Wii U Faster Than 360 Or PS3, No Blu-ray Or DVD Support

jdkramar was one of several readers to write with news of the Wii U hardware information that's been trickling out since E3. The new console will run a multicore IBM processor based on 45nm architecture (technology currently underpinning Watson), and will have an AMD R700 GPU chipset found in the Radeon 4000 line of video cards. Apparently it will, in fact, run Crysis. Nintendo has confirmed that the Wii U will use a proprietary 25GB disc format, and won't support DVD or Blu-ray playback. A spokesman said, "The reason for that is that we feel that enough people already have devices that are capable of playing DVDs and Blu-ray, such that it didn't warrant the cost involved to build that functionality into the Wii U console because of the patents related to those technologies."

Re:Doesn't warrant the cost

[Amarantine]

Didn't Microsoft do that with their first Xbox? Punters could enable dvd playback by purchasing the separate remote and IR receiver, which acted as a dongle to unlock the dvd playback facilities. The royalties for dvd playback were included in the price of the remote, not the console itself. However, many people blamed MS for just looking for an excuse to squeeze more money out of its customers, because the remote was a bit expensive. People might think the same if Nintendo would do the same, charging $10-$15 for a 10KB file that enables their console to do what every other bit of equipment with an optical drive could do since the dawn of time.

Re:What???

[AmiMoJo]

I'm not sure I believe TFA anyway. The Radeon 4000 architecture has been replaced by the 6000 now, which gives better performance at lower cost and produces far less heat. What possible reason is there to use something that costs more and needs more cooling, as well as being an older architecture anyway?

My guess is that they have mistaken using 4000 series features and performance levels for actually using that architecture, but I imagine the chip will be a custom design for Nintendo.

Re:Faster?

[hattig]

I had a lovely big comment but hit reload instead of new-tab when going to check something, so you'll get a much rougher version now. All FLOPS are single precision.

Theoretical Cell: 25.6 GFLOPS (PPE) + 179.2GFLOPS (Cell SPU) + 400 GFLOPS (RSX, not general purpose).

Theoretical Wii U: 1300 GFLOPS (GPU) + unknown GFLOPS (CPU)

So what's the unknown? I am going to assume a 3.2GHz dual-core variant of Power 7 (the architecture can go significantly faster, I'm presuming a lower clock speed for power consumption reasons; full Power 7 has eight cores). That would get 51.2 DP GFLOPS (http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1363413&postcount=2946), hence 102.4 SP GFLOPS. It can also run 8 threads, compared to 2 on the PPE.

So four times the CPU FLOPS and 2.5x the GPU/Computation FLOPS (although a modern GPU will probably be far more efficient).

Re:Proprietary format.

[cpu6502]

>>>gamecube had very little to offer over PS2 or Xbox

First off the Gamecube was in a statistical TIE with the Xbox, so it didn't perform as badly as you claim. Also the cube had a lot to offer, which made me choose it as my second console rather than the xbox:
- Mario
- Zelda WW
- Zelda 1 and 2
- Zelda Ocarina and Masks
- Tales of Symphonia
- Skies of Arcadia
- Metroid Prime 1 and 2
- Super Monkey Ball
- Resident Evil 3,4,0
- plus some others I've likely forgotten. Gamecube still remains my favorite console after the PS2. The used xbox I purchased just collects dust and I'll probably trash it soon, but I plan to keep the Cube forever.