nintendo trash
The Wii U has been regarded as one of the least powerful consoles of 2013. Outperformed by its counterparts, the Xbox 360 and PS3 (Later Xbox One and PS$, after their 2013 release), the Wii U really had no place in the market, with it's awkward controller concept, and lack of portability (Which if it were portable, it would have sold a lot better). But how powerful is the Wii U, and what makes it "one of the least powerful consoles"?
The Wii U is powered by an SoC (System on a Chip). In it contains 2 GB RAM (1 GB dedicated to system processes, 1 GB usable for games), as well as a graphics chip, and a processor chip.
The processor chip, dubbed Espresso, packs three cores, and is based on the IBM PowerPC 750 series chips, the same PowerPC CPU in the PowerMac G3 from 1999. Except the PowerMac G3 only had one PowerPC core, where as the Wii U has three. One could argue that developers could take advantage of these three cores to optimize games so they run faster. However, the individual cores are extremely slow, so slow that it would make Core 2 and even Pentium NetBurst look like next-generation hardware. To get an idea of how "powerful" a NetBurst Pentium 4 is, here's a video of the Pentium 4 running Battlefield 1.
However, the Wii U's saving grace, the one thing that prevents it from fading into obscurity and dealing a critical blow to Nintendo, is the graphics chip. The graphics chip, dubbed Latte, packs an ATI GX1, the same GX1 in the original Wii and the Gamecube. Not very impressive, but it contains another GPU: The GX2. Unlike the GX1, the GX2 is based on "modern" ATI/AMD architecture. While it's unknown what GPU it's based on, rumors say it's placed between the Radeon HD 4600 series, and the Radeon HD 4700 Series.
Because of the power of Nintendo + ATI's GX2 chip, developers have been able to port many third-party titles, such as Black Ops 2, WATCH_DOGS, Minecraft, etc over to the Wii U. However, out of all the other factors that brought down the Wii U, the two main things that killed it were the extremely slow PowerPC cores and 1GB usable RAM, and the release of the Nintendo Switch, which features a modified Tegra X1 chip (4 GB RAM, GPU similar to GT 920MX, 4x Cortex A57 primary, 4x Cortex A53 secondary).
Overall, the Wii U isn't the fastest system, but it is faster than most people think it is.
Citations:
"Wii U Tech Specs" IGN, Ziff Davis LLC. 28 Feb. 2014. http://www.ign.com/wikis/wii-u/Wii_U_Tech_Specs
"Nvidia Tegra X1" Specout, Graphiq Inc. http://system-on-a-chip.specout.com/l/1165/Nvidia-Tegra-X1
[Edited] Green Ham Gaming. "How Powerful is the Wii U" 30 Apr, 2017 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPqWqbjOIJc
[Edited] Green Ham Gaming. "How Powerful is the Wii U" 30 Apr, 2017 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPqWqbjOIJc
