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Gamecube Specs Updated
The Specifications for Gamecube Have Changed Slightly This article is from IGN
May 16, 2001
Nintendo has updated GameCube's specification sheet
revealing a few new clockspeeds, and a more complete features list. The
most notable changes are the upgraded speed of the Gekko CPU processor,
which now runs at 485MHz. As well as the Flipper graphics chip which has
been slightly downgraded from 200MHz to 162MHz. All the hardware must be
in sync, which is one of the reasons that graphics chip has a lower clockspeed
at this point. At 200MHz that seemed to be the ceiling for the processor
speed -- any higher and the chip would have run too hot. So, with an upgraded
CPU, Nintendo's only option was to downgrade the speed of the graphics
chip. This affects bus speeds, and bandwidth, but will it make a difference?
Technically speaking, yes, but had Nintendo not announced the spec change
users would have never known the difference. The kits most developers were
using had a slightly lower clock speeds than the final version. So, if
anything, the upgrade to the CPU is going to benefit developers in the
area of animation, ridding games of slowdown, more complex AI, etc.
Personally, we think the recent
demonstrations speak for themselves. GameCube is very powerful, and in the end
it's about gameplay. In that regard, the "specifications" can only grow with
time. See what will no doubt be the final specification sheet for the system
below.
Size: Approximate Height 4.3" / Width 5.9" / Depth
6.3".
Media: Three-inch Nintendo GameCube Disc based on
Matsushita's Optical Disc Technology, with approx. 1.5GB Capacity.
Launch Date: September 14, 2001, in Japan; November 5,
2001, in North America; and Spring 2002 in Europe.
Titles: Seven exclusive Nintendo GameCube titles from
Nintendo are expected by the 2001 holiday season in North America.
Peripheral Devices: Memory Card, containing 4 megabits
of flash memory; SD-Memory Card Adapter; Wireless Wavebird; Controller; 56Kbps,
V. 90, Modem Adapter; Broadband Adapter; and Digital Video Cable.
Controller: To provide more comprehensive and intuitive
play control, Nintendo has added several new features to the Nintendo GameCube
controller, including a second analog control stick, left and right analog
trigger buttons, and a built-in rumble motor. The Nintendo GameCube controller
has two grips and the controls for the left and right hands have been separated
into two "systems." The right-side buttons have been re-arranged to allow the
user to set the A Button home position, making the role of each button more
natural.
This is the old controller
that was revealed last year.
This is the new controller
revealed this year. Not much of a difference.

MPU (Micro
Processing Unit)
|
Custom IBM Power PC "Gekko"
|
Manufacturing
Process
|
0.18 micron IBM Copper Wire Technology
|
Clock Frequency
|
485 MHz
|
CPU Capacity
|
1125 Dmips (Dhrystone 2.1)
|
Internal Data
Precision
|
32-bit Integer & 64-bit Floating-point
|
External Bus
|
1.3 GB/second peak bandwidth
32-bit address space
64-bit data bus
162 MHz clock
|
Internal Cache
|
L1: Instruction 32KB, Data 32KB (8
way)
L2: 256KB (2 way)
|
System LSI
|
Custom ATI/Nintendo "Flipper"
|
Manufacturing
Process
|
0.18 micron NEC Embedded DRAM Process
|
Clock Frequency
|
162 MHz
|
Embedded Frame
Buffer
|
Approx. 2 MB
Sustainable Latency: 6.2ns (1T-SRAM)
|
Embedded Texture
Cache
|
Approx. 1 MB
Sustainable Latency: 6.2 ns (1T-SRAM)
|
Texture Read
Bandwidth
|
10.4 GB/second (Peak)
|
Main Memory
Bandwidth
|
2.6 GB/second (Peak)
|
Pixel Depth
|
24-bit Color, 24-bit Z Buffer
|
Image Processing
Functions
|
Fog, Subpixel Anti-aliasing, 8 Hardware
Lights, Alpha Blending, Virtual Texture Design, Multi-texturing, Bump Mapping,
Environment Mapping, MIP Mapping, Bilinear Filtering, Trilinear Filtering,
Ansitropic Filtering, Real-time Hardware Texture Decompression (S3TC),
Real-time Decompression of Display List, HW 3-line Deflickering filter
|
Audio
Processing
|
(Incorporated into the System LSI)
|
Sound Processor
|
Custom Macronix 16-bit DSP
|
Instruction
Memory
|
8KB RAM + 8KB ROM
|
Data Memory
|
8KB RAM + 4KB ROM
|
Clock Frequency
|
81 MHz
|
Performance
|
64 simultaneous channels, ADPCM encoding
|
Sampling Frequency
|
48KHz
|
Performance
|
Floating-point
Arithmetic Capability
|
10.5 GFLOPS (Peak)
(MPU, Geometry Engine, HW Lighting Total)
|
Real-world polygon
|
6 to 12 million polygons/second (Peak)
(Assuming actual game conditions with
complex models, fully textured, fully lit, etc.)
|
System Memory
|
40 MB
|
Main Memory
|
24 MB MoSys 1T-SRAM
Approximately 10ns Sustainable Latency
|
A-Memory
|
16 MB 81 MHz DRAM
|
Disc
Drive
|
CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) System
|
Average Access
Time
|
128ms
|
Data Transfer
Speed
|
16Mbps to 25Mbps
|
Media
|
3 inch Nintendo GameCube Disc based
on Matsushita's Optical Disc Technology
|
Capacity
|
Approx. 1.5GB
|
Input/Output
|
4 Controller Ports
2 Memory Card Slots
Analog AV Output
Digital AV Output
2 High-Speed Serial Ports
High-speed Parallel Port
|
Power
Supply
|
AC Adapter DC12V x 3.5A
|
Dimensions
|
4.3"(H) x 5.9"(W) x 6.3"(D)
|
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