oc_faq

The Nintendo Revolution is the next generation console developed by Nintendo. There has been no confirmed technical specs, but rumors are "four 2.5 GHz IBM G5 cores and a Dual core ATI card based off the RN520 chip" and another rumor is "two 1.8 GHz IBM G5 cores and a 600 mhz ATI graphics card." Again, these are just rumors and are most likely untrue, and realistically out of the two, it will likely be the second one, but no confirmed specs by Nintendo have been made.

There will be out of the box Wi-Fi internet access which allows you to play over the internet for free with other players, or download NES, SNES, and N64 games for a small fee. The games will be stored on 512 mb of Flash memory. And yes, Nintendo Gamecube games are compatible with the Revolution. Some older Sega games may also be available for download. The suspected systems are: Sega Master System, Sega Genesis/Megadrive, Sega CD, Sega 32x and Sega Saturn, but that is unconfirmed at this time.

As for games at its release date, it is rumored to be around 50, but only a few titles have been confirmed. Mario 128, Super Smash Brothers 3 (working title), and Final Fantasy:Crystal Chronicles 2.

Game companies that have pledged support so far are Activision, Atari, Bandai, Capcom, Electronic Arts, Konami, Midway, Namco, Sega, Square Enix, THQ, and Ubisoft.

An unconfirmed rumor is Nintendo may be empoying some sort of "NURB" like technology. NURBS . Which if true, could allow for graphics like the Xbox 360 and the PS3 are suspected to be able to achieve.

As for controllers, they are thinking very much so "outside the controller". They have developed a motion sensitive remote which has a port on the bottom to plug in accessories, two of which have been confirmed. There is a basic Analog joystick with 2 shoulder buttoms, and a conventional controller that still uses the motion sensitive features. The Revolution will also have 4 Gamecube controller ports, and 2 Gamecube memory card ports.
A little article on the controller.. http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3145837

This part is courtesy of TheKraken (thanks for this contribution!)

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
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The Nintendo Revolution will hook up to a t.v. or a computer monitor, thus enabling it to support up to 2048x1268 without HDTV.
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If this is the true specs (above) then it will be a very powerful system. It may get beaten in graphics, but it wont be noticable unless you are a really sharp eye, but its not gonna matter. It wont affect gampley.

Contributed by Jori

metalkobra

wewt!

J3r3my

Are all the old games actually gonna fit on 512MB?

HisMajesty

I doubt Nintendo could come up with anything like Quad CPU's but if they did i still wouldn't buy it. As for the dual R520 ATi cores, if they had them Xbox 360 would have it cause Xbox and Xbox 360 both have/had ATi graphics.

Krunk_Kracker

Nice job Jori :thumb:

Jori

Not necessarily, like I said these are just rumors. But the ATI chip is completely custom chip based on the RN520 chip, Nintendo had it SPECIFICALLY made, just like Xbox did. And for J3r3my, you can always buy more flash memory, and the cartridge games take up almost no space at all. NES and SNES games are like a few megabytes, and N64 are probably not to much larger, and likely with progression in compression (hey it rhymes) they will be even smaller.

Edit: Never MetalKobra!

metalkobra

specially* not especially ;).

Fellfromgrace

progression in compression biatches ! WHAT? HUH? OK? allright now your set lol, had to throw the "gangsta" in your little rhyme

Andrewchamp

Nicely put, very indepth and straight forward. Nice job!!!!

HrnyGoat

Good Faq. That would be sweet it did have 4 cores!