Final Nintendo Wii U Hardware Specs May Be Leaked
VGLeaks has published specifications of the upcoming Wii U console, which the site claims are now published on the Nintendo developer website.
The information posted by VGLeaks have not been verified, so it is a good idea to take them with a grain of salt. Of course, it is always intriguing to speculate, and the specs should be able to at least spark some discussions. From VGLeaks:
CPU: "Espresso" CPU on the Wii U has three enhanced Broadway cores
GPU: "GPU7" AMD Radeon-based High Definition GPU. Unique API = GX2, which supports Shader Model 4.0 (DirectX 10.1 and OpenGL 3.3 equivalent functionality)
Memory: Mem1 = 32MB Mem2 = 1GB (that applications can use)
Storage: Internal 8 GB with support for SD Cards (SD Cards up to 2GB/ SDHC Cards up to 32GB) and External USB Connected Hard Drives
Networking: 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi
Video Output: Supports 1080p, 1080i, 720p, 480p and 480i
Video Cables Supported: Compatible cables include HDMI, Wii D-Terminal, Wii Component Video, Wii RGB, Wii S-Video Stereo AV and Wii AV.
USB: Four USB 2.0 Ports
If the information is accurate, then the most interesting part may be the GPU and especially lack of DX11 support. However, Nintendo promised substantially upgraded graphics horsepower to enable HD gaming. As far as the CPU is concerned there is little detail available at this time, and it appears that the Wii U will not offer and exotic hardware features to set it apart from its rivals.

..that's Personal Computers M$ft
http://twitter.com/IBMWatson/status/240241146213842944
@DeSero "WiiU has 45nm custom chip ... a SOI design & packs same processor tech found in #IBMWatson" http://engt.co/l9uQLv - @engadget
https://twitter.com/IBMWatson/status/78473693843562498
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@TheDavidHansen #WiiU uses same #power7 chips.
VGLeaks
Am I the only one who facepalmed heavily after reading that?
so as i posted above it been confirmed by IBM the CPU is a Power 7 architecture based chip there newswest chip
..that's Personal Computers M$ft
The next gen console with hardware from 3 generations ago....
I wonder if they'll go for the 8-bit look that's been making a comeback in the android market?
The AMD R700 GPU is not that bad. DX11 API level added tesellation and multithreaded rendering along with other minor tweaks. With the tesellation hardware already implemented in R700 you just need a different API that uses it, same for multithreaded rendering.
The major change in features was from DX9.0c to DX10 and DX10.1 API level (R700).
Current consoles do not have multithreaded rendering, they use only one thread to render graphics.
So the statements from some developers that the GPU was a step forward for consoles but the CPU is a bit weaker than the PS360 may just be true.
If it only has three cores, how much will multithreaded rendering help? The option is left off in most games that support it since it actually hinders performance on two cores, it only helps on four or more. Not sure about three.
2) At least this console has a CD/DVD drive that is already going to put it ahead of other next gen consoles who are under the wierd impression that everyone has high speed internet in their homes. I mean, sure, most people do, but how long does it take to download a 10GB game over a 'high speed' DSL line? And you don't need to live far from a city to be out of DSL reach either.
3) What made the Wii a success was the innovation of a more 'natural' controller scheme. There is nothing natural about having to switch between 2 screens.
It's very unlikely the next Sony/Microsoft consoles won't have optical drives, for the reason you mentioned. The rumors that they didn't were just that, early rumors.
Yeah a poor CPU choice to be sure, and the tri-core bothers me as well. Quad core is becoming the norm, so why make a tri-core? You are just asking for slowness.
I hope the rumors are true. I hate making a console unnecessarily large just so that a very small portion of the user base can be served. Those same people could purchase a separate but connectable DVD/CD/Blue Ray drive for THEIR use. For myself, I would like the console to be as small and sleek as possible without garbage on it like a CD Drive.
On laptops I would agree, but we're talking about games that are up to 50GB now. Some PS3 games saturate both layers of blu ray disks. You want to stream that? No thanks, I'll take optical storage for dedicated gaming machines.
1GB is plenty for 1080p gaming (and higher if you count up-scaling) if they use it properly. I'd prefer more, but it's not unreasonable.
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Triple core isn't an issue IMO so long as it has better performance than Phenom II per core. The CPU, when optimized for, is easily one of the least major bottle-necks if the optimization is done well. We all probably know that consoles can use hardware more efficiently than most other computers, but this is especially true for CPUs considering that CPUs have a lot of resources that are wasted by the operating system, bad ports from the old consoles, and much more, yet even Phenom II CPUs can get great performance in any game if you do some overclocking.
Something that most people either forget about or don't know about is also AMD's CPU/NB frequency (controls the frequency of the L3 cache which defaults at a mere 2.2GHz) that can be used for substantial gains even past overclocking the CPU frequency (enough to fight overclocked Nehalem/Westmere in per core performance, maybe more, but not overclocked Sandy Bridge and overclocked Ivy Bridge).
However, if this is just an older micro-architecture on 45nm, I don't have my hopes up. I hope that these specs are wrong.
Although the Wii U's controllers seem odd, they are interesting IMO and it would kinda suck if the console is held back by older hardware. I'm sure that simply using a