Nintendo 3DS Hardware Specs Leaked?

IGN claims to have received the hardware specs on Nintendo’s upcoming 3D-enabled handheld, the Nintendo 3DS, from a source that traded the details for anonymity. According to the source, the 3DS will contain “two 266MHz ARM11 CPUs, along with a 133MHz GPU, 4MBs of dedicated VRAM, 64MBs of RAM, and 1.5GBs of flash storage.” The 3DS also employs the use of an SD card slot in order to provide expandable storage.

Though exactly which variation of the ARM11 processor would be used is currently unknown, the Zune HD, various Android phones, and older versions of the iPhone and iPod Touch use ARM11 processors.

According to Digital Foundry, the hardware is composed mainly of cheap parts; they also remind us that IGN has a history of leaking accurate Nintendo-related information. Though IGN claims that “numerous developers working on software for the platform have likened its graphical capabilities to current-generation consoles like the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, albeit on smaller, lower-resolution screens,” the actual specs of the hardware and official screenshots say otherwise.

Although these specs may disappoint some, achieving something akin to PlayStation 2 generation graphics (the 64MB of RAM is the exact amount as the PSP-2000 that released in 2007, while the 4MB of VRAM is the exact same amount found in the PS2 when it released in 2000), the power of the 3DS seems to closely resemble Nintendo’s own Wii. Sadly, for some early proponents of the 3DS’s power, the actual comparison between the Wii and 3DS processors puts the Wii’s ahead even if you add both 3DS processors together, as well a puts the Wii’s GPU ahead of the 3DS’s. Both systems have around the same amount of RAM, but the 3DS does sport three times the onboard storage as the Wii. Even though the Wii seems more powerful than the 3DS based on the leaked specs, the 3DS seems to look more graphically impressive because it’s employing the use of “per-pixel lighting, procedural textures, refraction mapping and self-shadowing,” a number of tricks to make up for the lack of per-pixel shading, on a screen much smaller than a television screen.

So, while some may be disappointed that these supposed specs seem to be as powerful as last-gen equipment, they can take solace in the glasses-less 3D technology and the significant upgrade in power from the current DSi.

(via IGN)