A rumour is currently circulating the internet which suggests that the recent Wii U system update has actually increased the console’s GPU and CPU speed. This latest rumour comes from a poster on a fairly unknown site called TV Tropes. He claims that the clock speeds have been increased, but sadly he hasn’t cited any sort of source or provided any evidence. You can read his assessment, below.
CPU: IBM PowerPC 7xx-based tri-core processor “Espresso” clocked at 1.24 GHz before the 3.0.0 update, 3.24 GHz after the 3.0.0 update. This is an evolution to the Broadway chip used in the Wii, is 64 bit and uses Power6 technote When IBM has said that Nintendo has licensed the Power7 tech from IBM, Nintendo is not using it for the Wii U, explaining its backwards compatibility.
GPU: AMD Radeon High Definition processor codenamed “Latte” with an eDRAM cache built onto the die clocked at 550 MHz before the 3.0.0 update, 800 MHz after the 3.0.0 update.
The gpgpu may be but not the CPU.
i’m too neutral to watch this cause defineing something sucks is a matter of oppinion. the me with windows and apple fanboys. they each say the other product sux, yet the product does exactly what it’s meant to do, works the way it should and looks the way it was intended by the designer.
so no matter how big you think something sucks. there is a chance i don’t and you sir/miss shuld have nothing but respect for my oppinion and the oppinion of others.
Saying something sucks implies an inherent lack of quality so therefore all completely invalid
Except when you talk about vacuum cleaners.
Dont you have dignity? To say something sucks and look like that. Hahahaha.
I got a worst console launch for you, 3DO, Jaguar, Sega Saturn, PlayStation 3.
yay a random fat guy telling me the wii u sucks
exactly what i’ve always waited for XD
you need to relax man , nintendo are saving all their triumhp games to the end of the year when the ps4 and 720 are released , and i think its a very smart thing they are doing.
why do u all assume its me in the video? and those who say that guy is fat would probably be broken like a twig by him in a fight
I didn’t state that was you. Thanks for assuming that I said that was you in the video.
Also, I’m the same size as him so I don’t think he’d break me but I do weight lift so I’d probably break him
Right after he’d fall over with a coronary, stroke, or just plain laziness. WIIU only sucks to fanboys of the competition. I have all consoles and Im very excited about my WIIU. My favorite system of all-time.
Look i believe this because originally the rumours were wiiu is using a 3.4ghz quad core cpu but is underclocked and only using Tri’core,so they obviously underclocked it alot,and the original rumour also stated 800mhz gpu but underclocked to 550mhz and to be fair this old rumour makes sense now,so for me on the cpu it just looks like they underclocked it massively not so much the gpu.
Guys an idiot. Pointless to listen to a stupid rant with no hard facts. It’s basically him stating his own opinion and trying to turn it into fact
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion
This is complete crap. You cannot overclock a 1.2ghz processor to 3ghz… If the rumor said like 1.6 or 1.8 I would believe it, but 3ghz??? Come on.
Also if Nintendo did this, it could break some retail games already released.
That depends entirely on whether it was underclocked to begin with (for safety factor). Unlikely, but it’s possible. This is for example how almost all CPUs used to be made. For example an AMD Athlon II 450 is the same chip as a 400, it’s just an underclocked version. I can’t say if that’s still the case today but it certainly used to be not long ago
It’s certainly possible that it was underclocked (with all the info we’ve got, it’s pretty obvious that it was), but not this much. 2GHz is a giant leap, completely impossible. At best, it can be clocked to 1.5 or 1.6GHz (putting it on a more fair playing ground with 720/PS4).
while that is correct the build quality of lower model numbers is often not as good
a 450 was tested to run at its specified frequencies and it will .. whereas a 400 might not, or at the very least may not have as much overclocking potential as the higher model number
Actually, if that was true than all my PC games wouldn’t work on my PC because I overclocked it.
You are right but some bugs apear more often and it crash a lot.
Not with me it doesn’t, probably because I have a Intel i5 and a GTX 660 Ti OverClocked
when you get glitches after overclocking then you went too far :)
problems that are inherent to every cpu, such as leakage currents, become more relevant to system stability the higher you go with the frequencies… increasing the voltage can counteract that but only to a certain extent.. when you get glitches and no amount of overvoltaging removes them then you should take it down a notch
I prefer avoiding oveclocking has a whole because even if raised by little the games are so diverse that they begave diffrent.
i’ve been overclocking my cpu by 15-20% for years without ever running into any trouble
PC games usually have no issues with varying frequencies (you have a span of several Ghz with modern CPUs).. unless you play old games in dosbox^^
Some software is designed specifically around the speed of the processor, your windows PC isn’t because its designed around the basic i686 .
But take that a system like Gentoo Linux where the entire OS was compiled with your exact processor in mind, and you will break the software (I know because I tried to overclock my computer to get more performance out of the already blazing speed of Gentoo Linux, and it pretty much broke everything)
So its not a stretch for a developer to aim the software directly at the exact specifications of the console… sure a dev can patch it, but what about titles like Epic Mickey 2, Darksider II, or NFS:MW … those devs aren’t going to patch anything on the Wii U.
they don’t have to, the wii U should be capable of underclocking the CPU where necessary.. the devs could even specify the necessary clock speed the wii U needs to run at in the gamecode
That’s true, or it couldn’t have hardware backwards compatibility built into it for Wii games (and thus, would’ve had to rely on emulation to do it).
it depends on the build quality of the CPU and the generated heat (and on whether the heatsinks are capable of taking the heat)
you can indeed overclock a CPU by 2 Ghz if it supports that.. just as you can underclock it by 2Ghz :)
if the wii Us cpu was underclocked (i.e. running below possible specifications) to begin with then this would be possible, however 3Ghz still seems unlikely and i wouldn’t take this with a grain but rather a pot of salt
They did talk a lot about how they made the Wii U as efficient as and paid a lot of attention to the heat sink in particular. Maybe they really have over clocked it to a decent speed.
Also, TV Tropes is fantastic, people really should have a look around it.
As efficient as possible*
NO!
NO NO NO!
Don’t encourage people to visit that site!
IT SUCKS THE LIFE OUT OF YOU!
You won’t be able to escape it for HOURS!XD
I’m gonna take this with the same amount of salt that Norway has set aside for gritting roads.
But the Wii U isn’t running under specifications. Its actually running at above spec.
Its based on the PowerPC 750, which was never designed to go above 1ghz. IBM never pushed them above that anyways. And Nintendo has it running at 1.2ghz.
The only thing I will say about the possibility, is how cool the Wii U runs even under full load of games that makes the PS360 crawl (NFS:MW U being one), that may give Nintendo some headroom to increase clock speeds… but that will also require higher voltage, and as some electrical engineers already did a meter reading and confirmed the console is still running at 29w-32w… nothing has changed, so the processor isn’t overclocked in the latest patch.
This desperation is making all Nintendo fans look bad.
“Its based on the PowerPC 750, which was never designed to go above 1ghz. IBM never pushed them above that anyways. And Nintendo has it running at 1.2ghz.”
IBM hasn’t released any own PPC 7xx designs in several years.. the specs of the PPC architecture you quote here are 7 years old
they only create custom designs nowadays and those can be custom molded to the requirements the buyer dictates
“and as some electrical engineers already did a meter reading and confirmed the console is still running at 29w-32w… nothing has changed, so the processor isn’t overclocked in the latest patch.”
firstly: do you have a source for that?
and secondly: IF the frequencies were indeed altered then it still seems very unlikely that the wii U would run at anything other than the original frequencies when playing already released games since that could likely cause them to cease functioning
and in menu mode the CPU prolly never ran at 100% anyway so even if the claims are correct it may be impossible to measure without a detailed readout of the CPU
No sorry m8 the wiiu cpu was a quad core at 3.4ghz but was said to be using only a Tri core version of the same cpu and underclocked google it ?
I have a real problem with this. The Wii U CPU does indeed use design cues of Power7. The backward compatibility would be a simple matter for IBM to implement PowerISA 1.03 code compatibility on one core. Indeed there is one core that has more logic as well as more cache than the other two, and PPC7XX did not support SMP, was never produced below 90nm, and was never clocked, in any permutation, above 1GHz, for stability reasons.
IBM has also confirmed in the past that not only did Nintendo license Power7 tech, they released information confirming that the WiiU CPU was based in part on Power7 tech.
actually IBM has confirmed that those comments were incorrect or at least misleading
they did however claim that the CPU is based on power architecture
that is still correct since both POWER7 and powerPC are part of the power architecture family
as far as is known now the CPU is indeed based on a custom powerPC design
whether it’s actually PPC 750CL or something else is not known
No IBM said the wiiu cpu wasnt power7 but also said it shares some tech from power7 ie from Watson and i think that will be 3mb of cpu cache on the cores ??? as this makes your cpu very powerful indeed.
Also Power6, which this person claims is in use in the WIiU CPU, did not support OOE, and was heavily clock reliant. Not something that would have made a CPU clocked at 1.25GHz “punch way above its weight”
It really makes no difference either way as it’s measuring a speed which isn’t defined. We have no real comparison or measurement. It could be 200mhz or 4ghz, it really doesn’t make much difference till everyone actually sees how it performs in comparison to the new consoles. Even then it’s not that big of an issue as it’s about the games it runs not how fast it runs.
Now you’re playing with power.
…ULTRA power!
Hyper power!
Ponys power!
9000 power!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
NINTERUDO FORSU!
C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER!
LE MEME FACE LOLOLOL LE MAYMAYS OVER 9000 XDXDXDXD!!!!!!1!!11
Would it be possible? That means that the Wii U GPU is clocked at a higher rate than the PS4
CPU I mean*
keep in mind that frequency alone doesn’t tell you much about the CPUs actual performance.. you can set an i7s clock to below a smartphone CPUs but the i7 would still outperform it by a large margin
Yeah, but there some that suggested that even at 1.25 GHz the Wii U CPU would run more efficiently than the PS4 CPU despite it being more powerful. Similar to how the GameCube CPU was more efficient than the XBOX CPU even though the XBOX CPU had more RAW horsepower. In the end it basically means that Nintendo can push out graphics on the Wii U nearly equal or equal to what the PS4 can do for a lot less money and tax on the hardware. There is virtually no latency between the CPU and GPU because everything is so close. It is a very elegant and efficient design.
Think of it like this. Comparing a big strong brute of a guy throwing a punch with no real training, to a smaller guy that has trained in martial arts for 40 years. The big guy is way stronger, but the smaller guy knows how to throw that punch most effectively. Nintendo is that smaller guy.
the design of the PS4 seems to be very sophisticated aswell and considering it’s using the new jaguar architecture, not just in a 4 core but even an eight core design, it would be reasonable to assume that the CPU is indeed more powerful
i don’t see any deficiencies there
The deficiency is the price and power consumption. There was nothing ‘wrong’ with the Pentium III used in the XBOX, but is cost a whole lot more and ran much hotter than the PowerPC750 “Gekko” processor in the GameCube.
Not that the PS4 design is totally linear, it is mostly linear to give 3rd parties the least hassle possible. Also why they choose the x86 architechture. The Wii U design is almost completely customized similar to how the Cell processor was on the PS3. I haven’t heard any developers do too much complaining but there has been some.
very sophisticated? these APU’s aren’t anything too special other then the fact that they are actually APU’s (cpu + gpu on same die). They are very low range. Tablet processors.
They are low end, but these are not the same APU’s you will buy at years end.Sony wants to offload some Cpu tasks to the CU ”Compute Units”Consoles are a bit different then a Pc,they may use the same hardware but certain customization need to be made, to get the most out of fixed hardware.A highend Pc will trash Ps4/Xbone,but Ps4 will be hitting above it’s weight.
Well the Jaguar CPU has 8 threads,which is more then what the WiiU cpu can do.Also both Ms and Sony have their own custom version’s.Ps4 has hardly any bottlenecks,Nintendo has to deal with memory bandwidth,Ram size,and having a much lower gpu.The cpu is a upgraded Wii cpu.The APU design is more efficient then the gpu/cpu setup WiiU has.Nintendo could went with more ram and a better Gpu for not much more.Yet again this gen they will be left behind.Nintendo games don’t need great hardware..but 3rd party games do.If you can’t port Ps4/Xbone games to WiiU that is a huge issue.
Spec whore much?
Spec whore?just correcting the Nintendo fanboys that think WiiU can keep up with Ps4/Xbone.Nintendo hates 3rd party developers which is why the support is lackluster to say the least.Sony asked these 3rd party much in the same respect MS did with the first Xbox.I don’t think the WiiU sucks i think Nintendo could had made it better DDR3 ram is cheap.Nintendo made money with Wii and 3DS so the RnD was their.I understand Nintendo doesn’t go for specs but in this case it would had helped.If Nintendo held back Gpu/Cpu speed that only makes things even more baffling.WiiU has better hardware then the current consoles,but the Cpu speed is a bottleneck.
It is possible to have re-configurable components in a console.
But i don’t know if they can be used to change clock speed or not…
It might be. I remember a software update for certain Adroid phones that increased clock speed from something like 1.0 to 1.5 GHz, so it certainly can be done.
you can easily overclock android smartphones anyway (if they’re rooted).. i’ve done that with mine :)
Of course they can, they have all the info about the chips. The real issue would be the cooling for the system. It is a small system and there is not a large fan or any extreme forms of cooling within the machine. However, at the speeds that it was released at it didn’t heat up at all, so that might mean that they had some room to play as the fan wasn’t even really being used. Plus it’s a fairly small chip so that also allows more wattage with less heat in turn a higher clock speed. Or the more likely scenario is that they tweaked a few things with both the chip as well as the OS to make it run more efficiently. Either way, there certainly is a huge improvement to how it’s running.
It’s all about TDP i am not sure the CPU could handle 2ghz that much too of a boost ,250mhz on the gpu is insain as well.
pretty much all CPU’s and GPU’s can be overclocked, so its not like the hardware CANT do it, but the question why would Nintendo take the risk of breaking some retail games for a bump in speed…
The Wii U is fast enough for what it was designed to do: 720p games.
Or maybe his speed was not 1.26 but something like 2.2 to beging whit because the 1.26 speed is still not confirmed.
It was not designed to do ”720p games”, Wii U is 1080p capable and I’m pretty sure that in some near future almost any game in the console will run in that format.
Even if it can run 1080p, you would have to sacrifice a lot of other stuff such as framerate or how much the game displays on-screen than when displaying the game in 720p.
The Wii U doesn’t have to sacrifice anything. Resolution is left up to the developer. Frame rate issues are do to optimization or LACK there-of. If a game is not optimized you are going to see problems such a frame-rate issue.
That is why on major 1st party titles for any console you very rarely EVER see frame-rate issue while on general cut-and-paste job multiplats are loaded with frame-rate problems.
Thank you. Some people see things as being way too concrete. The fact of the matter is, the frame buffer to a 1080p game needs to be about 6MB. The Wii U has 32MB of on-die EDRAM and 2GB of external DDR3 ram, so it could definitely do 1080p.
Hell assuming that Nintendo could have enabled 720p support on the Wii via firmware, the Wii could have even done 720p provided that the developer held the frame-buffer on the 1T-SRAM. Hell the PS2 could even run Valkyrie Profile 2 at 1080i and that was a great looking game on a console that was significantly weaker than the Gamecube.
So yea, in short, those sorts of things are up to the developers.
The Wii U is very capable machine, despite what so many seem to believe.
@Elem187..Wrong…the Wii U can do 1080P and 60FPS!
The Wii U can do native 1080p @ 60fps.
the wii U could still underclock its CPU for said games, just like it underclocks the CPU (and switches off 2 of its cores) for wii mode
if this really is true (which i still doubt) there should be no issues with existing games
The speed wouldn’t change much for the resolution of games to be played, that’s really more of a memory issue. Although, if they figured out a better way to use that eDRAM then that could have made the difference.
The PS3 CPU is clocked way higher than the PS4 one. But no, this is not possible (not this much).
No not possible.
Although the GPU in the Wii U could be bumped up reliably… its at 500mhz currently. I have always had luck overclocking my Radeon cards 10-20%
agreed. Although if it was harshly underclocked then it might be possible, but at 500mhz I doubt that is the case.
I guess its possible…
Reconfigurable components are quite common these days!
… but it does seem a little unbelievable
It wouldn’t be that hard to overclock it I imagine so it’s certainly possible.
it’s possible they were increased. But I highly doubt the CPU could be increased that much. Unless it was significantly underclocked to begin with.
+1
I dont think so, wii U have a passive cooler and what about the ac adapter.
it doesn’t have a passive heatsink x_x
the AC adapter is able to deliver 75watts
the wii U mostly only needed 30-35 watts in games which kinda makes you wonder if the CPU and GPU really were underclocked to begin with and the ability to increase the clocks at a later date (possibly when the software was more stable and capable to support it) has actually been part of its design process
That make a lot of sense. That’s a hefty AC adapter… Wouldn’t imagine why so much extra power on it. Remember Nintendo said the 3DS is also severely underclocked? That could be the case with the WiiU as well.
well to be fair the wii also had a 50watts AC adapter which was over twice as much as necessary
This also makes it a very reliable system with an extremely low failure rate. The closer to the max capacity there more likely of a burn out or failure, or worse a catastrophic failure… think mother board melting or starting on fire.
that only holds true when you regard the AC adapter
if the system runs close to the AC adapter’s capacity that has absolutely no effect on the systems longevity.. only the adapter’s
Clock speeds increased… No source or evidence… There have been even more far fetched rumours with some kind of evidence and/or source…. That being said its possible… But seems out there
Might be possible.
Under no possible scenario was the CPU bumped from 1.24ghz to 3.24ghz.
Its not even the same multiple. Nintendo would have had to modify the front side bus frequency, which would destroy the stability of the system because the rated memory has to run at specific FSB speeds.
So no, it wasn’t overclocked by 3x
You don’t have a very good IMAGINATION *sparkle*
I find it hard to believe that the CPU got increased an extra 2 GHz but if this is true, then this is great news. If this is true then I wouldn’t know why Nintendo underclocked a console THAT much. The GPU seems legit but that CPU increase is a big jump…
could have been due to the rather unfinished software on the console.. the launch of the wii U does seem like it was very rushed and maybe system stability couldn’t be increased to handle the frequencies up to this point
gpu seems less legit then the cpu really. To bump a GPU at 500hmz by 60 percent when it is already at a very normal clock speed is insane. A normal GPU overclock generally pushes it between 5-15 percent, and even then you are often risking graphic corruption without proper cooling. A cpu if it was harshly underclocked is more likely to be pushed to extremes.
the reason why GPU overclocks often only go so far is because voltage isn’t raised by the user
if you want to REALLY overclock your GPU you’ll have to raise the voltage
i don’t recommend it though
for that you’ll also have to flash a modified BIOS on your card because the voltage is usually fixed
Certainly possible, but highly unlikely. What they most likely did to increase those loading times was a better management of available memory increasing the system’s multitasking capabilities.So unless they were planning to increase the clock speeds from the very beginning, it is very unlikely that they did so at this point. Higher clock speeds means higher consumption and higher temperatures, and if the Wii U hardware at this point was made to withhold a fixed temperature then it would not be a smart decision to increase clock speeds.
I agree. With such low power consumption there is probably room for it to be clocked a little higher but to 3.24Ghz!!! That just sounds totally unreasonable to me. I guess it would draw a lot more power so you would be able to measure the power draw before and after to see if there was any difference.
There is no way NIntendo would do it in the first place
Second of all the hardware will not hit 3ghz….. 1 the processor is way too small to even come close to that of a desktop PC/Laptop CPU.
Crap like this makes all Nintendo fanboys look like desperate monkeys.
Just live with the console Nintendo made. Its a low cost gaming console meant to run on a small electrical footprint. It does what it was designed to do, it doesn’t need to be overclocked.
ability to overclock has absolutely nothing to do with a CPUs size but with the available system power (wii U doesn’t run on batteries so that’s not much of a concern) the build quality of the CPU (and we’re talking about an IBM design here) and the available heatsinks (which, judging by the pictures of disassembled wii Us that are all over the web are overproportioned for the measly 30-35w of heat the wii U currently emits)
so the thought that the wii U was underclocked isn’t that far fetched
granted it’s very unlikely that the CPU was actually underclocked by that much, but it’s not completely impossible
My point is the processor is too small for the 40nm process to even achieve 2ghz without getting some massive watercooling system installed.
Not to mention the voltage would have to more than double….. and we already have people using a volt meter on the wii u because of this rumor and can confirm that it is still running at 29w-32w…. Nothing changed in the patch. it was wishful desperation of some Nintendo fanboy trying to reassure his purchase, while making the rest of Nintendo fans seem desperate.
The Wii U does what it was designed to do perfectly. A budget gaming console with a small electrical footprint… it was designed for gaming at 720p, which it does far better than the PS360 (most of their titles ran at subhd resolutions, the wii u is far more reliable at 720p)
just some food for thought: you don’t have to lower the core voltage when underclocking a cpu
nintendo might have left it where it was
concerning the power meter i already replied to why that may be the case in another comment
Dude, i7’s are smaller then the Wii U’s processor. They are 32nm as opposed to the Wii U’s which is 45nm. Smaller is better.
But yeah, I totally agree. There is nothing wrong with the console and it will likely hold it’s own against Sony’s and MS’s new consoles. Even if it doesn’t, it doesn’t really matter cause it’s about the games anyway. Same reason the 3DS and the Wii have been such successes.
only if the console actually uses the new frequencies in a current game.. which seems unlikely seeing as these games were written with the old frequencies in mind and might not take a jump in frequencies too well
If the rumor is true, then the devs of Metro Last Light should stop they’re complaining now.
Nintendo was waiting for the E3 to drop a big big bomb!!
Maybe is this the 30 % they don’t know about the gpgpu from the wii u
those wouldn’t have anything to do with frequencies tho :P
we still don’t know what they do
but they just *might* be specialized shaders which would mean that the GPU is actually quite a bit more powerful than we’ve come to suspect so far
nintendo will prolly never reveal what those are for however.. chances are we’ll hear about it from a tech savy developer somewhere down the road (maybe shin’en)
i say tech savy because most developers have absolutely no clue about the hardware they’re writing for.. unfortunately
they just see the consoles programming library and that’s as close as they’ll ever get to the hardware level
well, this has to be confirmed since this is NOT official
Neither 1.24 GHz is “official”
Power6 didn’t exist when Espresso was made. The increased GPU clockspeed might be true but everyone who knows atleast something about PowerPC processors will say that it’s impossible to clock it that high. Even the most recent PPC designs are clocked at around 1.6Ghz. 3Ghz would be brutal.
You guys are just kidding yourselves. For your own goods, just forget about this rumor.
Stop acting all high and mighty, no one here seems to be taking this as gospel.
yup just like the e3 2012 rumor that people got hype and took it as facts, I never was in the hype train.
I will say this. I LITTERALY NOTICED a performance boost in certain games after the update. AC3 , Batman AC being the most notable. And certain other things , Need for speed seems to be running smoother etc.
I posted comments on Miiverse the day after the update asking people if they had noticed the performance boost. The indoor sections of Batman seem to run at about 50-60FPS. and the outdoor seems to be a more stable 30 as opposed to dropping to 20FPS sometimes.
The tyranny of King washington DLC on AC3 Wiiu also ran incredibly well after the update and others noticed it too. That adds credability to this story.
RV770 chips can’t be clocked that hig without a strong cooler. The only card that was clocked in that came close was a 4870 at 750mhz and that thing was extremely loud and had a cooler that was a lot stronger that the Wii U’s little fan+physics combo.
Clocking a PPC design that high is impossible.
Old games would have issues with the new configuration.
The WIiu’s GPU and CPU are 100% customized they bare almost no resemblance to shelved products apart from the fact that they are ”based on them”.
I’m not saying these figures are true , but I thought my self some form of overclocking must of taken place because I saw a performance boost on certain games. Now maybe these updates will allow for more peformance for development from now again.
If they would have raised the frewuency of the processor and graphhics chip by that much then there would be noticably more heat and the system would also draw more power.
That’s why i fail to believe it’s 1.2GHZ to 3.2GHZ. Maybe something more like 1.2 – 1.7 and 550 to 700 or something like that… I don’t know.
All I’m saying is I noticed a little boost in certain , previously sluggish games.
If you believe it happened, then in your mind, it did.
That’s called a placebo effect.
That’s only the case if one is expecting the intended effect, though.
The recent update said nothing about this possible outcome and therefore he couldn’t have expected it.
What you say is true that explains a lot why the first 360 got burn prety easy. I opened a dead one i had and the heatsink were even smaller than the ones the wiiu have and smaller fans too.
That was also a larger chip. Bigger chip = more heat. But yeah. I agree.
It just needs to be confirmed by Nintendo first before everyone takes this overboard.
They aren’t going to confirm anything. Because it doesn’t really matter.
could you do me a favor and measure your wii Us power draw?
the first indicator that clock speeds have indeed increased in games would be a slightly higher power draw
so far it’s been sitting at 30-35watts for most games
chances are however that the improvements you noticed are owed to the software update alone and not an overclock
Actually, I did notice an increase in Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate frame rate after the Update.
Maybe Nintendo did overclock the system after all
I noticed an improvement in Batman AC, too. But I wondered if because I hadn’t played it in a while, I had forgotten that it isn’t that bad.
TOTALLY agree with you lol. while i don’t think it was quite that much of a boost, there was a boost. and it’s not impossible to increase clock speeds through a software updates. have you people ever heard of adjusting it through your bios or driver updates? it’s totally possible to increase clock speeds and performance without a significant increase in temperature.
Don’t forget, it’s quite normal for a driver update on a GPU to give large performance gains. Both AMD and Nvidia struggle with this quite regularly with new GPU’s. I have even seen them be as high as 40% across the board with games. In some cases a game will only run at minimal fps (20-30) on high end cards, then with the driver update they will jump up to where they are supposed to be (100-200) depending on the game of course, and if it’s not limited. This is all PC of course.
If this is true, this is incredibly smart way to hide specs from competitors until after competition has finalized their consoles and then bump up the specs with software unlock.
it can happen
Impossible. They couldn’tve improved the specs in a software update. WOOOOOOOOOOW!!!
unless it was underclocked to begin with, or the update is overclocking the hardware
people can improve specs from software. its called overclocking. but i highly doubt that it has increased that much
Probably not true. I have tested Sunspider Javascript benchmark before and after the upadte on the web navigator and no changed was detected.
I can’t say I’ve noticed any changes in games so far, just in menu loads, but those are significantly better. Doesn’t matter, loving the U with or without this power rumor.
Completely memorized by Trine 2 right now, grabbed it on the sale last month and can say it’s easily the best $10 ever spent.
yeah same.
Trine 2 is extremely boring. I was bored playing just the demo… just saying. 💋
The demo doesn’t do the game justice. Later levels will test your ingenuity and skill.
I just want more trine with harder puzzles that aren’t only physics based.
Mabye the wii u was always 3.24 GHz CPU and 800 mhz GPU ?
No reason to believe it wasn’t. We know it was underclocked. People cried and complained about the Wii U CPU being too weak and being outdated because it was 1.24 GHz per core. Now all of a sudden that it may run at 3.24 GHz per core at nominal settings that is too powerful to believe? C’mon.
Serious question here. If I posted some random statement on 4chan. 2chan, reddit, etc., would you guys take what I said and make a news article out of it? Rumor or not, I really don’t see how this can be taken seriously. The source is some guy on tvtropes who can’t even back up what he or she said.
We dont but the site will post it.
Remember though there is 30% unknown data in Wii U’s GPU. In fact if it is true about the big bump in speed, then the hardware is not 100% unveiled. In other words Wii U’s hardware is even a bigger mystery then I thought. Exactly how powerful is the Wii U?
I know this has nothing to do with this article but I just sent Nintendo an email about the Oculus Rift Goggles and here is the short of what they said:
“Thanks for writing. I can certainly understand wanting to see the Oculus Rift goggles for the Wii U console. It’s great to hear what you would like to see from us in the future, and I’m happy to document your comments and share them with other departments here at Nintendo.
At this time we have not announced any plans to allow the use of the Oculus Rift. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been an announcement or even a hint of an announcement-either from us or our licensee partners-so for now we have to assume that it doesn’t yet exist.”
I won’t mention the name but lets just say it sounds like they might actually take my idea of adding Oculus Rift support into account and maybe even in a future update have the ability to use the Oculus Rift on the Wii U =3
you guys call your self fans and don’t remember when SCOTT MOFFITT said “WE ARE WAINTING FOR OTHERS (Sony and Microsoft) TO ANOUNCE THEIR CONSOLES, AND WE GOING TO SHOW THE TRUE POWER OF WII U. After that anounce my friends only said: it is that Wii U is under clock and Nintendo is going to over clock close to the release of PS4
Indeed and Ubisoft says a couple mounth ago, that Nintendo is gonna change a lot in the summer. So this can be treu, Ubisoft says also that after the update Nintendo is gonna do good!
Since the update I can go further away with my gamepad. Before the update I couldn’t play my wii u on the toilet, but since the update I can do it easily without losing collection. The same for playing in bed.
People should learn A LITTLE ABOUT CPU/GPU before saying that this is impossible, it make you all look like stupid, this CAN be done, for once, it may have been underclocked, the other thing we dont know how exactly its the CPU build…
That guy has to be silenced…
More information cannot leak anymore untill High Command gives the order…
He’s likely a false prophet, spreading misinformation about the Wii U me thinks.
Sounds like a desperate attempt to increase the likability for the product.
How sad.
Coming from the person supporting Microsoft who is pretty much in desperation to get developers on board the Next Xbox yet they aren’t bitting.
How sad.
I am waiting patiently to see if this is true. I know the wii u specs is great right now. the shorter pipelines in the wii u is 4x faster than the ps4 pipelines. So if indeed the cpu is underclocked then we will have a massive battle on our hands and I see Nintendo tipping in favor of winning.
Get N or get OUT!!!!
Weeeird, but okay
I dont believe this. It would be cool if it were true though..
maybe it was only 1.24Ghz idle or in the menus. but on full load much higher.
Whatever the case may be, Im not exactly sure why sony fans are expecting their console to just murder the WIIU in terms of graphics, and go as far as saying its a WII-Ps3 difference. What Ive seen from ps4 looks nice, but not WII-Ps3 gap. Its sad these fanboys will only be happy about numbers… overhype it to feel good about spending the money, and singing victory when WII which was weak kicked their ass. Nintendo may m ake some mistakes as all do, but they are the kings of not staying down.
seriously. what i think is funny is how much people are hyping up the ps4. it’s almost the EXACT same situation as the vita vs 3ds. the 3ds came out, didn’t so well in sales, was called underpowerd and had a software doubt, and then sony announces the vita and everyone starts getting super excited about how powerful it is and that it’s going to crush the 3ds when it comes out. right when the vita is about to launch, nintendo releases a new mario and mario kart and announces a TON of awesome looking first party games, and now the overpriced vita is a joke. i am 100% sure that this will be the same situation this holiday season, and im pretty excited to play the games nintendo releases.
TvTropes isn’t failry unknown you jackass
Nintendo made their system. they know all the little secrets it holds so no point in making uneducated guesses.
Hmmmmm I am not really that excited about it , wouldn’t this make the wii u temperature high and cause a rrod or ylod like thing ??
No. A lack of a ‘proper’ cooling system in the 360 helped cause that. Once Microsoft was able to develop a better one for the slim, everything was fine.
Hmmmmmm well then this might actually be good if it was true , but I won’t get my hopes high until it is confirmed
Funny, I said it was possible that Nintendo would do this in System Updates the day after Wii U launched
When Wii U dev kits first started going out to 3rd parties in 2011 we heard constantly that the dev kits were UNDERCLOCKED. That’s why a lot of people at the beginning were saying that the Wii U was only “on-par” with the PS3 and 360 because they couldn’t figure out how to use any of the Wii U power reserves.
So it’s possible that the Wii U CPU was designed to run at 3.24 GHz in the first place. It would be a brilliant move by Nintendo if they did have a secret “Super Pursuit Mode” built into the Wii U CPU. I guess only time will tell. I doubt that Iwata which actually take the time to explain all the Wii U specs in detail, but I think that the games will tell the story. Nintendo has said in the past that even they don’t know how powerful the Wii U truly is.
Quite impossible: i could accept a 500Mhz increase, but 3Ghz-1,2Ghz=1,8Ghz clock increase!! Really too much even for the most lucky overclock.
True, but maybe it was underclocked before
this is just one update
we are getting other update in june so how fast do you think wii u will be in july?
“1.24 GHz before the 3.0.0 update, 3.24 GHz after the 3.0.0 update”
X____X
I think people are getting hung up over the “overclock” statement. Like I said before, the Wii U was UNDERCLOCKED before. I don’t know if 3.24 GHz is it’s native state but if it is then it would not be a problem at ALL going from 1.25 GHz to 3.24 GHz if you are going from ‘underclock’ status to ‘native’ status.
The Wii U is not being “overclocked.”
What is interesting and scary is the Wii U is the first in its generation to launch and professionals still don’t know what’s in the hardware. People know more about PS4/720 more than Wii U. There is also some secrets on the GamePad such as at the bottom is a female port. What does that port connect to? Just how powerful is the Wii U?
The fact that the Wii U GamePad looks oddly similar to the GameBoy Advance and the fact that the GamePad does have some fo it’s own memory tells me that eventually that port may be used for an attachment to make the GamePad a full portable device.
To answer your question, I don’t think anyone including Nintendo even know how powerful it is. If this rumor is true this system will be able to hang toe-to-toe with the PS4 and 720 throughout THEIR lifespans and not just it’s own lifespan as I previously thought.
I can actually agree. That is a bit scary. The U has always been an enigma even more so when Mr. Iwata stated that it’s a misunderstanding that the U is underpowered. I’m starting to think that the U was underclocked..
It was underclocked. Several developers and many sites reported that 2 years ago. That’s the thing people keep missing or purposefully ignoring. I guess when we see the games from Nintendo we’ll get our answers.
So the Wii U is very efficient. Here is an example. Cars these days are shrinking engines without scraficing performance. Instead of 300hp V8, auto makers have 3.0L V6 engines with an output of 300 horses. As a result, they have mpgs close to 30 on the highway. Smaller engines are also cheaper as well. Nintendo is trying to be efficient. Sony wants to still create BOdy on frame V8 cars getting 18mpg or less. This is the best example of the Wii u’s hardware. Both can get from 0 to 60 in under 5 seconds but Nintendo sips gas.
^^ This
Its entirely possible that it got a boost. I doubt that much. It mouth be IP to 2Ghz in total not 3Ghz though.
Might*
until Nintendo confirm this, there is nothing to say about it.
Iwata did come out and say that the notion of the Wii U being underpowered is a misunderstanding right around the time the update happened. I doubt they ever will confirm such a thing. They probably had to twist Iwata’s arm just to get him to say that much.
Someone like Digital Foundry or something will have to do their own diagnostic to see what the speeds actually are.
i hope they hurry up & find out the actual speeds etc
So it’s a Super Saiyan thing? You suppress your power until later? “Lift the Limit?”
It’s highly possible for such a phenomenon to happen, but until any significant changes occur as a result, I’d consider this as a “non-impacting” change.
There is much that can be done to improve games that have already been made other than allow faster frame-rates in some areas and increasing games speed. The only significant changes we will see are comparinf ground up Wii U 1st-party titles to everything else.
the team that hacked the wii already said on twitter that the rumors are completly false, keep in mind that they already have a wiiU hack so they really know the cpu speed.
o i forgot they saidn that the cpu is not 64bit either
And just like this rumor you don’t have evidence to back it up.
Exactly. It’s a bunch of guess work at the moment. Any and all synopsis are valid until proven otherwise. I think that anything is possible, but based on the fact that there is a preponderance of data that says the Wii U was underclocked and that most CPU clock speeds are far above 1.24 GHz that this rumor has a little better than a 50/50 chance of being true.
They posted the wii cpu speed so no reason to not belive in them. But they also provided a test to see that the claims where false, just measure the watts that a pre update wii use and then compare it to a updated wii, this way you can check that the comsumption is the same so no changes on clock speeds where made (direct correlation between consumption and clock speeds)
Who are they? Can we get a link?
Still isn’t much of evidence
punch out is better then halo and killzone.
I’ve only got over 20 games on my Wii U. Needs more games. Right. Also, they’ll get here. People who attack Nintendo can’t not humiliate themselves. Can’t wait for smash.
Okay they did not increase the Cpu that much. it makes no sense. The Wii U is base on a powerfull Gpu. Meaning that most of the heavy processes go through hell you can even run a whole game on the Gpu itself. the Cpu is there so you can really build next-gen games. I dont think this is true for the Cpu because it doesnt need it. Maybe the Gpu was overclock that means nothing still until they make a game that can use the wii u’s potential
Maybe that’s why pikmin 3 is released so lately ?
It’s a bit believable since after the update the longest it took my U to do anything was roughly 8 seconds compared to the original 16-25 seconds. The fastest it took to close the software once was literally one second. It varies between 1-3 seconds but no doubt it’s gotten faster. So this rumor is a bit believable since we’ve got physical results of the U’s updated speed. Now all we need is a link/proof to this data.
We also need to see some software to full graphics capacity.
Found this good vid about why Wii U is next gen — sometimes the obvious needs to be pointed out:
Not bad. Quick and to the point.
Increase of roughly 2 Ghz? Yeah, right.
Even if it did (which it did not; this is just a Nintendo fan trying to spread positive Wii U-spec rumours), Wii U’s graphics card is still inferior to Sony/MS’s offerings, as is the memory type/speed and the amount of memory as well (1GB DDR3 in Wii U compared to 8GB DDR5 in PS4, for example).
hey Fygar… Dig Dug here wants to blow your arse up.
second of all, you little tart… U just mad because of the firmware of the update made Wii U’s loading times faster and more reliable.
One problem with that.
Wii U has DDR4 RAM.
PS4 has GDDR5 RAM.
Next Xbox has (Rumoured) DDR3 RAM.
So by your “Argument” you are saying that the next Xbox will be indeed weaker than the Wii U.
No one knows wiiu Ram type and Criterion did say wiiu processor’s are too divergent to compare spec numbers divergent means basically their scalable.
Apparently the CPU has a built-in infrastructure for “overclocking”, which is where you increase the clockspeed of a CPU’s cores. Now, typically this results in a massive increase in heat and will surely fry your hardware unless you set up a high-powered cooling system. However, this guy said that judging by the PSU and airflow design of the system, Wii U could easily be clocked to 3.0 Ghz if not higher. Moreover, it is possible to do this at the software level, i.e. without specialized hardware.
Source: http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/631516-wii-u/65338991/733184893
This also explains why Mr Iwata said recently that the Wii U is NOT underpowered! – http://mynintendonews.com/2013/04/27/iwata-is-aware-that-people-believe-that-wii-u-is-underpowered-and-says-this-is-a-misunderstanding/
hi there yeah nintendo always dont tell compution there true specs
Awesome power!
Maybe Nintendo had their console underclocked the whole time. At E3 2011 they already gave devs the unclocked consoles. Maybe they didn’t change a thing until the update. http://wiiudaily.com/2011/06/wii-u-hardware-at-e3-was-underclocked/ With the update the console is now running at correct speeds. If this is the case it’s a smart sneaky move by Nintendo.