Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

I was wondering if the Wii (not Wii U) uses software emulation to play Gamecube games, or does it have true hardware to run the game without emulation.

The wii uses almost the same hardware as a gamecube.

(06-26-2013, 10:34 PM)RachelB Wrote: [ -> ]The wii uses almost the same hardware as a gamecube.

Okay cool, thank you very much for the info. I know the Wii U uses software emulation for Wii games so it made me question the regular Wii's method of backwards compatibility.

The Wii U also has a similiar cpu as the Wii (but faster + multi core), but the gpu differs completely.

The Wii U's GPU either emulates the Wii's GPU or has the Wii's GPU embedded in it, IIRC.

I must have read wikipedia wrong, or it lied to me lol. I could have sworn that earlier today wikipedia claimed that Wii U used software emulation for Wii games. Now wikipedia says no such thing. According to wiiudaily, "the Wii U will be fully backwards compatible with the older Wii system, due to the hardware such as the Wii U CPU and Wii U GPU being based on the same type of architectures and made by the same suppliers." So the Wii U must be able to play Wii games without emulation since the hardware is very similar. But, the Wii U can't play Gamecube games and will have to rely on the Virtual Console software emulation.

(06-27-2013, 06:03 AM)shoober420 Wrote: [ -> ]But, the Wii U can't play Gamecube games and will have to rely on the Virtual Console software emulation.

They'll have to solve the fact that no GC pad can be plugged though

shoober420 Wrote:I must have read wikipedia wrong, or it lied to me lol. I could have sworn that earlier today wikipedia claimed that Wii U used software emulation for Wii games. Now wikipedia says no such thing.

Wikipedia is not a reliable source.

shoober420 Wrote:Wii U GPU being based on the same type of architectures and made by the same suppliers."

This is a load of baloney. They do technically come from the same supplier but only because ATI purchased the company that designed the GC GPU literally months before it went into production. As such the GC GPU technically became an ATI product even though it wasn't designed or manufactured by them. Then ATI was purchased by AMD in 2006. AMD of course designed the GPU in the WiiU but the architecture of that gpu couldn't be any more different from the GC/Wii GPU architecture.

Like paul said either the old GPU is embedded somewhere in the architecture or they use software emulation. At the moment nobody knows for sure.

LordVador Wrote:They'll have to solve the fact that no GC pad can be plugged though

The Wii U pro controller has all of the same buttons.

(06-27-2013, 08:11 AM)NaturalViolence Wrote: [ -> ]Like paul said either the old GPU is embedded somewhere in the architecture or they use software emulation. At the moment nobody knows for sure.

I'm surprised no one has opened up the Wii U and looked inside to determine if it indeed has actual Wii hardware inside. Since the Wii U doesn't upscale regular Wii games, I tend to think that its not emulating and is actually using true hardware, or hardware close enough to be able to run them without emulation. Because if the Wii U did in fact use software emulation to run Wii games, I'm sure they wouldn't hesitate to apply upscaling, since software emulation allows that option.

shoober420 Wrote:I'm surprised no one has opened up the Wii U and looked inside to determine if it indeed has actual Wii hardware inside.

This doesn't make any sense. We can't determine if any of the chips has the old GPU embedded in it without painfully analyzing it transistor by transistor (and there are billions of them) with an electron microscope and comparing it against a similar scan of the Wiis GPU. Or getting nintendo to tell us, which is much easier.

The only info. you're going to get by looking at the surface of the chips (which people have already done) is the codenames of the chips as well as other basic specs like the country it was manufactured in and the stepping and batch numbers. Nothing useful for determining the microarchitecture of the chips.

shoober420 Wrote:Since the Wii U doesn't upscale regular Wii games, I tend to think that its not emulating and is actually using true hardware or hardware close enough to be able to run them.

Are you sure about this? I've read that it does. In fact I've seen screenshots of it.

shoober420 Wrote:Because if the Wii U did in fact use software emulation to run Wii games, I'm sure they wouldn't hesitate to apply upscaling, since software emulation allows that option.

You can do that with hardware level compatibility too. Upscaling doesn't require software emulation. You just have to run the output video signal through a scaler chip. Which is often embedded into the GPU.