Interesting article:
http://www.edge-online.com/magazine/generation-when

Some speculation on WiiHD matching the 360/PS3 in power.

Now let me speculate on what this would take:

The Wii has an ARM processor that boots up the Wii and hands the Wii's extra functionality over the GC hardware. This ARM chip is a bit weak however, it can run code separately from the Wii's PPC. We know the Wii's main cpu is a PPC 740CL(based) and we know Hollywood is just Flipper running at 487Mhz with the old GC's 24MB of T1-SRAM on-die.

For a WiiHD, Hollywood needs to have it's internal framebuffer expanded and registers added to actually change resolutions about 480p as this is fixed rigjt now. It's already got an excellent pixel fill-rate, but clocking the gpu up to 650Mhz (+33%) won't hurt as it's already 3x faster than the GC's gpu...let's make it 4x. Frame+texture+Z ram needs to be bumped up to 6 or 8MB from the current 3.1MB. Hopefully they can also squeeze in 256MB of 1T-SRAM as well but I could see them trying to get away with only 48MB.

On the PPC side, it will need to go up to 975Mhz and possibly even be dual-cored. Again a 33% increase not taking into account a second core.

As for the ARM cpu, this is where they can make some big improvements to allow true dual but separate processing to free up alot of processing on the PPC side. With a beefier ARM with more memory dedicated to it, the ARM could handle all the WiiSpeak and W/LAN code freeing the PPC to handle bigger more complex games.

I would also like to see the 64MB of GDDR2 ram be bumped to GDDR3 and 256MB of it.

The wireless unit could be upgraded to support 802.11n.
Internal flash ram could be changed to a 16GB SSD.

This would make for a fine WiiHD console.

For good measure why not throw in an HD DVD drive for bigger games that won't fit on 1 dual-layered DVD...though this doesn't seem to be hurting the 360 much. HD DVD should be a cheap-enough commodity and why pay Sony roalties I say. It doesn't even have to offer HD DVD movie playback, though I know the homebrew community would enable it just like they do now with DVD playback.

I should note that the ARM cpu (called Starlet by the homebrew community) resides inside Hollywood. It would definitely need an internal ram upgrade. As Hollywood needs to be redesigned for HD anyway, why now upgrade Starlet as well.

Last edited by Lou on 19-Jun-2009 at 04:49 PM.
Last edited by Lou on 19-Jun-2009 at 04:46 PM.

@Lou

Quote:

Natal-equipped 360 SKU confirmed!

Seems some interpreted this as a new 360... Major Nelson had this to say ---
"A few people have emailed me regarding something Steve Ballmer said earlier today about a new Xbox coming in 2010. As the Xbox team stated at E3 two weeks ago, we are not even halfway through the current console generation lifecycle and believe Xbox 360 will be the entertainment center in the home for long into the next decade. Project Natal will be an important part of this platform, but we have not confirmed a launch date at this time."

Here's my current Microsoft guess.... Xbox Elite 2010: built in Natal, CPU/GPU likely without new features, larger HD, and Blu-Ray included. If Microsoft expects another 5 years for the console might as well put the Blu-Ray in now.


In gaming related news...
*Nvidia President claimes 20Teraflops per video card by 2015.
*Intel confirmed H1 2010 is the ship date for Larrabee.
* 2010 also brings the more paralleled GT300 and R800.


Quote:

Some speculation on WiiHD matching the 360/PS3 in power.

I think completely do able at the same price point. God know Nintendo has the profits. Throw a Blu-Ray player in there and Sony would have no choice but a 50% (okay maybe not that high) PS3 price cut. Microsoft would have to make a Blu-Ray option.

Last edited by BrianK on 19-Jun-2009 at 06:41 PM.