Nintendo Game Cube:

The Game Cube is Nintendo's entry into the current (128 bit ?) console war and it is one impressive beast. Featuring an IBM 'gekko' CPU running at 485 MHz, and some impressive custom chips, the Nintendo Game Cube seems to be the console to beat. It should be released in late September, 2001, hopefully worldwide. This is the Console that is veiwed by D.C. multi format central as the video games console benchmark. It will indeed be interesting to see how the Game Cube pans out.

Technical Specs:

CPU:

MPU("Microprocessor 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 1.3GB/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. 2MB Sustainable Latency : 6.2ns (1T-SRAM)

Embedded Texture Cache Approx. 1MB Sustainable Latency : 6.2ns (1T-SRAM)

Texture Read Bandwidth 10.4GB/second (Peak)

Main Memory Bandwidth 2.6GB/second (Peak)

Pixel Depth 24-bit Color, 24-bit Z Buffer

Sound:

Processed in system LSI

Memory:

System Memory 40MB

Main Memory 24 MB MoSys 1T-SRAM, Approximately 10ns Sustainable Latency

A-Memory 16MB (81MHz DRAM)

Graphics:

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, Anisotropic Filtering, Real-time Hardware Texture Decompression (S3TC), Real-time Decompression of Display List, HW 3-line Deflickering filter

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

System Floating-point Arithmetic Capability 10.5 GFLOPS (Peak) (MPU, Geometry Engine, HW Lighting Total)

Real-world polygon 6 million to 12 million polygons/second (Peak) (Assuming actual game conditions with complex models, fully textured, fully lit, etc.)

CD ROM:

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, Approx. 1.5GB Capacity

miscelaneous:

Input/Output Controller Port x4

Memory Card Slot x2

Analog AV Output x1

Digital AV Output x1

High-Speed Serial Port x2

High-speed Parallel Port x1

Power Supply AC Adapter DC12V x 3.5A

Main Unit Dimensions 4.3"(H) x 5.9"(W) x 6.3"(D)