Wii U Power

I've been looking into the Wii U's specs and tech for a few weeks now and I've been looking at specs dating back before the PS4's announcement. I have found some interesting results I thought I should share.

http://www.gamechup.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/ps4-dual-architecture.jpg
It started with Mark Cerny's presentation a couple of weeks back. He was explaining how they looked upon using an alternative architecture from what they are actually using, the one on the right. He explained; the idea is that they would use a small amount of eDRAM to bring the texture bandwidth up to 1TB per second. The catch being that they would need to use a small amount of on chip memory and each game team would need to develop special techniques in order to manage it correctly. He went on to compare them stating that while it took a bit longer, once they learn to use the eDRAM correctly, they would be able to unlock it's full potential. He concluded by saying that they went with the architecture on the left (which consists of a wide bus and fast memory which allows for straight forward programming) to make access easier for developers to develop, probably going from the whole Cell processor deal.


Now, the Wii U pretty much falls under the category of the picture on the right. It has a small bus of on-chip memory, but that is corrected with a small cache of 32MB of eDRAM. It also sports 3 MB of eSRAM which is a tad bit faster than eDRAM (albeit less powerful), to assist bring up speed even further. The Wii U needs less than half of that to create a 1080p frame-buffer

[Why did Mark even mention this? Throwing Nintendo a bone?]

Of course, RAM isn't everything, something I've been saying but there's more than just that. GPU and CPU. I found this article from back when the Wii U first launched, dating back to November, before reveal of the PS4 and Xbox One. I'll link it at the bottom. It goes about explaining how the Wii Us GPU and CPU work, I'll paraphrase: The CPU is designed to allow for massive overclocking at smaller power consumption and higher efficiency and it runs faster than it's clock speeds. This only does so much, that's what the eDRAM is for, as well as the eSRAM. The way the CPU works is it allows the Wii U to move more data into the eDRAM than usual, making it more efficient, you'll hear this word a lot.


Now the GPU; it is a GPGPU, which is designed to handle functions the CPU is normally meant to, except it does so better. The issue, just like the RAM and CPU, comes from when you use it incorrectly, if bare bones are run through it like they usually are on other GPUs, and the rest on the CPU, the system actually performs slower and causes problems. Aka, no quick ports as they end up buggy (ME3/Batman).


It concludes with the notion that regardless the Wii U will be outmatched if the other two consoles follow the same route, which they likely will... Except they didn't, MS and Sony went for off-the-shelf parts that have large up-front processing power but are inefficient. It's mentioned that when used correctly the console can be 10 times more efficient and is also cheaper, which explains why Nintendo opted for this option over a more developer friendly system, same with the RAM, eDRAM is much cheaper.


The best thing is that none of this affects Indie Developers, as at it's core the Wii U is still a great system and Indies haven't had issues as it's way more powerful than they need it to be. In an interview with Martin Sauter from Shin'en Multimedia he explained how their game, Nano Assault Neo, was made very inefficiently and they never ran into any issues with incredibly high resolution textures and a lot of special effects and particles, running at 1080p 60FPS.

He also states: "The Wii U GPU is several generations ahead of the current gen. It allows many things that were not possible on consoles before. If you develop for Wii U you have to take advantage of these possibilities, otherwise your performance is of course limited. Also your engine layout needs to be different. You need to take advantage of the large shared memory of the Wii U, the huge and very fast EDRAM section and the big CPU caches in the cores. Especially the workings of the CPU caches are very important to master. Otherwise you can lose a magnitude of power for cache relevant parts of your code. In the end the Wii U specs fit perfectly together and make a very efficient console when used right."


Again that word comes up, efficient. What I've concluded, is that while both the PS4 and Xbox One seem more powerful at first glance, they are both very inefficient and will blow through that power quickly. Seen by The Witness, an indie game using 5GB of RAM as of e3, and the Killzone Demo taking up 3.8GB, a demo. I don't know about you, but it doesn't seem like we should taking such large jumps from having 500MB of RAM and seeing results like The Last Of Us and Beyond: Two Souls, to suddenly, 6 months later an indie game is using 5GB of RAM.

PCs aren't about pure processing power anymore, it's about efficiency, using that power correctly, and that's something the other two consoles aren't doing. Right now the only games that are running at 60FPS so far are Forza, Killer Instinct, and Drive Club, of which the racing games I believe were at 720p, (I may be missing some). They've come out and said that this generation still won't be 60FPS 1080p, more like 720p and solid 30-60FPS depending on the games. Now, take this with a grain of salt but I read that Monolith Soft's X, an open world JRPG which is up there with the best of this year with visuals, is supposed to run in 1080p and at 60FPS, and one thing we do know for sure, is that it's not going to have any loading screens in that massive game. I believe that when used correctly, the Wii U is actually vastly superior when it comes down to it. Hell, supposedly of all the games they've shown at e3 (probably excluding X), they were all using but a fraction of the Wii U's capabilities, you know Nintendo, they won't go and blow their whole graphics load on Mario and Pikmin.

It comes down to install-base, that's all it is this time around, and it's coming. Once here, things will change, Wii U versions of Multiplats looking better and their first party games performing even better.

http://www.gamechup.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/ps4-dual-architecture.jpg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNfyumTCVZ4
http://www.zeldainformer.com/news/developers-have-it-wrong-the-wii-u-is-powerful-its-just-next-generation-pow
http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2013/05/shinen_wii_u_has_enough_power_for_years_to_come_gpu_is_several_generations_ahead_of_current_consoles