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Manufacturer : Nintendo
Generation: Sixth
Year Released: 2001 (Japan and Eua) and 2002 (Europe and Australia)
Units sold: 21.74 Million
Media: Nintendo Gamecube Game-Disc
Central processing unit:
Main article: Gekko (microprocessor)
486 MHz IBM "Gekko" PowerPC CPU
PowerPC 750CXe-based core
180 nm IBM copper-wire process, 43 mm² die, 4.9 W dissipation
Roughly fifty new vector instructions
32-bit ALU
64-bit FPU (1.9 GFLOPS, usable as 2×32-bit SIMD)
64-bit enhanced PowerPC 60x front side bus to GPU/chipset, 162 MHz clock, 1.3 GB/s peak bandwidth
64 KB (32 KB I/32 KB D) L1 cache (8-way associative), 256 KB on-die L2 cache (2-way associative)
1125 DMIPS (dhrystone 2.1)
System memory:
43 MB total non-unified RAM
24 MB MoSys 1T-SRAM (codenamed "Splash") main system RAM, 324 MHz, 64-bit bus, 2.7 GB/s bandwidth
3 MB embedded 1T-SRAM within "Flipper"
Split into 1 MB texture buffer and 2 MB framebuffer
10.4 GB/s texture peak bandwidth, 7.6 GB/s framebuffer peak bandwidth, ~6.2 ns latency
16 MB DRAM used as buffer for DVD drive and audio, 81 MHz, 8-bit bus, 81 MB/s bandwidth
Connectivity:
4 controller ports, 2 memory card slots
MultiAV analog audio/video port: interlaced composite, Y/C(NTSC models only), and RGB(PAL models only) video, stereophonic analog audio
Digital audio/video port: interlaced or progressive scan YCBCR video, RGB video, stereophonic I²S audio
Resolutions: 480i, 576i, 480p
High-speed serial ports: 2
Serial Port 1 is reserved for a broadband adapter or modem adapter
Serial Port 2 is unused
High-speed parallel ports: 1 (reserved for the Game Boy Player)
Power supply output: 12 volts DC x 3.25 amperes
Physical Measurements: 110 mm (H) × 150 mm (W) × 161 mm (D); [4.3"(H) × 5.9"(W) × 6.3"(D)]
Graphics processing unit:
162 MHz "Flipper" LSI (co-developed by Nintendo and ArtX, acquired by ATI)
180 nm NEC eDRAM-compatible process
8 GFLOPS
4 pixel pipelines with 1 texture unit each
TEV "Texture EnVironment" engine (similar to Nvidia's GeForce-class "register combiners")
Fixed-function hardware transform and lighting (T&L), 20+ million polygons/s in-game
648 megapixels/second (162 MHz × 4 pipelines), 648 megatexels/second (648 MP × 1 texture units) (peak)
Peak triangle performance: 20,250,000 32-pixel triangles/s raw and with 1 texture and lit
337,500 triangles a frame at 60 FPS
675,000 triangles a frame at 30 FPS
8 texture layers per pass, texture compression, full scene anti-aliasing
8 simultaneous hardware light sources
Bilinear, trilinear, and anisotropic texture filtering
Multi-texturing, bump mapping, reflection mapping, 24-bit z-buffer
24-bit RGB/32-bit RGBA color depth
Hardware limitations sometimes require a 6r+6g+6b+6a mode (18-bit color), resulting in color banding.
720 × 480 interlaced (480i) or progressive scan (480p) - 60Hz, 720 × 576 interlaced (576i) - 50Hz
Integrated audio processor: Custom 81 MHz Macronix DSP
Instruction memory: 8 KB RAM, 8 KB ROM
Data memory: 8 KB RAM, 4 KB ROM
64 channels 16-bit 48 kHz ADPCM
Dolby Pro Logic II multi-channel information encoded within stereophonic output
History
History
After Nintendo 64, Nintendo gambled its chances against Sony and Microsoft with discs, better graphics and better controller than Nintendo 64, Nintendo Gamecube was born in 2001 and ready to fight Sony and Microsoft
The difficulty of illegally coping games made the market in poor countries raise the sales of Sony PS2 in poor countries, it was not very appealing for casual players, making it more suitable for hardcore players and Nintendo fans. Many of the games from Gamecube were multiplataformer and enterprises usually prefered to release games for PS2, since it was the best seller console of the Sixth Era.
Gamecube was Nintendo's failure attempt to bring the public that was lost with Nintendo 64 against PlayStation. In two years, Gamecube cost less than 99 dolars (package included the Console, Controller, Memory Card and a game).
Sony keep releasing games for PS2 even after the release of PS3, Nintendo GameCube "died" in 2007 before Nintendo Wii.
Hardware
Hardware
Similar graphics to PS2 and Xbox, many of the games released for Gamecube were multiplataformer.
Use of Memory Cards for saving progress, the controller was better than Nintendo 64 controller, but it was nothing like the Super Nintendo controller. The players had difficult using the cross directional, using the Z button was confusing for many new players and it was hard to use the R and L buttons.
The console was ugly, Gamecube design wasn't the best, it didn't had a good look like PS2, it looks like a toy, making older players avoid it (also some childs).
External Hardware
External Hardware
Memory cards were necessary.
Players could connect their Gameboy Advance using a Link Cable.
Gameboy Advance emulator could be purchased to play Gameboy Advance games in a bigger screen.
Notable Qualities
Notable Qualities
Some of the Nintendo games were great, they were creative and had great designs, Nintendo tried to get the public back with games, they created amazing games, making Nintendo Fans very happy.
Low price very fast made customers very happy (and Nintendo very sad).
Notable Titles
Notable Titles
Super Smash Bros. Melee (7.09 million)
Mario Kart: Double Dash (7 million)
Super Mario Sunshine (5.5 million)
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (3.07 million)
Luigi's Mansion (2.639 million approximately)
Animal Crossing (2.321 million approximately)
Mario Party 4 (2.003 million approximately)
Metroid Prime (2 million)
Mario Party 7 (1.86 million)
Pokémon Colosseum (1.806 million approximately)
Sonic Adventure 2: Battle (1.732 million approximately)
Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (1.64 million approximately)
Resident Evil 4 (1.6 million)
Mario Party 5 (1.505 million approximately)
Sonic Mega Collection (1.453 million approximately)
Resident Evil (1.35 million)
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (1.32 million)
Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness (1.25 million)
Resident Evil Zero (1.25 million)
Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour (1.223 million approximately)
Super Mario Strikers (1.2 million)
Pikmin (1.18 million approximately)
Kirby Air Ride (1.172 million approximately)
Soulcalibur II (1.099 approximately)
Star Fox Adventures (1.059 million approximately)
Mario Party 6 (1 million)
References
References
http://web.archive.org/web/20040208044032/http://www.aceshardware.com/read.jsp?id=60000288
http://cube.ign.com/articles/090/090003p1.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_GameCube
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_GameCube_accessories
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_Nintendo_GameCube_video_games
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