[Fudzilla] New Nintendo Wii2 for 2012 using AMD R700 GPU

[wahdangun]

Unless they use a more proprietary custom design from AMD that would not be available for the computer industry. I think from all the Sony BS, we've learned that hackers are going to break into the system no matter what. Focus on delivering good content to customers, and business will take care of itself. It's not like a PowerPC based console cannot be broken into.

but there are no proprietary/special in X86 design, and yes every console can be hacked and moded but if they design it with different CPU/GPU than we normally have it will make it more harder just like PS3.

 

[Medu]

on topic, i think producing old 55nm R700 chips right now would not be cost efficient for AMD so they must be talking about acquiring old stock (which must be huge then) or producing them on a newer node. in any case, Wii games were never polygon-intensive due to cartoony graphics so even a weak 4xxx could handle them easily.

AMD won't be producing anything, they will just design the chip and get royalties every console that Nintendo sell. That's what they did with the GC, 360 and Wii.

It's really hard to believe any of these rumours anyway- if we were to have believed the rumours about the 3DS it would have a Nvidia chip inside it!

 

[VirtualLarry]

It would seem foolish to me if they didn't at least include DX11-class hardware, with tesselation. Then again, with a somewhat fixed output resolution, do you really need tesselation?

 

[Lonyo]

It would seem foolish to me if they didn't at least include DX11-class hardware, with tesselation. Then again, with a somewhat fixed output resolution, do you really need tesselation?

Why include DX11 hardware with tessellation, when you can include DX10.1 hardware with tessellation?

 

[Skurge]

Why include DX11 hardware with tessellation, when you can include DX10.1 hardware with tessellation?

Yep, the 360 has a DX9 GPU with tessellation.

 

[OCGuy]

I highly doubt 4870 performance. They need that power draw to be as low as possible.

 

[Lonyo]

I highly doubt 4870 performance. They need that power draw to be as low as possible.

You can get almost 4870 performance at low-ish power draw.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Powercolor/HD_5750_Go_Green/27.html
45w average load power draw for an HD5750, which is 80~85% on average of an HD4870.
That's about the same power use as the average HD5670.

It's not Wii low, but it's also not PS3/Xbox 360 high.
Also, you can't expect them to be that close to the Wii if they want a significant upgrade. The Wii was barely more than an overclocked Gamecube, so of course it was easy to make it super low power. If you want some beefier hardware, you have to increase power and size really.

 

[Jacky60]

How long is it gonna take for these console makers to wake up and smell the coffee?

Just give us a console with a 6 core Tegra 4 like chip, with a mouse and a keyboard, some type of integrated operating system to be on the internet like IE9/Firefox/Chrome, so we can email, go on You Tube, Facebook ect. ect. ect. Then add a decent gamepad and/or motion type controller. Add some AAA gaming titles with a terabye of storage, blueray RW drive and they can make a boat load of cash.

I'd pay 600$ for that, anyone else?

The rationale behing the 360 and the PS3 from what I read was the box to 'dominate the living room' so Bluray player/DVD player and gaming with additional functionality. What is it with POS console makers that they feel the need to get 10 year lifespans out of products that could double in performance every year/18 months. This makes me very angry because I'm in my 40's and at the current rate of incremental improvement I'll possibly see two or three new generations before I die. I suspect that my current PC will be as quick as the next generation consoles from MS/Sony which means I'll be in my sixties before I see an improvement. The market needs more competition or something to spur development as smart phones will be overtaking consoles AND be mobile pretty soon.

 

[Anarchist420]

In any event, I'm not excited. ATi's filtering sucks, and shimmering textures kills the deal for me. I can tolerate a little bit of shader aliasing here and there, but having everything shimmer sucks.

As for not needing a powerful console with good feature set for cartoony graphics, that's ridiculous. Non-realistic games benefit from more powerful HW than do realistic games.

I also don't expect 28 nm chips.

It pisses me off how Sega was forced out of the console market when they made decent hardware, while Nintendo gets to stay. The only generation in which Nintendo HW beat Sega HW was Genesis vs. Super NES, but then just barely. The Dreamcast had way better graphics than the Gamecube despite coming out 2 years earlier. It sucks the DC didn't have more storage (should've made GD-ROM medium be 1.8 GB and had a large cache buffer for the drive), more ram (16 MB VRAM and 32 MB system RAM), and a higher clocked CPU (to speed up T&L and post-processing), but it was pretty good for it's day.

I also expect this coming nintendo console to be $300-400. I'll be surprised if it's <$300.

Weak console hardware is why I nsist on nvidia.

 

[akugami]

It would seem foolish to me if they didn't at least include DX11-class hardware, with tesselation. Then again, with a somewhat fixed output resolution, do you really need tesselation?

I am not a developer. I am not a programmer. However, judging by what I've read about tessellation it would go well with consoles in helping ease and quicken development. The two major benefits are 1) decreased need for storing data related to the 3D models and terrain as well as the bandwidth to support and 2) on the fly scalability for said models and terrain so that the hardware doesn't have to render an object that is very far away in full detail and can scale it up as you get closer.

In the case of decreasing the need to store huge amounts of data, this helps in decreasing the size of any DLC (I hate DLC's btw), as well as the bandwidth needed to shuttle that data around. Notably this would go well in enabling developers to pack more data into a single disc. Not only that but since you need to pull less data off of the disc it should load content more quickly.

In the case of scaling the models and terrain, this is kind of self explanatory. Models up close can be rendered at a higher polygon counts while objects and terrain further from the player's viewpoint can be rendered at lower resolutions. This can all be done on the fly allowing the developer to better harness the available power.

 

[exar333]

I see this as being very, very interesting for console gaming. Up until now many of the big non exclusive console titles only were available on the 360 and PS3. Now that the Wii is getting a successor wth a much needed hardware upgrade, this is going to pave the way for all those titles to me made available on Nintendo's platform. Not just future titles, but we could see titles from the past five years re-released for the new Wii2.

Game development houses must be looking forward to increased revenues with this release. As well, now the Wii will no longer be the mainstay of people who want to play party games or the mario franchise games. It will suddenly become viable for your Call of Duty, Mass Effect and NBA2K11 gamers as well. MS & Sony must not be looking forward to this. The Wii already outsells either of their consoles.
And if the Wii2 presents with more horsepower than a 360 or PS3 it could become the platform of choice if developers improve visuals to take advantage of the better hardware in the Wii2.

A further to this is it could galvanize MS and Sony to get some new consoles out to replace the ancient beaters they are still selling now. Which would help PC gamers because we're getting abominations like Cryport 2 because of lack of progression in the console world.

Not true, the X360 was tops in March 2011, and lead Nintendo a number of months last year. Wii sales have eroded substantially in the last 18 months (probably due to the lack of good titles and strong competition from MS and Sony).

That said, Nintendo releasing a new Wii makes sense. They have been very successful with regular incremental updates to the DS over the past 6-7 years, and this would fit into this strategy rather well. It would put them on more of a level playing-field with Sony and MS, and potentially be 'the system' for the prettiest and shiniest versions of cross console releases.

The interesting thing to me is that traditionally companies have upgraded around the same time. Nintendo will have a tough time selling their new Wii for $400-500 (est) when a PS3 and X360 costs hundreds less. That will be challenging. MS or Sony could cut prices even more to lure potential buyers to their established platforms.

 

[exar333]

We have to keep in mind that the Wii, while playing games, consumes only ~20W of power. This means Nintendo has a lot of room to play with but I seriously doubt they'll suddenly jump into 360/PS3 territory of ~200+W.
Even liberally fast clockspeed estimates of a triple core IBM CPU + R700 GPU would easily be under 100W as long as they're produced on a modern fabrication process.



I already have a computer, several of them

Misinformation.

Xbox360 has not used 200w since Zephyr/Falcon; it PEAKS at less than 135w today. The PS3 is similar is that only the 1st gen used ~180w; 3rd gen was ~100w and the slim is 60-70w. The Wii is 20w (as you stated).

 

[Grooveriding]

Not true, the X360 was tops in March 2011, and lead Nintendo a number of months last year. Wii sales have eroded substantially in the last 18 months (probably due to the lack of good titles and strong competition from MS and Sony).

That said, Nintendo releasing a new Wii makes sense. They have been very successful with regular incremental updates to the DS over the past 6-7 years, and this would fit into this strategy rather well. It would put them on more of a level playing-field with Sony and MS, and potentially be 'the system' for the prettiest and shiniest versions of cross console releases.

The interesting thing to me is that traditionally companies have upgraded around the same time. Nintendo will have a tough time selling their new Wii for $400-500 (est) when a PS3 and X360 costs hundreds less. That will be challenging. MS or Sony could cut prices even more to lure potential buyers to their established platforms.

I'm sure month to month and in certain snapshots of time the 360 or PS3 may have outsold the Wii, but looking on the entirety of sales, the Wii has outsold either console by the tens of millions.

This is impressive in its own right as the Wii arrived on the scene concluding the release of the PS3 & 360.

I agree there are scenarios that could shift sales in the 360's favour again and allow it to eclipse the total sales numbers of the Wii in time, but with the upcoming release of the Wii2 next year, that looks unlikely.

Building on Nintendo's history of successful console launches I expect the exact opposite. Sales of Sony's and Microsoft's console will slow and the Wii2 will be the big hot console. Twofold main reasons for that being the popularity of Nintendo and huge hype with all their new console releases. That, in tandem with the new updated hardware, now the Wii2 will have the ability to run anything that you see on the 360 and PS3. So going forward there will be Dragon Age, Battlefield and all the rest on the Wii not just the PS3 and 360.

Going on Nintendo's pricing history, I feel you overestimate the pricing. I'm expecting $300 or $350, and people will line up to spend that to get their hands on one. I think even at $400 they would fly off the shelves.

 

[RussianSensation]

I wanna see a 110 watt console built on that kind of technology 2x as powerfull as a xbox 360 by 2014. I don't care who makes it, Nintendo, microsoft, or Sony. Is that asking to much?:thumbsup:

How did you miss the point that a full-fledged R700 would be at least 4-5x as powerful as the GPU in the 360? GTX480/570 is about 10x as powerful as the GPU in the PS3. Therefore, I hope that by 2014 the next Xbox/PS is at least 10x as more powerful as the 360/PS3. Also, unless you have time to game 8 hours a day, I don't think it makes a material difference financially if the console consumes 110 or 220 watts, esp. when the TV in the living room is pushing 300-400 watts. With console gamers often dropping $40-60 on games without issues vs. what we can get on Amazon/Steam, etc., I doubt they are concerned about electricity costs (otherwise most of America would be drying their clothes outside).

And for the sake of graphical advancements in the future, if PS4/Xbox720 are only 2x as powerful as the Xbox360, it will be the saddest day in PC gaming (of course it will be virtually impossible to release a GPU only 2x as fast as a 7950GT in the year 2014; so luckily we don't have to worry about that).

TWhat is it with POS console makers that they feel the need to get 10 year lifespans out of products that could double in performance every year/18 months. This makes me very angry

Partially. At the same time, it's also the consumers who dictate the strategic direction of the firm. Notice how Nintendo's profits and revenues declined significantly since customers stopped purchasing the Wii? This has resulted in Nintendo quickly moving towards their new generation console. So I can't say it's only the console maker's fault. All my friends who have PS3 and Xbox360 do not want a new console and are perfectly happy with the current COD version 165 and the same lame 5-year-old graphics. They are also largely to blame for supporting these consoles (some of them purchased 3-4 Xboxs after theirs RRODed). It's sad really.

In addition, Microsoft is not doing anything to promote exclusives on the PC. Instead they diverted all of their energy towards Xbox360 in the last 6 years. Can you imagine if Halo, Gears of War, Forza, etc. were all PC exclusives? The 360 would be a worthless pile of plastic.

 

[Blitzvogel]

but there are no proprietary/special in X86 design, and yes every console can be hacked and moded but if they design it with different CPU/GPU than we normally have it will make it more harder just like PS3.

You could theoretically build things into it that can act as security measures, physical ones even, but that would cost money, and even still those extra things could be emulated via code. Using a Fusion APU would help if you run some of the security code not only via the x86, but through the APU graphics cores. I'm sure there are plenty of different schemes to come up with and I think the hardware side of things is less important than actual software because nothing will be so proprietary that it can't be hacked in some way shape or form. I'd say that the PS3's exotic architecture helped, but I think Sony had more general layers in software too.

While I don't completely understand everything.....

But here's the FailOverFlow video from not too far back about them making the first real hack of the PS3.

But IIRC, the PS3's hardware wasn't too big a deal for the group, it was the software.

 

[cusideabelincoln]

It pisses me off how Sega was forced out of the console market when they made decent hardware, while Nintendo gets to stay. The only generation in which Nintendo HW beat Sega HW was Genesis vs. Super NES, but then just barely. The Dreamcast had way better graphics than the Gamecube despite coming out 2 years earlier. It sucks the DC didn't have more storage (should've made GD-ROM medium be 1.8 GB and had a large cache buffer for the drive), more ram (16 MB VRAM and 32 MB system RAM), and a higher clocked CPU (to speed up T&L and post-processing), but it was pretty good for it's day.

So the Dreamcast was more powerful than the PS2, GCN, and Xbox?

 

[happy medium]

So the Dreamcast was more powerful than the PS2, GCN, and Xbox?

nvm...

 

[akugami]

In any event, I'm not excited. ATi's filtering sucks, and shimmering textures kills the deal for me. I can tolerate a little bit of shader aliasing here and there, but having everything shimmer sucks.

You do realize that both AMD and nVidia have had issues with shimmering textures? At one point, there was a huge outcry about how bad nVidia's shimmering texture issue was compared to AMD. Not that AMD hasn't had their own shares of such issues.

It pisses me off how Sega was forced out of the console market when they made decent hardware, while Nintendo gets to stay. The only generation in which Nintendo HW beat Sega HW was Genesis vs. Super NES, but then just barely. The Dreamcast had way better graphics than the Gamecube despite coming out 2 years earlier. It sucks the DC didn't have more storage (should've made GD-ROM medium be 1.8 GB and had a large cache buffer for the drive), more ram (16 MB VRAM and 32 MB system RAM), and a higher clocked CPU (to speed up T&L and post-processing), but it was pretty good for it's day.

Do you know who forced Sega out of the console wars? Sega. Management and other decision makers ran that once proud company into the ground with one mistake after another. I owned a Dreamcast and thought it a shame that it died prematurely but let's all put the proper blame where it belongs. And if you think Sega got their crap together after that...look at the state of the company today and look at what they've done. Quite frankly, I'm not impressed.

Weak console hardware is why I nsist on nvidia.

Apparently AMD's graphics chips are so inferior that they can't compete at 1080p resolution. Let's all petition AMD to shut down their video card division and stop wasting shareholder's money cause they simply can't compete with nVidia. Let's also write Microsoft and tell them that the AMD GPU in their Xbox 360 sucks and is noncompetitive and should be scrapped ASAP.

Nintendo's Wii is "underpowered" because Nintendo chose to make it that way. Not because AMD could not provide them a more powerful GPU. Relatively speaking, the previous Nintendo consoles were in the same range as other consoles released during their respective generations. It was only the with the Wii where we saw a huge disparity in hardware power. Obviously I'm excluding portable consoles where Nintendo has always been relatively underpowered compared to competitors.

 

[cusideabelincoln]

I would say with the ps2/xbox that was debatable, but with the gamecube, I would say yes. I have one sitting right in front of me ,and believe it or not I still play it.

Don't make me laugh. Rogue Squadron, Metroid Prime... and hell even Soul Calibur 2 shined on the Gamecube.

Every multiplatform game to release was determined to look best on Xbox, followed closely be the Gamecube, and then the PS2 brings up the rear.

The Dreamcast is not more powerful than the Gamecube, and you don't know what you're talking about if you think the PS2 and Xbox were comparable.

 

[sxr7171]

In any event, I'm not excited. ATi's filtering sucks, and shimmering textures kills the deal for me. I can tolerate a little bit of shader aliasing here and there, but having everything shimmer sucks.

As for not needing a powerful console with good feature set for cartoony graphics, that's ridiculous. Non-realistic games benefit from more powerful HW than do realistic games.

I also don't expect 28 nm chips.

It pisses me off how Sega was forced out of the console market when they made decent hardware, while Nintendo gets to stay. The only generation in which Nintendo HW beat Sega HW was Genesis vs. Super NES, but then just barely. The Dreamcast had way better graphics than the Gamecube despite coming out 2 years earlier. It sucks the DC didn't have more storage (should've made GD-ROM medium be 1.8 GB and had a large cache buffer for the drive), more ram (16 MB VRAM and 32 MB system RAM), and a higher clocked CPU (to speed up T&L and post-processing), but it was pretty good for it's day.

I also expect this coming nintendo console to be $300-400. I'll be surprised if it's <$300.

Weak console hardware is why I nsist on nvidia.

If this a Dreamcast tribute, then I'm with you. I was really angry when all that happened. A superior product just dies because of lack of marketing. That machine made me interested in gaming again, and nothing since tops it IMHO for how absolutely impressive and creative it was.

 

[hans030390]

I would say with the ps2/xbox that was debatable, but with the gamecube, I would say yes. I have one sitting right in front of me ,and believe it or not I still play it.:thumbsup:

GC was definitely more powerful than the PS2.

 

[RobertPters77]

R700 is atleast 2.5x more powerful than the xenos chip in the 360.

 

[sxr7171]

GC was definitely more powerful than the PS2.

As were the N64 over PS1 and SNES over Genesis. The Wii was the first time they decided to be weak with their hardware.

 

[happy medium]

Don't make me laugh. Rogue Squadron, Metroid Prime... and hell even Soul Calibur 2 shined on the Gamecube.

Every multiplatform game to release was determined to look best on Xbox, followed closely be the Gamecube, and then the PS2 brings up the rear.

The Dreamcast is not more powerful than the Gamecube, and you don't know what you're talking about if you think the PS2 and Xbox were comparable.

? nvm

 

[Blitzvogel]

R700 is atleast 2.5x more powerful than the xenos chip in the 360.

Actually much more powerful. While a basic GFLOPs comparison isn't the end all way of comparing Xenos to whatever other AMD GPU, it's a good indicator of relative performance since the Stream Processor set up didn't change so much from Xenos to R600 to R700 to even Evergreen and Northern Islands to make them all too unrelated.

Using Wiki for Stats, here are some GFLOPS comparisons for the R700 series:

Xenos @ 500 MHz - 240 GFLOPS

Radeon 4550 (RV710)....@ 600 MHz - 96 GFLOPS
Radeon 4670 (RV730XT).@ 750 MHz - 480 GFLOPS (possible candidate for Wii 2 GPU)
Radeon 4770 (RV740).....@ 750 MHz - 960 GFLOPS (likely candidate for Wii 2 GPU, most hoped for it seems as well :hmm
Radeon 4850 (RV770PRO)@ 625 MHz - 1000 GFLOPS
Radeon 4870 (RV770XT)..@ 750 MHz - 1200 GFLOPS
Radeon 4890 (RV790XT)..@ 850 MHz - 1360 GFLOPS

Personally out of the entire series, I do think RV740 (Radeon 4770) would be an excellent choice simply because it would bar none be 4x more powerful than Xenos (from purely an SP view) at 750 MHz. Even backed down to 500 MHz to save energy, it would still hit 640 GFLOPS. Also, it's a 40 nm GPU and Ninty could've had AMD work on getting down to 28 nm which would reduce power consumption by a great deal without a clock decrease. Even though math is probably a bad indicator of actual turned out die size (since all sorts of changes have to be made to make a node size reduction workable):

(137 mm^2 RV740 GPU x 28 nm) / 40 nm = 95.5 mm^2 correct? (assuming perfect ratio change with node size)

RV730 (Radeon 46xx) would make a great candidate as it would be pretty small on 28 nm

(146 mm^2 RV730 GPU x 28 nm) / 55 nm = 74.32 mm^2

My beef with using RV730 would be it's low ROP count (8 ROPs) and that would make 1080p difficult (but probably manageable) for the same graphical fidelity as the Xbox 360, especially since the 360 has it's eDRAM advantage.which get's it just about "free" 2x MSAA @ 720p. At 720p though, the Wii 2 would be clearly the superior GPU, especially with 2x the shader performance.

But as far as I'm concerned, RV740 is where it's at in regards to the R700 family. RV770 is probably too big for an easy process reduction and not worth the effort. RV740 is a good start for node reduction since it's already 40 nm for "instant installation" into devkits before it could be shipped on 28 nm for production consoles and at a good balance of capability/power consumption. According to 4770 reviews I've seen, power consumption is in the 50W area (entire graphics board) with the 512 MB of GDDR5. Adding in another 512 MB to the VRAM (for 1 GB total) + 1 GB of GDDR5 SRAM + CPU and keeping it all under 100W should be easy, especially if the CPU and GPU are on 28 nm.