I am going to LA for the first time on thursday. I am pretty excited. I wont have much time I think but I am going to try to see as much of Hollywood as possible. Probably catch a Lakers game too. EVERYONE is there for Oscar weekend so hopefully I can see some stars.

Wii U Gpu insights from Chipworks:

Originally Posted by Jim Morrison, Chipworks:

Been reading some of the comments on your thread and have a few of my own to use as you wish.


1. This GPU is custom.

2. If it was based on ATI/AMD or a Radeon-like design, the chip would carry die marks to reflect that. Everybody has to recognize the licensing. It has none. Only Renesas name which is a former unit of NEC.

3. This chip is fabricated in a 40 nm advanced CMOS process at TSMC and is not low tech

4. For reference sake, the Apple A6 is fabricated in a 32 nm CMOS process and is also designed from scratch. It’s manufacturing costs, in volumes of 100k or more, about $26 - $30 a pop. Over 16 months degrade to about $15 each

a. Wii U only represents like 30M units per annum vs iPhone which is more like 100M units per annum. Put things in perspective.

5. This Wii U GPU costs more than that by about $20-$40 bucks each making it a very expensive piece of kit. Combine that with the IBM CPU and the Flash chip all on the same package and this whole thing is closer to $100 a piece when you add it all up
6. The Wii U main processor package is a very impressive piece of hardware when its said and done.

Trust me on this. It may not have water cooling and heat sinks the size of a brownie, but its one slick piece of silicon. eDRAM is not cheap to make. That is why not everybody does it. Cause its so dam expensive.

gamingeek said:

I can't see any particularly expensive bits in the leaked controller. It's almost wii level tech, but I guess if they have to include a pseye camera for the motion sensing to work I guess it will cost more. Still not as much as the u pad.

Right now the current PS3 dualshock controller is $50. The next one will have the addition of the touchscreen and the motion sensing built in. Six-Axis will obiviously be gone, and there are rumors about about the removing of rumble, but I don't think those are going to equal each other in balancing out the cost.

robio said:

Right now the current PS3 dualshock controller is $50. The next one will have the addition of the touchscreen and the motion sensing built in. Six-Axis will obiviously be gone, and there are rumors about about the removing of rumble, but I don't think those are going to equal each other in balancing out the cost.

I've come to the conclusion that hunting for and installing Skyrim mods is a game unto itself. I spent part of last night doing that while testing my replacement video card, which works great btw,.

So NFS Most Wanted U is using PC textures instead of console textures. Vader you were asking to see the difference, evidence of what Us extra RAM etc could do? Check the first two screens. I think it shows a pretty notable jump.

360

gamingeek said:

Okay Wii U Street has Melbourne, Miami, Santa Cruz listed. No Athens. London is completely mapped. Where bouts do you guys live? Local high sreet, centre of town if you don't want me to see your street, house.

I'll pm you my address.  See if you can spot me urinating in the bushes.

bugsonglass said:

As I hope you know I almost never do this, and I know you haven't asked for my opinion, but Castlevania: LoS is a seriously shitty game.  I really don't know how they fooled so many gamers and reviewers into thinking that crap was a good game.  It's a bad game trying to be (and posing as) a quality one ... a wolf in sheep's clothing, the worst kind of bad game.  You would do a lot better putting your gaming time into something else, but by all means try it for yourself