The Nintendo GameCube, 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 itself is the most compact and inexpensive of the Sixth generation era consoles.
Technical 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.
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
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.)
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). [4.3"(H) x 5.9"(W) x 6.3"(D)]
* The Digital output was removed in a hardware revision in May 2004. Models without the port are DOL-101. [6] The original system with the port is model DOL-001.
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