Nintendo Revolution Specs

[CptStern]

"According to an unconfirmed but detailed report on consumer website IGN, developers currently working with Nintendo's Revolution development hardware have provided specification-based insight into the power behind the upcoming next-generation platform.

The information, which is concerned primarily with Revolution's IBM "Broadway" CPU and ATI "Hollywood" GPU, reinforces Nintendo's strategy with the new hardware as being notably different from its competition, focusing on simpler, more accessible, and innovative titles rather than high-end graphics and horsepower.

According to the report, IBM's "Broadway" CPU employed by the Revolution is clocked at 729MHz (as a comparison, the Xbox 360 runs three symmetrical cores at 3.2GHz) while its ATI-provided "Hollywood" GPU will clock in at a relatively modest 243MHz. Though numbers do not paint the whole picture, it is clear that Nintendo has no plans to match its competition in terms of raw power.

Additionally, according to these reports, the Revolution will operate using 24MBs of main 1T-SRAM, as well as 64MBs of external 1T-SRAM for a grand total of 88MBs on top of the 3MB texture buffer on the GPU.

Of course, this is in contrast to statements made by former Nintendo of Europe senior director of marketing, who said in October 2005 that there would be no significant difference between the graphical abilities of the console compared to other next-generation systems.

However, while there is much speculation at this point as people wait for something more concrete to come from E3 in May, the report from IGN indicates that their information is based upon official Nintendo documentation or benchmark tests with working Revolution kits, and that the Revolution is expected to be only marginally more powerful than the existing GameCube hardware."

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=8745


wow that's sorely underpowered compared to the competition but knowing Nintendo they have some ace up their sleeve

E3 this year will be one of the more interesting ones in years

 

[Pi Mu Rho]

Power is nothing without control.

 

[Direwolf]

I think IGN summed up my thoughts rather nicely:

Whether or not Revolution is, in fact, a vehicle for the new freestyle controller or not, systems specs rarely tell the whole story. We would remind readers that during an era when polygon numbers meant everything, GameCube's polygon peaks were lower than PlayStation 2 and Xbox. However, few would disagree with the assertion that Resident Evil 4 - a title developed from the ground-up for Nintendo's system -- was one of the prettiest games of the generation.

They also estimate it as being about double the power of the GC, so thats not just "marginally" better and is in fact exactly inline with what Nintendo's been saying the whole time.

 

[Axyon]

So long as everthing's still party-oriented fun, the lack of power simply won't matter. People will kill for this in Japan, and I imagine it'll be hugely successful in the West as well.

 

[DarkStar]

Yeah, that IGN quote is good Direwolf. Personally, I think Resident Evil 4 looks almost next-gen it looks so good. Definitely better than a lot of the stuff on the 360.

I hope the Revolution is successful. I dismissed the DS at first as gimmicky, but look how that thing has taken off. The revolution seems to be following a similar model.

 

[VictimOfScience]

Specs, specs, specs...I guess there are some people that care about these issues, especially if you ever forsee the need to get into an internet e-dick-swinging competition, but for the most part, gamers want one thing only: games. Everyone who hasn't been living under a rock for the past year or so knows that Nintendo's new machine isn't about pushing the bleeding edge of technology--its about innovation and re-thinking the way games are played. The specs are secondary to what can be done with them.

 

[dream431ca]

Did you read what bioware and pandemic studios said about the revolution? It's on IGN's site. They said they saw some things behind closed doors and were absolutly enthralled. They were so excitied about it. It's good to see two very major developers so excitied about the revolution. The real name of the console will be annoucned at E3 probably.

 

[ThomasToad]

I'm glad you guys aren't upset like many other forums seem to be about these specs. I think everyone should have expected this as Nintendo has been claiming the Revolution to be less powerful than the PS3 and the Xbox360 for a very long time. Keep in mind, the Revolution doesn't support HD graphics, so the amount of power needed to produce a game would be much less than the other two. Also, developers were able to produce visuals equal to and in some cases better than the Xbox with the well underpowered Gamecube, and the hardware for the Revolution seems to be very similar to that of the Gamecube so developers should have a leg up at the beginning of this next generation.

I must say I can't wait till E3.

 

[Gray Fox]

High specs are used for more then just pretty graphics. Gravity comes to mind, better AI, and also better framerate with more units on screen. I don't know this seems like a little bit on the low side. Even from what I expected. Thats basicly as strong as an X-box. Hope it meens they focus that much more on the new control style and cost.

 

[OCybrManO]

Seeing as the processor in my little PMP runs at a maximum of ~200MHz and can still manage to encode a 640x480 video (from a TV/camcorder) at 1Mbps in real-time while also resizing the video to be displayed properly on its screen and having some juice left to navigate through the menus... I'm not going to judge the Revolution's power until I see some demos. Specialized hardware can be tricky to predict.

 

[Direwolf]

Its much stronger than an Xbox. Nintendo's different approach to architecture means that its not a numbers game when comparing it to the Xbox. Visually you could see that the GC was only slightly more underpowered than the Xbox, but the numbers don't reflect it. So just about doubling the speed from the GC puts it way beyond the Xbox.

 

[Stigmata]

Its much stronger than an Xbox. Nintendo's different approach to architecture means that its not a numbers game when comparing it to the Xbox. Visually you could see that the GC was only slightly more underpowered than the Xbox, but the numbers don't reflect it. So just about doubling the speed from the GC puts it way beyond the Xbox.

And if the Xbox is more powerful than the 'Cube, and the 'Cube gave us Resident Evil...

The Revolution hardware has drool potential yet.

Besides which... It has a cool pointer.

 

[Asuka]

Interesting. The thing that i like the most is being able to play older games etc. That alone might get me to buy one.

 

[VirusType2]

Nintendo creates the type of hardware they need in order to create the kind of software they want. Look at the DS. Much less power than the PSP but exactly the type of hardware they want in order to create the kind of games that makes them famous. Specs don't mean that much for Nintendo, they really have some unique ideas they use to make their video games awesome.

The SNES had an extremely slow ~3.3 MHz processor compared to the Genesis ~14MHz processor, but the visuals on the SNES were much better; more colors on-screen, larger sprites, "mode 7" scaling, better controller, better sound, etc.

However, If I was Nintendo I would be a little worried about the copy-cat cut-throat business of video games where Sony and Microsoft are probably in the labs right now creating a controller like the one for Nintendo's Revolution. If this controller is a success, I'm sure the other companies will release one, taking some of the advantage away from Nintendo's system; although it won't get nearly the same software support that Nintendo's system will get for this controller since it's the one that comes with the machine.

While I enjoy the cutting-edge hardware - like that in the 360 and PS3 - that allows amazing graphics never seen before, sometimes I enjoy just playing a crispy colorful game with unique artwork, and unique game play, as opposed to photo-realistic graphics, so the revolution still interests me greatly.

I can't wait to see what the games are like.

 

[smwScott]

We'll have to wait and see what the games actually look like. Keep in mind Nintendo isn't shooting for high definition so in order to get similar quality on standard televisions it won't take as much horsepower (a lot of games, especially sports games, barely look different than their 360 counterparts on normal TVs).

However, if the graphics aren't significantly better than the Gamecube I might even feel a little cheated by being asked to buy an entirely new console. If the new controller is the only real innovation ... that could easily be applied to the Gamecube. It could make the Revolution even less necessary than the PS3 or 360.

 

[VirusType2]

We'll have to wait and see what the games actually look like. Keep in mind Nintendo isn't shooting for high definition so in order to get similar quality on standard televisions it won't take as much horsepower (a lot of games, especially sports games, barely look different than their 360 counterparts on normal TVs).

However, if the graphics aren't significantly better than the Gamecube I might even feel a little cheated by being asked to buy an entirely new console. If the new controller is the only real innovation ... that could easily be applied to the Gamecube. It could make the Revolution even less necessary than the PS3 or 360.

Agree with all this but there may be more to the Revolution than just a name and a controller.

The developer kits at only $2000?! Now this is just speculation, but I could see people making innovative games and mods for this system and uploading them to a Nintendo server to be downloaded to your hard drive. Look at games like Tetris and you will be reminded that it doesn't take anything but a good idea to make a wildly successful game. With such an interesting controller to take advantage of, who knows what kind of games and mods people will make. This could be the real revolution.