IGN builds the Wii 2 [Video]

The folks at IGN decided to something I’d call a little crazy, and built a PC with specs roughly equivalent to what Project Café is rumoured to pack. They made a video of it in action, which shows off the Frankenstein-like machine and several PC graphical heavy-hitters like Crysis 2 running silky-smooth on it, with comparisons to their Xbox 360 equivalents.

The machine was packed with a 3.2 GHz tri-core AMD processor, 2 GB of RAM, and a Radeon HD 4850 (which uses the R700 series of graphics chips).

Don’t take what you see in the video to be hard evidence of the Wii 2’s true power, though – for one, absolutely none of the rumours about the system have received official confirmation, so there could be anything inside Nintendo’s own system. Second, when games are programmed specifically for a console, developers can optimize it for the hardware to a degree that is simply impossible when coding for computers. That’s how the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 still manage to put out very respectable graphics even though the underlying technology in them is getting close to 6 years old now.

Special thanks to SonOfMrPeanut for sending this one in!

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Comments, Reactions, and General Hooliganism

  1. Biohazard

    At least hardcore gamers can take comfort that Nintendo’s next console will run games like Crysis 2.

    • Joseph

      But can it run Crysis at max, probably not.

    • Biohazard

      When did I say it could?

    • Joseph

      I wasn’t quoting you.

    • Play4Fun

      It can if a Crysis version was made especially for it.

    • Joseph

      So thats a no.

  2. Jikayaki

    Something to take into consideration even if IGN’s Frankenstein PC is roughly comparable to Wii 2 it would be capable of far more in a optimized closed hardware scenario than its PC equivalent. An example if you where to put together a Xbox 360 equivalent PC it wouldn’t be able to play all Xbox 360 games and wouldn’t likely be able to play the games it could run in the same resolution or frame rate.

  3. RockD79

    These parts are meaningless. Each part runs differently. Just gonna have to wait till the projector starts running at noon on the 7th.

  4. Arnar

    This is pointless… This PC is running an OS and other programs while also running a game. Remove the power consuming OS and unnecessary programs and you’re boosting the graphical power by a lot. So a console with the same specs as a PC could run better/smoother looking games than the PC.

    So if the Wii 2 does indeed have similar specs as this home made “Wii 2”, expect it to perform better than a PC running on Windows Vista/7.

  5. Play4Fun

    The comparisons they did mean nothing for a console. The console would be capable of much more like the posters above said.

    Still, those would be some pretty nice specs. A console like that would run PC games like Crysis, Witcher 2 and battlefield 3 at high settings.

  6. wolvesgod

    That’s really awesome, I would love to see Nintendo’s IP games running on that thing.

    I also want to see how nintendo will show it off, too… will it be like the 3DS or will it be like Zelda skyward sword?

  7. Mason

    This is very interesting but graphics aren’t everything.

  8. real gamer

    massive dumb here !!!!!

    fact 1 pc runs a monster OS

    fact 2 its not a integrated polished gaming set up all on the same mother board or even the same chip these days

    fact 3 standard crappy ram no fast ram or edram

    fact 4 not being coded to the gpu and cpu its generic open code made for all pc types wii 2 wouldn’t run like that

    it would run wii 2 polished code

    fact 5 there’s no off the shelf processors in wii 2 there all custom built

    fact 6 real coders developers worth there salt will code even tighter to the metal to the assembly level code micro code of the gpu cpu giving yet another boost to power

    fact 7 nintendo makes the most efficent consoles in the world squeezing every drop from the chips the buy

    ign ignorant lol


  9. Arnar:

    This is pointless… This PC is running an OS and other programs while also running a game. Remove the power consuming OS and unnecessary programs and you’re boosting the graphical power by a lot. So a console with the same specs as a PC could run better/smoother looking games than the PC.
    So if the Wii 2 does indeed have similar specs as this home made “Wii 2″, expect it to perform better than a PC running on Windows Vista/7.

    That’s true. So, in other words, if it has those specs, it’ll look better than anything we’ve ever seen on a console.