Saturday, September 24, 2005

Revolution specs leaked?

The good people at Engadget have picked up on a story that has been going ´round the forums for a couple of days now. Beforehand I disregarded it as ´another one of those specs rumours´, but now I believe we actually got ourselves some substantiated stuff here. Here´s the rundown:

* a multithreaded PowerPC 2.5 GHz with 256 KB L1 cache and 1 MB of L2 cache

* a Physical Processing Chip (PPU) with 32MB of dedicated RAM, 512MB of system RAM

* a custom ATI “RN520” 600MHz CPU with 256MB of RAM

* the device will support external resolutions up to 2048 x 1268

* HD support is still as yet undecided

* 7.1 surround

Sounds good? So does the story of where these specs come from:

So apparently this dude who works at Factor 5 (they’ve done some Star Wars games) who goes by Han Solo has some supposedly leaked specs of the Revolution, which if they’re real might give the box a bit more of a fighting chance than we’d originally anticipated. Keep in mind this is the same person, we understand, who leaked some nearly dead on specs of the Xbox 360 before it was announced.

As I said before, I have ignored all spec leaks to this day. But if sites like Engadget and Joystiq are picking up on it and are willing to consider it as a possibility... well, so will I.

EDIT Here´s the original post by Han Solo as posted on this G4TV forum thread.
Nintendo has modified the System 1 specs. They have deleted the System 2 specs as it is obviously expensive and really powerful.

System 1 specs can be viewed on the first page of this thread, posted by White Wolf. Nintendo now has to choose between the System 1, that’s on the front page, or these Modified Specs.

System 1 Modified
CPU:
1 IBM Custom PowerPC 2.5 GHz with 256 KB L1 cache and 1 MB of L2 cache (an L3 cache is rumored). It’s Dual Threaded

13 billion dot product operations per second

Revolution GPU

ATI Custom based RN520 core. The "N" stands for Nintendo, and is because the ArtX team is with them, that is why it’s an "N".

GPU core at 600 MHz. Will support up to 2048x1268 resolution, HD support is still being decided. Will have 256 MB’s of 1T-SRAM (the RAM is much better due to some tweaking, compared to GC’s RAM. The latency and Cells are much more efficient and faster. Around 1.2 ns is the latency, on average).

32 parallel floating-point dynamically scheduled shader pipelines.

Polygon Performance: 500 million triangles per second theoretical, average in game would be around <100 Million/sec>

Shader Performance: ~50 billion shader operations per second

Revolution memory

512 MB of 700 MHz 1T-SRAM

Other bits and pieces
Revolution will support a PPU chip (Physical Processing Chip). There will be 32 MB’s of its own RAM, which will link to the CPU and GPU and the Controller.

There will also be a separate sound card that will support only DD 5.1 – DTS 7.1, rumors has it will have 16 MB’s, like the Cube DSP

So there’s the modified version. I think this would be on par with Xbox360, though PS3 could have an edge in the CPU area. In the GPU area the Revolution beats PS3, and technically would match Xbox 360.

And here´s Julian Eggebrecht´s reply, head of Factor 5, courtesy of Gizmodo:
“Han Solo is a scoundrel, we all know that, but in this case he isn´t a very clever scoundrel. That so-called employee of ours posting on message boards under the Han Solo name certainly isn´t employed at Factor 5 or working in any way for us. He isn´t speaking for the company and he better change his story as to where he has his information from, or we will be forced to take legal action against him.”

49 comments:

Anonymous said...

Engadget picked it up? i just left a comment but i will post it again. im egyptian too. falafel rocks. my aunt eats it with foul madamas. your blog rocks man.

Anonymous said...

this is a good all round blog

Anonymous said...

" I believe we actually got ourselves some substantiated stuff here. "

Is it the fact that the guy already got it right with X360 specs that makes you think so, or is there something else ?

Falafelkid said...

No, no. I keep repeating this a lot: I don´t know any more than any of you. (I just get to speak to some important people in the industry at times). So I tend to believe this rumour because the guy was right about the Xbox360 specs, apparently, and becuase Engadget are posting the story.

Anonymous said...

When Han Solo revealed the Xbox 360 specs, how much later was it officially announced? Maybe this will tell is how long it will take before Nintendo announces the specs of the Rev.

Anonymous said...

"I keep repeating this a lot: I don´t know any more than any of you."

It's OK, I know that ; I just thought I was misunderstanding something. Nevermind.

Anonymous said...

As I understand it, Han Solo leaked the Xbox 360 specs about 2 weeks before Microsoft. So, maybe we can expect offical Rev specs in October with the wi-fi info? Probably too soon. More likely some specs and screens nearing the 360 launch in November, that is if the Rev is graphically competitive.

Anonymous said...

Leave it to Nintendo to let us hype there system. I guess not providing answers to the obvious question (like the name to the system itself) makes us want it more. But when all the question are answered I wonder what the rest of the world will think?

Anonymous said...

this factor 5 thing has come up before...

Anonymous said...

sry this is off topic..but what is falafel?

Anonymous said...

hey falafel,

I was just wondering if someone could hsow me how all the pieces of tech could fit within 3 DVD cases? If it can't maybe the Revolution that we see really isn't the actual Revolution.

That is....if these are the actual specs..

Anonymous said...

i don't know why these specs are so unbelievable praxis.

the GPU clock is higher, but it has less pipes than Xbox360's GPU.

it also goes for a regular processor that can run as many threads as Xbox360's tri-core set-up and is also clocked a bit lower. clocked lower than ps3 and also doesn't have the SPEs. kinda looks like the processor you'd get if you went to IBM and spent similar money as Microsoft but asked for different things.

i tend to agree with you about the PPU.. i don't really see that happening and that throws the whole thing sideways.

i don't think the soundchip is unbelievable at all. nintendo hasn't had one since the SNES and they've been criticized on sound for the past decade because of it. also offloading sound to a seperate, reletively inexpensive processor would free up the main CPU to do even more work.

the RAM is not a sticking point for me at all. nintendo has been talking about making a machine 'faster to start and more power-effecient" and would be "applying advances in technology that do not just boost processing power. when we look at what you gain and what you lose, we don't like the trade off". using larger amounts of RAM instead of stuffing an uber-processor and expensive XDR ram in their console achieves those goals and also allows it to remain competitive.

i think alot of doubters are seriously over-estimating how much it will cost nintendo to buy lots of 1t-sram. they have a good relationship with MoSys and are going to sell millions of consoles. nintendo got alot of positive feedback from developers about 1t-sram and nintendo's in-house guys seem to like it alot too... would not surprise me in the least to see nintendo blow their load on RAM, and personally i'd rather they do that than worry about hitting 3 Ghz.

i mean shit.. you can play all these fancy ass games on the PC with a mediorcre CPU and a D-bo GPU as long as you've got some memory to play around with. let's be honest, CPUs are not the primary game focus right now. they just need to be competent

Anonymous said...

in my above comment, i made a big typo.

i said these specs say nintendo went with a multi-threaded processor than *can* handle as many threads as Xbox360 and is clocked lower...

that is a mistake. i meant to write *can't* handle as many threads and is clocked lower.

Anonymous said...

I'm just going to go through these specs selectively a little at a time and comment on them. I'm also just going to pretend for the moment that these are the actual specs, which they may very well not be. If they turn out to be made-up specs, then we'll all have a good laugh at whoever posted them originally and move on with our lives. Finally, please forgive any incoherence on my part, because I'm still recovering from the flu and I'm also a bit distracted (see below).

1 IBM Custom PowerPC 2.5 GHz with 256 KB L1 cache and 1 MB of L2 cache (an L3 cache is rumored). It’s Dual Threaded.

256KB is a very large L1 cache by most standards, and I think there are probably some peculiar things going on with it that will be revealed in time. For instance, assumption is that it's not symmetric, but that more of the L1 is I-cache than D-cache. This fits with what IBM did on the 970 (64K I-cache/32K D-cache), and it makes sense in a console setting where the D-cache is polluted very rapidly by streaming data. As for other peculiarities, all of the IBM-designed console chips do odd an innovative things with cache memory (i.e. the SPE's "local store," and the Xenon's cache locking mechanism), so I would expect this to be the case also with Revolution.

As for the basic architecture of Revolution, I've said previously in forum comments that I think it will be the same architecture as the PPE on both the Xenon and the PS3. If the above specs are correct, however, then this assumption is incorrect. The PPE is fairly deeply pipelined, with is why Cell and Xenon will debut at 3.2GHz. Running the PPE at 2.5GHz would be suicidal, I think, because performance just wouldn't be that great. So that 2.5GHz number suggests something else, and it's pretty obvious what that "something else" would be.

Here's something that I've heard: when they were going back and forth with IBM over The Switch, Apple was offered the Revolution chip for use in their portables. This tidbit makes a lot of sense if the Revolution chip is a modified 970.

The theory that this is a modified 970 (with hyperthreading + a specialized L1) makes even more sense when you think about the Revolution's form factor. You could probably fit the current low-power 970FX comfortably into the Revolution's form factor at 2.5GHz. If you couple this with another block of specialized hardware (whatever this PPU thing is), either on the same die or in the same package, then the Revolution looks pretty nice from gamer's standpoint. Just as importantly, from a developer's standpoint this makes the Revolution your favorite next-gen console. In contrast to the exotic Xenon and Cell parts, the 970 is a fairly conventional CPU architecture that doesn't rely too heavily on multithreading for performance increases. This means that it will be much easier to develop for than either Microsoft's or Sony's consoles.

512 MB of 700 MHz 1T-SRAM

This is a lot of very, very fast and relatively expensive system memory. If that number is real, then this console is no joke. This would also guarantee that there are some unusual things going on with the aforementioned 256KB cache. If you're going to do a memory hierarchy that's this customized for low-latency graphics operation, then that means that developers will have a lot of fine-grained control over how each level is used. You don't want developers to waste any effort or performance by working around what they expect the cache to do automatically (as is normally the case nowadays), so you'll do like the Xenon and the Cell and give them a high level of control over the entire memory hierarchy from the cache down.

The big unknown here is this PPU thing. Is it just a bank of additional off-chip SIMD hardware, or is it something else?

In all, this changes my perspective on the Revolution. When originally heard of the device's form factor, I was pretty down on its performance possibilities because I assumed that it would be going with the Cell/Xenon PPU as a CPU. However, the recent release of a laptop-worthy 970 and the possibility that some derivative of that will go into the Revolution changes the picture and makes the chip look more competitive performance-wise. It also makes it more developer-friendly, and that counts for quite a bit right now.

As far as Revolution's performance relative to the other two consoles, if the specs are true and what I've said above about the architecture is correct, then it's not at all far-fetched to say that it will initially perform on-par with the Xbox 360 and better than the PS3, despite having less hardware to go around. This is because the developer learning curve, and hence the game performance curve, will be less steep and will level off quickly. I'd expect the other two consoles to surpass it eventually, though. You can't break the laws of physics, and you can't get something for nothing: the MS and Sony consoles will be have more execution hardware and draw more power, so when (or if) developers learn to take advantage of all that hardware then the Revolution will lose its edge.
source:http://arstechnica.com/staff/carthage.ars/
2005/9/23/1348

Anonymous said...

WOW!

thats all i said after reading the specs.
After all this tlak of nintneod just being innotative and not ahve any real graphic or power specs in it, i think they surprised as all wiht these specs, if they are true.

but like half the stuff does seem a bit far fetched, but i can understand it not being able to surport HD but abl to surport a higher res then it, becasue HD-TV is completly diffrent form a normall tv. Go ifnd a computer site and read up on it youl understand.

Nintendo has always been good at making stuff load faster then other wize thought possiable, casue like a Game Cube loads much faster then a PS2 witht eh very same game, why? not only becasue tis got higher speeds and betetr specs all around but they did something diffrent that they never thought of, used mini dvd disks.

A smart move, but something that Han Solo(isent that the same name as the charecter in the movies[i know this guy has helped make some startwars games])but there rumours going around that its going ot be using a new type of render technolgy, unlike sony and microsoft that are useing floating point but the revo is going to be using cube mapping, which has been in devolpment for 5 years and they ahve perfecting it and using it in the revo. but thats a rumour of course

Anonymous said...

People seem perplexed by the PPU. I do not really know much about hardware, and I do not even know if my guess is possible, but could the PPU have something to do with processing all the different movements of the controller? I am not even sure if xbox 360 or ps3 have a PPU, but if they do not, then maybe the conroller is why the Revolution has it, but they don't.

Anonymous said...

has anyone considered that the reason nintendo may NOT want to go High-Def is because they don't want to spend money on an HD media format?

people keep speculating it's because of a weak processor or shitty GPU.. but hell even the GameCube could output at 480p, and we're supposed to believe Nintendo's next entry will be just barely more powerful?

Look at the Xbox360, lots of developers are claiming they are pushing up against the limits of the 7-ish Gig Dual Layer DVDs and it's already been confirmed that eNchant aRM is having trouble fitting it all on 2 DVDs.. BEFORE they add CGI cutscenes.

swapping discs is not a huge deal.. and for RPGs I accept it and it's been pretty much the norm in that genre for big titles since PSX. but obviously i don't want every xbox360 game i get to come on 2 discs or be compressed and then have to decompress all that shit on the fly while i'm playing.

seriously.. people try and argue Xbox360 gpu >>> PS3 gpu and vice versa.. and that's the WRONG discussion.

xbox360's storage space per disc, plus no standard HD, plus mandated 720p resolutions is a fucking bottleneck on that system. it's not the RAM or CPU or any shit like that. every other component in MS's system is outpacing it's media format.

maybe nintendo wants to stick with 480p because they spent all the money on RAM and don't have a HD media format solution and don't want to bog users down with lots of compression or disc swapping.

Anonymous said...

While unverified, a Factor 5 employee posting as "Han Solo" on forums.g4tv.com has posted supposed specs for system architectures that Nintendo is deciding between for their next console. Normally we'd be more skeptical, but Solo did provide near exact Xbox 360 specs before official details were announced.

According to Solo, Nintendo had two possibilities, canned the less-realistic, more expensive one and is now deciding between the first system and the following modifications to the first. From the middle of the thread's third page:


System 1 Modified
CPU:
1 IBM Custom PowerPC 2.5 GHz with 256 KB L1 cache and 1 MB of L2 cache (an L3 cache is rumored). It's Dual Threaded

13 billion dot product operations per second

Revolution GPU

ATI Custom based RN520 core. The "N" stands for Nintendo, and is because the ArtX team is with them, that is why it's an "N".

GPU core at 600 MHz. Will support up to 2048x1268 resolution, HD support is still being decided. Will have 256 MB's of 1T-SRAM (the RAM is much better due to some tweaking, compared to GC's RAM. The latency and Cells are much more efficient and faster. Around 1.2 ns is the latency, on average).

32 parallel floating-point dynamically scheduled shader pipelines.

Polygon Performance: 500 million triangles per second theoretical, average in game would be around <100 Million/sec>

Shader Performance: ~50 billion shader operations per second

Revolution memory

512 MB of 700 MHz 1T-SRAM

Other bits and pieces
Revolution will support a PPU chip (Physical Processing Chip). There will be 32 MB's of its own RAM, which will link to the CPU and GPU and the Controller.

There will also be a separate sound card that will support only DD 5.1 ñ DTS 7.1, rumors has it will have 16 MB's, like the Cube DSP


Sounds at least like he knows what he's talking about. Solo goes on to say that he thinks, "this [machine] would be on par with Xbox360, though PS3 could have an edge in the CPU area. In the GPU area the Revolution beats PS3, and technically would match Xbox 360." This would be great news to some as it would quell worries about console inferiority and level the playing field for multi-system releases. We'll be here to confirm or deny this rumor when official specs become available.

Anonymous said...

why is nintendo launching so much later than microsoft if they are going to have a much less powerful system?

that's under the assumption that the specs posted on this page are fake, because i really really believe that revolution will not be anywhere near as powerful as the other two.. xbox360 is going to sell at $399 and they are still losing money on it. these competing systems are ridiculously expensive and i wouldn't be surprised to see Sony eat like 100 or more dollars on every PS3.. just because if they do win this generation with sheer dominance, they will make a ton in a long run with blu-ray movies.

nintendo just can't launch at $199 or $250 and be competitive from a power perspective. also, i don't even think nintendo will have 512 MB of ram.

i think alot of you are going to be very disappointed in nintendo because you have let these fakers pump you up.. the Revolution is going to have much weaker hardware than it's competitors.. that's why there's a weird controller and nintendo keeps talking about how it isn't in competition with the others.. it's because they really aren't.

Anonymous said...

I thought the 512MB was for the downloadable content? Or did I just mis-read it

Anonymous said...

512 MBN of flash memory.

that particular spec has no real bearing on system performance, because flash memory isn't used like RAM.

the 512 mb is nice for downloads and game saves, so it's definitely a very positive aspect of the revolution.. at least i hope it's for game saves too.

i think the specs that got leaked a while ago..

2 1.8 ghz processors and 128 MB 1t-sram and 256 MB DRAM are probably a lot closer than some people would like to think. 768 MB of 1t-sram is really unrealistic.. especially since nintendo is specifically aiming this system at non-gamers. all you guys hoping for nintendo to just blow the other companies away with their own answer to Halo and Final Fantasy are in for a fucking shock.

you're going to get lots of nintendogs games and 2 Zelda games and Metroid. i'm trying to bring some of you guys to reality.. the rev will have plenty of get up and go, and will be more powerful than gamecube by a good bit, but if you've been playing games for a while and were thinking about only getting the Rev, you should probably rethink that. nintendo doesn't really want your business anymore.. we're kind of a dead end market, the 18-30 male.. we buy most games, but our market is pretty tapped and nintendo doesn't have a large stake in it.

Anonymous said...

*sarcasm*oh ok then just cause you said it was crap lets go and buy an Xbox and a Playstation

Anonymous said...

i don't think that guy was trying to slam nintendo.

notice how sony and microsoft keep saying 'casual gamer' and nintendo keeps saying 'non-gamer'?

just by the nature of them trying to reach those people you're pretty much guarenteed less games aimed sort of at you. i say sort of, because i don't know what you like.. but i'd gather that the people who most want to see nintendo kick all kinds of ass and want metroid prime 3 to destroy halo 3 aren't necessarily buying nintendogs.

Anonymous said...

I'm quite sure nintendo doesn't want to loose (or risks to loose) its hardcore fans.

Their franchises are their biggest weapon - so why wouldn't they build upon the thousands of fans of those franchises (like metroid, zelda, mario, pikmin, pokemon etc).
Nintendo will do two things:
- Make solid, deep games like they used to do for their fans
- make a lot of fun, smaller and "new types" of games to attract a broader audience.

Anonymous said...

This spec might be true ...

1. some one form nintendo tell that revolution's cpu will not as fast as other

2. some one form nintendo (Again) tell that revolution not slower than 360
-so ppu might be true-

3. nintendo don't wish to make revolution to have hdd and play mp3
-ya revo's cpu slower so rip music will take a little longer than other-

4. on the day nintendo show revo's controller he say that this revo will easy to make game
-this match a single core cpu-

5. 7.1 sound ...
-for cube it's *the* and *only* one that support 5.1 and function in game event ps2 support 5.1 only on playing dvd and on some movie in game-

6. In this web say that revo will used "ATI R520"

-----------------------------------------------------------
Ie-wa-ta sa-to-ru *not* say that Revo will not support HD tv but say that it will used 480p as default

2048 x 1268 is spect of ATI R520

and

*HD support is still as yet undecided- .... This HD is "Hard Disk" not HD tv*

Anonymous said...

Though I'm surprised that nintendo used a PPU (if these specs are true) it makes perfect sense. If you're using this magic wand controller to interact with an environment, say, swinging link's sword, you can't do as many things through simple animations. More physics calculations will have to be done on the fly in order to get his sword to feel like its moving correctly. That actually makes me believe these specs a little more, though I'm still hesitant.

Anonymous said...

This revolution it so trickey
----------------------------------

First Trick
The controller that really something
----------------------------------

2nd Trick
Single core make it easy to make game on it
----------------------------------

3th supper trick ...
1. revolution used that new-look controller to get people who don't play any game. and make a big sale of it.

2. revolution it self easy to make game ... or copy game form other system to it.

3. normaly game-maker get money form console's owner and number of people who buy it

4. game-maker make money for themself.

OR

1 : 2 , revolution have a big sale (a big number of people) and easy to copy game form other system to it.

3 : 4 , game-maker get money form console's owner and number of people who buy it.

OR

.... if other console's owner (as sony) can't effort more money than a change to sale there game to people who buy revolution the game-maker will move to revolution in the end ....
----------------------------------
Just if it a really big sale on revolution ... good luck this try nintendo.

Anonymous said...

From http://cube.ign.com/mail

"Han Solo is a scoundrel, we all know that, but in this case he isn´t a very clever scoundrel. That so-called employee of ours posting on message boards under the Han Solo name certainly isn´t employed at Factor 5 or working in any way for us. He isn´t speaking for the company and he better change his story as to where he has his information from, or we will be forced to take legal action against him."

Anonymous said...

HD is high-def, HDD is hard disk drive. Those specs are talking about HD, not HDDs.

I don't know. It was posted on g4's forums (I go there quite a bit) and... yeah. I don't know.

Anonymous said...

Matt from IGN leaks Revo Specs.

I have a friend who works for Camelot Software, and according to him, Revolution features 1 billion megabytes of embedded 1T-SRAM and its ATI-designed graphics chip runs both at 1.2 gigawatts and is simultaneously able to travel back to 1955 whenever it clocks speeds beyond 88 miles per hour. Spread the word!

Anonymous said...

Matt, have you seen these Revolution specs that leaked on the Internet? Are they real?

| Codename Revolution |
Central Processing Unit:

Custom IBM CPU "Broadway"
1x IBM PowerPC 970 core @ 3.0 GHz
256 kB L1 cache
Single core and multicore operation modes
2x IBM PowerPC 970FX cores @ 2.5 GHz
2x 128 kB L1 cache
Optional activation for multicore
Low power consumption
1 MB L2 cache


32-bit integer, 64-bit floating point
Two threads per core, six threads total
11 billion dot product operations/second (peak)
Graphics Processing Unit:


Custom ATI GPU "Hollywood"
Dual customized ATI R520 cores @ 500 MHz
ATI "Crossfire" dual core technology
10 MB embedded EDRAM
2x 128 MB GDDR4 graphics memory @ 1.25 GHz
50 GB/second texture bandwith (peak)
Next-gen hardware prestations
2048x1536 maximum resolution (DVI)
1920x1080 maximum resolution (1080i)
650 million triangles/second (peak)
100 million polygons/second (expected performance)
112 million shader operations/second (peak)
56 million shader operations/second (expected performance)
Physics Processing Unit:


Custom AGEIA PPU
Customized AGEIA PhysX PPU @ 400 MHz
Hardware physics acceleration
32 MB PC3200 DDR SDRAM physics memory @ 400 MHz
Sound Processing Unit:


Custom NEC Sound DSP
Custom NEC digital signal processor
256 simultaneous channels
196 KHz maximum sample rate
Sound ADPCM encoding
Dolby Pro Logic II, Dolby Digital 5.1 and Dolby DTS support
16 MB embedded SRAM sound memory
Memory:


512 MB 1T-SRAM @ 900 MHz main memory
No memory read delay
10 MB EDRAM @ 500 MHz embedded video memory
2x 128 MB GDDR4 @ 1.25 GHz graphics memory
32 MB PC3200 DDR SDRAM @ 400 MHz physics memory
16 MB SRAM sound memory
Total of 826 MB RAM
Miscellaneous system data:


1.2 billion floating point operations/second (peak)
65 nm manufacturing process
Liquid metal cooling
65x better heat conduction than water
No fans or pumps involved
Media:


Custom Panasonic 12 cm discs
12 GB data storage
CD/DVD support
Supports DVD-9, DVD-5, DVD-ROM, DVD+/-R, DVD+/-RW, Audio DVD, SVCD, VCD and audio CD.
16x DVD speed, 21.6 MBit/second data transfer
Data storage:


4 MB embedded EDROM (system utilities)
512 MB embedded Flash ROM (data storage)
2x SecureDigital memory card slot
64 Mbit/second read speed (peak)
16 Mbit/second write speed (peak)
Supports up to 16 GB per slot
2x Nintendo GameCube Memory Card slots
4 Mbit/second read speed (peak)
2 Mbit/second write speed (peak)
Networking:


802.11g compliant network chip
54 Mbit/second data transfer (peak)
Backward compatible with 802.11b protocol
Compatible with any 802.11g / 802.11b router, as well as the Nintendo PC Access Point and Nintendo DS
150 ft range (peak)
50 ft range (expected inhouse performance)
Matt responds: Sweet Jebus! If you're going to send me these long spec lists, at least have the courtesy to format them first. I mean, it took me like six minutes to properly list all of that crap! And for what? Just so that I could write that these specs are totally bogus and insanely inflated. Honestly, Revolution isn't going to be anywhere near that in terms of power and memory. I wish I could paste some of the cackles I got from industry folks when I showed them those crazy specs.

Oh well, at least that list filled up the mailbag section nicely -- and for that, I am thankful.

Oh, by the way, there seems to be an abundance of douchebags on the Internet who claim to have so-called leaked Revolution specs. Some joker calling himself 'Han Solo' alleges that he is an employee of Factor 5 and has specs for the system. As expected, he is a liar. Here's what F5 president Julian Eggebrecht has to say on the subject:


"Han Solo is a scoundrel, we all know that, but in this case he isn´t a very clever scoundrel. That so-called employee of ours posting on message boards under the Han Solo name certainly isn´t employed at Factor 5 or working in any way for us. He isn´t speaking for the company and he better change his story as to where he has his information from, or we will be forced to take legal action against him."
Incidentally, Mr. Solo's specs are likewise completely bogus. These people really seem to get a kick out of making up completely outlandish spec lists. I really want to get in on the fun. Let me try.

I have a friend who works for Camelot Software, and according to him, Revolution features 1 billion megabytes of embedded 1T-SRAM and its ATI-designed graphics chip runs both at 1.2 gigawatts and is simultaneously able to travel back to 1955 whenever it clocks speeds beyond 88 miles per hour. Spread the word!

Anonymous said...

"Han Solo is a scoundrel, we all know that, but in this case he isn´t a very clever scoundrel. That so-called employee of ours posting on message boards under the Han Solo name certainly isn´t employed at Factor 5 or working in any way for us. He isn´t speaking for the company and he better change his story as to where he has his information from, or we will be forced to take legal action against him."

why would factor 5 want to talk legal action if the speck were fake "He isn´t speaking for the company and he better change his story as to where he has his information from, or we will be forced to take legal action against him."

so he got info from some were

Radar11x said...

I look at the specs my self and I think that the numbers are marked up; and has anybody herd about a PPU before the leak?

Anonymous said...

Yeah the ppu was rumoured before, but mostly for the other two consoles.

Anonymous said...

On the old time. HD call for 1.44 mb disket (A:)

ya! HD been call for "H"ard "D"isk too. And if you (Maybe) work for long time you might know it.

Praxis say
"if R520 support resolutions up to 2048 x 1268 ... so Revolution must support HD tv"

and I think yes. OH! maybe HD is other device not HD tv.

So. I think. if HD is Hard Disk it will makes sense. Since HD tv is been support. And all Other consloe support Hard Disk.

Nintendo still have a long time to think about it. since nintendo say that it will connect on USB port if it exist -so it undecided-.

Anonymous said...

More likely to be something like:

CPU: Less than 2GHz custom PowerPC, maybe multi-threaded.

RAM: Maybe 128MBytes total

Polygons per sec: given the GC can do I think 20 Million per second max then I would think in excess of 50 Million for the Rev is achievable. If it is truely based on Ati R520 chips then it'll certainly not be lacking in graphics power based on recent suggestions.

PPU is a possibility, though I wonder if it may purely be a processor for the controller as opposed to a dedicated physics chip.

Falafelkid said...

Okay, here´s a word of warning to you sad little spammers out there. The next direct link to a commercial site which is obviously off-topic will be traced and sued. Go bother other people. Our penis sizes are fine, thank you very much. Maybe you should consider taking those pills yourselves. Sad little fucks!

Anonymous said...

Wow. Falafelkid, remember me never get on your nerves. :)

Anyway, what we've got here is enough to prove those specs fake, isn't it ? What do you think ?

Anonymous said...

Han Solo admitted to being a fake.

He claims he worked as some kind of 'physics engineer' and was contracted by Factor 5. So he's not actually an employee of Factor 5 directly and never was, but he claims he did work with them.

So all his specs are not true, he is a total fake, and I really doubt he ever worked for/with/near Factor 5 in way, shape, or form. He lied about one big thing, so you can't really believe anything he says.

He's a pretty sad man. Don't know why you'd want to do that and leak bloated specs like that.. it's only going to hurt Nintendo in the long run.

Anonymous said...

my beef with nintendo is this.. if you're seriously not going to release a system on par with the other two, why the hell are you going to be last out of the gate?

and what if this controller sucks?

seriously.. i'm cool with the idea of a "budget" system, especially if it's got some dope exclusives.. and i guess i don't really care about 512MB of ram either.. look what cube and xbox did with 24 and 64, respectively.. 128MB or 256MB ought to be cool for a $199 system... but i'd would have rather had a normal controller with a less expensive system.

i just don't understand why nintendo is going to take so long and deliver a weaker system. they are already practically irrelevant in Europe and it seems they are trying their damndest to do it in the states too. US is like your last holdout in the west Nintendo, don't fuck it up.

Anonymous said...

HD is high def when talking about specs, HDD is hard disk drive. They really can't be swapped in the context that Han Solo used them.

"* HD support is still as yet undecided"

Wouldn't it be easier and cause less confusion of they were talking about a hard drive if they said "HDD support is still as yet undecided"? And Nintendo has already shot down a hard disk drive for being too fragile. Han Solo is talking about high def there.

Not like it matters.

Anonymous said...

well including a hard drive doesn't make much sense for nintendo.

everything they want to accomplish with downloaded content can be handled cheaply, cooly, and effeciently with flash memory. 512 MB is great for NES and SNES games (not quite as hot for N64 games.. but i'd imagine by the time rev is out picking up a 256MB flash card to pop a bunch of N64 games onto would run you prolly like 15 bucks.. plus large flash cards are getting real cheap now too).

however.. even as i say this and recognize that an HDD is not even remotely necessary in a game machine, the custom soundtrack system of Xbox was IMO, the thing that put Xbox a level above the other systems.. people bring up the graphics and Halo, but graphics were still pretty good on other machines and not everybody likes Halo.

Being a frequent player of MVP Baseball and Madden for my PS2.. i can safely say that nothing has driven me closer to splattering my brains against a dirty bathroom wall more than EA-Trax music.

I honestly don't care about Hi-Def (tho it would be nice to let some of those HDTV owners get their nintendo on in full glory) or playing DVDs. Seriously.. DVD playback is way down the list for me.. but custom soundtracks for at least a good portion of games is a must and might be a deal breaker for me personally.

i dunno how Xbox360 is going it now.. i guess you need an mp3 player to stream music directly.. which is somewhat lame if that's the only way to do it. what if people don't have mp3 players?

people made a big damn deal about HD and even some dumb website, but there has been no talk of custom soundtracks. it personalizes your games a whole helluva lot better than fucking faceplates, that's for sure. nintendo fans need to make a big deal out of this because it's awesome.

again, i'm not saying allow this for like Zelda, Metroid or Mario.. but it'd rock for like Mario Kart or F-Zero and of course EA games because EA-Trax is shitty garbage covered in extra garbagey shit.

Anonymous said...

"if R520 support resolutions up to 2048 x 1268 ... so Revolution must support HD tv"

Certainly not true. Sure the video card can output that high, but the GC one I'm sure could output higher than 420p. If Nintendo slaps a port on the back of the revolution that doesn't support higher than 420p (say, like the current GC one) then no one will make HD games for it. The video card can do better graphics at 420p than it can at 2048x1268, so its not like you're really losing extra power or anything, just resolution.

If anyone's into astronomy here's a good analogy. You can have a really high res telescope, but if you don't collect enough light, you don't see jack shit. Resolution is always nice, but its not the be all and end all of things.

Anonymous said...

i think Matt from IGN recently said that some third party developers have reported having some 720p documentation in their Nintendo Revolution dev kits.

either way, i'm sure there's enough spec wise in the Revolution to hit 720p. whether there's a significant framerate hit, or if the frame buffer isn't big enough to handle FSAA at 720p might be some stuff getting in the way.

it could be they don't want to get a HD media format and don't want to pay for one, and don't want alot of multiple disc games, so they just said "forget it.. just make games at 480p with tons of effects"

i just want to remind everyone, that there's a reason why xbox360 has 48 shaders. number one, it needs more because the unified ones, while more flexible, aren't as powerful as traditional vertex and pixel shaders. second, when you do things in 720p vs 480p, you have 3 times as many pixels to draw. so while the resolution goes up, you actually can't do as much work per pixel.

Anonymous said...

That right resolutions is something pointless since rev don't care about how picture it make. But how fun we will get.

But for game like tertis that don't need video card speed. it make sense for allow software to change resolutions ... (and it just one-pass metrix tranformation to resize the output ^ ^)

anyway support 720p is better since it used normally like 420p. not *the new* hd-tv that request much more power to make picture , and much more money for that hd-tv.

Anonymous said...

Sorry, but the PPU deal is with Sony and the PS3

However, it is still possible that AGEIA has an NDA with Nintendo...

Anonymous said...

First off, I read this blog ALL OF THE TIME. Second, I wish that those specs were real.

...But then again...maybe it's a mind game trick and Nintendo wants everyone to lower their expectations of Nintendo Revolution's true power so they could make me say WOW. Nintendo would never say their console is weaker and not have a special trick with them.

Anonymous said...

come on, dont shit your pants...
as the revo is supposed to attract non-gamers, its obvious that it wont cost much. low cost means not that powerful hardware, as powerful hardware would raise the price.

concluding those facts, we can say: as the revolution is a next-gen-console, it will surely show us really good graphics, but not as good as the ps3.
dont expect too much, just wait for official specs, or better, screenshots.

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