In order to better understand the constraints of the Wii's limited graphics horsepower, I decided to do a bit of studying and research, albiet somewhat in a weird way. First of all, let me get started by explaining the supposed rumored specs of the Wii's graphics processor.

Broadway GPU:
243 MHz clock speed
2 Texture EnVironmental (TEV) Units
8 Pixel Pipelines
8 Texture Units (1 on each pixel pipe)

We have no real data on the Wii's max polygon counts, but I'm fairly sure they are beyond 20 million in game using what is known about the Gamecube and it's rumored relations to the Wii's hardware.

However we can still predict the maximum texture and pixel fillrates. Let us calculate:

8 pixel pipes x 243 MHz = 1944 MPixels/Sec
8 texture units x 242 MHz = 1944 MPixels/Sec.

Ok, so I decided to use my laptop and it's GPU, a G72 graphics core based GeForce Go 7200. It's armed with 4 pixel pipes and 4 texture units, and using software, I can clock the GPU to certain speeds in order to simulate the Wii's fillrates, specifically 461 MHz (4 x 461 MHz = 1944). Of course there are differences in total pixel and texture units, 3 actually rasterization output units and different graphics APIs, it's still similar raw output and like the GeForce 7200, it supports many of the same shader effects and capabilities like bumpmapping, etc. So in my effort to emulate the Wii, I decided to run certain games at the same fillrates and same resolution as the Wii would encounter: 640 x 480 resolution. And in the ensuing madness I've concluded that the graphical peak of the Wii and the theoretical fillrates will let it run Call of Duty 2 PC with similar results to what I've encountered, so expect this possibly:



Take note of the high usage of bumpmaps to heavily improve the look of textures in the game.

However I must add that the game when running at my theoretical test conditions, I did not have any full screen anti-aliasing running and the game was running about 15 frames a second. Before you start hounding me, I would like to add that outside of the FSAA issue, this was the game being run at FULL GRAPHICAL SETTINGS. So in order to increase the friend-Wii-ness (lol) of this game if it ever was to grace the presence of the Wii, it would need some things scaled back, maybe the polygon counts as well as the soft shadows which are graphics processing hell to deal with, in which case I'd recommend harder shadows, ones with much less sampling, maybe in similarity to those used in Source Engine based games. Also perhaps a bit less bumpmapping and not as much dynamic lighting from muzzle flashes. Those two little tweaks could greatly increase the framerate and bring more stability. In the vain of the GF 7200 in comparison to the Hollywood, the Hollywood does have more pipes running at once, which is an advantage even if the theoreticals per second are the same (this would really help on the multitexturing side of things). My other quandrum is how RAM usage and it's loading and offloading as well as RAM available to the GPU works. Even at such a low resolution, much data will be needed for rendering the frame, 3D model and all, and I hope dynamic RAM loading can alleviate that.

Despite such possible boundaries and barriers I've discussed in this weird thread I hope that I've convinced the majority if what is rumored about the Wii is true, then we can really expect some great looking titles. We just need developers who are not lazy. My little theoretical test runs are very possibly untrue to the actual Wii operating environment not just in GPU but outside of it, but I think many games like CoD2 PC, Half Life 2, and Far Cry are quite viable graphical targets to shoot for. HL2 and Far Cry on Wii would operate quite well, where the Wii really does pull ahead of the Xbox in terms of CPU capability, RAM and pixel fillrates. Only reason Vengence ran and looked like crap on the Wii was it's pure lack of optimization both processing wise and graphics wise. These are speculations that I hope to see fulfilled in the coming year on the Wii and I'm very interested in how developers will make full use of such limited hardware. An HDD for the Wii will also improve load times and texture streaming. So I'm very excited to see developers step up to the challenge with full hearts, ideas and work ethics.