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The Wii U’s processor speed is slower than Xbox 360 and PS3

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 2 min

Wii UThe Nintendo Wii U’s processor is slower than its counterparts in the years-old Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, and the Wii U graphics chip either matches or is slightly faster than its rivals’ graphics chips. That’s another affirmation that Nintendo rarely cares about being on the bleeding edge of performance when it comes to loading up the features in its brand-new game consoles.

GamingBolt reported that a hacker Hector Martin, who goes by the name Marcan, discovered that the Wii U’s IBM PowerPC central processing unit runs at 1.24 gigahertz per core, with a total of three cores. By comparison, the PS3’s Cell processor and the Xbox 360’s Xenon run at 3 gigahertz per core.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.