Previous Generation Radeon HD Powers the Wii U
The big reveal at the E3 games show this year was the Wii U, Nintendo's next-generation gaming system that's set to appear in 2012.
Like the Wii, the Wii U appears to be using modest technology that's affordable today, rather than the state-of-the-art parts that Microsoft and Sony chose for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 over five years ago.
According to Japanese publication Game Watch, powering the graphics in the Wii U is an AMD Radeon HD 4000 series class GPU. Yes, this does mean that the Wii U, which is still a year away from market, is already spec'ed with a GPU that's decidedly last-generation.
Still, despite it being quite old in the PC world, it's still more advanced than Microsoft and Sony current offerings. The ATI GPU in the Xbox 360 and Nvidia GPU in the PS3 are of the DirectX 9 generation and feature Shader Model 3.0.
The Wii's GPU is based off of the RV770 core, which is of DirectX 10.1 generation with Shader Model 4.0.
Nintendo's use of Xbox 360 and PS3 game footage as its own at the E3 keynote may have raised a few eyebrows, but with this GPU, the Wii U should have no problem at least matching the graphical output of the current generation.
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So that's a 48XX series GPU?
Technically two generations. Even the 5000 series is old news now (and uses far less juice than the 4000 parts).
Looking on the bright side; at least consoles seem to be (finally) accepting that there is life after DirectX 9, despite the PC industry having to sit drumming its fingers for the last 3 years.
Well they have to cut corners somewhere in order to pay for that bloody controller
Well they have to cut corners somewhere in order to pay for that bloody controller
It's not really cutting corners, using not-so-cutting edge parts is a given in the console industry.
But I'm willing to bet it will do far better than the 6000 PC series, if only because of the greater degree of optimization programming for a single part enables.
It's not really cutting corners, using not-so-cutting edge parts is a given in the console industry.
Granted, but in this case it is cutting corners. being a generation behind is one thing, but RV770 is 2 generations behind.
The Wii doesn't even use DirectX...
why is this such an issue for everyone? consoles use GPU much more efficiently than computers ever could (less overheads, blah blah blah), so it's not comparable, and more importantly keep the prices nice and low.
i personally don't fancy paying £500+ for a games console, do you?
between every generation of console the jumps in graphical performances get less and less noticeable, it's a now point where i honestly don't care.
How much will this console cost us? Specs and price is closely related.
I hope this will not cost more than USD300 by launching