WiiU Tech Specs leaked - supposably legit

[RuskiSnajper]

From VGLeaks.com

It may not be a leak at all but it's unofficial and anonymous, maybe the NDA is over and they just waited to drop the bomb until the NDA drops the second E3 conference started.

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

GFX API

• 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

• 2 x USB 2.0 host controllers x 2 ports each. (2 front, 2 back)
• 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.

Validation:
Neogaf Moderator says it's "accurrate": http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost...79&postcount=2
bgassassin confirms also: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost...&postcount=149


NOTE: Seems to be based on earlier target specs, the final dev-kits had a specs bump, in line with the UE4 rumors, but bgassassin thinks the bump was just a small boost.

NOTE2: Please don't make any performance judgments and comparrisons, by analyzing them, these specs have been constructed in a way to purposelly hide KEY specifications required to determine total processing power - we simply cannot get an idea of equivalent or comparrison at this point, but the indictions are that this is modern hardware and ofcourse the on the GPU side the most important feature that stands out is compute shaders.

[erocker]

Not impressed.. Though the triple core Power PC CPU is interesting I suppose.

[freaksavior]

Interesting

[thunderising]

1.5GB Memory.wow

[RuskiSnajper]

Originally Posted by erocker

Not impressed.. Though the triple core Power PC CPU is interesting I suppose.

Your opinion is your opinion, but i should have warn you that, in the community, there wasn't any big expectations and from the tech community they were not expecting

So people, don't make your expectations too high, the rumors are ALL above what the tech community speculated, it got progessively higher as the info began to be more believeable.

So it's a case of just too good to be true sometimes, 2GB of RAM was our maximal best case scenario speculation. The GPU speculation was "over 1TFLOP" ... from the rumors it seems it's more than that and one rumor even points it as 2TFLOP. (the latest "barts" one from VGA ZOL)

There will be no hard drive as we knew this for months, also, 2 controllers are supported at once as expected, people still didn't beleived that, the non-techies.

[erocker]

Originally Posted by RuskiSnajper

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

^That kinda says it all. Granted we don't know what other graphical features are running. I don't know, I feel the one thing that made the Wii popular was its simplicity. The Wii U is going away from that. Who knows? Perhaps the Wii name alone will sell consoles to the masses that bought it for what it was to begin with.

[JrRacinFan]

Originally Posted by erocker

Perhaps the Wii name alone will sell consoles to the masses that bought it for what it was to begin with.

I know I am going to get one. Maybe not on release day but eventually.

[RuskiSnajper]

Originally Posted by erocker

^That kinda says it all. Granted we don't know what other graphical features are running. I don't know, I feel the one thing that made the Wii popular was its simplicity. The Wii U is going away from that. Who knows? Perhaps the Wii name alone will sell consoles to the masses that bought it for what it was to begin with.

It's a custom GPU, doesn't assign to anything directly.

Currently this is what im trying to do now, hopefully get some closest possible equivalent. But this may take some time.

[remixedcat]

OMG TRIPLE COREZZZZ !!!11111

lawlz

[RuskiSnajper]

Originally Posted by remixedcat

OMG TRIPLE COREZZZZ !!!11111

lawlz

The spec bumb was apparently 4 cores ... if the ubisoft tech leak rumor is to be believed.


"Ubisoft" Tech Leak rumor (may be too good to be true but nobody knows, maybe it was purposelly designed to look fake by saying which company he works for and other stupid things such as price and release date, but still GPU wise it's not as absurd as the VGA ZOL Barts rumor )

• Developer supposedly from Ubisoft Milan division
• Wii U will support two touch-screen controllers.
• Wii U will include a lot of pre-installed software, just like the 3DS.
• Wii U’s launch lineup is amazing; what happened with the 3DS at launch won’t happen again.
• Ubisoft has “multiple versions” of the system.
• Nintendo asked Ubisoft to release a large number of titles at launch; they’re planning to have Rayman Legends, Assassin’s Creed III, and Just Dance 4, with Killer Freaks from Outer Space available a few weeks later.
• Ubisoft has received several dev kits and tech demos that showcase the system’s capabilities; apparently they haven’t even gone through all the tech demos yet.
• 2GB of RAM, 512 MB for the OS.
• Graphics card will be a Radeon HD 6770, meaning DirectX11 and Unreal Engine 4.
• Previous dev kits clocked in at 4GHz, but apparently the latest ones cap out at 6GHz.
• Rayman Legends is also coming to PS Vita.
• Next Xbox’s graphics card will be better than Wii U’s, but Ubisoft is focusing on Wii U development for now.
• Assassin’s Creed III runs at 60fps and 1080p on Wii U, versus 720p on Xbox and PS3.
• Leaked information on a small site to avoid being easily seen and identified.
• Launch price was originally going to be around $450, but Nintendo is now talking about lowering it to $350-400.
• The launch date is supposedly going to be November 23.
• The source doesn’t know much about what’s going on with first-party Wii U games.
• Crytek, EA, and Valve are developing for Wii U - and Valve is starting with Portal ports.
• L and R triggers won’t be analog.
• No information is available yet about the online store
• \Gamertags may or may not be available, but achievements will.
• 3DS and Wii U interaction is already planned out, but the employee didn’t reveal anything.
• Wii U’s interface will be the most customizable interface ever developed by Nintendo.
• New controller button has something to do with Wii Vitality Sensor.
• Rayman Origins demo wasn’t made by Ubisoft; it was put together by another team.
• He decided to leak the info because he really loves Wii U… but we’ll see more exciting info at E3.

It's like you gut's bet .... some of the info is straight on TRUE, some of it is a bit on the WTF side, some of it is a bit wrong, because I don't think anything on the controller had to do with Vitality sensor... or we might still don't know what that means, maybe the HOME button has something ... we haven't seen any talk of that on conference, maybe reggie will tell more in interviews this week.

As you can see this is writeen by someone else apparently, i havent searched the source of where it was posted, maybe this is the wrong thing im linking to, i've never searched for the source text.


EDIT: Seems like i've now managed to track down the source text, as this posted text is rewritten by nowgamer.com, it's obvious how stupidly something seems as it's taken out of context by the journalists. I should have did this before.

Here is the thread: http://www.mariocastle.it/viewtopic.php?f=102&t=1075
The Forum designated it as "confirmed FAKE" but you can see that we got some things correct, like the much expected 2 controller support but meh, maybe it was just a lucky quess, that doesn't make HD6770 equivalent or more might not be a lucky guess

proper english translation (jig = gigabyte)

Hi to everybody, I am a developer of Ubisoft Milano.
I have followed recently her a lot situation of the Nintendo Wii U, I would want to spread with you some information that the Nintendo has made us know.
Very probably however they won't last for a long time, but I try there the same.

The Wii U has 2 jig of RAM, 560MB for the OS, support the DX11s and we have succeeded in bringing the Unreal Engine 4 of the Epic Games, the hardware of the console it is very lending even if I now tell already you from that it is less powerful person of XBOX 8, the new console Microsoft.
I also add that it is possible to use only 2 pads, this because of the receipt of streaming.
The console will go out November 23 rd 2012, we of Ubisoft will do in way to support the base Nintendo with Rayman Legends, Assassin's Creed 3, Rabbids Party, Killer Freaks from Outer Space, The Avengers and Just Dance 4.
Ah, and finally respect the controller few times ago a developer of Travelers Tales has twettato a photo of the pad, surely you will ask you to that you/he/she serves

UPDATE:
Seems like this is the actual rumor that got posted on the english sites, but nobody took the OP seriously. The fake guys might have used all kinds of past rumors including the OP (developer1)

The one that was posted on sites was at the second page which was in italian completely (the whole list was written by someonelse who was saying for someone else, so that might be fake as how it was written and all ... and confirmation of fake)

But it may not be this OP to be the fake, don't really know, because the OP was completely correct on everything, on the games, and on the 2 controller, he's completely true. So what makes 2 GB of RAM not true.

I guess the thread dismissed that list, but the actual OP is pretty straight on.

http://www.allthingsgaming.net/2012/...formation.html
This site has updated on the fake ... this was all going 2 weeks or more before E3.

I haven't searched the whole thread to see on what they've found as the confirmation to fake, don't have time now anymore.

[RuskiSnajper]

I've did a search and yes these specs point to a R700 series of Radeons the HD4000 series.

Many of the GPU features matched 100% with what's writteon on the AMD website for the HD4870 website, Some of the GPU features in the leak aren't found in neighter, also not the HD6000 series specification is a less detailed at AMD site than HD4000 specification chart.

UPDATE:

"Early Z test and Fast Z Clear" did not match in HD4870 but i found through google that it traces back to HD4500 and HD4600 series ...

... well pretty much it's clear it's based on the R700 core, but that doesn't tell us about the performance still, hopefully it's at least 1 TFLOP or just above as rumored.

[FordGT90Concept]

Looking over those specs, they almost match Xbox 360 word-for-word. What Ubisoft and other developers said about the hardware being equal to or less than Xbox 360 were correct. Also saddening, there's only about 1.5 GiB of RAM. Much improved over the previous generation of consoles but that isn't going to mean lots of 64-bit ports to PC. Then again, most ports are from the Xbox hardware.

If UE4 can run on that...that's disgruntling.

Originally Posted by erocker

^That kinda says it all. Granted we don't know what other graphical features are running. I don't know, I feel the one thing that made the Wii popular was its simplicity. The Wii U is going away from that. Who knows? Perhaps the Wii name alone will sell consoles to the masses that bought it for what it was to begin with.

I think it's just as simple as the Wii, just with slightly more modern hardware. Tri-core vs single. 1.5 GiB vs < 512 MiB >8 GiB vs <1 GiB, HDMI vs component, etc.

Originally Posted by RuskiSnajper

well pretty much it's clear it's based on the R700 core, but that doesn't tell us about the performance still, hopefully it's at least 1 TFLOP or just above as rumored.

Very, very doubtful. I think it'll be closer to the 500 GFlop mark. Nintendo is likely to insist on passive cooling again which means pretty low clocks.

[Frag Maniac]

Actually the graphics specs far exceed the 360, but only 8GB storage?

[JrRacinFan]

Originally Posted by Frag Maniac

Actually the graphics specs far exceed the 360, but only 8GB storage?

Shouldn't need much at all. With the sd slot and USB ports ....
In the previous console you can move gamesaves to sd if needed.

[Solaris17]

cool they have a dedicated sound card.

[xenocide]

Originally Posted by JrRacinFan

Shouldn't need much at all. With the sd slot and USB ports ....
In the previous console you can move gamesaves to sd if needed.

It took them several years to get a firmware update out that allowed you to do that >.>

[Frag Maniac]

Originally Posted by JrRacinFan

Shouldn't need much at all. With the sd slot and USB ports ....
In the previous console you can move gamesaves to sd if needed.

When it comes to console storage, it's not a matter of upfront need, it's a matter of how much convenience and value you get built-in, and capacity wise that is far below even current 360s and PS3s, let alone their next offerings.

[JrRacinFan]

I agree with that but I have a great feeling IN SPECULATION that it will be more than adequate.

[FordGT90Concept]

Originally Posted by Frag Maniac

When it comes to console storage, it's not a matter of upfront need, it's a matter of how much convenience and value you get built-in, and capacity wise that is far below even current 360s and PS3s, let alone their next offerings.

PS3 and Xbox 360 can install games to hard drive as well as download large games from online. Games available for download on Wii are pretty small (pre-GameCube) and all games strictly run from disc. I think 8 GB is adequate. 2 GB card + 512 MB is excessive on Wii--about 1 GB internal would have been the sweet spot.

[Frag Maniac]

Originally Posted by FordGT90Concept

PS3 and Xbox 360 can install games to hard drive as well as download large games from online. Games available for download on Wii are pretty small (pre-GameCube) and all games strictly run from disc. I think 8 GB is adequate. 2 GB card + 512 MB is excessive on Wii--about 1 GB internal would have been the sweet spot.

In a way you kinda nailed what I was getting at. The other consoles are more versatile. As with PC you aren't limited to what kind of games you can DL to them, which is especially appealing to those with little time to shop, or living in rural areas.

In worrying so much about proprietary discs and pirating, Nintendo has made their system much more limited in use. It's ironic that the system with the most versatile controller would be the one that offers little use as an entertainment hub.

That leaves Nintendo marketing the Wii U primarily on it's controller and more powerful graphics. With the competition already having a much better title base and hub features, that may not be enough to rely on in and of itself.

Sony and MS will no doubt soon catch up on graphics, and they're already way ahead on adult titles. As is said, if you're going to dive in deep, you gotta go big, and it seems Nintendo is still merely swimming away slowly from the shallow end of the pool.

[RuskiSnajper]

Capacity won't be a problem for me, i don't play anything else except first-parties. The days of 50 games installed are over, not only because the quality is poor, but also because i don't have time for entertainement stuff.

And also, i don't really care about features such as social and other visual/audio nonsense. Hopefully the browser works, that's all i would like, but i take it as bonus.

Originally Posted by FordGT90Concept

Very, very doubtful. I think it'll be closer to the 500 GFlop mark. Nintendo is likely to insist on passive cooling again which means pretty low clocks.

Rumors and specs have indicated R700 GPU from ages ago, this is no real surprise now.

[lyndonguitar]

I don't really quite understand why Nintendo starting with the Wii wouldn't add that extra graphics/processing power to compete with the supposed ps4 and xbox 720 consoles.

Now Xbox 360 has kinect and PS3 has move, and the Wii has nothing left to throw at them except for more Zelda and Mario. and with this WiiU specs, it looks just nothing new, its just smilar to the Xbox 360's specs.

I know its for the cost but come'on. graphics make a large percentage of the games quality. Majority of the people buy newer gen consoles because of the graphics, at least that's what convinced me to buy newer gen consoles.

the same reason thats making me to continue to upgrade my Desktop PC. Graphics and Performance

I know Nintendo can do it, Gamecube had better power than PS2. But lacked games. came later, had shit marketing and ugly looking console so PS2 won.