IGN has gotten the skinny on the Revolution's horsepower (or lack thereof). Nintendo has been tight-lipped, even saying that the company many never divulge the details on the Revolution's "Broadway" CPU and "Hollywood" GPU. IGN's anonymous sources, all in possession of development hardware, report that the Revolution runs on an extension of Gekko and Flipper architectures that powered the GameCube.

According to official Nintendo documentation, the IMB produced "Broadway" CPU is clocked at 729 MHz. To put things in perspective, the GameCube's Gekko CPU powered at 485 MHz, while the Xbox 360's CPU runs at 3.2 GHz. The original Xbox's clocked at 733 MHz.

The Revolution's ATI-developed "Hollywood" GPU runs at 243 MHz, compared to the GameCube's GPU that clocked at 162 MHz. "The 'Hollywood' is a large-scale integrated chip that includes the GPU, DSP, I/O bridge and 3MBs of texture memory," a studio source told IGN.

Other numbers include 88 MBs of system RAM, while the GameCube sported 40 MBs of RAM. The original Xbox had 64 MBs of RAM. However, the PS3 and the Xbox 3 boast 512 MBs of RAM.

So what does this mean? Well, pretty much what Nintendo has saying the entire time: they are not competing with the muscle consoles. Compared to the PS3 and the Xbox 360, the Revolution is underpowered. But while the specs may not exactly be mind-blowing, cheap games and invention are.

Full Piece Here [IGN]

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