I've been thinking about the Revolution's hardware and it's probable amount of power.  It has occured to me that even though we don't know specifics about it, we know all that we really need to know.  I mean, when sony talks about how the PS3 can transfer 22.4 GBs per second between system memory and the graphics chip, does anyone know what kind of a difference that makes to the games graphics as opposed to 19 GBs per second?

We gamers see specs in basic units, like 360 "hmm, 3 cores are better than 2" and PS3 "oh ya, 7 thingies that process stuff".  Getting a higher level of understanding of what these spec sheets actually mean just isn't realistic.

So in crude terms we know lots about the new Nintendo system:

1)512 MBs of flash memory (plenty to save files and download old games, faster than a hard drive, and expandable too)

2)Brand new IBM Broadway processor.  Ok, has to be faster than Pentium 4 if its newer, from a better company, and is custom designed for Revolution.  Also simpler than the competitors, so maybe the processor has 2.4 GHz clock speed, 2 threads, 256 KBs total cache and I dunno, 24 pipelines.  There, that's as good as any spec sheet from Microsoft.

3)Ram will be enough.  Whatever the system needs, Nintendo will give it.  This is their fifth system, not to mention the handhelds, they know how to make a competent, bottle-neck free system, and they shall do exactly that.  Maybe 256MBs main system memory, who knows.  The memory is different for consoles than it is for PC's.  They are getting MoSys to design their Ram again like with GameCube, and that was some weird design called 1T-SRAM which worked like static ram but was as cheap as dynamic ram (for those who aren't in computer science - that's good).

4)I talked too long on that last one.  ATI is doing Revolution's graphics chip, but they are also doing Xbox 360's.  Now, obviously any effective format, architecture, shader capabilities, etc., that they learned about when designing a chip for Microsoft, they aren't just going to forget.  It will be fast with all the important bells and whistles.  I'd bet their Revolution graphics chip (called "hollywood") will have a similar clock speed as the 360, the same "unified shader architecture" that they are so proud of these days, and will feature pixel shaders, HDL lighting capabilities, vertex shaders, and whatever else a gaming machine needs.

Ok, there we go, we know as much about the Revolution hardware as we (really) do about the other systems.  Here you go, read it and weep:

System Memory:
1T-SRAM memory solution, combined 256 MBs
Storage:
512 MBs Flash Memory
CPU:
IBM Broadway CPU, 2.4 GHz with 2 threads
GPU:
ATI Hollywood GPU, 240 MHz featuring unified shader architecture

So it will definitely be more powerful than a current high end PC, otherwise Nintendo wouldn't have brand new chips made for the system, they would just throw in a pentium 3 or something.  Lest we forget the GameCube's CPU clock speed was 485 MHz, yet its games were on par graphically with many games built to run on a pentium 4 PC with 2000 MHz, so things are never quite as clear as gamers hungry for specs would want.

In closing, relax, it's Nintendo's job to make a solid system with competitive graphics.  They probably don't want to release the details for fear of people misinterpreting them "omigosh, they can only transfer 5 DVD's worth of data across the CPU to GPU, while Sony's can transfer 7! I am SO getting a PS3!!"