Hacker Says He's Cracked Open The Wii U, CPU Is 'Nothing To Write Home About'

Hector Martin, he who put together the first open-source driver for Microsoft’s Kinect two years ago, now says he’s cracked open the Wii U.

https://lastchance.cc/victor-declared-in-hack-kinect-bounty-hunt-5687002%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E

He won’t say what he did to get the details out of Nintendo’s latest console, but he did tweet some juicy (and very, very technical) tidbits about the system:

https://twitter.com/embed/status/273970271449411584

https://twitter.com/embed/status/274179198141206528

https://twitter.com/embed/status/274179630599131136

https://twitter.com/embed/status/274180424178233345

https://twitter.com/embed/status/274181497370591233

https://twitter.com/embed/status/274182672652308480

So what can we make of all this? For starters, it sounds like Kotaku‘s reporting over the summer—that the Wii U will be a “power orphan” compared to its next-gen competitors—was spot on. As Stephen wrote then:

https://lastchance.cc/the-wii-us-power-problem-5920931%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E

But one insider who has had access to the machine says that the console’s impressive AMD Radeon-based graphics chip is off-set by a CPU that runs at low speeds, can do out-of-order processing but has fewer threads than the 360.

Also worth noting: just last week, one of the developers behind Metro: Last Light said the Wii U has a “horrible, slow CPU.” Martin’s discoveries seem to match that theory, as well as Digital Foundry’s thoughts on how Mass Effect 3 runs on the three different consoles

https://lastchance.cc/the-wii-u-has-a-horrible-slow-cpu-according-to-these-5962354%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E

We’ll be following this story and continuing to talk to developers about the Wii U’s power as time goes on.

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