Wii U Reported to Have 50% More Processing Power than PS3

[Tharic-Nar]

When Nintendo showed off its Wii U last week at E3, its focus seemed to be a lot more obvious on the controller than on the games, and for that reason, few next-gen titles were even unveiled. From what we did see, it was difficult to surmise just how much better the Wii U's capabilities were over the original Wii, and at the same time, many speculated that it couldn't even match the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360.

You can read the rest of our post and discuss here.

 

[marfig]

It's quite possible that consoles will eventually match PCs processing performance levels. I seem to think that it's only their long product cycles that don't allow this to be more visible. But a console today is a home user (non gaming) PC 10 years ago. And I'm not so sure as to if this gap is indeed widening.

If anything, I notice that home users have increasingly less reasons to upgrade their machines. This is mostly due to the fact that most software just can't take advantage anymore of the extra processing power we are being offered today. Long gone are the days when a processor upgrade resulted in a clearly visible productivity increase. It's really just the geeks and gamers in our midst that don't think of their computers as a tool for the next 4 or 5 years. And whether we want to see it or not, we are the minority. A high-value minority no doubt, due to our consuming habits. But a minority nonetheless.

If indeed this is becoming more prevalent and the life of a home user computer is being extended, it shouldn't be long until a console processing capability matches the computers at our homes. It won't probably ever match what top PCs can achieve (there the gap can indeed even increase), but will match what most users will be using at their homes.

It doesn't shock me if that eventually happens. The purposes of both types of machines and the way they are controlled are so vastly different that this won't even lead to the so-called end of PC gaming. Besides, where there is a processor, there will be always someone wanting to have it run a game. And the faster the processor, the more powerful the game.

 

[DarkStarr]

Bahhhh I say enable users to upgrade them!! XD I would be willing to pay like $50 for another 256mb of ram in the 360

 

[Tharic-Nar]

When you start introducing upgrades into consoles, then it adds another variance to the hardware that developers need to take into account - if they decide to support it at all. It kind of defeats the point of consoles as a platform, e.g. it doesn't change, thus predictable. This is how they can squeeze high performance games out of seemingly simple hardware, developers don't need to worry about a wide variety of hardware and optimizations.

There has always been this leapfrogging of consoles over PCs when they first come out. This is limited to the mainstream and budget sectors only really, as no console could ever compete with a high end PC in any generation, but thats because you're comparing a $400 launch console to a $2500 PC...

Mainstream PCs have never really been geared towards games though - sure, they have a GPU, but it's only good for 720p for 1-2 years. The CPU though will last a fair while.

Old PCs, Pentium 4 era etc, really do show their age now. For word processing and email, they'll last indefinitely... web browsing though, thats another matter entirely. Browse the Internet with an old 2GHz P4 and you'll quickly realise that it isn't as quick as it should be, all that javascript and memory hogging behavior can give it a bit of a workout. When you throw Flash into the equation then you will really notice the performance hit (or more precisely, the inefficiencies of Flash). Browsing the modern Web with something like a Pentium 3 and you have to turn flash off, and even then, if you running on 256MB RAM... heh, that's painful.

 

[Kougar]

Bahhhh I say enable users to upgrade them!! XD I would be willing to pay like $50 for another 256mb of ram in the 360

Yeah, I have to agree with Tharic-nar on that one. Just changing the DVD drive on the 360 caused Microsoft major problems, every year there are new problems with the DVD drives because they've been changed multiple times. I'm not just referring to the defective drives and the noisy drive issues, although those were partly behind why the drive was changed so much.

You'd think a DVD reader couldn't matter, but they've had just about every possible problem one could have with it which has resulted in console returns, customer complaints, damaged discs, and issues with specific games not working because of how the disc data is distributed. The most recent issue was a firmware update that changed how much data could be crammed onto the disc, and quite a few DVD drives weren't compatible with it and couldn't read the edges of the disc. Meaning the games wouldn't play and MS had to replace the consoles. I truly wonder JUST how many 360's have been replaced versus genuinely sold...

But after seeing how "fast" Portal 2 loaded on a friend's 360 even with the game loaded to the 20GB hard drive, I can certainly understand the need for upgrades. I now understand why people hack those things to install a modern HDD or even a SSD for the speed boosts. The console was loading so slowly even the loading animations would pause, lag, or even outright freeze between level loads.