Nintendo GameCube System Fact Sheet
May 20, 2001
Size: Approximate Height 4.3" / Width 5.9" / Depth 6.3".
Media: Three-inch NINTENDO GAMECUBE™ Disc based on Matsushita’s Optical Disc Technology, with approx. 1.5GB Capacity.
Launch Date: September 14, 2001, in Japan; November 5, 2001, in North America; and Spring 2002 in Europe.
Titles: Seven exclusive NINTENDO GAMECUBE titles from Nintendo are expected by the 2001 holiday season in North America.
Peripheral Devices: Memory Card, containing 4 megabits of flash memory; SD-Memory Card Adapter; Wireless Wavebird™ Controller; 56Kbps, V. 90, Modem Adapter; Broadband Adapter; and Digital Video Cable.
Controller: To provide more comprehensive and intuitive play control, Nintendo has added several new features to the NINTENDO GAMECUBE controller, including a second analog control stick, left and right analog trigger buttons, and a built-in rumble motor. The NINTENDO GAMECUBE controller has two grips and the controls for the left and right hands have been separated into two “systems.” The right-side buttons have been re-arranged to allow the user to set the A Button home position, making the role of each button more natural.
NINTENDO GAMECUBE hardware specifications:
MPU (“Micro Processing Unit”)
Custom IBM Power PC “Gekko”
Manufacturing Process
0.18 micron IBM Copper Wire Technology
Clock Frequency
485 MHz
CPU Capacity
1125 Dmips (Dhrystone 2.1)
Internal Data Precision
32-bit Integer & 64-bit Floating-point
External Bus
1.3 GB/second peak bandwidth
32-bit address space
64-bit data bus
162 MHz clock
Internal Cache
L1: Instruction 32KB, Data 32KB (8 way)
L2: 256KB (2 way)
System LSI
Custom ATI/Nintendo “Flipper”
Manufacturing Process
0.18 micron NEC Embedded DRAM Process
Clock Frequency
162 MHz
Embedded Frame Buffer
Approx. 2 MB
Sustainable Latency: 6.2ns (1T-SRAM)
Embedded Texture Cache
Approx. 1 MB
Sustainable Latency: 6.2 ns (1T-SRAM)
Texture Read Bandwidth
10.4 GB/second (Peak)
Main Memory Bandwidth
2.6 GB/second (Peak)
Pixel Depth
24-bit Color, 24-bit Z Buffer
Image Processing Functions
Fog, Subpixel Anti-aliasing, 8 Hardware Lights, Alpha Blending, Virtual Texture Design, Multi-texturing, Bump Mapping, Environment Mapping, MIP Mapping, Bilinear Filtering, Trilinear Filtering, Ansitropic Filtering, Real-time Hardware Texture Decompression (S3TC)
Real-time Decompression of Display List, HW 3-line Deflickering filter
Audio Processing
(Incorporated into the System LSI)
Sound Processor
Custom Macronix 16-bit DSP
Instruction Memory
8KB RAM + 8KB ROM
Data Memory
8KB RAM + 4KB ROM
Clock Frequency
81 MHz
Performance
64 simultaneous channels, ADPCM encoding
Sampling Frequency
48KHz
Performance
Floating-point Arithmetic Capability
10.5 GFLOPS (Peak)
(MPU, Geometry Engine, HW Lighting Total)
Real-world polygon
6 to 12 million polygons/second (Peak)
(Assuming actual game conditions with complex models, fully textured, fully lit, etc.)
System Memory
40 MB
Main Memory
24 MB MoSys 1T-SRAM
Approximately 10ns Sustainable Latency
A-Memory
16 MB 81 MHz DRAM
Disc Drive
CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) System
Average Access Time
128ms
Data Transfer Speed
16Mbps to 25Mbps
Media
3 inch NINTENDO GAMECUBE Disc based on Matsushita’s Optical Disc Technology
Capacity
Approx. 1.5GB
Input/Output
4 Controller Ports
2 Memory Card Slots
Analog AV Output
Digital AV Output
2 High-Speed Serial Ports
High-speed Parallel Port
Power Supply
AC Adapter DC12V x 3.5A
Dimensions
4.3"(H) x 5.9"(W) x 6.3"(D)
*The peak figures listed are all for maximum instantaneous performance and cannot be achieved in an actual game. However, following the conventions of the game industry, they are listed for your reference.