[QUOTE="painguy1"]
[QUOTE="maxgil2"]
@ mouthforbathory/painguy1
Any games on Wii so far that you've seen that pushes the Wii hard or hitting it to MAX?...was SMG/MH3 close? (might be a dumb question)
mouthforbathory
haha no its not a dumb question. im also a bit unsure, but lets create a perfect scenario in which Nintendo is the developer and they plan on using everybit of the wiis hardware. Take a look at galaxy's framerate. its 60fps. Take that scenario and lets say we increase the graphical intensity by 20% maybe even 25%(highly unlikely to be perfect 25%, but this is me being hopeful :P). Thats basically the max, but this of course is a perfect case scenario that i honestly dont believe will happen througout the wii's lifetime. Its very hard and costly, and i dont believe that anyone besides Nintendo is willing to spend that kind of time and effort. Thats even a steep expectation for Nintendo IMO. At this point we are trying to squeeze the Wii dry of whatever power is left in the box. The fact that Nintendo is sayng they want to compete with MH3 is an obvious sign. But like i siad before, I have no doubt in my mind they can easly achieve this goal, but after that i think we wont be able to get much more out of the wii. The most i think we will see is 10% maybe 15%. It may sound like a low number, but 15% can make a big difference.
You can't just speak in percentages, GPUs and CPUs are not really like that, especially the GPU as it's constructed of multiple "pipes" as well as the TEV. It's all about making your code more efficient, and/or using tricks to make things appear as "better", and in the graphics space, LOD management is one of the best ways to do that, though a keen eye easily notices.As for what you said about the system earlier, nothing has been confirmed about the CPU or GPU being real architectural improvements from the GC, just die shrinks and for the CPU some added SIMD functionality and instructions. It's still a PPC750 family processor. Starlett is just an ARM9 core (confirmed through Homebrewers) that purely manages I/O and software security. There is no known FPU anywhere in the system, and nothing so far has shown it to be possible. The heavily physics based games like Elebits and Boom Blox are purely running on the CPU. It's not that powerful, but it's certainly capable of handling it since there is nothing else to manage like AI and basic game orchestration is simple in those settings.The TEV isn't as flexible as the programmable architecture in the Xbox's GPU (which is Geforce 3 related), but in conjunction with the CPU it can do effects like normal mapping, though it readily does EMBM and other various types of basic bumpmapping extremely efficiently. The Wii's real improvments like lie in the memory bandwidth and amount of RAM in general. Because of that, the Wii isn't just 50% more powerful, it should be able to realistically achieve 2x the results the GC could thanks to the increased efficiency. The CPU and GPU are the real bottlenecks now. Super Mario Galaxy, the Conduit, MP3 and some other titles support this notion.
As for pure theoreticals, 140 million triangles is way out of the Wii's league. It's maybe 70 million at best. Real games at highest would probably be running a quarter of that number once purely textured and lit. The Xbox was running at best 20 million, though the record in game last gen is held by a Gamecube title: Rogue Squadron III, which IIRC is pushing 20 million/second. I've read some discussion on the title, and it's purely amazing how Factor 5 managed to do it especially while still running self shadowed vehicles as well as bumpmapping on the vehicles and many other surfaces. Water ran a shader when present too, though I've noticed some of the levels make the system slow down.
As for the Wii, here are my graphical highlights:
Super Mario Galaxy - Best use of the system's strengths. EMBM spammed everywhere. Some fur shading. Very good geometry throughput and lighting, as well as rock solid 60 fps.
Metroid Prime 3 - Extremely high polygon throughput, HDR and bloom lighting (IMO a waste) at rock solid 60 fps.
The Conduit - Employment of largest amount of varying graphics techniques, including normal mapping, EMBM, dynamic shadows, bloom lighting (though wastefully over-used). My favorite thing though was the dynamic water simulation. Absolutely fantastic though only present in "lull" areas of the game where there is nothing else to orchestrate. Expect to see all these techniques again in Gladiator AD turned Tournament of Champions.
Overlord Wii - Large scale shadowing system that included self shadowing. Unfortunately it's very low resolution, but a good effort on the part of the developers. The Wii just can't handle too much shadowing. It's very expensive.
There are other games to mention I'm sure, but I've actually played most of those.
If there is one thing about the Wii I could realistically improve, it would be the CPU. I would've employed a generation better CPU maybe Power 4. Backwards compatibility would've been preserved while gaining a much better CPU that was readily available. Only issue might have been heat, but the performance gains would've been massive. Areas where the GPU lacked could be made up for somewhat by the much faster Floating Point capabilities.
What do the Wii's 16 pipelines have to do with measuring preformances with percentages? Anyone can measure preformance with percentages. Infact PC tech reviewers do it all the time when ever a new piece of hardware is released. its simple math. Just take the previous hardware and compare. Its nothing complicated. You can easly do that with games aswell if you know the fps, the current hardware, and the effects present in the game etc. There are a number of ways to do this. Infact there are many debug units for the wii, u can even make ur own (majority of devs in the homebrew scene do it)
Yeah ive already mentioned that many times. I siad it is subjective to the game engine and how it is designed.
actually the wiis hardware is documented very well on a certain site. i cant say the name because i will get banned, but i bet u get the idea. Go read it if u know what im talking about. Starlet does do I/O fucntions, but also does some software aswell as hardware acceleration. Whoever told you that at a homebrew site is wrong. Also the GC had an FPU and the Wii doesnt. Open up ur Wii and u can see. once again this is all documented in detail on that site i mentioned.
yeah thats kinda obvious, but we werent talking about those features before hand. u just mentioned selfshadowing which can be handled on the GPU aswell. AI and physics are obviously handled on the CPU considering that the Wii has no OpenCL support, only OpenGL support. Its also like this on every other system with the exception of PC games with physx support or CUDA etc.
The TEV is capable of producing shaders similer to those used by GPU's with fixed-function, and programmable pipelines. The only difference is that the pixelshaders GPU's have more pipelines, but smaller limits in the data that can be used. While the Wii's TEV has less "16 stages to be exact", but has a very large data limit.
Once again i have to repeat myself. 140 RAW triangles, NOT TEXTURED. 70 million isnt overkill. 20million is too low. 100 million is the official number nintendo has given out with a textured game. Nintendo rarely comments on their hardware, but even im skeptical so i took into account the TEV poly usage, and estimate around 70 mil. 20 million is too low. You really are underestimating the capablities of the wii. I know its not the strongest little box this gen, but its is capable of much more than u seem to make out of it. The wii may have bottlenecks much like the xbox, but the issue the xbox had was much worse than with the wii. the poly's wont go that low (20mil) on high production games like Nintendos First Party titles.
Obviously any hardware improvement is better, and I much like you wouldnt mind the changes, but cost then becomes an issue and that is Nintendos main concern. If they did use a Power4 though many games would lost compatability. Some games may still work, but alot of issues would arise because its using a very different core. I suppose if they kept the FPU that was present in the GC then maybe it would have been better.
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