Over at GamesIndustry International, Digital Foundry has conducted a detailed examination of the Wii U to determine its efficiency in comparison to the PS3 (Super Slim model) and the Xbox 360 (S model). The team found that while the Wii U is not drastically more powerful than the other two consoles (despite technically belonging to the next generation), it is far more efficient. In fact, the Wii U can do essentially what the PS3 and 360 can do, but with less than half the power.
This is especially surprising because the Wii U has a much smaller volume than the other two consoles, which ought to make it more likely to have problems with overheating akin to those that plagued the original 360s. But Nintendo has managed to produce a console that stays cool even when running games, only drawing around 32w when Fifa 13 was placed in the console compared with 70w from the PS3 and 76.5 from the 360 for the same game.
So how does the Wii U do it? Digital Foundry explains that the console's CPU and GPU are bonded together, localising the concentration of heat and thus saving space for cooling. Aside from that, the Wii U has low CPU power compared to the PS3 and 360, which is definitely a contributing factor.
Have you noticed your Wii U stays magically cool even after hours of play?
