GameCube technical specifications


originally offered a digital video output on early GameCube models. However, it was determined that less than one percent of users utilized the feature. The company eventually removed the option starting with model number DOL-101 of May 2004.
The console's technical specifications are as follows.
DetailsSource
CPU
GPU
  • 162 MHz ArtX-designed ATI "Flipper" ASIC
  • 180 nm NEC eDRAM manufacturing process, 51 million transistors, 106 mm² die
  • Contains GPU, audio DSP, I/O controller and northbridge
  • 3 MB of on-chip 1T-SRAM with ~18 GB/s total bandwidth
  • * Embedded 24-bit Z-buffer/framebuffer RAM: 2 MB
  • ** Bus width: 384-bit
  • ** Bandwidth: 7.8 GB/s
  • ** Sustainable latency: Under 5 ns
  • * Embedded texture cache: 1 MB
  • ** Bus width: 512-bit
  • ** Bandwidth: 10.4 GB/s
  • ** Sustainable latency: Under 5 ns
  • 24 MB 1T-SRAM main memory @ 324 MHz, 64-bit bus, 2.6 GB/s bandwidth
  • *
  • 1 vertex pipeline, 4 pixel pipelines with 1 texture mapping unit each and 4 render output units
  • Simultaneous textures per pass: 4
  • Color depth: 24-bit RGB, 32-bit RGBA
  • System floating-point arithmetic capability: 11 GFLOPS
  • Fillrate: 648 megapixels/sec, with Z-buffering, alpha blending, fogging, texture mapping, trilinear filtering, mipmapping and S3 Texture Compression
  • Raw polygon performance: 90 million polygons/sec
  • *40 million polygons/sec, with fogging, Z-buffering, alpha blending and Gouraud shading
  • *33 million polygons/sec, with fogging, Z-buffering, alpha blending and texture mapping
  • *25 million polygons/sec, with fogging, Z-buffering, alpha blending, texture mapping and lighting
  • *6-20 million polygons/sec, assuming actual game conditions, with complex models, fully textured, fully lit, etc.
  • 16-stage TEV fixed-function texture combiner unit
  • Image processing functions: Volumetric fog, heat haze, motion blur, bloom, subpixel anti-aliasing, per-vertex lighting, 8 hardware lights, alpha blending, hardware transform and lighting, virtual texture design, multi-texturing, emboss bump mapping, Dot3 bump mapping, lightmapping, shadow mapping, shadow volumes, planar projection shadows, environment mapping, mipmapping, LOD, depth of field, perspective-correct texture mapping, bilinear filtering, trilinear filtering, anisotropic filtering, real-time hardware texture decompression , 8 simultaneous texture layers, 256 levels of transparency, alpha blending, clipping, hidden surface removal/culling, Zfreeze, Zcomploc/early-Z reject, bounding box, destination alpha test, alpha test, depth test, render to texture, TEV compare, color combiners, alpha combiners, texture combiners, transparency effects, framebuffer effects, post-processing effects, Gouraud shading, cel shading, dithering, can emulate 1-bit stencil buffer through a Zfreeze function
  • Other: Real-time decompression of display list, hardware motion compensation capability, HW 3-line deflickering filter
  • System Memory
  • 43 MB total non-unified RAM
  • * 24 MB MoSys 1T-SRAM @ 324 MHz as main system RAM
  • * 3 MB embedded 1T-SRAM cache within "Flipper" GPU
  • * 16 MB DRAM used as I/O buffer for audio and DVD drive
  • Memory bus width: 64-bit main system RAM, 896-bit internal GPU memory, 8-bit ARAM
  • Memory bandwidth: 1.3 GB/s Gekko to Northbridge, 2.6 GB/s Flipper to main system RAM, 10.4 GB/s texture cache, 7.8 GB/s framebuffer/Z-buffer, 81 MB/s auxiliary RAM
  • Latency: Under 10 ns main memory, 5 ns texture cache, 5 ns framebuffer memory
  • Audio
  • Audio processor integrated into Flipper: custom 81 MHz Macronix 16-bit DSP
  • * Sampling frequency: 48 kHz
  • * 64 simultaneous channels, ADPCM encoding
  • * Instruction memory: 8 KB RAM, 8 KB ROM
  • * Data memory: 8 KB RAM, 4 KB ROM
  • External auxiliary RAM: 16 MB DRAM @ 81 MHz
  • * Auxiliary RAM bus: 8-bit
  • * Auxiliary RAM bus bandwidth: 81 MB/s
  • * CPU can read/write blocks from RAM to ARAM through DMA; ARAM can be used for miscellaneous low-bandwidth purposes
  • Stereo output
  • Video Modes
  • 640×480 interlaced @ 60 Hz
  • 640×480 progressive scan @ 60 Hz
  • 768×576 interlaced @ 50 Hz
  • Connectivity
  • 4 controller ports, 2 memory card slots
  • 2 high-speed serial ports
  • * Serial Port 1 is reserved for a broadband adapter or modem adapter
  • * Serial Port 2 is unused
  • 1 high-speed parallel port up to 81 MB/s
  • Analog AV Out
  • *NTSC models: S-Video, composite
  • *PAL models: RGBS, S-Video or composite
  • *Stereophonic analog audio output
  • Digital AV Out
  • * Interlaced or progressive scan YCBCR synthesized to YPBPR using in-cable custom Macronix DAC
  • ** RCA, D-Terminal
  • * Stereophonic I²S digital audio
  • Storage
  • 8 cm miniDVD optical disc
  • * 1.5 GB capacity
  • * 16 Mbit/s–25 Mbit/s transfer rate operating in CAV mode
  • * 128 ms average access time
  • Memory card
  • * Capacities: 512 KB, 2 MB, 8 MB
  • * 8 KB sectors
  • Other
  • Power supply
  • * DC 12 volts
  • * 3.25 A
  • Dimensions: × ×