GPU Comparison: Wii vs. Last-Gen
June 14th, 2007
Comparing specs is one thing, but the GPU? Its a bit frightening in some ways, but it is important as graphics can only go so far with what the GPU is capable of. This is for imformation purposes only.
Note: Wii info is based on developer reports and is possible of error.
Clock Speed
PS2 - 147Mhz
Xbox - 233Mhz
GCN - 162Mhz
Wii - 243Mhz
Pixel Pipelines
PS2 - 16
Xbox - 4
GCN - 4
Wii - 4
Embedded Memory
PS2 - 4MB
Xbox - None
GCN - 3MB
Wii - 3MB
Pixel Fillrate
PS2 - 2,350 Megapixels/Second
Xbox - 932 Megapixels/Second
GCN - 648 Megapixels/Second
Wii - 942 Megapixels/Second
Textured Fillrate
PS2 - 1,176 Megatexels/Second
Xbox - 1,864 Megatexels/Second
GCN - 648 Megatexels/Second
Wii - 942 Megatexels/Second
Floating-Point Processing
PS2 - None
Xbox - Yes
GCN - Yes
Wii - Yes
Shaders
PS2 - Programmable
Xbox - Programmable, DirectX 8
GCN - Fixed, 8 stages in TEV
Wii - Fixed, however capable of reproducing Next-Gen shaders, 16 stages in TEV
Color
PS2 - 32-bit
Xbox - 32-bit
GCN - 24-bit
Wii - 24-bit
Key differences and comments:
Wiis ATi Hollywood GPU was noted to be an extension of GameCubes Flipper GPU. The Hollywood however, is 90nm in size and with more capabilities. It is much faster and can offer double the amount of textures in-game (as can be seen in a game like Madden).
Geometry Transformation: The PS2s CPU transforms geometry and sends to the GPU. The Wiis GPU has fixed transformations.
PS2 can perform FSAA (full-scene anti-aliasing) only in software, while Wiis GPU (as well as Cube and Xbox) has FSAA and Texture Compression in hardware. Wii also has hardware-based sub-pixel anti-aliasing. Normal mapping was rarely if ever, found in a PS2 game, while Xbox and Wii has these capabilities (Cube does not). Wii can do things like motion-blur as well, which is a feature that PS3 and 360 can do.
The GPU in the Wii might be closely compared to a GeForce 2 GTS (or Ultra) on the PC, while Xboxs GPU can be easily compared to a high-end GeForce 3 (although Xbox shares its RAM). The GPU in the Xbox can theoretically perform at 80.0 GFLOPS, while the GameCube was at 8.6 GLOPS. Wiis theoretical performance is unknown, however it outperforms the GameCubes GPU.
Wii has a big advantage over last-generation as it has 64MB of dedicated GDDR3 Video RAM for the GPU.