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lwilliams3 · Oct 30, 2016

vern said:
I said before (and Nate too, but don't want to speak for him) things may look slightly different, but the leaked specs are pretty much what you should expect. I wouldn't expect Pascal tbh...

Not trying to be coy and I'll be around to confirm future leaks which I'm sure are coming, but the few non-hardware spec related things I know I can't really be the first to talk about.

Ok for real I'm out for a few hours. Trying to get ripped at the gym lol. I'm sure there will be more discussion, if anyone asks me anything and I am able to help at all I'll reply later.

I think Nate Drake's Pascal info is not actually about boosting the power of the system as much as keeping the power consumption down. Powerlevel wise, it may end up being close to the max power of chipset. However..

MuchoMalo said:
If this thing really is locked to just 4GB, I'm thinking it's Maxwell and on a 64-bit bus.

As Vern and Nate said, it is just in the devkit. Pretty much vanilla Tegra X1s. Nintendo and Nvidia will likely modify some things to improve memory efficiency. Even with the Wii U, the memory system was well thought out.

Vena · Oct 30, 2016

MuchoMalo said:
I didn't say that it was an exact science, but it's a safe assumption.

No it isn't. At all, and the fact that you think it is shows just how much nonsense you love to spew.

Doctre81 · Oct 30, 2016

MuchoMalo said:
With only 4GB I'd assume that they want to stick to a single stacked die. Also, Nintendo temds to like to have breathing room when it comes to RAM, so if 3.2GB is avaliable for games, Switch is likely less than 3.2x as powerful as Wii U. In that case it shouldn't need a fan or have battery issues if it's Pascal. It's safe to say that we're looking at a modified TX1, which would have the battery life and cooling issues. I guess Nintendo still wants to stick to proven technology. :/

Maybe all of these specs are real after all and the only thing Nintendo changed compared to the TX1 was that they removed the A53s.

MuchoMalo said:
I didn't say that it was an exact science, but it's a safe assumption.

Honestly with such old tech it could probably hit $200 if Nintendo wanted. Thus, expect $250.

BuggyMike · Oct 30, 2016

If it turns out that the final specs will be close to this, what resolution and settings could we expect from specs like these?

lwilliams3 · Oct 30, 2016

MuchoMalo said:
With only 4GB I'd assume that they want to stick to a single stacked die. Also, Nintendo temds to like to have breathing room when it comes to RAM, so if 3.2GB is avaliable for games, Switch is likely less than 3.2x as powerful as Wii U. In that case it shouldn't need a fan or have battery issues if it's Pascal. It's safe to say that we're looking at a modified TX1, which would have the battery life and cooling issues. I guess Nintendo still wants to stick to proven technology. :/

Maybe all of these specs are real after all and the only thing Nintendo changed compared to the TX1 was that they removed the A53s.

So... Nividia spent 500 man-years to just make a castrated Tegra X1?

BuggyMike · Oct 30, 2016

lwilliams3 said:
So... Nividia spent 500 man-hours to just make a castrated Tegra X1?

If you wanna get anything done, everyone knows you gotta spend a minimum of 1000 man years.

Maxrunner · Oct 30, 2016

Is it pascal or not?

Vena · Oct 30, 2016

Maxrunner said:
Is it pascal or not?

No one knows. No one will know for a while, probably, unless someone with a final unit leaks it.

All info we'll have for a while will be from dev kits at various external developers.

antonz · Oct 30, 2016

BuggyMike said:
If it turns out that the final specs will be close to this, what resolution and settings could we expect from specs like these?

If it ends up pretty similar to a Regular X1 then its still basically 3x Wii U power not counting performance enhancements from architecture etc.

lwilliams3 · Oct 30, 2016

Maxrunner said:
Is it pascal or not?

NateDrake still stands by his sources that it is. Nothing confirmed, though the way Nvidia's blog described the Switch's chipset can easily be interpret as indirectly saying that it is Pascal.

Branduil · Oct 30, 2016

lwilliams3 said:
I think Nate Drake's Pascal info is not actually about boosting the power of the system as much as keeping the power consumption down. Powerlevel wise, it may end up being close to the max power of chipset. However..

As Vern and Nate said, it is just in the devkit. Pretty much vanilla Tegra X1s. Nintendo and Nvidia will likely modify some things to improve memory efficiency. Even with the Wii U, the memory system was well thought out.

I always assumed that would be the biggest reason to go Pascal. At least for handheld mode.

EDarkness · Oct 30, 2016

lwilliams3 said:
NateDrake still stands by his sources that it is. Nothing confirmed, though the way Nvidia's blog described the Switch's chipset can easily be interpret as indirectly saying that it is Pascal.

My thought is it should be. We're still talking about early dev kits so we don't know what the final is going to be. Things can change a lot or not much at all, but we'll just have to wait and see. I'm of a mind that it will be based on what Nvidia said in their blog.

Schnozberry · Oct 30, 2016

MuchoMalo said:
With only 4GB I'd assume that they want to stick to a single stacked die. Also, Nintendo temds to like to have breathing room when it comes to RAM, so if 3.2GB is avaliable for games, Switch is likely less than 3.2x as powerful as Wii U. In that case it shouldn't need a fan or have battery issues if it's Pascal. It's safe to say that we're looking at a modified TX1, which would have the battery life and cooling issues. I guess Nintendo still wants to stick to proven technology. :/

Maybe all of these specs are real after all and the only thing Nintendo changed compared to the TX1 was that they removed the A53s.

The Shield Android TV, Shield Tablet, and Jetson TX1 tablet use two ram chips. Nvidia didn't remove the A53 cores for any of their designs. They're just only exposed to the OS as 4 cores, with kernel switching for low power mode. Tieing the RAM increase to a static multiplier for system performance seems like you're reaching a bit. If you're customizing a Tegra Chip, there isn't much reason to stick with Maxwell and 20nm.

KingBroly · Oct 30, 2016

MuchoMalo said:
Honestly with such old tech it could probably hit $200 if Nintendo wanted. Thus, expect $250.

I thought we kept hearing this was modern tech?

EDarkness · Oct 30, 2016

KingBroly said:
I thought we kept hearing this was modern tech?

Heh, it is...from a few years ago.

Rootbeer · Oct 30, 2016

Heck at this point i'm willing to be pleased if it has 4GB of RAM.

Plenty of rumors saying that it might only have 2GB, since dev kits often have more ram than the final unit. 2GB might be fine for Nintendo 1st party since they clearly use wizardry unlike any other studio to get their results... but third parties aren't gonna like it one bit.

Terrell · Oct 30, 2016

Has the RAM type been pinned down? RAM type and utilization has always been Nintendo's strong suit (I mean, look at what Gamecube could do with the paltry sum of RAM it had for its time), so I'm curious to see if the trend has continued.

guek · Oct 30, 2016

4GB would be very underwhelming and sounds like a really obvious bottleneck.

Zulithe said:
Heck at this point i'm willing to be pleased if it has 4GB of RAM.

Plenty of rumors saying that it might only have 2GB, since dev kits often have more ram than the final unit. 2GB might be fine for Nintendo 1st party since they clearly use wizardry unlike any other studio to get their results... but third parties aren't gonna like it one bit.

Wii U has 2GB. It's unlikely nintendo wouldn't at least double that amount.

MuchoMalo · Oct 30, 2016

Schnozberry said:
The Shield Android TV, Shield Tablet, and Jetson TX1 tablet use two ram chips. Nvidia didn't remove the A53 cores for any of their designs. They're just only exposed to the OS as 4 cores, with kernel switching for low power mode. Tieing the RAM increase to a static multiplier for system performance seems like you're reaching a bit. If you're customizing a Tegra Chip, there isn't much reason to stick with Maxwell and 20nm.

And how much reason was there for making a customized R700 or even R600-based GPU on 40nm in 2012? Or using the 2006 65nm Pica 200 in 2011?

Cerium · Oct 30, 2016

KingBroly said:
I thought we kept hearing this was modern tech?

He's full of shit. Every rumor and Nvidia's own words suggest it's Pascal not Maxwell.

Nintendo Switch is powered by the performance of the custom Tegra processor. The high-efficiency scalable processor includes an NVIDIA GPU based on the same architecture as the world’s top-performing GeForce gaming graphics cards.

That is Pascal. That is not Maxwell. There is no way you can interpret that to mean Maxwell.

Rootbeer · Oct 30, 2016

guek said:
Wii U has 2GB. It's unlikely nintendo wouldn't at least double that amount.

I realize that it has 2GB, but it's still being tossed around as a possibility (replies to Emily's tweets; not saying they are reputable but just the fact people are floating it as an option is offputting enough)

Is it not true that devkits may have more ram to allow for debugging? do we know what the ram statistics were for previous nintendo devkits? do they tend to match the final unit or no?

Cerium said:
That is Pascal. That is not Maxwell. There is no way you can interpret that to mean Maxwell.

I mean, it gives me great hope that it's Pascal, but at the end of the day it's just marketing speak. It could mean anything.

Schnozberry · Oct 30, 2016

MuchoMalo said:
And how much reason was there for making a customized R700 or even R600-based GPU on 40nm in 2012? Or using the 2006 65nm Pica 200 in 2011?

Backwards compatibility and EDRAM.

lwilliams3 · Oct 30, 2016

MuchoMalo said:
And how much reason was there for making a customized R700 or even R600-based GPU on 40nm in 2012? Or using the 2006 65nm Pica 200 in 2011?

The development for Wii U's GPU began in 2008. That system is infamously known for going though a development from hell, but the system was definitely built around the EDRAM.

The NVidia apparently failed Nintendo with the Tegra 2 for the 3DS, so they went elsewhere.

It should be noted that the GPU for the 3DS and Wii U are still one of the strongest parts of these systems, so there was not as much of an urge to make those parts more powerful/efficient compared to what is going on now.

Anteo · Oct 30, 2016

Wait did something new came up? Or is that rumor still fake

Cerium · Oct 30, 2016

Zulithe said:
It could mean anything.

It really can't though. It's actually quite specific. They're saying Pascal as clearly as they can without using the name, which is probably because Nintendo won't let them yet.

OrbitalBeard · Oct 30, 2016

vern said:
And OS

I'm really, really interested in learning about this aspect of the system. I hope it's a vast improvement over both 3DS and Wii U.

th3sicknness · Oct 30, 2016

Cerium said:
He's full of shit. Every rumor and Nvidia's own words suggest it's Pascal not Maxwell.

That is Pascal. That is not Maxwell. There is no way you can interpret that to mean Maxwell.

It could mean Maxwell because that chipset is and was top performing.

usmanusb · Oct 30, 2016

What type of customization can make a difference in Tegra for Nintendo?

How much difference it makes by adding edram?

Any features from the pc line of Nvidia portfolio to Tegra which makes it better?

Shogmaster · Oct 30, 2016

You kids will really go bonkers if Nintendo does what I kinda suspect they will do: 1/2 the RAM of devkit in the retail version.

Dakhil · Oct 30, 2016

I don't know if this warrants making another thread, but here's Emily Roger's thoughts on the supposed "leaked specs" of the Nintendo Switch development kit.

Emily Rogers said:
I can't confirm if entire spec list is accurate, but most of list is stuff I reported in late Aug/early Sept. (1/3)

https://twitter.com/ArcadeGirl64/status/792581105480105984

Emily Rogers said:
4GB of ram is something I heard the v2 dev kits had. I don't know how much that changed for retail units. (2/3)

https://twitter.com/ArcadeGirl64/status/792581707840917505

Emily Rogers said:
I was told before that Nvidia's custom Tegra chip is pretty similar to Tegra X1. So these specs might not be farfetched. (3/3)

https://twitter.com/ArcadeGirl64/status/792583744347516928

I'll admit I'm a little disappointed if this is true.

Speely · Oct 30, 2016

th3sicknness said:
It could mean Maxwell because that chipset is and was top performing.

Sure it could be referencing the 980 Ti but I seriously doubt it. Pascal not only fits the performance bill better overall when considering "cards" plural, but makes way more sense for power efficiency, which is probably the most important element of a portable device.

Edit: though this IS Nintendo, so who knows. Besides, a custom Maxwell chip could still deliver.

Vena · Oct 30, 2016

Shogmaster said:
You kids will really go bonkers if Nintendo does what I kinda suspect they will do: 1/2 the RAM of devkit in the retail version.

Why would you think that they will have the same RAM as the WiiU? That seems illogical.

EDarkness · Oct 30, 2016

Dakhil said:
I'll admit I'm a little disappointed if this is true.

Same here. Seems crazy to just use what is basically an X1 for something coming out next year. I guess that's why Nintendo got such a great deal on the chips. Nvidia needed to get that tech into something, so they gave Nintendo a deal. I guess there was no way they were going to use the newer stuff for a cheap price.

guek · Oct 30, 2016

EDarkness said:
Same here. Seems crazy to just use what is basically an X1 for something coming out next year. I guess that's why Nintendo got such a great deal on the chips. Nvidia needed to get that tech into something, so they gave Nintendo a deal. I guess there was no way they were going to use the newer stuff for a cheap price.

The thing better be $200 then

Vena · Oct 30, 2016

EDarkness said:
Same here. Seems crazy to just use what is basically an X1 for something coming out next year. I guess that's why Nintendo got such a great deal on the chips. Nvidia needed to get that tech into something, so they gave Nintendo a deal. I guess there was no way they were going to use the newer stuff for a cheap price.

That's not how chip development works. nVidia doesn't just have X1 chip components sitting around that they need to put somewhere. They license a design, another party will do fabrication. They also didn't sink 500 man-years on slightly tweaking an X1, that's just nonsense.

Next to no one fabricates on 20nm nodes anymore, which is likely where the Pascal info comes from because X1 -on 16/14nm fab nodes is Pascal as almost all of the gains/differences are purely on the fabrication change. X1, in the long run, would be more expensive stuck on a 20nm node.

EDarkness · Oct 30, 2016

Vena said:
That's not how chip development works. nVidia doesn't just have X1 chip components sitting around that they need to put somewhere. They license a design, another party will do fabrication. They also didn't sink 500 man-years on slightly tweaking an X1, that's just nonsense.

Next to no one fabricates on 20nm nodes anymore, which is likely where the Pascal info comes from because X1 -on 16/14nm fab nodes is Pascal as almost all of the gains/differences are purely on the fabrication change. X1, in the long run, would be more expensive stuck on a 20nm node.

It'll be interesting to see what kind of gains they were able to get out of it in that case. They could have done some things inside to spruce it up a bit. The real key is going to be looking at the games and how they perform. I still don't think this thing will have any problems running more modern games like GTA V and the like.

Vena · Oct 30, 2016

EDarkness said:
It'll be interesting to see what kind of gains they were able to get out of it in that case. They could have done some things inside to spruce it up a bit. The real key is going to be looking at the games and how they perform. I still don't think this thing will have any problems running more modern games like GTA V and the like.

The gains are going to be from the major architectural leaps over the WiiU, and the API overhaul that nVidia did on the backend.

As is noted, these specs are what has leaked so far and give us a ballpark estimate. People discussing 2GB of RAM are discussing boogeymen (and the devkit > retail RAM point has not been valid for a long time). The NS isn't going to launch with the same RAM profile as a WiiU but considerably stronger CPU/GPU combo, that's just mindlessly stupid to consider.

th3sicknness · Oct 30, 2016

Vena said:
That's not how chip development works. nVidia doesn't just have X1 chip components sitting around that they need to put somewhere. They license a design, another party will do fabrication. They also didn't sink 500 man-years on slightly tweaking an X1, that's just nonsense.

Next to no one fabricates on 20nm nodes anymore, which is likely where the Pascal info comes from because X1 -on 16/14nm fab nodes is Pascal as almost all of the gains/differences are purely on the fabrication change. X1, in the long run, would be more expensive stuck on a 20nm node.

Didn't the wii u use a 45 nm process while everything else including the xone and ps4 used 28 nm...

Vena · Oct 30, 2016

th3sicknness said:
The
Didn't the wii u use a 45 nm process while everything else including the xone and ps4 used 28 nm...

28nm was not available when the WiiU was being designed. It was also not a usable node for the Wii BC and EDRAM pool.

Quasar · Oct 30, 2016

Anth0ny said:
32GB seems small when you consider how large PATCHES are today, let alone full games.

good luck to anyone going digital only. start stocking up on those SD cards.

Yeah. I wondered about that. If I bought one I would continue my digital only stance and so enough storage for just a couple of games is a bit if a problem. Hope it supports SDXC or some other large capacity format.

EDarkness · Oct 30, 2016

Vena said:
The gains are going to be from the major architectural leaps over the WiiU, and the API overhaul that nVidia did on the backend.

As is noted, these specs are what has leaked so far and give us a ballpark estimate. People discussing 2GB of RAM are discussing boogeymen (and the devkit > retail RAM point has not been valid for a long time). The NS isn't going to launch with the same RAM profile as a WiiU but considerably stronger CPU/GPU combo, that's just mindlessly stupid to consider.

Yeah. I think 4GB is fine and even having 3.2 to play with will make a HUGE difference. More is better, of course, but still 4GB will be nice. Especially as a guy working on a Wii U game at the moment....

What I'm more interested in is how games will perform. We know what a stock X1 can do, so where will this fall in comparison to that. It'll be interesting times.

Schnozberry · Oct 30, 2016

Dakhil said:
I'll admit I'm a little disappointed if this is true.

I wouldn't be. Maxwell and Pascal are very similar. The real gains would be in power consumption, and modest performance gains unless they really crank up the clocks.

Reallink · Oct 30, 2016

Cerium said:
It really can't though. It's actually quite specific. They're saying Pascal as clearly as they can without using the name, which is probably because Nintendo won't let them yet.

I've already dissected their PR double speak:

Reallink said:
The 980ti (Maxwell) is still the third fastest GPU in the world, which certainly qualifies as "top-performing GeForce gaming graphics cardS" (emphasis on the plural S). This quote means and says absolutely nothing. If anything it suggests it's NOT Pascal, else they would have used the more boisterous singular--top or fastest "card" in the world. Come to think of it, the plural vaugery is actually very out of character for Nvidia, they speak in absolutes (best, fastest, most advanced, etc...) In limiting the subset to Geforce cards and using the plural, I think this may very well be confirmation it's Maxwell. It makes no sense to have not to have used the singular if it were Pascal, Volta has no bearing on what they say or do in October of 2016. It doesn't even exist.

Speely · Oct 30, 2016

Schnozberry said:
I wouldn't be. Maxwell and Pascal are very similar. The real gains would be in power consumption, and modest performance gains unless they really crank up the clocks.

Aren't the potential power consumption gains very important to a portable device, though? That's why I am really hoping for Pascal architecture. The performance is, I think, going to be pretty uniformly modest but capable no matter what. For example, they could target the same performance of a similar Maxwell chip but get better power efficiency with a Pascal chip.

I feel like that is important to Nintendo. Maybe that's just me projecting my wishes onto the Switch, tho.

Vena · Oct 30, 2016

Speely said:
Aren't the potential power consumption gains very important to a portable device, though? That's why I am really hoping for Pascal architecture. The performance is, I think, going to be pretty uniformly modest but capable no matter what. For example, they could target the same performance of a similar Maxwell chip but get better power efficiency with a Pascal chip.

I feel like that is important to Nintendo. Maybe that's just me projecting my wishes onto the Switch, tho.

Power consumption will be important to Nintendo, yes. As I said, we won't know on this for a while (unless the source is close to the retail units, but that leak would come from Redmond or NCL, not a random dev months out from launch) because this isn't info that a dev unit will know (nor will they care, really, if the API are good and ubiquitous enough). They aren't targeting "power draw %s" they are targeting performance and specs, the former is on Nintendo's engineers at NTD to worry about with the final unit so long as they still have a final kit that matches or exceeds the target performance of the dev kits.

For similar reasons, modern RAM allotment considerations from dev kit to retail unit are fud unless a dev comes out and says, "Ya, 2gigs are overhead for debugging, we've been told to work in less than 2gigs for games." In fact the opposite has happened, we've been told 4GBs and 3.2GBs for games. Nintendo isn't going to let you develop at 3.2GB target and then ship a unit with 2GBs, thats inane. The games wouldn't work.

KingSnake · Oct 30, 2016

4GB is disapointing. I still hope it uses Pascal even if downclocked to match X1 for the simple reason that it's more power efficient and generates less heat for the same processing power.

EDarkness · Oct 30, 2016

Speely said:
Aren't the potential power consumption gains very important to a portable device, though? That's why I am really hoping for Pascal architecture. The performance is, I think, going to be pretty uniformly modest but capable no matter what. For example, they could target the same performance of a similar Maxwell chip but get better power efficiency with a Pascal chip.

I feel like that is important to Nintendo. Maybe that's just me projecting my wishes onto the Switch, tho.

Well, one thing we know about Nintendo is that they're all about keeping power low. Even more so in this case because the system is going to be portable. I wouldn't be surprised if they do a revision down the line like they did with the N3DS if they find a way to improve the design a bit.

Schnozberry · Oct 30, 2016

Speely said:
Aren't the potential power consumption gains very important to a portable device, though? That's why I am really hoping for Pascal architecture. The performance is, I think, going to be pretty uniformly modest but capable no matter what. For example, they could target the same performance of a similar Maxwell chip but get better power efficiency with a Pascal chip.

I feel like that is important to Nintendo. Maybe that's just me projecting my wishes onto the Switch, tho.

I believe it is Pascal. I think people are reading into Emily saying the chip is very similar the wrong way. The performance profile and design of the chip probably are very similar, but the devil is in the details. Same number of shader modules, same number of CPU cores, and the same amount of RAM. Just more efficient and capable of higher clocks.

lwilliams3 · Oct 30, 2016

So, if these dev kit leaks are true, I guess that the Switch has at least 3x the power of Wii U's GPU (not including memory improvements, using FP16, more modern featureset, and around the range of PS4/XB1 in CPU power.

Shogmaster said:
You kids will really go bonkers if Nintendo does what I kinda suspect they will do: 1/2 the RAM of devkit in the retail version.

I don't know about that, man.,. IIRC, the dev kits for the Wii U was not double the retail amount.

Reallink said:
I've already dissected their PR double speak:

While that may be true, another truth is that Pascal itself is basically Maxwell on a smaller fab.

JoshuaJSlone · Oct 30, 2016

Zulithe said:
Plenty of rumors saying that it might only have 2GB,

Zulithe said:
it's still being tossed around as a possibility (replies to Emily's tweets; not saying they are reputable but just the fact people are floating it as an option is offputting enough)

Speculation in response to a rumor isn't even a rumor.

EDarkness said:
I still don't think this thing will have any problems running more modern games like GTA V and the like.

Using a game that already exists in decent form on X360 is a pretty low standard to meet.

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