Hardware Specs

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.

• Name: "Gekko"
• Producer: IBM
• Core Base: Power PC 705CXe
• 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
  • 128-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)

System LSI

• Name: "Flipper"
• Producer: ArtX/Nintendo
• Manufacturing Process: 0.18-micron 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
  • RAM type is 1T-SRAM
• Texture Read Bandwidth: 10.4 gigabytes/second (at peak)
• Main Memory Bandwidth: 2.6 gigabytes/second (at peak)
• Pixel Depth:
  • 24-bit RGB / RGBA
  • 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
  • Anisotropic filtering
  • Real-time hardware texture decompression (S3TC)
  • Real-time decompression of display list
  • Hardware 3-line deflickering filter

Aural Functionality

• 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

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
• 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
  • Approximately 1.5 gigabytes in capacity
• Controller Ports: 4
• Memory Card Slots: 2
• Analog Audio/Video Outputs: 1
• Digital Audio/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: 4.3"(H) x 5.9"(W) x 6.3"(D)

External Links

• Official Nintendo GameCube site from Nintendo
• IGNcube channel at IGN
• Planet GameCube
• Private GameCube fanpage
• European Gamecube fan/newssite