Project CARS to showcase Wii U’s “hidden power”

http://wiiudaily.com/2014/01/wii-u-project-cars-power/

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The Wii U’s graphical capabilities have long been the source of contention and debate. Detractors are quick to point out that the console is far behind the PS4 or Xbox One in power and will never be able to match them graphically.

Certain games, however, such as Nano Assault Neo and Need for Speed: Most Wanted, show there is yet potential for Wii U games to outshine the last generation.

Slightly Mad Studios, developers of the upcoming multi-platform release Project C.A.R.S., has added their two cents to the discussion, saying their game will “showcase the hidden power the Wii U has”.

Until now, Slightly Mad Studios has only mentioned GamePad features such as motion control when talking about the Wii U version, so it is encouraging to hear them refer to the console as being graphically relevant.

Will Project C.A.R.S. be the game that finally showcases what Nintendo’s console is capable of graphically? Or is this comment by Slightly Mad nothing more than PR talk? Let us know what you think in the comments below!

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You think three Gamecubes taped together have some kind of hidden power? Its a racing game, of course it looks better than most other genre, cars at least...

y u do dis

The wii u's graphics are pretty good it's the performance I'm worried about. All the games I played on my wii u from third party have had chaotic frame rates. It might be my wii u because I play it so long it gets hot.

It's not your wiiu, it's the games. 3rd party put little effort into WiiU when it comes to optimization.

When will we get WiiU screens?

@silversix_:

Wii U is not 3 GameCubes taped together i.e. 3x Radeon 7500(not the HD version) lol.

Funny enough, we heard soooo much last gen about unlocking the Wii's "hidden power" and it lead to squat and most games still pretty much looked like GC games.

However this time around, lll bite. l think someone is going to make a WiiU game that will really make a lot of people say "Wow! Thats running on WiiU??"

l don't think ltll be this game tbh, but i think well see something special soon.

Nah, even 3D World has performance issues at times. Nothing game breaking of course, but it can be pretty noticeable. I've seen it on 3 different Wii Us, so its not just an isolated thing.

Pretty crazy that Nintendo can't even lock down the performance on the consoles biggest title.

I'll believe it when I see it. :p

XD lol

I think some analogue buttons might have benefitted a game like this.

Nintendo can't even lock down the performance of a HD GCN port running at 30fps. Wii-U is just a poorly designed console.

Just kidding :p

WiiU is slightly more powerful than 360/PS3, so i think it's safe to expect something at Forza 4 or GT6 level, at least.

dgpu confirmed

Hidden power?

Its a racing game, of course it will look pretty good. The roads, background and everything except the cars are just static images that move and rotate in relation to the car to give it a sense of movement. They really only have to focus on the cars themselves vs having to render entire landscapes that need to be drawn in for games where you can run anywhere you want while driving games you are stuck on a track.

And if while were on the topic and graphics make something good then play a racing game on ps4 or xbox one, there, that just single handedly ruined the "hidden power" of the wiius racing game.

There is no "hidden power".

Wii U’s “hidden power”............lololol

Not sure why you even bother posting in any Nintendo related threads

Then again, you might as well say that to several other posters here, even towards ones who do it on MS/Sony/PC threads.

What performance issues would those be? I'm on the post game levels and it's been running at a smooth 60 fps all the way through

The Wii had the same core as the gamecube but clocked higher. And, the Wii U is the same core as the Wii, just with three of them.

Technically, that makes it 6 gamecubes taped together brah.

The worst it will look like is that need for speed game on the wiiu.It will probably looked better than that game when it is released. I seen pics of the wiiu version of the game and it looks pretty good for a wiiu game still in development.

I haven't really seen any framerate drops in super mario 3d world and I'm in the post game part of the game.

How come no one is blasting the X1 and PS4 for having only games with last gen graphics so far.

DoGe Processing Unit? :D

And yes, it's a racing game, which means extracting the majority of the GPU performance should be fairly easy and not too difficult on the CPU. Who knows, maybe "hidden power" could refer to a true 1080p framebuffer (using the eDRAM).

Also, considering Project CARS is technically an indie game, maybe Nintendo could better embrace and encourage indies and perhaps make it possible for anyone to develop games for the system much like the 360 and XNA. It would actually encourage people to give the Wii U a second look while providing more software for the system, even if much of it was little indie and arcade games.

The game is currently running at 720P and 30fps on the WiiU. No one knows if they are using the eDRAM yet., but the game will be optimized a bit more before it launches most likely.

@super600: Eh figures.

Hidden power. The last resort of the desperate.

Power has been holding back sales. If there were hidden power, you can be 100% sure Nintendo would have revealed it by now. But they haven't because they have once again been cheap and played you for your ultra loyalty and you eat it up again.

lol "hidden power"

Optimizing a GPU with VLIW architecture is harder than SIMD based GPUs e.g. AMD Graphics Core Next (X1/PS4) or AMD Xenos (Xbox 360).

Wii U's VLIW5 with 320 stream processors has the potential to process 320 shader instructions per cycle i.e. each 5 scalar instructions (1 data element for each scalar) are bundled together into 1 very wide instruction issue, hence "VLIW5".

On Xbox 360, it just 1 scalar (1 data element) and 1 SIMD4 (4 data elements) instruction issue. Xbox 360's GPU can process up to 96 shader instructions per cycle. Xbox 360's 48 pipelines are divided into 3 blocks with each having 16 pipelines i.e. 16 SIMD4 yields 64 stream processors and 16 for scalar.

For X1/PS4, each AMD CU block in Graphic Core Next has 64 stream processors from 16 SIMD4 + 1 independent scalar unit (big difference from Xbox 360 i.e. scalar units are not independent from SIMD units). Xbox 360 is roughly equivalent to 3 CU equipped Radeon HD at 500Mhz.

GPUs with VLIW architecture as much higher instruction per cycle potential than their SIMD counterparts.

Read http://www.anandtech.com/show/5261/amd-radeon-hd-7970-review/3 on Radeon HD 6970(Cayman)'s VLIW4 vs Radeon HD 7970 (Southern Islands)'s SIMD designs.

Because the smallest unit of work is the SIMD and a CU has 4 SIMDs, a CU works on 4 different wavefronts at once. As wavefronts are still 64 operations wide, each cycle a SIMD will complete ¼ of the operations on their respective wavefront, and after 4 cycles the current instruction for the active wavefront is completed.

Cayman by comparison would attempt to execute multiple instructions from the same wavefront in parallel, rather than executing a single instruction from multiple wavefronts. This is where Cayman got bursty – if the instructions were in any way dependent, Cayman would have to let some of its ALUs go idle. GCN on the other hand does not face this issue, because each SIMD handles single instructions from different wavefronts they are in no way attempting to take advantage of ILP, and their performance will be very consistent.

...

There are other aspects of GCN that influence its performance – the scalar unit plays a huge part – but in comparison to Cayman, this is the single biggest difference. By not taking advantage of ILP, but instead taking advantage of Thread Level Parallism (TLP) in the form of executing more wavefronts at once, GCN will be able to deliver high compute performance and to do so consistently.

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Wii U uses older "VLIW5" type Radeon HD. It's too bad Wii U wasn't equipped with Radeon HD 8570M (AMD Graphics Core Next with 6 CUs) with 64bit DDR3-2000.

I have laptops with Radeon HD 4650M (320 stream processors/4 CU, VLIW5) + GDDR3-1400 128bit and Radeon HD 8570M (384 stream processors/6 CU, Graphics Core Next) + 64bit DDR3-2000. Radeon HD 8570M (~15 watts, Ultrabook) has better performance than Radeon HD 4650M (15 to 20 watts).

Most of Wii U's power comes from the GPU not the CPU.

What WiiU's power?

Can't wait to see how amazing it looks.

Compute power. Compute power covers both CPU and GPU.

Because Killzone Shadow graphics surpass anything on last gen consoles and Wii U.

That isn't much better than last gen.

so the Wii U will finally produce graphics at the PS3 level?

taking for ever there Nintendo.

Wrong

According to Digital Foundry:

All of these features would be for nothing if the performance wasn't there, of course. Mario titles demand precision and a quick response that call for a solid 60 frames per second update. More so than most games aiming for this goal, EAD has managed to deliver a 100 per cent consistent update. Every moment of the game, every menu transition, and every element of the user interface all operate at 60fps without a single hitch. Shooting for 60fps is no small task and requires cooperation from the entire team throughout the development cycle, but Nintendo takes it further by taking a zero-tolerance approach to frame-rate dips.

Perhaps you were too stoned to realize the frame rate is a rock solid 60 fps?

Does really matter much?

I thought most of Nintendo "only/mostly" fans are happy with cartoon-ish graphics (contrast to gritty/realistic).

Whatever it is, it's probably going to be good enough for the lot of them.

If they wanted certain graphics, they'd go to other platforms.

Gamespot actually released a pic of the Wii U version. Warning, it contains some spoilers

@mrfokken:

Just slow down. I noticed it even in the first world, but Shadow Play Alley in world 2 was the first place I saw it noticeably and then many other places throughout the game. Its pretty random when it happens, the only thing I know of that seems to slow it down somewhat consistently is when you immediately jump after a ground pound. Rosalinas spin also triggers it, but not quite as much.

I played most of the game with 2 players, so maybe thats why, but I know that even on single player it still happens, though far less frequently. Again, nothing game breaking, but I was shocked that a perfectionist dev like EAD would let that kind of stuff slide.

@mrfokken: You can post quotes all day, doesn't change what my friends and I saw on a regular basis. Then again, this is nothing new on SW. It seems performance has to be TERRIBLE for most users here to notice.

SM3DW was easily my favorite game of last year so I'm not bashing it. I'm not even saying the performance was bad, it was actually VERY solid. It just wasn't perfect performance like the SMG games.

I highly doubt the guys at DF played the game as much as I have and they likely only played single player from the sound of it.

I too have noticed a bit of slowdown. It usually occurs for me when riding the big dinosaur and you ride into half a dozen enemies at once. The frame rate chugs noticeably for a few seconds. It's not that big a deal generally speaking, but it's surprising coming from Nintendo. They tend to like rock solid frame rates, especially for Mario.

Exactly man, and that's all I was really saying. At no point did it bother me, or take away from the experience. Like you said, it was just surprising coming from Nintendo especially when its their biggest IP and biggest title of the year from their best studio.

Some of Wii U's 3rd party games shows better results e.g. games with textures that exceeds 500MB i.e. textures recycled from the PC version.

Straight ports from Xbox 360/PS3 game assets wouldn't enable Wii U to show it's TMUs (Texture Management Units) /1GB VRAM advantages.

yeah and others look mediocre even compared to 8y old systems *cough* batman aa *cough*

You funny, TC.

'too stoned'

no such thing mate.