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LPVG: Nintendo Switch Dock Increases Performance, Not Via Extra Hardware

M

Mokujin

Member
While it was the main theory that Switch would run at full clock while docked it's really great news to have confirmation it does, that probably confirms we are in the full speed Tegra X1 range power envelope at the very least.

On the other side the fan being on the Dock was not the main theory, and to me it always seemed like a better solution.

But what I don't believe is that there are fans on both the dock and the main unit, it doesn't makes sense to me.
 
B

bomblord1

Banned
Wait wait wait.

Does this mean we could actually see Breath of the Wild and Xenoblade X running at native 1080p when docked?

Someone hold me.
 
S

Skittzo0413

Member
Mokujin said:
While it was the main theory that Switch would run at full clock while docked it's really great news to have confirmation it does, that probably confirms we are in the full speed Tegra X1 range power envelope at the very least.

On the other side the fan being on the Dock was not the main theory, and to me it always seemed like a better solution.

But what I don't believe is that there are fans on both the dock and the main unit, it doesn't makes sense to me.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I agree that this is a bit of an odd choice if true. It would either mean that the tablet needs fans inside the casing to work as a supplement to the fan in the dock (or vice versa) to provide enough cooling, or it means that the tablet needs to be cooled when in portable mode, which would indicate that the system runs too hot to be comfortable for a portable.

In the latter case, it could either mean that the GPU clocks are running far higher than we'd normally expect in portable mode (or that there are more SMs than we expect) or that they are going with Maxwell architecture, which is 60% less power efficient than Pascal would be.
 
LordOfChaos

LordOfChaos

Member
Donnie said:
I don't think Denver is a particularly good CPU for gaming and A57/A53 are a bit long in the tooth these days. A72/A73 would be better options.
Click to expand...

Yeah, if it was all Denver I'd think it's a bad idea, but in a mixed environment with more standard cores as well I think they could lean on each others strengths.

Denver also choked up on messy data access patterns as its binary translator couldn't keep up - I imagine this is the very first thing they'd want to address on any revision of Denver.
 
K

KAL2006

Banned
Mokujin said:
While it was the main theory that Switch would run at full clock while docked it's really great news to have confirmation it does, that probably confirms we are in the full speed Tegra X1 range power envelope at the very least.

On the other side the fan being on the Dock was not the main theory, and to me it always seemed like a better solution.

But what I don't believe is that there are fans on both the dock and the main unit, it doesn't makes sense to me.
Click to expand...

Fan is definitely on the dock. There is a air vent in the trailer for the Mario Kart scene. The past where there is a attachment stand for the car seat. The attachment stand has a hole for the air vent. If you need to expose air vent in the car stand that means fans will be on in portable mode as well.
 
I

Instro

Member
On a side note, I wonder if the Switch will make use of checkerboard rendering type solutions ala the PS4 Pro. Might go a long way to helping it maintain 1080p for more games, although I'm not sure as to the viability at lower resolutions in comparison to using it for 4k.
 
Astral Dog

Astral Dog

Member
KAL2006 said:
I guess you are not Happy with Xbox Onewhere quite a few games are not 1080p

Bit I guess the handheld Switch will outperform the Xbox One to allow consistent 1080p games riiiiigggght lol.
Click to expand...
I agrrrreee with you, graphically demanding on Switch? There is no way those will run at 1080p, SWITCH is an impressive handheld with a few console features, but its no magick
 
J

JoshuaJSlone

Member
Sub Boss said:
I agrrrreee with you, graphically demanding on Switch? There is no way those will run at 1080p
Click to expand...
You could easily have impressive looking games at 1080p on Switch. Or Wii U. Or PS3. Or you could do something so crazy that it would have problems maintaining a playable frame rate at 240p on any of those. Since there's no one set standard for what "graphically demanding" means, it's all relative.
 
D

Deleted member 752119

Unconfirmed Member
ViciousDS said:
can I get full power without the dock? I want to just play it remotely without performance decreases....like a USBC plug into the bottom of the unit itself.
Click to expand...

The handheld isn't going to have a 1080p screen most likely anyway. So dropping down to 720p or whatever the screen ends up being is probably the main compromise I'd think.
 
Astral Dog

Astral Dog

Member
JoshuaJSlone said:
You could easily have impressive looking games at 1080p on Switch. Or Wii U. Or PS3. Or you could do something so crazy that it would have problems maintaining a playable frame rate at 240p on any of those. Since there's no one set standard for what "graphically demanding" means, it's all relative.
Click to expand...
Downports from PS4/ONE "AAA" games (maybe not Sonic) and the ocassional open world Nintendo game i had in mind. those will punch far above what the Wii U could do and i dont see the resolution/system keeping up.

Though there will be far more 1080p games than Wii U, at least, just maybe not the standard.
 
P

Peltz

Member
Lexxus said:
Zelda Wind Waker was 1080p on WiiU.
Click to expand...

To be fair, that was a port of a much simpler looking game with far fewer physics calculations and objects on screen. Furthermore, it ran at a smooth 30 fps at 480p with no loading times on ancient hardware.

BoTW, in contrast, looks to be Nintendo's most ambitious game ever from a technology/graphical standpoint. I don't think that hitting 1080p is a lock considering the Switch will only be 2-3x more powerful than the Wii U.

I think we may still get a 720p game but with a larger draw distance and more consistent 30fps framerate.
 
R

Rodin

Member
Peltz said:
To be fair, that was a port of a much simpler looking game with far fewer physics calculations and objects on screen. Furthermore, it ran at a smooth 30 fps at 480p with no loading times on ancient hardware.

BoTW, in contrast, looks to be Nintendo's most ambitious game ever from a technology/graphical standpoint. I don't think that hitting 1080p is a lock considering the Switch will only be 2-3x more powerful than the Wii U.

I think we may still get a 720p game but with a larger draw distance and more consistent 30fps framerate.
Click to expand...

You don't need 3x or even 2x the GPU horsepower to increase resolution from 720p to 1080p, it all comes down to how much Nintendo wants to improve graphics from the Wii U version. Physics can't possibly an issue considering they run on Espresso and how ridiculously more powerful the CPU will be in the Switch. 900p is also a possibility if they want to considerably boost things like shadow quality/distance, lod, etc (this is for when you play on TV, it will obviously be 720p on the portable screen).
 
G

Graphics Horse

Member
Instro said:
On a side note, I wonder if the Switch will make use of checkerboard rendering type solutions ala the PS4 Pro. Might go a long way to helping it maintain 1080p for more games, although I'm not sure as to the viability at lower resolutions in comparison to using it for 4k.
Click to expand...

Don't see why not, Rainbow 6 used it for 1080p before the Pro was announced. But I think we can assume the boost with dock is big enough that it won't be necessary to use another technique so you'd probably have checkerboard 720p and checkerboard 1080p, if you can get away with it at 720p
 
B

BDGAME

Member
Graphics Horse said:
Don't see why not, Rainbow 6 used it for 1080p before the Pro was announced. But I think we can assume the boost with dock is big enough that it won't be necessary to use another technique so you'd probably have checkerboard 720p and checkerboard 1080p, if you can get away with it at 720p
Click to expand...

That is a cool trick. Battlefield 1 running at 360p and upscale to 720p on tablet.

And on TV, it works like the Xbox one, ruining 540p with upscale to 1080p.
 
L

LordKano

Member
Peltz said:
To be fair, that was a port of a much simpler looking game with far fewer physics calculations and objects on screen. Furthermore, it ran at a smooth 30 fps at 480p with no loading times on ancient hardware.

BoTW, in contrast, looks to be Nintendo's most ambitious game ever from a technology/graphical standpoint. I don't think that hitting 1080p is a lock considering the Switch will only be 2-3x more powerful than the Wii U.

I think we may still get a 720p game but with a larger draw distance and more consistent 30fps framerate.
Click to expand...

We don't know that and using that kind of metric is not really precise enough to draw a conclusion about the power.
 
D

DrWong

Member
heringer said:
Minimum requirements for Dark Souls 3 is actualy 4GB, as with most of the recente AAA 3D games.
Click to expand...
That's the recommanded configuration actually, minimum configuration is a 2GB graphic card. I ran Steep on my old 570 TI (1.2GB of RAM) based config @ 1080P 28fps, everything on low, when min. requirement is a 2GB card.
 
R

Rodin

Member
Graphics Horse said:
Don't see why not, Rainbow 6 used it for 1080p before the Pro was announced. But I think we can assume the boost with dock is big enough that it won't be necessary to use another technique so you'd probably have checkerboard 720p and checkerboard 1080p, if you can get away with it at 720p
Click to expand...
This is actually pretty clever, it works beautifully in Watch_Dogs 2 PC as well. If i don't see the upscaled version next to the native one, i can barely tell it's not actual, full 1080p. Nvidia and Nintendo's engineers would certainly know about this technique, hopefully they worked on game engines to make this work in the best, most efficient way possible. I'm sure the most tech savy guy who knows how to pixel count can see the difference without a problem, but those aren't Nintendo's main public. Masses don't know the difference between 720p upscaled to 1080p and native 1080p (they think both are 1080p), the end result will just look awesome to them.
 
blu

blu

Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
LordOfChaos said:
Which made that 4x Cortex A57 rumor odd/not believable for me. The Cortex A57 is in the same baseball league as Jaguar, but four of them vs 7ish running a PS4/XBO game wouldn't keep up. So I'm curious what the final CPU will be. 4 A57s, 4 A53s? 8 A57s? 4 A57s, 2 Denver?
Click to expand...
A57 would be in there only if something in the early design stages got set in stone, for some reason. A72 outguns A57 in all three parameters - area, clock, and power efficiency. And A73 kills it, but that might be too new for the Switch (at least from my POV, Thraktor thinks otherwise).

Donnie said:
I don't think Denver is a particularly good CPU for gaming and A57/A53 are a bit long in the tooth these days. A72/A73 would be better options.
Click to expand...
As lived as the A53 is, it's still the most efficient 64-bit CPU on the planet. And A73 is in the power/perf class of A72, so there's no point in pairing A72 with A73.
 
J

James Scott

Banned
I wonder how fast the switch will be. Will it start displaying automatically at 1080p on the TV or do you have to enable it?
Would be cool if it was instant.
 
LordOfChaos

LordOfChaos

Member
blu said:
A57 would be in there only if something in the early design stages got set in stone, for some reason. A72 outguns A57 in all three parameters - area, clock, and power efficiency. And A73 kills it, but that might be too new for the Switch (at least from my POV, Thraktor thinks otherwise).


As lived as the A53 is, it's still the most efficient 64-bit CPU on the planet. And A73 is in the power/perf class of A72, so there's no point in pairing A72 with A73.
Click to expand...


Agreed, to me the core count is the bigger question. As I recall the A72 and Jaguar alternated trading blows in micro-benchmark breakdowns, but again it wouldn't be to the point where one may describe 4 A72s as being '>>>>>>' 6 and a half available Jaguar cores. Unless it clocks significantly higher, which I suppose is also possible.
 
D

Donnie

Member
LordOfChaos said:
Agreed, to me the core count is the bigger question. As I recall the A72 and Jaguar alternated trading blows in micro-benchmark breakdowns, but again it wouldn't be to the point where one may describe 4 A72s as being '>>>>>>' 6 and a half available Jaguar cores. Unless it clocks significantly higher, which I suppose is also possible.
Click to expand...

As far as I remember the A57 traded blows with Jaguar, but was overall faster. So A72 should be quite noticeably faster than Jaguar.
 
D

Donnie

Member
blu said:
As lived as the A53 is, it's still the most efficient 64-bit CPU on the planet. And A73 is in the power/perf class of A72, so there's no point in pairing A72 with A73.
Click to expand...

Yeah sorry I didn't mean to say pair them, just meant to say A72 or A73, just wrote it in a really confusing way :)
 
S

Skittzo0413

Member
OG_Original Gamer said:
I'm now expecting Crisis 2-3 visuals docked, I having nothing to base this expectation on other than hoping I'm right by accident.
Click to expand...

Well, remember Crysis 3 was running on Wii U and was cancelled just before the discs were about to be printed. But as said above, visuals can vary quite a bit even in the same game.

jabberwocker said:
wait they did not show it on the preview teaser?
Click to expand...

We really have no idea what kind of footage that was, but it's likely that all of the footage from the Switch trailer was captured from development PCs, and not Switch consoles.
 
E

EatChildren

Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
I dunno, I'm still expecting a lot of games to run at 720p even when docked. Though it will be interesting to see how developers balance docked versus portable performance with the different power draws. In an absolute perfect world swapping from docked to portable downscales more or less everything, particularly asset quality, to ensure that the portable version can still hit a decent framerate and IQ. I fully expect most games to not do this though, and instead just be hit by framerate, resolution, and anisotropic filtering (or lack thereof).
 
J

James Scott

Banned
EatChildren said:
I dunno, I'm still expecting a lot of games to run at 720p even when docked. Though it will be interesting to see how developers balance docked versus portable performance with the different power draws. In an absolute perfect world swapping from docked to portable downscales more or less everything, particularly asset quality, to ensure that the portable version can still hit a decent framerate and IQ. I fully expect most games to not do this though, and instead just be hit by framerate, resolution, and anisotropic filtering (or lack thereof).
Click to expand...
Yeah, especially ports of PS4/X1 games. Not sure about 720p, per say, but many 900p games are pretty likely.
 
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