Nintendo GameCube

The Nintendo GameCube (Japanese: ゲームキューブ; originally code-named "Dolphin" during development; abbreviated as GCN) is Nintendo's fourth home video game console, belonging to the 128-bit era; the same generation as Sega's Dreamcast, Sony's PlayStation 2, and Microsoft's Xbox. The GameCube was released on:

Hardware specifications

The following are hardware specifications provided by Nintendo of America. Some benchmarks provided by third-party testing facilities do indicate, however, that some of these specifications, especially those relating to performance, may be conservative.

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Central processing unit

• Name: "Gekko"
• Producer: IBM
• Core Base: PowerPC 750CXe, 43-mm² die (modified PowerPC 750 RISC with 50 new instructions)
• Manufacturing Process: 0.18 micrometre 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, usable as 2x32-bit SIMD
• External Bus:
• 1.3 gigabyte/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)

Graphics processing unit

• Name: "Flipper"
• Producer: ArtX/Nintendo (ArtX was acquired by ATi Technologies in 2000 and is now a part of ATi)
• Manufacturing Process: 0.18 micrometre NEC embedded DRAM process
• Clock Frequency: 162 MHz
• Embedded Frame Buffer:
• Approximately 2 megabytes in capacity
• Sustainable latency of 6.2 nanoseconds
• RAM type is 1T-SRAM
• Embedded Texture Cache:
• Approximately 1 megabyte in capacity
• Sustainable latency of 6.2 nanoseconds (6.2ns)
• RAM type is 1T-SRAM
• Texture Read Bandwidth: 10.4 gigabytes/second (at peak)
• Main Memory Bandwidth: 2.6 gigabytes/second (at peak)
• Fill Rate: 648 megapixels/second
• Pixel Depth:
• 24-bit RGB / RGBA
• 24-bit Z-buffer
• Image Processing Functions:
• Fog
• Subpixel anti-aliasing
• 8 hardware lights
• 8 pixels pipeline
• hardware nurbs
• Alpha blending
• Virtual texture design
• Multi-texturing, bump mapping
• Environment mapping
• MIP mapping
• Bilinear filtering
• Trilinear filtering
• Anisotropic filtering
• Real-time hardware texture decompression (S3TC)
• Real-time decompression of display list
• Hardware 3-line deflickering filter

Audio specifications

• Producer: Macronix
• Clock Frequency: 81 MHz
• Instruction Memory:
• 8 kilobytes of RAM
• 8 kilobytes of ROM
• Data Memory:
• 8 kilobytes of RAM
• 4 kilobytes of ROM
• Simultaneous Channels: 64 channels
• Encoding: ADPCM
• Sampling Frequency: 48 kHz
• 206mb graphics
• "Dolby Pro Logic II" in analog audio out
• AC3 signal through "digital out" with D-erminal cable

Other system specifications

• System Floating-point Arithmetic Capability: 10.5 GFLOPS (at peak) (MPU, Geometry Engine, HW Lighting Total)
• Real-world Polygon Performance: 6 million to 12 million polygons/second (at peak) (assuming actual game conditions with complex models, fully textured, fully lit, etc.)*
• Main RAM:
• Approximately 24 megabytes in capacity
• Sustainable latency of 10 nanoseconds
• RAM type is 1T-SRAM

(Even though DDR-SDRAM is significantly faster, since the PowerPC 750CXe can not address DDR-SDRAM, it is not used.)

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• Auxiliary RAM:
• Approximately 16 megabytes in capacity
• 81 MHz in speed
• RAM type is DRAM
• Disc Drive:
• Drive type is Constant Angular Velocity (CAV)
• Average access time is 128 milliseconds
• Data transfer speed is between 2 megabytes per second and 3.125 megabytes per second
• Disc Media:
• Based on DVD technology
• Diameter is 3 inches in length
• Producer is Matsushita (Also known as Panasonic)
• Approximately 1.5 gigabytes in capacity
• Controller Ports: 4
• Memory Card Slots: 2
• Analog Audio/Video Outputs: 1
• Digital Video Outputs: 1 *
• High-speed Serial Ports: 2
• High-speed Parallel Ports: 1
• Power Supply: AC Adapter DC12 volts x 3.25 amperes
• Physical Measurements of Entire System: 110 mm (H) x 150 mm (W) x 161 mm (D).

:* The Digital output was removed in a hardware revision in May 2004. Models without the port are DOL-101. http://www.nintendo.com/consumer/systems/nintendogamecube/component_faq.jsp

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Media

The GameCube Optical Disc is the media format used by the Nintendo GameCube. The disc is a proprietary version of the 8 cm DVD (MiniDVD) format. The capacity of the disc is 1.5 GB. Games with large amounts of voice acting or pre-rendered video often need to be put on 2 discs.

Related Topics:
Media - Proprietary - Cm - DVD - MiniDVD - GB - Pre-rendered video

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Controller

The standard GameCube Controller features eleven buttons. It features an analog stick on the left, with a smaller D-pad below it. On the right are four buttons; a very large green "A" button in the centre, a smaller red "B" button to the lower left corner, an "X" button to the right and a "Y" button above the "A" button. On the right, there is a yellow "C" stick, opposite the D-pad, which has a similar function to the right stick on a Playstation. The start/pause button is in the middle of the controller. On top, there are three shoulder buttons. The "L" and "R" buttons are moulded to fit your index fingers, and there is also a smaller blue "Z" button on the right, above the "R" button. Some unofficial controllers also have a "turbo" button, but this is not supported by many games.

Related Topics:
Analog stick - D-pad

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The controller is a standard wing grip design, and was designed to fit the human hand perfectly. As such, it is quite comfortable to use. The left stick is pressure sensitive, and games such as Super Mario Sunshine exploit this to good effect. Also the L and R buttons have some sensitivity, in that you can press them down part way, or fully, when you will hear a click. Again, this is exploited in some games.

Related Topics:
Wing grip - Super Mario Sunshine

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One notable feature of the GameCube is that when you turn it on, like the Nintendo 64 controller, it will set the current analog stick and L and R buttons' positions as "neutral", which may cause undesired effects in games if they are aligned incorrectly at startup. Thus, Nintendo established a way to reset the controller. They advise you to hold down X, Y and start/ pause for three seconds, and the controller should work fine again. This method is also commonly used as a prank during multiplayer games, in which you can set the neutral positions of the other players' controller buttons to non-neutral positions, causing malfunction during gameplay.

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