The Wii U Will Have 8GB Internal Memory,1.5GB RAM And Other Fun

[casper2]

Source: geek.pikimal

VGleaks, apparently a site of video game leaks, posted what were apparently the Wii U devkit?s specs recently. The specifications of the devkit offer up a good idea of what the final Wii U build will look like and offers up some information Nintendo haven?t yet released. Some users on NeoGAF have confirmed the accuracy of accuracy of the specs leaked through some insider information and Nintendo?s official specs, released after these, correspond to it well. So there?s good reason to sprinkle a bit less salt on these specs than normal.

It?s a very long list but check out the main points after the break.

Tri-core, PowerPC based CPU with a 3MB L2 cache

3GB RAM in devkit; 1.5GB expected in retail

GPU API currently based on AMD r7xx series (Radeon 4000 series)

32MB eDRAM

Modern unified shader architecture

MSAA 2x, 4x, 8x

Multisample shader surface reading

Anisotropic filtering at 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x

Tesselation unit

Compute shader support

Stream out support

120MHz audio DSP

802.11 b/g/n wi-fi controller

4 USB slots

SD card slot

8GB internal storage

512 internal storage for OS

So, what do these neo-hieroglyphics mean? WiiU?s got some power. It?s like that short guy who can benchpress you into the dirt. How powerful? It?s not a full generational leap like the PlayStation 2 to the PlayStation 3 but, at the same time, it?s not simply a slightly better Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 either. If anything, it?s likened to appear anywhere from 1.5x to 2x the power of the Xbox 360.

The processor seems to be at about the same level as the Xbox 360?s, which is also a tri-core PowerPC based CPU, but it?s impossible to tell if it?s better at all without further information. The RAM is thrice that of the Xbox 360?s, which is a rather large boon for developers. So far, a third of it is set aside for OS functions, leaving developers to assume a RAM amount of twice what the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 offer. The textures in this LEGO City: Undercoverscreenshot should speak for itself.

The GPU appears to be rather fully featured compared to the Xbox 360?s offerings. The 32MB eDRAM cache alone is a huge help for developers, allowing for multiple passes at high resolutions, thus the higher amounts of Anti-Aliasing available to the Wii U. To contrast this, the reason the Unreal 3 engine does not support high levels of MSAA is because the Xbox 360 couldn?t perform multiple passes on the GPU. The separate tessellation unit and compute shader support are indications that we?ll see the Wii U pull of fancy graphics that the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 have not touched yet. The Xbox 360 has a tessellation unit as well but it?s about seven years old now. A modern one should yield much nicer effects.

The eight gigabytes of storage is, at first blush, ridiculously small given the original Xbox had the same amount while the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 launched with 20GB (60GB on some models of the latter). However, it appears that Nintendo is also trying to keep costs downso that they can ?pleasantly surprise? us with the price of the new system. Cutting down on internal memory is probably the most effective way to do it, especially since it will have support for a variety of alternate sources of memory including USB keys and external hard drives. You could simply plug in a 1TB external flash drive if you like.

Still, a notable exception is digital audio output, again. So far, no Nintendo console has ever offered it while their competitors have since the PlayStation 2 days. It?s disappointing for a system bringing in the new generation to skimp out in such a small, but vital area, but the HDMI support should provide an adequate bridge for some. Notably absent is the optical drive spec. The Wii U isn?t a download-only console, especially not with that size of internal memory out of the box, so it?s a bit odd they didn?t specify any optical drive. For all we know, they could be working on providing a blue-ray drive sans movie playback to provide the most disc space with the least cost. Given the rise of Netflix, why not?

Also looked at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wii_U it has listed GPU: AMD "RV740" based GPU

[Anthony Tosie Veteran]

Well, it's pretty much what we expected, if true: hardware that's a bit more powerful than the current generation, but will likely be far behind the next generation. I'm still concerned this is really bad timing for Nintendo to release their next console, so far ahead of both Sony and Microsoft.

[+LogicalApex MVC]

Well, it's pretty much what we expected, if true: hardware that's a bit more powerful than the current generation, but will likely be far behind the next generation. I'm still concerned this is really bad timing for Nintendo to release their next console, so far ahead of both Sony and Microsoft.

If they are shipping them with a profit margin as they did with the Wii then this isn't a bad time. They can take advantage of the lack of pressure from MS and Sony to get more sales which are profitable from day 1.

[Dotdot]

Well, it's pretty much what we expected, if true: hardware that's a bit more powerful than the current generation, but will likely be far behind the next generation. I'm still concerned this is really bad timing for Nintendo to release their next console, so far ahead of both Sony and Microsoft.

Worked last time. And now they have a customer base of everyone from housewives, to gran dads, to 5yr olds, to 30yr old nintendiods. I have no doubt they,ll do well, but im still not convinced there supporting the hardcore.

[The Teej]

Worked last time. And now they have a customer base of everyone from housewives, to gran dads, to 5yr olds, to 30yr old nintendiods. I have no doubt they,ll do well, but im still not convinced there supporting the hardcore.

Actually last time they launched a whole year ahead of the 360 and at the same time as the PS3.

[notuptome2004]

well for example if the CPU spec is true it still be better then the Tri-core in the 360 because it is based off thre current generation Power 7 so it be far more efficient and can do more workloads per clock and the GPU is miles ahead of what was in the xbox 360

[mattmatik]

Meh. Its all in the software anyway. That's my big beef with N nowadays: they flame out with good titles at the 50% life of the console. If I'm buying a console, you better support the thing with good software through the life-cycle.

[LightShadow]

Still, with the price, you'll still be expected to get a flash drive/external hard drive as with downloadable HD games, you'll have trouble after 2 on the internal memory.

[Blackhearted]

Without any names and numbers to go with the cpu/gpu, and how they're not even sure about the amount of ram, this list seems like nothing more than just guessing. Which it likely is.

[HawkMan]

well for example if the CPU spec is true it still be better then the Tri-core in the 360 because it is based off thre current generation Power 7 so it be far more efficient and can do more workloads per clock and the GPU is miles ahead of what was in the xbox 360

To bad the CPU is the least important part, compared to the much more important Radeon 4000 series....

And it doesn't matter if their powerPC is newer since they don't mention the clock speed at all, so it may very well be clocked a lot lower.

So yes, it'll probably be faster but as has been said and can be seen from these specs, it won't be a generational leap, I'd be hard pressed to even call it half a leap.

[Aergan]

I wonder if the MSAA causes a massive performance hit or worse as I've seen no noticable anti-aliasing applied in any videos from realtime play on it so far. Shader effects for HDR lighting etc were impressive on the Assassins Creed 3 video though.

[Anthony Tosie Veteran]

Worked last time. And now they have a customer base of everyone from housewives, to gran dads, to 5yr olds, to 30yr old nintendiods. I have no doubt they,ll do well, but im still not convinced there supporting the hardcore.

You may want to re-check the dates of this generation's console launches.

[Jason S. Global Moderator]

theyre seriously using a GPU that shares a core with the Radeon 4000 series? a chip that came out 4 years ago?

[majortom1981]

theyre seriously using a GPU that shares a core with the Radeon 4000 series? a chip that came out 4 years ago?

Keep in mind since this is all custom is based off the 4xxx series. It still will have some differences then a normal pc video card. I bet its probably more like a 5xxx because the 5xxx series has the added features for dual screens .

Everybody also has to keep in mind that developers do not have final dev kits yet. So current demos will probably have a lot of bugs.

If these specs are true they are as good as we can hope from nintendo . These specs allow future ps4/xbox 720 games to be easily downgraded if need be.

[nominak]

theyre seriously using a GPU that shares a core with the Radeon 4000 series? a chip that came out 4 years ago?

And what did the 360/PS3 use?

Xbox 360 - ATI R500 = X1000 series cards. 2005-06

PS3 is a 7 series nvidia card. (codenamed G70) launched on June 22, 2005

Wii-U = AMD RV740 = HD4000 series. May 2009

3 year old GPU. At most.

It surprises me at how far people will go to make Nintendo look bad, without even fact checking.

[notuptome2004]

As for the CPU in the system While it may be a Tri-core chip it is based off IBMs current Power 7 architecture so it be massive amounts faster in Performance per clock. The GPU while based on the R700 so rumors siad last year this is still huge leaps and bounds over what is in both the 360 and PS3 by miles so what we can see from developers i think can be huge . here is some screenshots from archkem city

[dead.cell]

And what did the 360/PS3 use?

Xbox 360 - ATI R500 = X1000 series cards. 2005-06

PS3 is a 7 series nvidia card. (codenamed G70) launched on June 22, 2005

Wii-U = AMD RV740 = HD4000 series. May 2009

3 year old GPU. At most.

It surprises me at how far people will go to make Nintendo look bad, without even fact checking.

Xbox 360 released in 2005 though, and PS3 in 2006. About a 1 year difference between the cards and consoles. Not sure what your point was, aside from correcting the 4 to a 3 as his point still stands...

Also, we as consumers have a right to be concerned with what Nintendo is bringing to the table, as many of us don't want to be stuck with a console that won't see a true multiplatform release due to lacking the sufficient hardware. I fail to see how that's an issue here. Hopefully, what majortom1981 said is true. Won't know until we actually see what the competition is bringing to the table though.

[+Warwagon MVC]

My current i7 build from Late 2008 still uses a 4800 series card. Gave Skyrim a try on it and it ran great.

[nominak]

Xbox 360 released in 2005 though, and PS3 in 2006. About a 1 year difference between the cards and consoles. Not sure what your point was, aside from correcting the 4 to a 3 as his point still stands...

Also, we as consumers have a right to be concerned with what Nintendo is bringing to the table, as many of us don't want to be stuck with a console that won't see a true multiplatform release due to lacking the sufficient hardware. I fail to see how that's an issue here. Hopefully, what majortom1981 said is true. Won't know until we actually see what the competition is bringing to the table though.

It's not concerning because this is the beginning of the life cycle for the Wii U . Just like the beginning of the 360 cycle, it had crap looking games. Now look at them.

[johnnyq3]

It's not concerning because this is the beginning of the life cycle for the Wii U . Just like the beginning of the 360 cycle, it had crap looking games. Now look at them.

And Arkham City just looks flat out ugly. :p

But on a more serious note, I am also glad that Nintendo has confirmed the ability to use USB based portable hard drives for space.

[Jason S. Global Moderator]

And what did the 360/PS3 use?

Xbox 360 - ATI R500 = X1000 series cards. 2005-06

PS3 is a 7 series nvidia card. (codenamed G70) launched on June 22, 2005

Wii-U = AMD RV740 = HD4000 series. May 2009

3 year old GPU. At most.

It surprises me at how far people will go to make Nintendo look bad, without even fact checking.

yes - the xbox/PS3 uses a chip that was developed around the time the unit was released - 2005-2006.

"official release of the HD4800 series on June 25, 2008"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radeon_R700

how can you judge me to say that i want to make nintendo look bad. i love nintendo - love my 3DS. love mario and whatnot. im just wondering why theyd choose to use a GPU that's already 4yrs old.

[Blackhearted]

yes - the xbox/PS3 uses a chip that was developed around the time the unit was released - 2005-2006.

"official release of the HD4800 series on June 25, 2008"

http://en.wikipedia....iki/Radeon_R700

how can you judge me to say that i want to make nintendo look bad. i love nintendo - love my 3DS. love mario and whatnot. im just wondering why theyd choose to use a GPU that's already 4yrs old.

What? Did you expect nintendo to pull a sony, put a high end(for the time) gpu into it, charge ~$600, and then proceed to lose a ton of money for the next several years?

[bjoswald]

And I'm willing to bet all that technology will be wasted on Mario games. :rolleyes:

[Jason S. Global Moderator]

What? Did you expect nintendo to pull a sony, put a high end(for the time) gpu into it, charge ~$600, and then proceed to lose a ton of money for the next several years?

nope, youre right. in order to keep their price point to $300 they have to use outdated hardware. makes complete sense. i just would have expected something from the 5000 series, perhaps.

[torrentthief]

Anything better than 360/ps3 graphics for a nintendo console is great. Now we can play mario and other titles in 1080p with highish quality graphics. Hopefully it will support .mkv and it is plausible that it could play bluray movies although that is unlikely. MS and Sony will probably release their consoles at christmas 2013, just 1yr after wii u.