Ars Technica has debunked the latest round of “leaked specs” for the Nintendo Wii using the tried and true forumla of “Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V.” The specs, leaked by a poster at MaxConsole.net, were really nothing more than what critics of the Wii have said since the beginning: That Nintendo’s next-gen console was an overclocked GameCube with a DVD player.
But not so fast. Says Ars Techica: “Oh, waitaminute… I’m sorry. Those are specs I copied and pasted from one of the many pages of unofficial Gekko documentation that I was able to dig up on Google with a few keystrokes. The MaxConsole list features the same data, in the same order, with a few phrasing tweaks and the MHz numbers revised upwards […] Personally, I have a hard time imagining that IBM, ATI, and Nintendo have invested all this time and money into a product that’s basically a speedbump of an existing product. If Wii were just a GameCube with a DVD player and a funky controller, you’d think it would be out already. And here’s another clue: I know and have reported before that Apple was offered Broadway as a possible laptop chip, but I just can’t see IBM offering them the above single-issue design with a straight face. What’s outlined above isn’t even a G4. It’s a heavily tweaked G3, and it would be a big step backwards from the G4.”
Don’t these liars know anything? Nintendo is a company that can’t be matched.
The story tells it all!!!!!!!!.
It's nothing I didn't say- with proof- right after the story was released both here and in other places. The most notable thing was that the external 64 MB of memory is officially confirmed to be 1T-SRAM, not the GDDR3 they listed.
I'm really not going to hang onto the idea that it's going to be very good as far as horsepower is concerned. I'm tired of people caring so much. In the end the games are what matters, whether it's a poly-pushing mega-masher, or it's a weakling, I care more about what I play rather than how good it would look on a 60 inch projection TV (I only have like a 25 inch standard def CRT still, that will change soon, but honestly, I'm not getting one THAT big so will it really matter?) What I initially heard is that it will be slightly better than the fat xbox, something around there is fine with me. Besides, did you all see how pretty SMG looked?
Exactly. Just because the specs were fake doesn't mean the Wii will be any more powerful. Anyone who's seen Red Steel, Rayman Raving Rabbids, and Mario Galaxy knows some very good looking games are coming the way of the Wii.
dozer:Numerous times, I've heard the claim that the Wii is supposed to be slightly more powerful than the first Xbox, but something just occured to me…Didn't the Gamecube have the most powerful hardware out of any system this generation? If I'm correct, this is was proven to be true, as evidenced by just looking at RE4. So my thought is that Nintendo has to be keeping SOMETHING about the graphics from us. If it really were slightly more powerful than the original Xbox, they'd be releasing a dumbed down Gamecube, but they've already said Wii will be 2-3x more powerful than the 'cube…..just something to think about
I'd also like to add, that they really could go ahead and release a graphically inferior 'cube, and I'd be more than happy because it's all about good quality, fun games with high replay value.
I dont think it will be a monster but I do think they have something up thier sleeves with Wii – not exactly sure what – maybe a physics chip or something but I doubt it will be more than that. I reckon it will be a G4 based chip instead of a G3 with some functions added in like the Gekko did. Games will look good because cube games do, and well, we all know that Zelda TP is on that so theres no question that it pisses on the other systems in this gen.Im not sure how good the graphics will be but like everyone says who cares – im still playing on my Snes FFS.Wii will be awesome, I just wish I hadnt left my cube at my mates 8 months ago and could play more than SNES and DS!
But the 64 MB of RAM wasnt as good a spec as the GCNs and the 485Mhz processor is RISC so you cant compare just on numbers. GPU is faster but look at the games, GC's look loads better.
They both have roughly the same power, with a very slight edge going to the Xbox because of its memory and a slightly more powerful GPU. The Mhz numbers stopped mattering a few years ago, architecture is the tell tale (this is why a 2.2 Ghz AMD processor can outperform a 3.2 Ghz Intel processor). The Gamecube's CPU had a bit of an edge over the Xbox, and the console is very efficient and fast at communicating between its components.