Topic: Wii U got performance boost rumour - lets discuss!

Clock speed != TDP != Performance

There were 3Ghz desktop CPUs back before the the 360 was even released. They were room heaters and can be beaten in benchmarks by low end netbook CPUs. Low end netbook CPUs that can almost get away with passive cooling and are definitely less powerful than what's in the Wii U. We're talking 5 and a bit CPU generations ago for the medium to high end, something like 40x less power than a mid-range desktop CPU these days.

All of this is irrelevant however because the only thing that matters is how the games perform and the Wii U does an alright job. Mostly because of a significantly improved memory configuration over PS3/360. What matters more is what content is on the platform.

@SCAR392
You have a fact and I can appreciate that.
The fact that Ferrari can make a fast automobile affords me no aspirations that my family car can out perform it, even after an aggressive tune up.
A bad analogy yet I feel that's your angle: [publisher that isn't Nintendo] has achieved performance Y, therefore Nintendo can easily go from Y to eXtreme. I dunno.

Read @skywake's introductory comments, and you would realize that clock speeds aren't even the final determinant of performance.

There is so much FAIL in this post.

The Xbox never went from 720P to 1080P for games. All games still run at 720P just like PS3 (although there are a few simple games running at 1080) and all current games on Wii U run at 720P or less (COD BLOPS).

The rumor did't indicate "almost doubled", it was almost tripled. 1.2 GHz x 3 = 3.6 that is pretty close to 3.2.

Just because the 360 runs at 3.2 does not automatically mean the Wii U can. The reason is these were DESIGNED to run at the speeds they do. 360 was designed to run at 3.2, Wii U was designed to run at 1.2 GHz. The architecture is way different. The 360 has discrete separate chips for the CPU and GPU etc. This allows each chip to dissipate it's own heat. There are also much bigger heat sinks on them. Also don't forget, the 360 has been redesigned allot since launch, the chips in the Slim are newly designed too, but they still give off allot of heat. 3 cores at 3.2 GHz generate lots of heat, it is physics. The WiiU has everything integrated on one die, GPU and CPU to save cost. If you look at the WiiU case it is just too compact to allow it to dissipate that much heat (they didn't make the new 360 Slim more than twice the size of the WiiU because they are stupid, they have been making Xboxes for over 6 years!) . There is no way these can have the clock speed almost TRIPLED with it's current heat sinking and both GPU and CPU both creating heat on the single chip, it would fry out and let out the magic smoke. (Chips have magic smoke in them, when you let it out, they no longer work) The "modern architecture" in the Wii U basically just allows a 1.2 GHz system to perform closer to a 3.2 GHz one. This overclock claim is certainly bogus.

When are we gonna learn that rumors are mostly fake just to get attention. End of discussion

I already stated my reasoning was speculation. Whether other users try to attack me personally is a different story.
There's a rumor floating around that Nintendo's newest console is next gen.
Holy mackerel!

EDIT: Oh ya. @DaveC I already knew all that info. Xbox can still put out at 1080p.

Just wait and see fools.

@skywake

The menu/OS doesn't use the tri-core. It runs off a separate ARM 11 CPU.

I knew I could rely on scar to come in and defend Wii U no matter how unrealistic it is

Maybe I don't say this enough, but: I like Nintendo! The Wii U is awesome too!
Heck I even like you!
Otherwise I wouldn't 'waste my time' trying to correct your logical inaccuracies.

Thanks guys. I truly do try to make sense of this technology by my own observations.
If I'm wrong, then OK.

Look at it this way. Things would be a lot more boring around here without cheaptrick trying to find whatever reason to bash Wii U and without you totally defending Nintendo no matter the situation. You guys at least make me chuckle a bit and have a good time regardless.

I am in no way saying I believe this rumour but one thing people don't seem to have considered is that the Maracan hack was just wrong. The numbers he gleaned from the system were through using software while in Wii mode. Now it is entirely possible that that all he got were false readings because of the Cpu being in a downclocked state because of Wii hardware emulation functions. Which is entirely plausible.

Also people seem to he just saying that it would fry the Cpu of you overclocked that much. Why? The thermal limit on the chip is probably around 90-100c Wii U chip never gets far beyond room temperature. There is clearly a massive amount of thermal headroom and 40watts from the power supply not being used.

Finally it could also have simply been the fact that Wii U's operating system was as we all know very unstable at launch. That instability is something that would have dramatically increased the higher clock went, so it could have been a case of Nintendo releasing the cork now that OS stability had been improved. Really though we know nothing and likely never will find out, but trying to prove that this rumour os false one way or another is futile. There are so many unknowns as to what the chip actually is to he able to make any informed judgement. Even the PowerPC750 theory can't be proven as the Neogaf teardown has shown that "Espresso" looks nothing like any PowerPC750 chip seen before.

Simple fact is we don't know, but, saying it isn't possible is also bogus.

I think the Wii U system got slightly less noisy after the update. Now I am just one guy saying something on the internet with no evidence - but feel free to make a news article about it and discuss the possibility.

I get what you're doing but this is actually what happened. The disk drive doesn't spin when you're not using it after the update so it actually does make less noise than it did before the update

As long as the system runs smoothly, I'm good. Though a slight increase in game performance doesn't hurt either.

There are ways they could improve the clock speed though. This is Nintendo, a company that purposely locked out one of the CPU cores in the 3DS at first.
I still think it's possible. Like skywake said, this isn't even that surprising in the first place if true, because it's been done before. They could easily just run 1.1GH on each CPU core in unison combined with the GPU mirroring.

@Optimus_Prime
I was actually going to use a car analogy, but it was going to be determining a cars power based on the speed limit of a highway.
A Ferrari can only go 65-75 mph on a US interstate highway, because of the law.

@SCAR392
It's not at all like that and your analogy is broken in the way you're using it. If anything if a CPU is like an engine then Ghz is the amount of fuel it is consuming at a given point. More fuel generally means more performance but that's not the whole story. Some engines consume a lot of fuel but aren't all that powerful and others are very efficient and can do more with less.

To put it really simply there are three main things that determine a CPU performance:

• How many things you can do in a step
• How much energy a step requires
• How many steps can you do without melting the chip

The "steps" is measured in Hz. The thing is for almost a decade now getting more steps in there hasn't been the goal. Desktop CPUs hit 3Ghz and the focus changed to getting more efficient chips that did more. This is why Intel had a 3.4Ghz desktop CPU in 2003 and yet still sells 3.4Ghz CPUs for $310AU. That's not saying that this 3Ghz rumour is credible because 3Ghz isn't a crazy high number. I'm just saying that Hz isn't how you measure performance.

I personally don't care much at all what the actual specs of the Wii U are, as long as it's got decent software that runs well enough. I just don't think it's a good idea to go reading too much into this. Take the original story and it's alleged implications with a bucket of salt.

Well, I'm not gonna argue, but I understand what Nintendo did. It's just hard to explain, that's all.

360 doesn't output at 1080p, it upscales. A lot of games are under 720P, to help maximise frame rate.

The other thing to realise is that die sizes and chip designs have evolved massively since the 360 was released. As pointed out, clock speeds mean nada, it's efficiency that's key.

I should add, obviously some games are full HD. I'm talking the bigger titles, that are more strenuous titles for the ageing hardware.

Back on topic, I really can't see the CPU being stable in terms of performance and heat distribution; sure it may've had a boost but by such a percentage to get it to 3Ghz would be insane. We'd have a Nintendo RROD scenario.