Wii far more powerful then expected?

Wii Rumour | Sources disagree once again.

The always speculative Spong has rounded up some rumours floating around the net that there were two totally different sets of Wii hardware at E3 - one that was representative of the real console, and another that was just a Gamecube development kit with the new controller technology. They say reports are now leaking out that the console is actually more powerful then is currently expected by the gaming community - and though still behind the Xbox 360 and PS3, at regular resolutions it may match their graphical grunt. Spong says this could explain the vast gulf in graphical quality we saw from Wii games at E3, where the Super Mario Galaxy playable demo and the Super Smash Bros Brawl trailer looked far more advanced graphically then other games that are due out six months earlier.

Spong goes on to quote a Daily Tech article that suggests it has the real Wii specs: "...the Wii will ship with a PowerPC 750GX CPU jointly developed between IBM and Nintendo. Nintendo says the codename of the processor is Broadway and was manufactured using a 90nm fabrication process. IBM claims the 750GX GPU is based on the 750FX processor designed by the company several years ago. The chip can run at frequencies up to 1.1GHz and includes a 4-way set-associative single core with 1MB L2 cache." They also claim that the GPU will be part of ATI's R520 family.

It's worth noting that this CPU spec is more powerful then the Wii specs IGN published a few months ago, and that the GPU here is very capable indeed. That unnamed source quoted specs that IGN compared to the original Xbox. Could IGN's source have had a very early development kit? Or is this wishful thinking by some Nintendo fans?

Spong has been known to be correct in the past (they predicted Nintendo's controller announcement before it happened at the Tokyo game show last year), but are just as often dramatically wrong. But given that one un-named source is as good as another, we're back in the dark. Looks like we'll have to wait and see!

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27 Comments

realitybites

5 years ago

Well that site has dubious credentials to begin with so one should eye this with much skepticism.

If we take the path that its true does it matter?

Its going to be outgunned by the other two consoles in the graphics department anyway. It has to stay focused on the games and the Wii controller.

Wii will be successful through good solid marketing, good price point and uniqueness.

As soon as it tries to engage Sony or MS at their game its doomed.

ElliottRW

5 years ago

I'd like to revise my earlier comments. I recently found out that the original Gekko cpu used a 0.18micron copper process, not an aluminum process as I had assumed. Given that, I don't think we can expect a 4x increase moving to 90nm. Still, we should see a 2x increase from the size decrease, and a 15-20% increase from the move to SOI. The new calculation puts the target speed at 1.0 - 1.3ghz. Sorry about that.