Wii U CPU Clock Frequencies Below the Xbox 360 and PS3
Nintendo promised significantly greater processing capability in the recently released Wii U than in the preceding Wii console.
However, as far as chip architecture and clock speeds are concerned, the specs seem to be a bit underwhelming.
Hacker Marcan claims to have identified the clock speed and some characteristics of the CPU. Apparently, Nintendo uses a variant of the IBM PowerPC 750 processor with three cores and a clock speed of 1.243125 GHz per core. The Wii had a PowerPC 750CL processor running at 729 MHz. The Wii U's graphics clock is 549.999755 MHz. The Wii's Hollywood GPU was clocked at 243 MHz.
We know that clock speed isn't everything in performance, and the specs somewhat correspond to developer claims -- though some of which are apparently already hitting their limits. Still, the clock speeds are substantially below the rival processors, as the PS3′s Cell CPU and the Xbox 360′s Xenon chip are clocked at over 3 GHz per core. The graphics chip in the Xbox 360 runs at 500 MHz, while the PS3's GPU is clocked at 550 MHz.
However, the Wii U's CPU and GPU appear to have written compromise all over them and support the speculation that Nintendo simply needed to counter Microsoft's Kinect quickly and did not have enough time to engineer an entirely new hardware foundation. According to VentureBeat, one of the major compromises in the Wii U is that the console does not support two tablets running at the same time and when it does, it will have to scale back the frame rate of the game that is played.

Exactly. One big reason the Wii did so well was because of the games and general "fun-factor". The Wii-motes were, and are, a long ways ahead of the kinect and PS3's wand.
I don't think the Wii U will be anywhere near as popular as the Wii was though.
Clock speed isn't important and can't be compared apples to apples...worthless article. How about showing a benchmark or something rather than write a meaningless article?
Exactly. One big reason the Wii did so well was because of the games and general "fun-factor". The Wii-motes were, and are, a long ways ahead of the kinect and PS3's wand.
I don't think the Wii U will be anywhere near as popular as the Wii was though.
Exactly. That's what makes them fanboys - they aren't actually looking at what they are buying. Let's pay $300+ for a console that performs worse then the current ones. Did you see the BLOPSII frames? Could barely keep pace with the PS3 and was hammered by the 360. Again, Nintendo have been shown to have released nothing more then a gimmick.
to say clockspeed isnt important is a dumb claim. and to say that mention of the clock speed of a new console isnt important or news worthy in a tech news site is also dumb. if clock speed isnt important, than all the people here on Toms that OC their CPUs are just wasting their time. its true that you really cant compare WiiU cpu to others because theyre totally different, but devs already have claimed the CPU isnt fast enough. 1.2ghz isnt really all that great tbh.
and what exactly do you think they can "benchmark"? this is a closed system with no publicly known benchmark tools and app comparisons.
I have some hope that devs will find a workaround to the CPU limits and optimize the console as much as they can to lat a few years and not look as pathetic as wii looked shortly after release. current console games dont look half bad, I think the graphics power of the wiiu wont limit the playability of games like the wii did.
I dont think even trinity looks better than the wiiu graphics. the hd4000 wont have nearly as much juice to look half as good as a game would on a WiiU, much less a very optimized WiiU game in the next few years.
The 5 year old 32 way Mainframe at my work is faster than 20 of your 4 year old PCs. Hello apples meet oranges. You realize its not a PC, its 1/2 the price of a PC, and its a small cheap gaming console? Got any grapes?
apples and oranges.
The WiiU's GPU is part of an ecosystem built to optomize performance for any titles that will play on it. HD4000 is meant as an iGPU to provide adequate performance for most applications and needs the flexibility to run Windows XP->8, OSX, as well as Android.
HD4000 is mostly geared for 2D workloads, and only entry level 3D workloads. WiiU is aimed at minimal 2D workloads and moderate 3D workloads.
HD4000 shares system memory and resources with the rest of the computer, while the WiiU GPU is a dedicated GPU with its own memory, bus bandwidth, and resources.
Simply put: The WiiU would smoke the HD4000, as well as most other iGPUs like AMD's APU designs, because it is in a different league entirely, and built for a different use case than iGPUs are. that does not mean it is 'good' or 'bad' compared to other systems, it is simply adequate for what the designers at Nintendo need to have games look and act the way they are supposed to. Compare it to a $50 dedicated GPU and then you are talking about something closer to an apples-apples comparison.
I agree with JamesSneed... It's not a computer. It's a $300 console.
1st - Clock speed isn't as important as it once was. Today many other factors play a role that determine how fast a CPU is.
2nd - The chip in the Wii U is roughly equal to a 4870 or a 4890 video card
BTW
Passmark scores:
HD 4870 - 1,411
GTX 260 - 1,108
Now lets do like JamesSneed said and stop trying to compare apples to oranges and grapes cause they are just not the same thing at all.
How could you possibly be sure of that and even if you were, how could that possibly matter at all?
Unless it is better than a 4870 or 4890, the WiiU isn't likely to be able to beat AMD's upcoming Kaveri APU (supposed to have a rough equivalent of a Radeon 7750 for its IGP). Furthermore, it wouldn't smoke AMD's APUs for the same reasons for why it may smoke Intel's CPUs in IGP performance. AMD's APUs have gaming GPUs. Low end, yes, but gaming nonetheless.
Clock speed in no way is an indicator of performance and that is what he/she was trying to say. 1.2GHz isn't necessarily low whatsoever. For example, if it was an extremely complicated CPU, then maybe at 1.2GHz, it'd be as fast as say Sandy Bridge per core at 4GHz. Sure, it's undoubtedly not the case for the WiiU, but it provides perspective on why clock speed doesn't matter if you don't have the full specifications of the system.