Hasta La Gadget!

Nintendo’s consoles aren’t known for raw performance, and the upcoming Wii U won’t change that. But Akihiro Suzuki, developer of the popular–and graphically intense–Dynasty Warriors, has already started to complain about what he considers an underpowered CPU:

“One of the weaknesses of the Wii U compared to PS3 and Xbox 360 is the CPU power is a little bit less. So for games in the Warriors series, including Dynasty Warriors and Warriors Orochi, when you have a lot of enemies coming at you at once, the performance tends to be affected because of the CPU… Dealing with that is a challenge.”

Although the exact specifications of the IBM-made CPU remain a mystery for those outside of Kyoto, it’s known that it has 3 Power PC cores and was known to be relatively less powerful than the Wii U’s custom AMD 7 series GPU. It’s entirely possible that the Wii U could have better graphics, but worse performance. Suzuki is speaking from experience: his team has been developing a Dynasty Warriors game  that will launch alongside the Wii U on November 18.

Of course, the Wii U is a new console and developers will probably require some time to get used to the system and its developer tools. Optimizations that work well on one console architecture can doom performance on another. But it’s still not a great sign for Nintendo that its third-party developers are already calling the Wii U’s processor a “challenge.”

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Nintendo Wii U launch for Europe might be brought forward to 23rd November thanks to advertising glitch, Nintendo Wii U will reportedly be region-locked,

A teardown of Apple‘s A6 mobile processor powering the new iPhone 5 has revealed some details this afternoon. Like many of their previous processors there’s been a lot of mystery around just what exactly is powering the new device, but thanks to iFixit we now have an in depth teardown of the A6 processor itself.

The teardown reveals that the chip has been highly customized, as it sways away from the standard ARM-based design and layout for Apple’s own needs. This is completely custom and and ARM-based CPU cores seem to all be arranged manually for optimal performance. The microscopic inspection by iFixit shows just how advanced this SoC really is.

While we already knew the A6 was a dual-core processor, this reveals things such as 1GB of RAM, dual CPU cores and a triple-core GPU for graphics and rendering. Those three GPU cores will help with all those smooth UI transitions, as well as the stunning gameplay and graphics performance Apple touted during their announcement of the iPhone 5.

When we said manually arranged above, we mean that each core was placed manually, rather than automated like most processors these days. iFixit states this is “much more expensive and time consuming” but obviously the performance benefits outweigh the costs. This allows the chip to be extremely powerful, efficient, and perform great without the need to boost CPU speeds like the competition. The teardown also confirms the Apple A6 processor powering the iPhone 5 is indeed a Samsung 32nm chip. This makes us excited to see how Apple can maximize performance with other ARM-based layouts moving forward.

[via Electronista]

Apple A6 teardown reveals dual-core CPU, tri-core GPU power is written by Cory Gunther & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

For many people who’ve bought Apple computers over the past few years, unless you have an external monitor setup, your Thunderbolt port has gone unused, although Apple touted Thunderbolt’s ability to transfer data faster than USB 3.0 as a feature. There have been a few hard drives offered with Thunderbolt functionality, but they’ve been expensive, premium devices. LaCie just started offering a Thunderbolt and USB 3.0-enabled version of its Rugged series of external drives. The drives are fully portable too–they’re fully bus-powered and draw all their power from the host computer.

(more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: LaCie introduces rugged eSATA external hard drive, LaCie rikki hard drive,

So, it turns out hiring replacement refs so that the NFL season can continue uninterrupted was not the best idea. Sure, it’s led to tons of free publicity and has put the league in the spotlight. But with betting websites actually refunding wagers as a result of botched calls, it’s not the positive light NFL officials were hoping for. More »

Sony is always looking for more ways to make the PS3 standout from the likes of the Xbox 360 and Wii (soon to be Wii U), and one new way its doing that is by putting games on PSN the same day they launch at retail. Unveiled today, Sony’s new “PSN Day 1 Digital” program will kick off in October with the release of Resident Evil 6, letting users purchase and download full, new games on launch day right from their couch. Even better is that PS Plus users will get to enjoy a 10% discount in some cases.

Out of all of this, the fact that PS Plus users get 10% off is probably the most surprising. Console manufacturers – Microsoft especially, Sony to a lesser extent – sometimes like to keep prices high on digital versions of retail games. The result is that occasionally you’d end up paying more for a digital copy of the game than you would for a physical copy from a brick and mortar store, but this time around, Sony is ready to pass on some discounts provided you’ve subscribed to PlayStation Plus. Of course, just being a PS Plus member doesn’t automatically mean you’re entitled to the discount, as you’ll have to pre-order the game in question before Sony and the publishers will shave 10% off the purchase price.

Here’s the full list of games that will be launching on PSN on launch day. Keep in mind that PS Plus prices only apply if you pre-order the title unless otherwise stated:

• Resident Evil 6 – October 2, $59.99
• NBA 2K12 – October 2, $59.99/$53.99 for PS Plus members
• Dishonored – October 9, $59.99/$53.99 for PS Plus members
• Doom 3: BFG Edition – October 16, $39.99/$35.99 for PS Plus members
• 007 Legends – October 16, $59.99/$53.99 for PS Plus members during first week of availability
• Medal of Honor Warfighter – October 23, $59.99
• Need for Speed: Most Wanted – October 30, $59.99/$53.99 for PS Plus members
• Assassin’s Creed III – October 30, $59.99

Unsurprisingly, three of October’s biggest games – Resident Evil 6, Medal of Honor Warfighter, and Assassin’s Creed III – don’t come with a discount for PS Plus members, though Assassin’s Creed III is still available for pre-order. There’s no word on if these games will be available to download at midnight on launch day, but Sony’s recent launch day release of Borderlands 2 wasn’t, so it isn’t looking good for the rest of the bunch. More details will almost certainly be coming shortly, so stay tuned.

[via The Verge]

Sony unveils PSN Day 1 Digital program is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.