I' d be very surprised if the console didn' t use SM3. A console like the Wii is very much about efficiency and maximising output across the board from a range of seemingly modest performance increases on individual components.
Take for example
this page look down at the shader model 2/3 graphs - yes it looks prettier, but it is actually more efficient by up to 25% - and thats just a shader!! These improvements have gone on across the board with the wii.
Now imagine all of those performance increases across the board. Think of 2.0 engines in cars 25 years ago, they put out 100-110bhp on average if you were lucky, by the 1990' s (before emission regs kicked in) they were getting 150bhp from the same units! The difference is only 40bhp on paper, but the difference between a car with 110 and another with 150 is stark.
The CPU is double the clockspeed yes, but that is not the best way to illustrate the differences.
Lets say you have two people stood washing dishes in a race, each persons pair of arms can wash a set number per minute. BUT the new model washes twice as fast - and also has another two pairs of arms to help out with the preparation post washing tasks etc, so the whole process is not double it is the original speed plus perhaps up to a further 50% efficency in tasking, then this multiply this figure by clockspeed increase.
It' s widely acknowledged that the Wii is powered by a derrivative of the series R520 (or similar) certainly my mates in EA seem to think so still - but these chaps were not working on any wii titles and it was hearsay. I guess we wont know until the unit is out whether this is true or not. Where the " clockspeed may be 1.5x faster" again the layout of the LSi (including DSP etc) is far more efficient and these advances of the past 5 years in efficiency must not be discounted before the multiplication.
Also I think the Ati 520 link link holds most water as they bought out Artx who originally developed " Flipper" for GC and before that had deceloped the N64s gfx. Ati have all the skills in house (despite being acquired by AMD) to fulfill Nintendo' s objectives at the appropriiate pricepoint seeing as the card it is related to is now over a year old.
At first I saw this as simply a routine improvement in hardware within a budget, but now I have looked into it I think the Wii will put out some much better than expected gfx and certainly much better than it' s stats appear on paper.
expecting performance of 4x gamecube from 1,5xGPU, 2xRAM and comparably better CPU is stupid don' t you think?
This really isnt the best way to evaluate performance, it' s not core speeds but the overall improvements in architecture and efficiency over hte past 5 years since gamecube, then multiplied by the difference in clock speeds here that will make the Wii stand out.
Flipper was incredibly efficient to develop for, much more so than the GFX of other consoles of the time but, I wouldnt want to tie myself down to a specific multiplier " X" of performance.
The same would be hard to assess for that of the 360 and PS3. But, I will go on record saying it' s must be Nintendo' s most efficient console to date, and Majik has gone to great lengths to identify often overlooked areas in attack of the whole Wii=GC1.5x debate, (which as an argument I think is just ridiculous)
An awful lot has changed in 5 years. Say all the efficiency can get you 50% A processor can get you at least 200% increase, GFX another 175%, let alone the increased ram and ram speeds. Add it all together, its much more than 2x that' s for sure. Also not having the HD overheads of competitors gives them a significant step up over rivals for development costs and results over time.
It is after all the only console that will put gameplay over graphics every time, and it' s sure going to look the b******s too....
< Message edited by musashi -- 1 Aug 06 13:46:58 >