Ninintendo Wii Equivalent

[dnwalker]

APPROXIMATE PURCHASE DATE: Next 2 weeks

BUDGET RANGE: Sky is the limit, no real restriction here

SYSTEM USAGE FROM MOST TO LEAST IMPORTANT: Testing games.

PARTS NOT REQUIRED: mouse, keyboard, speakers

PREFERRED WEBSITE(S) FOR PARTS: None

PARTS PREFERENCES: None

OVERCLOCKING: Maybe

SLI OR CROSSFIRE: Maybe

MONITOR RESOLUTION: 1600x1200

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS: Hi! Just wondering if anyone can tell me what would be a PC equivalent of a Nintendo Wii? We need to do some game testing in a computer that has the same limitations as the Wii, but we are not sure of what would be a good equivalent in PC terms.

 

[MadAdmiral]

Crap.

None of the consoles are powerful compared to today's tech. I doubt you could even build something that's similar with new parts right now...

 

[shortstuff_mt]

The Wii is very weak as far as processing power. It has a 90nm Power-PC CPU clocked at 729MHz and a 90nm ATI GPU that runs at 243MHz. It also only has 88MB of RAM that's shared between the system and GPU.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wii#Technical_specifications

 

[MadAdmiral]

That's interesting. It's a lot lower than I would have guessed.

By comparision, the lowest clock speed for CPUs available new right now is 1.8 GHz. The slowest GPU is at 400 mhz. And obviously, nothing will run with only 88 MB of RAM...

 

[dnwalker]

So let me get this straight: The Wii is so underpowerd that even the crapies PC out there is still more powerfull than it?

 

[shortstuff_mt]

The Xbox 360 is much more powerful. It has three dual-core CPU's that run at 3.2GHz each and a GPU that runs at 500MHz. It also has 512MB of RAM.

http://gdgt.com/microsoft/xbox/360/specs/

 

[restatement3dofted]

So let me get this straight: The Wii is so underpowerd that even the crapies PC out there is still more powerfull than it?

That's about right.

 

[shortstuff_mt]

So let me get this straight: The Wii is so underpowerd that even the crapies PC out there is still more powerfull than it?

As far as pure processing power is concerned, yes that's true.

Why are you asking this? The Wii was designed to do one thing and it does it's job just fine. A computer has to do a wide variety of jobs.

 

[MadAdmiral]

Have you seen the quality of the games on the Wii? It doesn't take much power to play non-HD games.

 

[dnwalker]

As far as pure processing power is concerned, yes that's true.

Why are you asking this? The Wii was designed to do one thing and it does it's job just fine. A computer has to do a wide variety of jobs.

Well we are planing to do Wii games, so we want to test out if out game mechanics and graphics are going to run smoothly in the Wii. So we are planing to build a computer that will be verry similar to the Wii to test this out.

 

[MadAdmiral]

Wouldn't it just be easier to buy a Wii and modify it to play off your disks or other hardware? I know for a fact that's what they do for developing Xbox games...

 

[dnwalker]

Wouldn't it just be easier to buy a Wii and modify it to play off your disks or other hardware? I know for a fact that's what they do for developing Xbox games...

The truth of the matter is that we are still aplying for the Wiiware software, so there are a few elements that are going to be uncompatable with the Wii (Even if we crack it). This is more to test it out that everything we are doing will run smoothli on the Wii. We don't want to get aprove for the Wiiware, crack the Wii, test the game and realise that we over did it and have to modofi everything to make it work on the Wii.

 

[rodney_ws]

I believe the Wii's maximum output is 480P... yeah, that's a wide screen ratio so that's obviously more pixels than a 640 X 480 desktop, but still... it's not a lot more. The GPUs driving the PS3/XBox 360 are pretty much comparable to Nvidia 7900s and ATI 1900s if my memory is correct... and obviously the Nintendo Wii is a step down from those consoles in terms of graphical horsepower. The ONLY time a console will have near-parity with a PC is the day that it's released... it's all downhill from there. No current console can come close to touching a modern PC... assuming price isn't an issue. That said, you do get a lot of hardware for the money when it comes to consoles, but of course they're planning on making it back on the games.

 

[dnwalker]

I believe the Wii's maximum output is 480P... yeah, that's a wide screen ratio so that's obviously more pixels than a 640 X 480 desktop, but still... it's not a lot more. The GPUs driving the PS3/XBox 360 are pretty much comparable to Nvidia 7900s and ATI 1900s if my memory is correct... and obviously the Nintendo Wii is a step down from those consoles in terms of graphical horsepower. The ONLY time a console will have near-parity with a PC is the day that it's released... it's all downhill from there. No current console can come close to touching a modern PC... assuming price isn't an issue. That said, you do get a lot of hardware for the money when it comes to consoles, but of course they're planning on making it back on the games.

Thanks that helps a lot! It makes a lot of sense. Do you think that it would be a good idea to look at what was consider a top of the line PC 4-5 years ago, and start from there?

 

[MadAdmiral]

You could easily get an older PC and handicap it to run as if it was a Wii. You could downclock the CPU and GPU easily. I'm just not sure how you could make it only used 88 MB of RAM.

 

[dnwalker]

Ok, will do that. Thanks a lot for the help!