Medal of Honor Vanguard

I would think that, if it's being developed for PS2 as well as for Wii, that it probably doesn't.

It looks decent from the previews, and some of the controls sound cool (like the parachuting).

Most of the Wii games are going to be ports from the PS2 and PSP. The Wii is only a bit more powerful than the Gamecube. Games built from the ground up for 360 and PS3 just couldn't be done.

What do you mean vaporware?

I personally think it looks like a typical PS2-originated crap, nothing else. I don't see anything in this preview that a GC couldn't do years ago.


Says who?

PSP???


It's been already debunked by unexplainable facts (GPPU die size is twice as big as it should be after shrink etc), see other threads - the question for me is rather how Wii a lot more powerful than GC and when we are going to see it first?


Please, please, enough for baseless speculations in a single post.

Because die-size equates directly to performance?

The only thing unexplainable is how you end up at "the Wii is so utterly different from the GameCube in performance and features" based on nothing more than misinterpreted developer quotes and remarks about die-size. The die for a 486DX is about 2.5 times as big as the Wii GPU... maybe they should have used one of those for the graphics chip instead.

The Ubisoft developers that created Red Faction stated in no uncertain terms that the Wii in whole is slightly more capable than the original Xbox, but that graphically the original Xbox could do more, which seemed to be a nod to the lack of vertex and pixel shaders on the Wii GPU. They also stated that the Wii is in the same ballpark as the GameCube and that for the first time at a console launch the state-of-the-art for tapping graphics and system performance was already well established due to the Wii's similarity to the GameCube in those respects... ie, there aren't a lot of hidden tricks. So outside of more available RAM and a 50% boost in clock speed there's almost certainly no silver-bullet feature we don't know about lurking in the recesses of the Wii's CPU or GPU which are going to create visuals much beyond the very best GameCube games like Resident Evil 4, Rouge Squadron, and StarFox Adventures.

Also, based on the only system diagram that appears publicly available the extra 64 Megs of RAM does hang off the GPU as essentially a 3rd tier or memory, so the CPU still has to use the path to the GPU to access all memory banks available... which means.... it's STILL bottlenecked in EXACTLY the same way the GameCube was.

I love this console, I expect that some folks will make some pretty impressive games for it. Folks like Factor5 were able to do some cool things on the GameCube at launch, and I expect that we'll see some quality titles that have decent graphics, but I totally fail to understand where you draw these 100% assured conclusions that the Wii is just being totally untapped and that eventually we'll all see what it's really capable of. We already know what it's capable of. Without the addition of programmable shader support to the GPU it's capable of incrementally more geometry processing than the GameCube, incrementally larger or more detailed textures than the GameCube, and incrementally better AI processing than the GameCube.

It's not some vast mystery.

In other news: How is the control scheme in this game? Better than Call of Duty?

We're still missing online play I presume?

Ouch, you and your denial again...
As not only me but ~100 other people already explained on various online forums yes, the same chip made on lower process should show comparably proportional die size decrease with respect to other things (ie extra added due to increased leakage etc).

I thought in the other thread you finally - as you first miscalculated even the expected ratios, halved process meant half the die-size for you - understood that that Wii's GPU is apparently almost twice as big as it should be if it would be still GC's chip.

Now you're here, with this again...


You know, you have a very nasty habit of putting words into others' mouth if it nicely fits into your misconception - you're using quotation marks so link these words or stop faking quotes.


For you - IIRC a self-declared chip designer ROFL - it's apparently unimaginable but as so many people already pointed out it is pretty comparable.
No, it's not the straight proportionate - you also seem to be locked into your black-and-white way of thinking - but pretty similar.


Ah, another one of your usually completely off notes... just as you misunderstood the supposed Wii CPU vs the old PPC6xx-family differences - see my posts in the other thread WRT 6xx->750 changes you got mostly backwards until my links proved you wrong - now your pretty laughable "analogy" simply ignores that 486DX and Wii's GPU, unlike GC's and Wii, doesn't share any architectural similarity, let alone one being the successor of the other... another meaningless bollocks, in other words.


?
1. Red Faction was published by THQ, developed by Volition for PC, later ported to PS2,
2. only RFII, still a THQ game, still developed by Volition, originally for PS2, later for PC, made it to
3. be a GC-port, by the noname Cranky Pants Games.

You probably meant Red Steel? But that never been on GC as it was a Wii launch exclusive so it's hardly a base for comparison as far as I can tell.

Now that it's clear let's move on...


...to this giant pile of complete bollocks.

Let me simply quote what Ubisoft "stated in no uncertain terms", OK?


Even if we ignore that a pretty goofy Google translation from a French interview with Red Steel team member equals "Ubisoft... stated in no uncertain terms" for you (LOL) I think it's actually the stated the other way, don't you think?


Hehe, you're quite confused: reusing assets and methods or porting things due to various reasons (ie saving time etc) and developing a new engine are two different things.


Declared by who? How?
Your apparent ignorance on these things hardly makes your pulled-from-thin-air statements more true...


You know, these lousy, never researched yet highly opinionated posts were the reason I stopped arguing with you finally in the other topic.


Besides various empty claims - I won't address all the bollocks in this part, just doesn't worth the php and time - you seem to be stucked in your B&W world: the only thing I can be sure 100% that you were dead wrong in most of your posts as my links proved it time after time, nothing else.
And this post is not an exception either.


Not for me but apparently it still is, at least for some...

I never said I was a chip designer. I developed embedded software. ARM, PPC, MIPS, and some x86. Mostly signal processing stuff.

I never confused the difference between the PPC60x and the PPC750, except to say that they operate on the same bus signaling protocol. Which is 100% true. The original statement was made in rebuttal to your comments regarding something to the effect of the Wii having significantly more "bandwidth" than the GameCube. Which is true I guess. If you consider 50%, based on the 50% clock boost of the overall system, to be significant.

I pointed out that the GameCube used the 60x bus between the Gekko and the Flipper. The only publicly available block diagram for the Wii shows essentially the same topology as the GameCube with exception of the 64 Megs of GDDR3 with hang off the GPU.

If the Broadway is an offshoot of a PPC750 like the Gekko was, and the only publicly available block diagram of the Wii is any kind of source, then it seems largely safe to believe that the Wii also uses the 60x bus between the CPU and GPU. Also, if the diagram is true, then the Wii CPU only has access to any RAM via that bus, while the GPU has direct access to at least the 3 MB on-core RAM and the 24 MB on-package RAM, and with unknown access methods to the additional 64 MB of RAM.

Which means, again based only on what public resources there are for the Wii and GameCube system design, that the Wii is bottlenecked between the CPU and RAM just like the GameCube was... with exception of 50% higher theoretical performance due to clock speed increase.

About the only thing I can find regarding the Wii GPU is that it reportedly *might* have twice the pixel pipelines as the Flipper from the GameCube. However there is no confirmation of any other features by way of a more flexible T&L engine, standard pixel and vertex shaders which don't require the use of lightmap texturing for effects, nor any additional info about improvements made to the TEV hardware.

So the GPU *might* support better throughput via greater parallelism, though raw fillrate at 480p is hardly limited by the original Flipper hardware. Ultimately the problem is going to come down to if any new kinds of resources were added to the hardware, and I have yet to find anything definitive that says so.

What is the total power usage of the Wii when running full-bore? Isn't it something like ~20 watts, and ~10 at idle with the Wifi still enabled. So we're also dealing with presumably a ~10W power envelope for the CPU, GPU, RAM, etc. when running at full steam. How much performance can there really be locked away in there?

The new Pokemon game seems to be something people are rumbling about for guessing what's made the Wii GPU core bigger that a process shrink would do.

So far the only in-game footage I've been able to track down shows capabilities no better than what Factor 5 was able to do with the GameCube with exception of apparently denser geometry and larger textures. Which makes complete sense.

However, while I'll agree with everyone that the effects look quite good, they're still no different than what was available on the GameCube.

I'll be entirely content to be totally wrong about the capabilities of the Wii, as I'd really rather not buy a 360 or PS3 down the road.

For the sake of complete honesty. I don't really find either the 360's or the PS3's graphics to be all that awe inspiring considering what they've got under the hood. Motorstorm is about the only thing I think looks pretty immersive.

I understand that this is your opinion, and while I respect other people's opinions, you sir are an idiot. I have a Wii and I love it, I have a 360 and I love that too. Check out Gears of War, Ghost recon, Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon 2, NBA 2k7, Lost Planet....and tell me that those graphics aren't awe inspiring. For the first time EVER we have seen games of this graphical quality, PC gaming aside I'm talking consoles here. From the IGN review of Lost Planet: "While we're on the topic of eye candy, we'd be remiss if we didn't gush over the smoke and explosion effects, which are some of the best we've ever seen. Anybody who says that graphics don't add to the gameplay needs to have a rocket zip past their head in Lost Planet." I'm sure I'm not the only one who agrees with statements like that.

Contrary to popular belief, flipper was a programmable GPU, however not in the common sense. While it did not have traditional pixel/vertex shaders, the TEV was programmable and could be used for effects that were even beyond DirectX8.0. The programmable features of Flipper were more difficult to program for than the NV2A in the Xbox, but they were used in the GC's most beautiful games: Resident Evil 4, the Metroid series, and Factor 5's Rogue Squadron titles.