Well this is interesting:

Portion of rumored Wii U leaked specs confirmed by Ubisoft


DX11 features and a tesselation unit?

Remember when we posted up this blurb about the Wii U back before E3?



AMD GPU7 R700-Based processor


“GX2″ named API for Wii U


32MB embedded DRAM capable of 720p 4x MSAA or 1080p rendering in a single pass

Check out this info that comes from the LinkedIn profile of Ubisoft's Rémi Génin...



I currently work on a multi-platform game engine (PC-DX9, WiiU-GX2) during the production of "The Raving Rabbids 6".


- Maintenance and optimization of the proprietary engine.


- Improvements on the soft shadows system (VSM, PCF, cascades).


- SSAO



That right there actually confirms the GX2 API from the rumored info. Does that mean the rest of those leaked specs were spot-on as well?

These were the pre-E3 leaked specs:

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


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.

The RAM has been bumped up to 2GB since then I hear.

A tesselation unit should be good, it's what Crytek are showing off in their Cryengine 3 tech videos, using level of detail to give you a much more detailed area.

The GPU is based on the AMD GPU7 R700-Based processor and is designed to be as efficient as the GC GPU.

The guy in the video reckons that compute shaders are DX11 features, I checked MS's online site:

"A compute shader is a programmable shader stage that expands Microsoft Direct3D 11 beyond graphics programming. The compute shader technology is also known as the DirectCompute technology. Like other programmable shaders (vertex and geometry shaders for example), a compute shader is designed and implemented with HLSL but that is just about where the similarity ends. A compute shader provides high-speed general purpose computing and takes advantage of the large numbers of parallel processors on the graphics processing unit (GPU). The compute shader provides memory sharing and thread synchronization features to allow more effective parallel programming methods. You call the ID3D11DeviceContext:ispatch or ID3D11DeviceContext:ispatchIndirect method to execute commands in a compute shader. A compute shader can run on many threads in parallel"

CVG said about the specs:

"For those not able to decipher the esoteric language here's the take away: it's powerful, but the lack of a hard drive could be a problem. "

Here is what the NeoGaf techeads thought about it.

For a start it seems accurate and secondly they say it's way better than 360.

I am so fucking in love with the U gamepad design. I want to put it between my asscheeks.

edgecrusher said:

Well as I've been saying, just based on the graphics chip alone there's no doubt about it smoking the Xbox 360, whether the haters want to admit it or not. I don't know why its such a shock that Nintendo would make a console that blows 360 away 7 years later.

These were target specs according to GAF.

The only problem is the rumour that they then downclocked the CPU. According to devs who talked to websites I cannot remember the site - they said the GPU features would allow it to do Star Wars 1313 like graphics but the CPU might hamper things. So technically the system has a great GPU but the CPU aint great. I hear they balanced the system making the GPU handle things the CPU usually does so that might be why the CPU is weaker?

A tesselation unit would be cool. It would have been cool if Crytek had done a version of Crysis 3 and pushed the system, they like the system and specs but think that the market isn't suitable i.e kiddy market or whatever. But then they say Cryengine 3 runs great on it and someone else is using CE3 to make a Wii U game.  

I wish someone would come out and push the system like Takuechi did with 3DS when he showed us RE Revelations which still blows away any other 3DS game.

Graphics do not bother me that much - it's more the reaction of gamers and the media that is annoying. The constant speculation, obsessing about and trolling.  Zombi U is the closest thing we have to a ground up high budget game, the problem being that it's not high budget and Killer Freaks started off as a 360 game. I wish Ubisoft would port Watch Dogs, the game makes sense given the touch screen and I'm sure they could make a better looking version.

Even Ass Creed 3 is just a 360 port as is Darksiders 2. Until we get to see a proper AAA high budget production we wont have any idea how far they can push things. I am convinced that Nintendo will make very little effort to make a graphics pushing game other than say a Mario game that looks like Banjo 360.

Ubisoft SHOULD put Watch Dogs on the Wii U. It would be much more capable at running it close to that PC version than the PS3 and 360 are.

SteelAttack said:

It's a perfected 360 controller, which was almost perfect to begin with. So, yeah, it stays between the cheeks.

Are you talking about the U gamepad or the classic Wii U controller?

So how is it perfected then?

Analog placement could also be argued but of course YMMV.

gamingeek said:

YMMV?

"Your milage may vary". I think.

It is a pretty sexy controller...they both are, actually. That's one thing you gotta give to Nintendo, they've REALLY improved their controller designs since the Gamecube days. For awhile there, it was like they were purposely gimping their controllers just to piss us off. Glad those days are over.

Foolz said:

GameCube controller was awesome. It might have been ugly, but it was incredibly comfortable. All the ones I had broke really quickly, though.

That little C stick and tiny d-pad were a bust but for comfort it was unbelievable and I loved the button layout and shape. People ragged on it because of the way it looked but having that big central A button and kidney shaped side buttons was perfect.