Wii Massively More Powerful Than Expected? New Specs Emerge

May 24th, 2006, 02:14 Posted By: wraggster

According to reports breaking of late, the Nintendo Wii could be much more powerful than even the most optimistic fan might have hoped. Several sources, believed to be taking information from western developers equipped with near-final development kits for Wii, have seemingly leaked some impressive specs for the machine that, if true, slash the power void between Nintendo and its two home console rivals.

According to an article on Daily Tech, widely ignored during E3 but since gathering some pace, "...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."

The big news here is the mooted use of a PowerPC 750GX CPU running at 1.1GHz with 1MB L2 cache well beyond the expectations of most.

The piece continues, "On Nintendo's official Wii hardware "specifications" page, the GPU of the console is listed as still being developed with ATI. Whether this means that the GPU is still being tuned or there was simply a grammatical error on the site is up in the air. Very little is known about the Wii's GPU, codenamed Hollywood except that it is part of ATI's R520 family."

The mention of the R520 has sent shockwaves of quivering anticipation around gaming circles, as if the news proves true, Nintendo would essentially be able to boast a massive leap forward from the GameCube with the Wii possessing the graphical grunt of a well-equipped gaming PC. The outlined chipsets are also highly versatile, a feature Nintendo will likely employ to throttle the Wii for standby use during WiiConnect dormant sessions.

For reference, Nintendo's own blurb on the performance of the Wii, an interesting if guarded read, can be found here.

The merging belief that there were two kinds of Wii hardware on show at this year's E3 has brought some understanding to the gulf in visual quality between certain titles. It does seem likely that the majority of Wii software was running on modified GameCube development kits, with other titles, specifically Mario Galaxy looking as though they were delivering far beyond what the Wii's predecessor could ever have achieved. This was in stark contrast to titles such as Metroid which looked unchanged from its GameCube outings.

We'll update you on the progress of all things Wii at time trickles on.

Via Spong

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