GameCube technical specifications

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• 32-bit 486 MHz IBM "Gekko" PowerPC CPU (based on the 750CXe and 750FX){{citation needed|date=April 2016}}
• 180 nm IBM six-layer, copper-wire process, 43{{nbsp}}mm² die with 4.9 watts dissipation
• 1.8 V for logic and I/O
• 27×27 mm PBGA package with 256 contacts
• 18.6 million transistors; of which 6.35 million transistors are for logic
• Superscalar 3 issue (2 plus branch folding)
• Out-of-order execution
• Two 4-stage integer units: IU1 and IU2, 32-bit
• Front-side bus:
• 162 MHz 64-bit enhanced 60x bus northbridge to Flipper
• 1.3 GB/s peak bandwidth (32-bit address, 64-bit data bus)
• On-chip caches:
• 32{{nbsp}}KB 8-way set-associative L1 instruction cache
• 32{{nbsp}}KB 8-way set-associative L1 data cache
• Half of L1 data cache (16{{nbsp}}KB) can be locked for fast DMA-from-cache in parallel with instruction execution
• 256{{nbsp}}KB 2-way set-associative L2 cache
• 64-bit Floating Point Unit (FPU) coprocessor:
• PowerPC 750 + roughly 50 new SIMD instructions, geared toward 3D graphics
• 7-stage pipeline
• 32x 64-bit FPR registers
• Usable as 1x 64-bit (double-precision) or 2× 32-bit (paired singles) SIMD per clock cycle.
• 1.9 GFLOPS (single precision 32-bit floating point)
• IEEE compliant
• Data Compression
• 2:1 and 4:1 compression for graphics data yields 5.2 GB/s peak effective bus bandwidth
• Load Q instruction: converts 8-bit or 16-bit, signed or unsigned integers to SP floating point
• Store Q instruction: converts SP floating point to 8-bit or 16-bit, signed or unsigned integer
• Branch Prediction Unit (BPU)
• Load-Store Unit (LSU)
• System Register Unit (SRU)
• Memory Management Unit (MMU)
• Branch Target Instruction Cache (BTIC)
• CPU performance: 1125 DMIPS (Dhrystone 2.1)

| style="text-align:center" | {{cite web|url=http://www.anandtech.com/show/858|title=Hardware Behind the Consoles - Part II: Nintendo's GameCube|last=Shimpi|first=Anand Lal|date=December 7, 2001|publisher=AnandTech|access-date=July 9, 2013}}{{cite web|access-date=March 27, 2008|url=http://www.aceshardware.com/read.jsp?id=60000288|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20040208044032/http://www.aceshardware.com/read.jsp?id=60000288|archive-date=February 8, 2004|title=Game Consoles: A Look Ahead|date=December 14, 2003|publisher=Ace's Hardware}}

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• 162 MHz ArtX-designed ATI "Flipper" ASIC (9.4 GFLOPS)
• 180 nm NEC eDRAM manufacturing process, 51 million transistors (approximately half dedicated to 1T-SRAM), 106 mm² die
• Contains GPU, audio DSP, I/O controller and northbridge
• 3 MB of on-chip 1T-SRAM (2 MB Z-buffer/framebuffer + 1 MB texture cache) with ~18 GB/s total bandwidth
• Embedded 24-bit Z-buffer/framebuffer RAM: 2 MB (4× 512 KB)
• Bus width: 384-bit (4 buses, each 96-bit wide)
• Bandwidth: 7.8 GB/s
• Sustainable latency: Under 5 ns
• Embedded texture cache: 1 MB (32× 256 Kb)
• Bus width: 512-bit (32 buses, each 16-bit wide)
• Bandwidth: 10.4 GB/s
• Sustainable latency: Under 5 ns
• 24 MB (2× 12 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 (TMU) each and 4 render output units (ROPs)
• Simultaneous textures per pass: 4
• Color depth: 24-bit RGB, 32-bit RGBA
• System floating-point arithmetic capability: 11 GFLOPS (peak) (MPU, Geometry Engine, Hardware Lighting Total)
• Fillrate: 648 megapixels/sec, with Z-buffering, alpha blending, fogging, texture mapping, trilinear filtering, mipmapping and S3 Texture Compression[https://www.ign.com/articles/2001/03/17/graphics-processor-specifications Graphics Processor Specifications], IGN, 2001
• Raw polygon performance: 60 million polygons/sec{{cite web|url=http://ign.com/articles/2001/01/17/gamecube-101-graphics|title=GameCube 101: Graphics|author=IGN Staff|date=January 17, 2001|work=IGN|access-date=November 22, 2015}}
• 40 million polygons/sec, with fogging, Z-buffering, alpha blending and Gouraud shading
• 30 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
• 6-12 million polygons/sec,{{cite web|url=https://www.ign.com/articles/2001/01/09/x-ing-things-out|website=IGN|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20010123223800/http://cube.ign.com/news/29756.html|title=X-ing Things Out|date=January 9, 2001 |archive-date=January 23, 2001|access-date=November 12, 2021|df=mdy-all}} assuming actual game conditions, with complex models, fully textured, fully lit, etc.
• 16-stage TEV fixed-function texture combiner unit (4 inputs, 1 output)[http://amnoid.de/gc/tev.html]
• 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 (T&L), virtual texture design, multi-texturing, emboss bump mapping, Dot3 bump mapping (normal 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 (S3TC) (6:1 ratio), 8 simultaneous texture layers, 256 levels of transparency, 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

| style="text-align:center" | [http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1227977 GameCube clears path for game developers], EE Times, 5/16/2001

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• 43 MB total non-unified RAM
• 24 MB (2× 12 MB) MoSys 1T-SRAM @ 324 MHz (codenamed "Splash") as main system RAM
• 3 MB embedded 1T-SRAM cache within "Flipper" GPU (2 MB framebuffer/Z-buffer, 1 MB texture cache)
• 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

| style="text-align:center" | {{cite web |access-date=March 28, 2008 |url=http://register.nintendo.com/techspecgcn |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080502201300/http://register.nintendo.com/techspecgcn |archive-date=May 2, 2008|title=GCN Technical Specifications |publisher=Nintendo}}

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• 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[https://blog.lse.epita.fr/articles/38-emulating-the-gamecube-audio-processing-in-dolphin.html]
• Stereo output (may contain 5.1-channel surround via Dolby Pro Logic II)

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• 640×480 interlaced (480i) @ 60 Hz
• 640×480 progressive scan (480p) @ 60 Hz {{Failed verification span|(mostly NTSC games only)|date=November 2023}}
• {{Failed verification span|640×576 interlaced (576i) @ 50 Hz (PAL games only)|date=November 2023}}

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• 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 (DOL-001 models only)
• 1 high-speed parallel port up to 81 MB/s (reserved for the Game Boy Player)
• Analog AV Out
• NTSC models: S-Video, composite
• PAL models: RGBS (SCART), composite
• Stereophonic analog audio output
• Digital AV Out (DOL-001 model only)
• Interlaced or progressive scan YC_BC_R synthesized to YP_BP_R using in-cable custom Macronix DAC[http://www.gc-forever.com/wiki/index.php?title=MXB012355]
• RCA (NTSC-U), D-Terminal (NTSC-J)
• Stereophonic I²S digital audio (not used by any cable)

| style="text-align:center" | {{BSN|date=August 2020}}

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• 8 cm optical GameCube Game Disc
• Approx. 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 (59 blocks), 2 MB (251 blocks), 8 MB (1,019 blocks, incompatible with some games{{Cite web|url=https://www.nintendo.com/consumer/memorycard1019.jsp|title = | Nintendo - Customer Service - Memory Card 1019 |}})
• 8 KB sectors

| style="text-align:center" | {{cite web |url=https://www.nintendo.co.uk/NOE/en_GB/systems/accessories_1222.html |title=Nintendo GameCube Accessories |publisher=Nintendo |access-date=July 3, 2009 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://archive.today/20120911060746/http://www.nintendo.co.uk/NOE/en_GB/systems/accessories_1222.html |archive-date=September 11, 2012 |df=mdy-all }} (dead)

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• Power supply
• DC 12 volts
• 3.25 A
• Dimensions: {{cvt|4.3|in}} (H) × {{cvt|5.9|in}} (W) × {{cvt|6.3|in}} (D)

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