It’s been a while since we’ve heard anything new on the Wii U specs front. The latest report suggests some rather accurate specs that Nintendo was targeting for developers last year, and apparently Nintendo has kept the hardware consistent since then. However, take these hardware specs with a grain of salt, as the details have likely changes since. Nevertheless, here are the rumored specs, as per the Wii U dev kit of last year:
New Wii U Specs (dev kits)
- Wii U CPU runs at 3.4 GHz and has 3 cores
- 2 MB L2 cache on one core, 512 KB on the two other cores
- 3 GB memory for dev kits, 1.5 GB of memory for retail consoles
- Custom AMD Wii U GPU with 32 MB embedded eDRAM and unified shader architecture
- More GPU features: custom shader support, compute shader support, 128 bit floating point HDR texture filtering, multi-sample anti-aliasing, 720p + 4X MSAA, or 1080p no MSAA rendering.
- Dedicated 120 MHz audio processor, 6 channel audio for console, 2 channel for controller
- 512 MB of on-board flash storage for the Wii U operating system
- 8 GB of flash storage for apps and games.
In addition, Nintendo has given developers access to powerful graphics APIs that are reportedly very easy to use and very familiar to those who developed on the Wii and GameCube. On paper, it looks like the Wii U specs include many of the modern features, especially on the GPU front. Of course, these specs are rumored and coming from a developer who supposedly has access to the system. The final system specs may be different.
Last time we heard regarding Wii U specs, the CPU was said to be 20X faster than the one found in the Wii. Given Nintendo’s history of never officially announcing the specs of their consoles, we’ll have to wait until someone gets a retail version of the Wii U and peeks inside.
Thanks for the tip, Ricky!
