New specs for the Wii U have allegedly been disclosed by an unknown source, but just how accurate are they? We investigate.

Let the console-jockeying commence: Rumored specifications for Nintendo's big follow up to the Wii are hitting the airwaves and, if true, they'll give Nintendo a one-up on its console rivals for a brief period of time, at least.

According to Wii U Daily, an undisclosed developer has allegedly leaked some of the specifications for Nintendo's Wii U gaming console, currently rumored for released in the latter part of next year. According to the rumor-starter, the Wii U will allegedly pack a quad-core, 3-GHz CPU from IBM into its design, a 45-nanometer PowerPC chip that's "very similar" to the 3.2-GHz triple-core PowerPC processor found in the Xbox 360.

Wii U Daily goes on to mention that the Wii U will come with 768 megabytes of embedded DRAM  built on the same die as the CPU itself  as well as an "unknown," 40-nanometer GPU from ATI.

Are your eyebrows raised yet? If not, they should be. First off, IBM's already insinuated that the Wii U will be using a Power7 variant of its Power-based microprocessor architecture, not a PowerPC. That said, there is a four-core Power7 CPU in IBM's arsenal that runs at 3.0-GHz on the dot  make of that what you will. As Extreme Tech's Sebastian Anthony puts it, "In terms of raw power, this should put the Wii U way ahead of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3."

And then there's the memory issue. Or, in other words, the questioning of whether Wii U Daily just got its phrasing wrong, or whether anything it's reporting has any accuracy to begin with. The website claims that Nintendo is testing versions of the Wii U with both 768MB and one gigabyte of "embedded" DRAM. In other words, eDRAM, of which the current-generation Xbox 360 has 10MB and the Wii has 3MB. A console with 768 megabytes of eDRAM would be both prohibitively expensive and likely not fit in one's living room.

While it's been suggested that Nintendo's successor console will come with a large quantity of embedded DRAM, a more likely scenario  a completely unofficial speculation, we should note  is that the main memory of the Wii U will hover around 768MB or one gigabyte and the eDRAM will come in at 32MB. For comparison's sake, the system's main memory would be a bit beefier than the 512MB currently found on today's Xbox 360. As for the eDRAM, that's still a high amount for a gaming console, but the Wii U will certainly need all it can get for displaying its images at a native 1080P resolution.

Ultimately, we're all playing the speculation guessing game. Numbers aside, it's safe to say that the Wii U will best the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3, specs-wise, until both companies release their own follow-ups sometime after the debut of the Wii U. Welcome to the console wars.