IGN is supposedly in the know about the upcoming Revolution’s specs. Here’s the relevant paragraph:

Insiders stress that Revolution runs on an extension of the Gekko and Flipper architectures that powered GameCube, which is why studios who worked on GCN will have no problem making the transition to the new machine, they say. IBM’s “Broadway” CPU is clocked at 729MHz, according to updated Nintendo documentation. By comparison, GameCube’s Gekko CPU ran at 485MHz. The original Xbox’s CPU was clocked at 733MHz. Meanwhile, Xbox 360 runs three symmetrical cores at 3.2GHz.

And:

The overall system memory numbers we reported last December have not greatly fluctuated, but new clarifications have surfaced. Revolution will operate using 24MBs of “main” 1T-SRAM. It will additionally boast 64MBs of “external” 1T-SRAM. That brings the total number of system RAM up to 88MBs, not including the 3MB texture buffer on the GPU. By comparison, GameCube featured 40MBs of RAM not counting the GPU’s on-board 3MBs. The original Xbox included 64MBs total RAM. Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 operate on 512MBs of RAM.

Those specs would make the Revolution about as powerful as the original Xbox. Which is not really a next-gen leap. People have been complaining that many Xbox 360 games don’t look next-gen enough compared to what is being done on the PS2 and Xbox today. With specs like these, it’s obvious that Nintendo is not even trying to keep up. Frankly, I wasn’t expecting Nintendo to come out with the most powerful system, but I was expecting something better than the current generation, and I’m now unsure that we’ll even be seeing that.

That new controller better be really good!

IGN – Revolution’s Horsepower