Video Games Information & Articles

This type of problem, if not solved, could have a dramatic effect on the succeess of the game business.

Nintendo decided to focus on solving this issue by creating the Gamecube with the purpose of realizing the highest levelof performance and to enhance the productivity of software development. This was Nintendo's vision of what a next generation game machine should do.

Instead of going for the highest possible performance, which does not contribute to software development, Nintendo created a developer-friendly next generation TV game machine that maintained above-standard capabilities.

In order to accomplish this, Nintendo has painstakingly removed the "bottlenecks" which hinder an efficient system. They also introduced 1T-RAM technology, which has a minimum of delays, into the main memory and the Graphics LSI Mixed Memory. Also, secondary cache memory with a large capacity was implemented in the MPU. With this combination Nintendo succeeded at creating reliable functionality that can be used with actual games.

The Nintendo GameCube can create worlds in which players can enjoy the feeling of actually touching the "worlds" created by the software. In addition, players benefit by building a bond with the game and characters in it.

The NINTENDO GAMECUBE carries on the "DNA" of Nintendo games and gave birth to a new kind of entertainment that surpasses existing concepts of what great gaming is.

The "New Generation of Entertainment" in the 21st Century starts right here.

Features:

• MPU("Microprocessor Unit")IBM Power PC "Gekko"


• Manufacturing Process 0.18 microns Copper Wire Technology


• Clock Frequency 405 MHz


• CPU Capacity 925 Dmips (Dhrystone 2.1)


• Internal Data Precision 32bit Integer & 64bit Floating-point


• External Bus Bandwidth 1.6GB/second(Peak)


• External Bus Bandwidth 1.6GB/second(Peak) (32bit address, 64bit data bus 202.5MHz)


• Internal Cache L1: Instruction 32KB, Data 32KB (8 way) L2: 256KB (2 way)


• Internal Cache L1: Instruction 32KB, Data 32KB (8 way) L2: 256KB (2 way)


• System LSI "Flipper"


• Manufacturing Process 0.18 microns NEC Embedded DRAM Process


• Embedded Frame Buffer Approx. 2MB


• Embedded Frame Buffer Approx. 2MB Sustainable Latency : 5ns (1T-SRAM)


• Embedded Texture Cache Approx. 1MB Sustainable Latency : 5ns (1T-SRAM)


• Texture Read Bandwidth 12.8GB/second (Peak)


• Main Memory Bandwidth 3.2GB/second (Peak)


• Color, Z Buffer Each is 24bitsImage Processing Function Fog, Subpixel Anti-aliasing, HW Light x8, Alpha Blending, Virtual Texture Design, Multi-texture Mapping/Bump/Environment Mapping, MIPMAP, Bilinear Filtering, Real-time Texture Decompression (S3TC), etc


• Other Real-time Decompression of Display List, HW Motion Compensation Capability


• The Gekko MPU integrates the power PC CPU into a custom, game-centric chip

Online purchase available at Gamestop.com