Here is a link to the WiiU specs on the Nintendo website.

http://e3src.nintendo.com/wiiu/

What do you think of them. Can anyone say categorically (someone who knows about console specs) where these lie relative to the 360 and PS3?

Do these change the view of anyone out there whether they will buy it or not?

---Edit---

It has been pointed out that these are just basic brand descriptions and not an indication on the actual machines power or full specs.

Sorry for misleading you.

What it does point out is that the WiiU will have an AMD processor and a Radeon GPU. It will also still use SD cards and have 4 USB ports.

@Dixavd:

There are no specs on that website just the name of the processor and gpu

@bam13950: They still count as specs - and they give an indication of how they are building the system (i.e. there is a limit to what a GPU can handle so it gives an indication of that). It is still something.

@bam13950: Also the Storage part is interesting. Like how it will continue to use SD cards.

@Dixavd said:

@bam13950: They still count as specs - and they give an indication of how they are building the system (i.e. there is a limit to what a GPU can handle so it gives an indication of that). It is still something.

All it does is say they're ATI and Intel. That doesn't really give any indication of power. There are powerful ATI and Intel harware, and there are super weak ATI and Intel hardware. It's impossible to know how powerful the console is going to be from those "specs".

I still don't understand why people care so much. I mean, it's Nintendo. In HD. Why is that not enough?

These specs make actually been known for months now. Nintendo is not the kind to get into real specifics like processor speed and the like.

@MattyFTM said:

@Dixavd said:

@bam13950: They still count as specs - and they give an indication of how they are building the system (i.e. there is a limit to what a GPU can handle so it gives an indication of that). It is still something.

All it does is say they're ATI and Intel. That doesn't really give any indication of power. There are powerful ATI and Intel harware, and there are super weak ATI and Intel hardware. It's impossible to know how powerful the console is going to be from those "specs".

Oh, guess I was wrong. I am not fantastic with computer stuff - I just thought GPU information gave the same find of info as a Power Supply would in saying the limit that it could do. Sorry. Feel free to lock this if you want.

@MattyFTM said:

@Dixavd said:

@bam13950: They still count as specs - and they give an indication of how they are building the system (i.e. there is a limit to what a GPU can handle so it gives an indication of that). It is still something.

All it does is say they're ATI and Intel. That doesn't really give any indication of power. There are powerful ATI and Intel harware, and there are super weak ATI and Intel hardware. It's impossible to know how powerful the console is going to be from those "specs".

From the look of Batman, I'd say the console might be slightly less powerful than a PS3

@PrivateIronTFU: It is more about knowing what kind of games they could make - especially with splitting power to the controller as well. For instance an HD zelda game would be enough for me - but if it allowed them to make it fully open world without any loading while staying stunning then all the better. It also shows how long the console will likely last.

However, I was wrong about them giving an indication of that.

These specs say literally nothing. It just tells the brand of each component.

@Jack268: Yeah, sorry for misleading you. I kind of just made this as soon as I found it (I did that since I found it on Nintendo's own website so I knew it was true which was my only thoughts of checking).

@Dixavd: The processor in this system could have a core speed of anywhere between 2.4GHZ and 4.15GHZ and it may have anywhere between 4 and 8 cores. That gives a very broad range of where the processor could sit, and there isn't really any information about the GPU.

@Dixavd said:

@bam13950: They still count as specs - and they give an indication of how they are building the system (i.e. there is a limit to what a GPU can handle so it gives an indication of that). It is still something.

Considering this thing was gonna play Wii games, we already knew this. Radeon and AMD processors, just like on the GameCube and Wii. We want operating clock speeds and RAM numbers and get a feeling how far this machine can go.

Here is this from VG Leaks (via GoNintendo.)

VG Leaks says they have received the Wii U specs from a anonymous source.

Hardware Features

Main Application Processor

PowerPC architecture.

Three cores (fully coherent).

3MB aggregate L2 Cache size.

core 0: 512 KB

core 1: 2048 KB

core 2: 512 KB

Write gatherer per core.

Locked (L1d) cache DMA per core.

Main Memory

Up to 3GB of main memory (CAT-DEVs only). Note: retail machine will have half devkit memory

Please note that the quantity of memory available from the Cafe SDK and Operating System may vary.

Graphics and Video

Modern unified shader architecture.

32MB high-bandwidth eDRAM, supports 720p 4x MSAA or 1080p rendering in a single pass.

HDMI and component video outputs.

Features

Unified shader architecture executes vertex, geometry, and pixel shaders

Multi-sample anti-aliasing (2, 4, or 8 samples per pixel)

Read from multi-sample surfaces in the shader

128-bit floating point HDR texture filtering

High resolution texture support (up to 8192 x 8192)

Indexed cube map arrays

8 render targets

Independent blend modes per render target

Pixel coverage sample masking

Hierarchical Z/stencil buffer

Early Z test and Fast Z Clear

Lossless Z & stencil compression

2x/4x/8x/16x high quality adaptive anisotropic filtering modes

sRGB filtering (gamma/degamma)

Tessellation unit

Stream out support

Compute shader support

GX2 is a 3D graphics API for the Nintendo Wii U system (also known as Cafe). The API is designed to be as efficient as GX(1) from the Nintendo GameCube and Wii systems. Current features are modeled after OpenGL and the AMD r7xx series of graphics processors. Wii U’s graphics processor is referred to as GPU7.

Sound and Audio

Dedicated 120MHz audio DSP.

Support for 6 channel discrete uncompressed audio (via HDMI).

2 channel audio for the Cafe DRC controller.

Monaural audio for the Cafe Remote controller.

Networking

802.11 b/g/n Wifi.

Peripherals

Link

2 x USB 2.0 host controllers x 2 ports each.

SDCard Slot.

Built-in Storage

512MB SLC NAND for System.

8GB MLC NAND for Applications.

Host PC Bridge

Dedicated Cafe-to-host PC bridge hardware.

Allows File System emulation by host PC.

Provides interface for debugger and logging to host PC.

Arkham City looks worse than the PS3 and 360 versions but that is a port and it's early days for the hardware, still it's definitely nothing impressive looking so far.

No word on shader count or bus width. Great.

I know the gamepad has a resolution of 854x480 and it's listed as 6.2 inches, which I assume is a diagonal measurement, so the Pixel Density of that thing is around 158, which is closer to the PSP Go than it is to something like the vita...and it's less then half the resolution of modern HD phones (e.g. Iphone, galaxy s 3). I know that isn't a big deal to probably 99% of the people looking at the console, but, to me, that speaks to the utility of the screen. Because it's resolution is so much lower than the output from the console to the TV, I think developers will treat it as a glorified mini-game utility or menu. That's all well and good, but it isn't worth paying what I assume will be around $300, for a feature like that. I hope I'm proven wrong by Nintendo in the next year or so, but I said the same thing about the wii, and I don't use my wii.

@SpartyOn: The battery life is also 3-5 hours, and using two gamepads will cut the framerate down to 30 fps.

@PrivateIronTFU: We want to know the upper limits of what it's capable of. We want to know the profit margin on each unit produced. We want to know Nintendo's entire strategy moving into the next gen, and the Wii U specs will say a LOT about that.

It claims 8k textures on 32mb of ram for the GPU? wat

Again, Nintendo skipped the ethernet port? If they specify that the console has Wifi, I suspect there ain't going to be a ethernet port. Buuuu!

@PrivateIronTFU said:

I still don't understand why people care so much. I mean, it's Nintendo. In HD. Why is that not enough?

If Nintendo can play its cards right and give us a powerful system, then it might be able to bring in third-party games from other developers. The Nintendo faithful might be keeping the company afloat but that's not really a ton of money. Cite all the Wii hardware sold you want to, casuals might not want to spend another $300 or so dollars if they aren't going to play it much and thus far the 3DS, which is doing better, isn't doing phenomenal yet.

As for why power is important, well, just take a look at the original Crysis. Sure, that was eventually ported to consoles, but that's hardly the best version and they had to gimp a lot of it in order to make it fit, including an entire level, and it still doesn't always perform up to par. With more power a game developer can simply do more things with a game besides graphics. For another example, in Oblivion you could make custom spells in all the versions. In Skyrim you can't because consoles can't handle it. Maybe they could dial the graphics back to make that happen, but I would hardly call that an acceptable solution considering that part of the game's appeal is traversing its wondrous lands.

nintendo says the cpu is an IBM Power (versus PowerPC) which is kinda interesting.

thats the top of the line nomenclature for their processors. hopefully we get to know more about that in the future.

@JJOR64 said:

Here is this from VG Leaks (via GoNintendo.)

VG Leaks says they have received the Wii U specs from a anonymous source.

Hardware Features

Main Application Processor

PowerPC architecture.

Three cores (fully coherent).

3MB aggregate L2 Cache size.

core 0: 512 KB

core 1: 2048 KB

core 2: 512 KB

Write gatherer per core.

Locked (L1d) cache DMA per core.

Main Memory

Up to 3GB of main memory (CAT-DEVs only). Note: retail machine will have half devkit memory

Please note that the quantity of memory available from the Cafe SDK and Operating System may vary.

Graphics and Video

Modern unified shader architecture.

32MB high-bandwidth eDRAM, supports 720p 4x MSAA or 1080p rendering in a single pass.

HDMI and component video outputs.

Features

Unified shader architecture executes vertex, geometry, and pixel shaders

Multi-sample anti-aliasing (2, 4, or 8 samples per pixel)

Read from multi-sample surfaces in the shader

128-bit floating point HDR texture filtering

High resolution texture support (up to 8192 x 8192)

Indexed cube map arrays

8 render targets

Independent blend modes per render target

Pixel coverage sample masking

Hierarchical Z/stencil buffer

Early Z test and Fast Z Clear

Lossless Z & stencil compression

2x/4x/8x/16x high quality adaptive anisotropic filtering modes

sRGB filtering (gamma/degamma)

Tessellation unit

Stream out support

Compute shader support

GX2 is a 3D graphics API for the Nintendo Wii U system (also known as Cafe). The API is designed to be as efficient as GX(1) from the Nintendo GameCube and Wii systems. Current features are modeled after OpenGL and the AMD r7xx series of graphics processors. Wii U’s graphics processor is referred to as GPU7.

Sound and Audio

Dedicated 120MHz audio DSP.

Support for 6 channel discrete uncompressed audio (via HDMI).

2 channel audio for the Cafe DRC controller.

Monaural audio for the Cafe Remote controller.

Networking

802.11 b/g/n Wifi.

Peripherals

Link

2 x USB 2.0 host controllers x 2 ports each.

SDCard Slot.

Built-in Storage

512MB SLC NAND for System.

8GB MLC NAND for Applications.

Host PC Bridge

Dedicated Cafe-to-host PC bridge hardware.

Allows File System emulation by host PC.

Provides interface for debugger and logging to host PC.

Does anyone know how these specs compare to the 360 and PS3?

@CrossTheAtlantic said:

@SpartyOn: The battery life is also 3-5 hours, and using two gamepads will cut the framerate down to 30 fps.

Which is pretty ridiculous considering that gamepad will cost a TON when compared to current gen controllers. The Wii U looks like it could be interesting, but they've really disappointed me in a few areas that, unfortunately, I consider to be key.

Approximately 3.41 pounds. This is huge news!

I have it on good authority that it's using the IBM Power 7 architecture which is spec'd from 2.4Ghz onwards. I reckon it'll likely be clocked at most 2.4Ghz, maybe even a bit slower to reduce heat and power consumption. Also, it's most likely a quad core.

@JasonR86 said:

Does anyone know how these specs compare to the 360 and PS3?

The developers probably do, but the issue would be that Nintendo could have had substantial tweaks to the chips architecture that would drastically impact performance. Most devs have been calling it as even with the PS3/xbox360 though.

The other item to consider is that the Wii U's chassis allow for very little in the way of cooling (unless that thing has a hidden port with a really elegant/expensive heat sink setup). Since the 45nm CPU / 40nm GPU is confirmed, you can be pretty sure that any improvement in performance vs. power will still land it in a situation where it cannot greatly outstrip the current gen consoles (x360 s has great cooling and 45nm CPU/GPU). And the price delta between things like decent battery life and barely acceptable, or getting into a multi-touch screen (like a kindle has, so a plain stylus works) is relatively minimal (a few dollars). It looks like Nintendo wanted to make typical Nintendo games look good @ 720p, and then cut their materials cost to stay under some really severe price point.

That listing is pretty believable, but pretty much anyone could have made that up too ./shrug.