Wii U Specs Possibly Leaked: PowerPC CPU, AMD GPU

eeew 768 of ram? you call that HD gaming LMAO hahahahahahaahaha. just like ps3 and 360 512 of ram even 1 gig ram is outdated hardware, how can they call HD gaming ? PC is the GOD OF HD Gaming and it will all ways be

As always Nintendo has a great strength in capturing a market, they just never seem able to hold onto it. If you constantly release consoles and titles for pre-teens, and your consoles have a lifespan of 5 years. Then if your 8 year old customer receives a Wi when they come out, before you release a new console they will want an XBOX. Its only a matter of time before those children want to play call of duty and world of warcraft.

If Nintendo ever released consoles or content that matured to at least pg-13 levels then Sony and Microsoft would have never been able to enter the gaming market.

I wanted to buy an Xbox this Friday, but then I took an arrow in the knee

I don't think HD means what you think it means. It really just is a buzzword now though I guess. And you are right, PCs will always reign supreme, if you have the money for it.

I'll miss you Nintendo.
Say hi to Atari and Sega for me when you get to console heaven.

i cant really tell where to start... 1gb is more than enough for 1080p gaming, and if you are coding specifically for one hardware set (note, consoles) you can get by with less due to less bloat on the other hardware.

please, don't comment if you know nothing about this subject, as it only annoys people.




n64, gamecube, both high end for their time, especially the n64, and the gamecube able to push games that looked better than the 2x as powerful xbox, but for some reason nintendo never held a large hard core crowd.

the wii, i can at least understand their position, most people didn't have an hd tv at the time of its launch, so they stayed sd, and i have to say, for their nintendo games, hd or sd, they would still play the same, but now zelda, after demon souls, after assassins creed, you can see where that game could improve from better hardware.

with the wiiu, we will get to see what they can do with a more modern setup, and if its the design team thats holding them back or if its the hardware.

lol 1g for console is enough to display graphics that would kick pc's ass

I thought these were demonstrated fake around their initial posting.

Essentially they are releasing a console that will, once again, be one generation behind, except this time they will not have a compelling gimmick.

gj, Nintendo.

of the way
well if that is the specs you could go back 5 ears and get a better pc hardware. and beside its gotta be insanely cheap if it will be more affordable then a pc of the same specs. its like nothing today amd quad 3ghz 4gig ram a nvidia 560ti asus and 4 gig ram 500w power 815 dollars in Sweden so its like 15% more tax for us i guess its worth it if its allot cheaper or if its the same price cuss you got the hand held little screenomagig. beside pc games latly sell 10% cheaper the last year so its not so much about price no more, its about the nintendo games

i hope it come with bluray, oh wait i guess they may put dvd now

What gets me is that it is "probably" going to be shared RAM. The GTX 260 core 216 had 800 and some odd megabytes of VRAM and it does just fine with games, but the fact that this has to be shared with system and game processes has me worried. Considering how cheap DDR3 RAM is these days, I'm honestly surprised they didn't throw in more RAM especially if it is going to be shared.

idiot, it's a console not a PC. It doesn't run windows or need to open huge spreadsheets. It only runs games. Also, the amount of ram your system has, has nothing to do with your video output. My video card has only 512MB but runs all off the newest games in 1080p. If you look at system ram consumption in windows while you are playing a game you will be surprised that many games don't take up nearly as much ram as you think. Most of the RAM is for quickly loading various windows components.

"please, don't comment if you know nothing about this subject, as it only annoys people."
Yes, Thank you!

... wow, just wow.
Consoles play games at 1080p? since when? oh right, that fighting game with 2 characters. in reality consoles really play NO games play at 1080p unless its at a very slow situation and at 30fps if not less. not only this, but also its been nearly 7 years since the xbox 360 and ps3 came out and they both had about 512mb of ram, and now your telling me that 7 years later, nintendo is releasing a console with only 768mb of ram? really?

Consoles are good at what they do, but the lack of memory means that they will suffer from frequent loading of levels, blurry textures (play bf3 campaign and spin around quickly (when you arent in a cutscene or QTE)) and you'll see the little buggers jump from blurry to regular.

also, I bet your 512mb video card plays games at 1080p quality, but what frames per second? and what game? any AA?

And they were saying this would have competitive specs.

Expected at the very least a movement to x86, failing that, to ARM.

And that isn't even mentioning the failure of RAM and VRAM.

Plus, 40nm? Really? I was expecting a fairly modern GPU, maybe even a 7xxx.

Oh well.

Great...looks like even the NEXT GEN consoles are already going to be holding us PC gamers back. Add in 6-7 year, probably a decade for the next one console cycle..and..meh...

Not to defend the other guy and his whining, but of course your pc is going to be fine; most of the newest games are console ports.

elcentral -
It's not unusual for consoles to be sold at a loss. A year ago I built a computer (reusing my hard drive, case, optical drive and accessories) exclusively using heavily discounted and rebated items. If I remember correctly I spent around $165. For something not much more powerful than a 360 (dual core processor, Radeon 5550, 4 GB ram, no frills but not bad quality mobo, low wattage antec PSU). And that took months waiting for deals on all of the parts. It definitely used to be (for some people) about the price, and we'll just have to see about the future.

And unfortunately, the big name PC games are raising their prices to match the console prices (if that's what you were referring to. I'm not entirely certain what you were getting at there).

Exactly. The original quote didn't make any mention about quality, just HD. I'm playing Homeworld in HD right now. I love it, but I wouldn't say the graphics are top notch anymore.

768 Megabyte of embedded DRAM is just insane.... if not entirely impossible.

Maybe they mean 768 Megabit (96MB)?. That sounds a bit more plausible.

45nm, that's old tech. Also a higher nm makes for a hotter running CPU?

Consoles do run a OS but compared to windows using a ton of memory, the one on the console will only use around 10-20MB

But the area where the console OS excels is not the low memory footprint but the more direct path to the hardware, allowing games to better utilize the hardware.

and since all of the hardware is the same across the board, game developers can optimize the game specifically to the console.

for example the videocard and memory in a console will never provide a playable frame rate on a game like skyrim if it was rendered the same way that the PC version will.

But since everything is the same on the console, they can get creative with rendering. they know how long it takes to load up a texture and swap textures and adjust mesh counts so they can tune the game specifically to it.

You can have closer objects rendered with a higher res texture with a better mesh count and a higher resolution light map and probably some ray tracing while a little further away things can be toned down a little more.

Look at the graphics of many modern games on the PS3 and Xbox 360, it is far better than what was available with the equivalent PC components, even now this holds true.

All in all, since all of the hardware is the same, developers can do significantly more to optimize games to look good

When comparing a PC to a console, don't look at whats currently available on the PC because it will be better, instead look at equivalent hardware then compare the gaming performance, you will see that the console is able to offer multiple times the quality.

(if you have a console that has been modded in a way that allows you to cheat, that is when the optimization breaks down, you move too quickly and the mesh count goes down as the console in unable to swap in higher resolution content)

I really hope this will teach Microsoft and Sony a good lesson. Should have used 22nm AMD APU with 8GB XDR2 shared RAM, to support future Ultra HD TVs. It's called future proof!!!!!!!

Has 1080p television penetration reached the point where you can be bothered to invest in HD graphics and maybe a modern port like HDMI, Nintendo? Hmmmm?

I'd rather take the money and buy a $500 laptop.

Nintendo messed up... they should have focused on what sold their consoles. Namely the Wii controller and Wii Fit.

New HD capabilities, improved wii controllers and reigning in all the shovelware would have allowed them to continue to dominate the casual gamers.

My bet is the next version of Kinnect will do for casual gamers what the wii did.

Well, think about it, how much RAM does a GAME really utilize? 768MB of RAM is more than adequate for this console. Whilst it would be nice if the console designers would go all out on hardware so us PC gamers don't have to be dragged down by horrible PC ports, That won't be happening any time soon.

While I agree 768mb of ram is way too little we have to remember that the system ram wont need to be very high since it will be running off of the disk. That will leave ~640mb or so for the graphics and as we can see with games like mass effect 2, a directx 9 card with 512mb of ram runs it at 60fps at 16x9 res pretty consistently.

Not sure about the powerPC chip or anything but if youre going for such a setup why not go with an intel ivy bridge with its dx11 integrated graphics? that way you save on power consumption and heat and still get the ability to do the type of cartoonish graphics nintendo is known for but this time in 1080p.

I don't play console anymore, but SNES was in my opinion, the best console ever made. There was no gimmick. Just had a library of some of the best games ever made.

Who cares if its 700mb or 1gig or 4gigs. It's all about launch titles. I guarantee if Nintendo puts something like Zelda, Mario, Kirby, Super Smash Bros, Pokemon, Chrono Trigger, Mega Man, etc. the Wii U will sell like hotcakes.

But, I agree, the whole tablet controller gimmick just isn't what Nintendo should have gone for. Whether you hate Nintendo or love it, respect it. They made the most contribution and made gaming the way it is today.

except that the cpu and gpu get outdated, not only that, but future proofing means you wont make any more money by selling them a new console.

Do you realize that such hardware for a console would easily shatter the $1,000 price barrier? Ultra HD isn't even out yet, and future-proofing for it would be a retarded idea. The hardware would be too weak to render games with good graphics at playable frame rates at a resolution of 7680x4320 when it becomes common, which won't be until the end of this decade or even the middle of the next. Take this analogy for example: *It's 2002* "I'm going build a PC with the fastest hardware so I can future-proof it to max out games in 1080p when it becomes the most commonly used resolution!!!!" *fast-forwards to 2008* Damn this rig can barely run any modern games, time for an an upgrade!!!"