Oh just wait, you beautiful creation you…in 8 more days all of your secrets will be revealed!

I received a bit of news today from a 3rd party source, as to how powerful the Nintendo 3DS is based off the person’s personal hands on time with the system. This isn’t a 100% confirmation, but similar to how my source provided me straight from Japan the news about Mr. Hideo Kojima considering to develop Metal Gear Solid 5, I’m considering this to be pretty close to reality. According to my contact, the in house model they’re using has approximately 3 times the amount of flash storage as Wii. Wii has a 512mb “hard drive” (if you want to call it that), so 3DS likely has 1.5GB. I expect that DSiWare will continue on the 3DS, as well as a portable Virtual Console, and since these games will be a lot smaller in size than their big brother’s (Wii), 1.5GB of space should suffice. It’s said that the 3DS will also have an expandable storage space (card insert) that works similarly to Wii’s own setup. I personally hope that it acts as a hard drive expansion that 1) protects Nintendo’s games from being illegally copied and 2) gives gamers a real way to store their extra files…unlike the system that Nintendo first introduced with Wii (refrigerator and ice chest philosophy).

Teal Nintendo 3DS

The CPU has me excited as it uses dual core technology, pumping out two 266Mhz ARM11s as opposed to the original DS’ 67Mhz ARM9 and 33.5Mhz ARM7. PSP has a single CPU that has 333Mhz for rival comparisson.

The GPU seems like it’ll be around 133Mhz, but to have a processing speed of at least double that.

Orange Nintendo 3DS

For RAM, it has 64 true MBs (which was compared to Wii’s) and possibly as much as 16 more that’s integrated onto the graphics card. Wii has an extra 24 on its graphics card, totalling 88. It looks like the 3DS may have upwards of 80 total. If that’s the case, it’ll be plenty for a handheld gaming device, so don’t worry if it doesn’t end up having more than Wii in this department.

In terms of VRAM, there are at minimum, 4MB (which would make it comparable to PS2), but just like with the RAM, it might have an extra 2 somewhere else. Personally, I hope that the unit is capable of using up 6, but if not, I know from playing it myself at E3, that games like Resident Evil: Revelations and Metal Gear Solid 3DS look stunning as is. Plus, PSP has been able to pump out some pretty games and it only has 2.

Purple Nintendo 3DS

The gyroscope and accelerometer technology is as accurate at a Wii Remote with Wii Motion Plus attached. I think I can vouche for this one, because when I went hands on with the 3DS at E3, the tech certainly seemed there, and was all the more impressive when integrated with the 3D cameras.

The two 3D cameras facing out are powerful and are fully capable of differentiating between multiple points in 3D space. This means that when taking a picture of something with the 3D camera, you won’t just get a look at how deep the furthest away image is compared to the one closest to you, but also be able to tell the difference in 3D space of the objects in between. Once again, at E3 with the picture demo, I purposely had the Nintendo booth girl take a picture of me, with one hand stretched out all the way and to the left, one hand to the right and closer to me, and my head in between and all the way back. This was my test at E3 and it worked…I saw the difference between all three points. It seems like now my test is simply officially proven.

Take all of those specs I mentioned earlier and just double them!

My source from a specific 3rd party said that Nintendo also has a codename for the CPU and GPU, like they had with Wii “Broadway” and “Hollywood” (respectively), but it’s not yet known what they are. Hopefully in addition to the price and release date being announced this September 29th, we’ll also learn more of the 3DS’ power. When I receive more concrete information, I’ll be back to share.