Hackers Discover Wii U's Processor Design and Clock Speed 173
MojoKid writes "Early, off-the-record comments from game developers indicated that the Nintendo's Wii U console horsepower was on par with, or a bit behind the Xbox 360 and PS3, which raised questions about just how 'next-generation' the Wii U would be. Now, Wii and PS3 hacker Hector Martin (aka Marcan) has answered some of these questions and raised a few others. According to his findings, the Wii U's CPU is a triple-core design clocked at 1.24GHz. Marcan identifies the base design as a PowerPC 750, which makes sense. Nintendo used PowerPC 750-derived processors in both the GameCube and the Wii. Retaining that architecture for the Wii U would simplify backwards compatibility and game development. Now factor in the GPU, which is reportedly clocked at 550MHz. Some have favored the Radeon HD 4000 series as a basis for the part; I still think a low-end Radeon 5000, like Redwood Pro, makes more sense. That GPU was built on 40nm, measured 104mm sq, clocked in at 649MHz, and had a 39W TDP. The die size discrepancy between the Wii U and Redwood Pro would account for the 32MB of EDRAM cache we know the Wii U offers. Nintendo may have propped up a relatively weak CPU with considerably more GPU horsepower."
Never really been about horsepower (Score:5, Interesting)
Nintendo will get my money purely because of their software; mario (inc paper mario series), zelda, metroid, pikmin, pokemon and a dozen other's that were purely first or second party exclusives. The vast majority of x-box and ps3 games I can play with much better graphics on my pc. The x-box and ps3 don't really offer anything beyond what a pc is capable of, where as Nintendo consoles do.
Re:Perhaps Horsepower No Longer Equals Next Gen? (Score:5, Interesting)
What everybody seems to be ignoring is the target demographic for the wii U which is NOT the hardcore shooter crowd.
Is this a weak CPU? Yep, but for the casual games Nintendo is making their money on you aren't gonna see ragdolls and physics up the butt so a powerful CPU makes zero sense, its not ragdolls and fireball effects and physics that sell to the casual crowd, its easy to pick up games that everybody can play without having twitch reflexes.
So I truly see this as much ado about nothing, with only misguided fanbois that expected the big N to make "one console to rule them all" getting butthurt when they find the Wii U can't play games that the X360 can...well duh! The X360 shooter crowd isn't their target demographic! To use a /. car analogy it would be like getting pissy that the Ford fiesta can't take a new Porsche on in the quarter, its just not built for that market, isn't for that market, and just as Ford isn't building the Fiesta for the drag strip so too is the big N not building their consoles for the Gears Of Killzone, Modern Halo crowd.