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The Wii's Brain Exposed

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the delicious-brains dept.

Jon Stokes, at the Opposable Thumbs column, discusses a final revelation of the Wii's technical prowess. Though it's been assumed since the early days of the marketing push that the Wii is basically a super-charged GameCube, a post to Acer's Hardware boards would seem to confirm that. Not, as Mr. Stokes says, that that is a bad thing: "I'm no longer nearly as upset about the implications of this move as I was back in August. In fact, thanks in large part to my DS Lite, I've gone from being disappointed at Wii's underpowered hardware to actually anticipating the new console. I plan to pick one up when they become generally available, and I'm even hoping to hook my (nongamer) wife on it."

5 of 241 comments (clear)

  1. Supercharged! by StonedRat · · Score: 3, Insightful

    And my PC is just a supercharged 386. So what?

    --
    "Religion is the most malevolent of all mind viruses." - Arthur C. Clarke.
    1. Re:Supercharged! by Chris+Burke · · Score: 4, Interesting

      And my PC is just a supercharged 386. So what?

      Well, not really. The ISA may be the same, but the microarchitecture is completely different. Your PC's CPU looks nothing like a 386, it just happens to speak the same language (and certainly some new instructions, if not entire operating modes like 64-bit, besides).

      The point of the article is that the Wii's CPU is really microarchitecturally similar to the Gecko, down to the number of FP pipelines and such, and is basically a 90nm shrink of the old chip with higher clock speeds.

      Now personally I find it hard to believe that IBM would go through the trouble of shrinking the chip to 90nm (which isn't as easy as just applying a scaling factor to your old mask) without tweaking the architecture even if there were no major changes planned. I guarantee there were improvements that they either wanted to add to Gecko but didn't have time/resources for, or flaws in the Gecko that they discovered after it was produced that they would like to fix. The shrink to 90nm is the perfect time to get some of those changes in, so I'm betting they did.

      Which brings me back to your point, which was: So what? Indeed, so what? So it's the same chip, only at a much higher frequency and probably with a small percent boost in IPC performance besides. How is that bad? It isn't. It just isn't a super brand new highly experimental chip that requires new (or, going back to mainframes with slews of I/O controllers, old) programming methods. So for anyone who was hoping Nintendo would have some incredible hardware specs for them to drool over, dissapointment may ensue. Oh well, there's still a good chance it will be good enough.

      Look at the last generation: The Xbox and GC were fighting for best graphics (xbox winning mostly, but GC showing some astounding performances from time to time), and also fighting for 2nd place. 1st place went to the console with the worst graphics, but they were good enough to be part of that generation, and it had the games. The Wii will certainly be representative of this generation of graphics, even if it will be the worst in that regard. Personally I, like anyone who favors a PS2, just hope it has lots of fun games.

      --

      The enemies of Democracy are
    2. Re:Supercharged! by Patoski · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's not a vastly underpowered (for the current generation) game system being sold for more than the parts are worth (when the competition is selling hot new tech at a loss), propped up by a gimmicky controller.

      Honestly, none of what you've mentioned matters at all. The PSP is light years better than the DS from a technological point of view, but the DS is mopping the floor with the PSP. Why?

      In the end, it all comes down to games.

      If Nintendo has the games that are the most fun they will sell the most consoles. The same is true for MS and Sony... If the controller is gimmicky and the games are not very fun, it will become very clear in due course. How anyone can declare winners and losers in the console war at this point is beyond me. The party is really just getting started.

      --
      G. Washington on Government "it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."
  2. Re:Wii isn't underpowered except by SetupWeasel · · Score: 3, Funny

    I think this will be their fatal flaw for next gen console rave.

    I don't know. The PS3 has a very low ecstasy to glow stick ratio.

  3. Nintendo DS uses OpenGL by tepples · · Score: 4, Interesting
    This is the GBA and Nintendo DS strategy rehashed. Both these consoles has (albeit limited in the case of the GBA) the ability to do 3D, but Nintendo basically -on purpose- ommited to make an API for it to be easily done.

    True of the GBA, but Nintendo DS uses a subset of OpenGL, similar to the "GX" API used by the GameCube.