Iwata saying Wii adding stuff on Wii u like 1+1), but extended... i mean, based on
http://publib.boulde...ler_listing.htm

instruction set tab

edit2: paired singles seems to be a FPU ability, FP/PS and ps_madd (multiply add), should be there too.. (referring to Wii U, but... Power7 shouldn't?) I mean, did they jump to x86 extended set wagon too? That's my question, because I don't know anything about power7 architecture yet.

 

[tronic307]

I don't read single-core into that statement, more like multi-Wii-core, and what would be wrong with that? Power7 cannot run Wii code, there is no support on the silicon for Broadway's floating point method. Plus it's huge and power hungry.

Power 7 runs x86 registers eax,ebx,ecx vs ppc being r0-r31? I see a starlet project translating registers there.

Or are you referring to custom cpu instruction sets? (ldi, addi, mflr,mtlr)

From what I gather, Altivec (or VMX) replaces Broadway's paired-single instructions, and reserves the same opcode range, while being incompatible. You can emulate paired-singles on a CPU with Altivec, but you'll only get like 1 FLOP per clock.

But altivec was one of PPC's main features since, like last decade or so on IBM cpus, (apple using ppc and all dat)

Espresso could have a totally new FPU that's backwards compatible with Wii code, but why would Nintendo make GPGPU seem so prominent if that were true? We'll only know the real deal once someone x-rays the CPU.

 

[Coto]

Nevertheless, if there's something I really admire on Nintendo development, is the ability they have to wrap older code and run them in newer hardware. That's black magic at hardware/low level, while they use some older hardware to do it, they manage to wrap most it on a different CPU. Much like ARM9 3D vectors translated to newer 3DS gpu.

 

[tueidj]

Except for all the times they don't bother... like how they didn't use any wii features when running gamecube games, requiring original controllers and memory cards.

 

[Rydian]

I think his issue is that it implies limits. Here's the article he wrote on the Wii's architecture and why it's bad.

http://hackmii.com/2009/02/why-the-wii-will-never-get-any-better/

Unless the Wii U is running the entirety of the Wii software in some virtualized environment (like the PSP with PSX stuff)...

 

[tronic307]

Nevertheless, if there's something I really admire on Nintendo development, is the ability they have to wrap older code and run them in newer hardware. That's black magic at hardware/low level, while they use some older hardware to do it, they manage to wrap most it on a different CPU. Much like ARM9 3D vectors translated to newer 3DS gpu.

True, and they do it without emulation, a feat rarely attempted by others in the industry. Sometimes I wonder if the SNES was supposed to be backwards compatible, but Nintendo decided to keep it simple in the end. Why was the CPU compatible?

 

[some1ne]

Only time will tell how far developers will go on the console's performance.

 

[tronic307]

Except for all the times they don't bother... like how they didn't use any wii features when running gamecube games, requiring original controllers and memory cards.

Wii games are going to look like a blockfest over HDMI. We apparently won't be able to play VC games on the GamePad. When I first saw the GamePad, I thought that's what it was made for.

 

[Coto]

Maybe the CPU was powerful enough and could do a lot (and help porting proyects from NES to SNES) easily. Also RISC is well known as a very fast processor under relatively low clock rates.

Even the N64, while it was somehow difficult to develop 3D for it (tasks had to be fetched from RCP to RDP then RGB), the idea of a custom "microcode" gave nice results in the end. Scalable architectures (different points of view on how-to perform tasks, draw stuff on screen, sound arrangement, art techniques, etc) can be cost-effective(ie: a developer doing a secuel of some game, so it won't be that difficult to port code), and also help to prevent losing customers in the end (less costs, less price on a next gen machine), lol.

Except for all the times they don't bother... like how they didn't use any wii features when running gamecube games, requiring original controllers and memory cards.

Wii games are going to look like a blockfest over HDMI. We apparently won't be able to play VC games on the GamePad. When I first saw the GamePad, I thought that's what it was made for.

Well, GPGPU's should be of some use in this case, filters or shaders can help there, drastically.

 

[DiscostewSM]

Except for all the times they don't bother... like how they didn't use any wii features when running gamecube games, requiring original controllers and memory cards.

Wii games are going to look like a blockfest over HDMI. We apparently won't be able to play VC games on the GamePad. When I first saw the GamePad, I thought that's what it was made for.

I honestly think that when Nintendo made the comment about Wii games not being upscaled was that they were referring to it being unable to render at any resolution than what it was originally designed for. We've already seen them handle upscaling via filters with DS games on the 3DS, and that system's ability to render is based on a 48-scanline buffer sent directly to the screen on the DS (but to a separate buffer on the 3DS to apply the scale filters), not full-screen buffers than modern GPUs are capable of. So in essence, I believe that filtering would be used on Wii games at HD resolutions. It won't be sharp as HD, but it won't be blocky either.

 

[Hielkenator]

I thought this was interesting. This isn't the first time a developer has pointed out that the CPU is slow. Now we see that Koei Tecmo is having issues with the amount of characters they can place on screen before the performance takes a hit. I think it's kind of sad that Nintendo can't even match the CPU power of last gen tech. Hopefully developers are able to work around this once they get use to the hardware more.

On the brighter side it seems that the Wii U has a stronger GPU based on the developers statement.

Here's some quotes I copied and pasted from the link:
"One of the weaknesses of the Wii U compared to PS3 and Xbox 360 is the CPU power is a little bit less," he said. "So for games in the Warriors series, including Dynasty Warriors and Warriors Orochi, when you have a lot of enemies coming at you at once, the performance tends to be affected because of the CPU.
"Dealing with that is a challenge."
"Developing on new hardware in itself was a challenge, and also making that launch date was a challenge," he said. "But from a visual standpoint, based on the performance of the Wii U, we knew the game had the capability of having much better graphics than games on PS3 and Xbox 360. Make no mistake, from a visual standpoint, it is able to produce better graphics. So our challenge was to make a higher quality graphics. We were able to meet that."
"While the visuals are great, as is being able to improve them, we had to deal with the lower CPU power and how we can get around that issue"
"I expect that GPU focused games will benefit from smoother frame-rates and lower levels of screen-tear, but cross-platform titles highly dependent on CPU power could end up noticeably worse off."


Source: http://www.eurogamer...-u-launch-title

Seems like a VERY conservative developer.
He's just apologizing for bringing out a bad game in the future, allready.
They just have to "learn", and they are just lazy.