Nintendo Wii U powered by custom designed Radeon HD GPU

[caveman-jim]

Technical details are few and far between, but this could be the chip rumored to be based on RV770 that Nintendo wanted hurried through for Christmas 2011. AMD Graphics Marketing Director, Casey Gotcher, posts on the [email protected] blog:

On June 7th at E3, Nintendo announced their upcoming successor to the ultra-popular Wii, the Wii U, will be powered by a custom-designed GPU from AMD. The AMD Radeon™ technology in the new console will help deliver amazing gaming and entertainment experiences, and offer support for multiple screens.

As David Wang, corporate vice president of silicon engineering, AMD explained, “AMD shares Nintendo’s excitement for the new HD entertainment experience planned for the Wii U game console, we’re proud to provide the custom AMD Radeon™ graphics processor as the HD multimedia graphics engine designed to support the new entertainment features of the Wii U game console.”

Read the full blog on [email protected] blog.

Blooog. BlloooOOg. It's big its heavy its wood!

[Dave]

just need to figure out if its rv770xt (4870 with 800spu) or rv770ce (4730 with 640spu)

the fact that nintendo is holding on so tightly to this new consoles specs worries me a bit.

(oh and grats on 40,000 posts)

[DaNdo]

So much for DirectX11 being pushed by new gen of consoles...

[Hyrax]

Originally Posted by Dave

just need to figure out if its rv770xt (4870 with 800spu) or rv770ce (4730 with 640spu)

the fact that nintendo is holding on so tightly to this new consoles specs worries me a bit.

(oh and grats on 40,000 posts)

Don't they usually tight lipped?

[Targon]

Originally Posted by DaNdo

So much for DirectX11 being pushed by new gen of consoles...

DirectX 11 would be for the XBox, and considering how low-end the graphics are in the Wii, this is a huge step forward. We can't know at this point just what is going in, since all of this is a rumor.

[Daemos]

Originally Posted by Targon

DirectX 11 would be for the XBox, and considering how low-end the graphics are in the Wii, this is a huge step forward. We can't know at this point just what is going in, since all of this is a rumor.

That and Nintendo/Sony do not use Direct X...they have their own graphical APIs.

[Akumajo]

Originally Posted by DaNdo

So much for DirectX11 being pushed by new gen of consoles...

Direct X is a registered trademark and intellectual proprietary (and patented) marketing API owned by Microsoft.

AT erm AMD and Nvidia make GPUs for the computer market and Windows Operating System that comply with the Microsoft requirements.

Nintendo has to contract a company to make the graphics chipset, and that contract costs money. Money that Nintendo is nowhere near in a bidding war with Sony or much less Microsoft.

There is also the disturbing fact that current high end, top of the line GPUs fabbed on a 40nm engineering process are just too hot and too power hungry to fit inside a small gaming box meant to be enjoyed by the whole family and mostly little kids and teens who take tech for granted and beat the crap out of these devices.

But when Microsoft's next console is release we will find out if its DirectX 11 or 12 thats going to define the next 10 plus years like DirectX 9 has, again thanks to Microsoft.

[caveman-jim]

Originally Posted by Akumajo

There is also the disturbing fact that current high end, top of the line GPUs fabbed on a 40nm engineering process are just too hot and too power hungry to fit inside a small gaming box meant to be enjoyed by the whole family and mostly little kids and teens who take tech for granted and beat the crap out of these devices.

Indeed. But let's not forget that Caicos, the chip powering the AMD Radeon HD 6500 and 600 series of discrete cards, is 10x more powerful than Xenos and sits in the sub 70W TDP range. Much lower than that in mobility. And the Fusion APU using the Redwood core (previous gen) uses less power for the whole x86 chip including mainstream graphics.

APU's are in huge demand, and after talking with people at AFDS I'll be very surprised if APU's in some form don't make it into gaming machines. Heck, the original Xbox chip and gpu is now nearly an APU, in the XBOX Slim's.

[L4dd]

Originally Posted by Targon

DirectX 11 would be for the XBox, and considering how low-end the graphics are in the Wii, this is a huge step forward. We can't know at this point just what is going in, since all of this is a rumor.

I concur. Whether this has 640 Streams or 800, this will be so much stronger than what is currently used for any console!