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[moniker]

That would require doubling the battery size, which makes the unit thinker and heavier, which still restricts portability.

Not necessarily since the dev kit could draw more power than the retail unit, for various reasons. Rumors said that (at least some) devkits where using a 20 nm Tegra X1, and the retail unit might have a customized 16 FinFET Tegra X2 for example, which would mean less power draw at the same performance level. It's probably best to keep expectations in check though.

 

[Shpeshal Nick]

Shouldn't the sentence then be "I think 5 would be perfect if they could hit that number." instead of "I think 5 would have been perfect if they could have hit that number.", or am I going crazy?

Yep. You're right.

 

[sprsk]

The controllers have their own battery, obviously. They can function independently.

Yeah but that doesn't mean they don't siphon the battery when attached. You gotta charge em some how right?

 

[cw_sasuke]

Eh, I wouldn't take this as an indication of the real battery life. Pre-release dev systems != consumer systems in terms of power consumption and even hardware spec.

Not to mention we don't know what 3 hours means in terms of what kind of usage, what background processes are running (keep in mind dev units probably have extra layers of diagnostics running a release system wouldn't bringing down the battery life.)


I still think we'll get 5-6 hours. If the leaked specs are real and it's only 720p, it can't be *that* big of a battery hog. Though, if the conrollers feed off the system battery then maybe that's enough to bring the battery life down?

I completely agree.

Even so i hope we will have bigger optional batteries soon after or even at launch.

 

[gofreak]

Do you think that Switch might eventually cause MS and Sony to consider having FP16 enabled in future hardware?

PS4 Pro has this support. All future systems should. In terms of optimisation effort ... Afaik, a dev could switch (!) to using half precision types in their shaders, and that same shader code will work transparently on hardware that doesn't natively support fp16. They just get automatically cast to fp32 on those platforms. So a dev wouldn't have to maintain a special approach to numerical precision if they think about it up front. The other thing is though... Depending on the platforms shader syntax, they'll probably have to port and maintain the shader code anyway. It's usually not a big deal, often automated away...engines take one shader code base and compile to target automatically as long as you don't start doing machine specific things. It may not be a huge deal to replace floats with halfs in that context. The bigger work burden might be in checking there's no unintended side effects like colour banding or whatever. You won't want to use halfs everywhere, so the effort might be in testing and checking you're not over-using them. But I wonder if this would be a huge effort. There'll definitely be multiplatform incentive to make that effort going forward.

 

[Zedark]

Disgusting.gif

Battery tech needs to catch up to the rest of the industry ASAP. Or they need to just man up and put a bigger one in there. It should be at LEAST 5 hours minimum.

Yeah, that's sadly not going to happen anywhere in the foreseeable future. We have reached a (fundamentalist physical) battery density limit where increasing the energy stores per volume would make batteries explosive, which us annoying consumers don't like either. Until a shortcut in battery physics is discovered, we are stuck and can only increase the size of batteries if we want more energy. It's a shame but a physical reality.

 

[michaelius]

The other part of it is how much it will actually be used. That is a lot more murky, as it will depend on developers performing platform-specific optimization for NX which doesn't really benefit them on most other gaming platforms. This is a question that depends on individual developers, and also on how easy the toolset and/or common third party engines make using it.

Well going by latest interview with Cerny FP16 is supported by P4Pro and will be part of AMD Vega so Scorpio should have it too.

 

[Fox_Mulder]

I can see this thing bomb like the Wii U

 

[Jon Carter]

The truly interesting bit of information would be the battery life when in sleep mode, because I would assume the amount of people playing games on-the-go for over three hours is very, very small. I think most people play much less but don't want the battery to die in sleep mode before they get home. The 3DS and Vita had very similar battery lives at first glance but there turned out to be a huge difference in the battery life during sleep mode. My wish is Vita-level battery life, but 3DS-level would work too. Less than that would start to be pretty bad.

 

[SinCityAssassin]

I can see this thing bomb like the Wii U

 

[Jon Carter]

Better bomb like the Wii U than explode like the Galaxy Note 7 I guess.

 

[ShadowFox08]

The dock rumours are the most intriguing for me, as rendering the same image for both the TV the console screen just doesn't seem optimal, especially if it's a "a home gaming system first and foremost".
At the very least I feel it has to have higher clock speeds while docked. This would also collaborate with Nintendo's statement to IGN about the dock, as the clock speed increase would be a function of the console (enabled by the mains power) and not a function of the dock.

Honestly I'm thinking the upclock(or clocking to "normal speed") when docked is just there to increase the resolution from the handheld's 720p to 1080p(or whatever highest resolution each game can support) to what the developers originally intended. I'm not expecting anything more from the dock. Maybe we'll get an SCD down the road, or we'll get an upgraded version of the NS with better specs 3 years down like the XL or even a full blown mid generation update.

I think I'm at the point where if I keep thinking this game has insane specs based off speculation, I'm gonna go insane. I'd honestly expect the worst case scenario. I'm sure some of you remember how WUST went.

 

[wowbaggerBR]

3 hours? Nintendo is laughable at hardware design.

 

[EatChildren]

Higher clock speeds when docked seems completely reasonable without having any additional hardware in the dock itself. Modern GPU/CPUs overclock almost effortlessly on the condition that the power draw can match the load, and cooling is adequate to prevent overheating.

Really, I don't even see this as a device that gets a performance boost when docked, so much as a device that is downclocked when portable. As long as Nintendo built the hardware in mind with stabilised docked power and cooling, having the GPU (and maybe CPU) downclock when portable is a sensible decision for a device that has to conserve battery power.

 

[Turin Turambar]

Serious question :

How many hours last an iPad playing an intensive 3d game?

 

[JoeM86]

3 hours? Nintendo is laughable at hardware design.

Battery technology hasn't really evolved in line with technology.

If you play any mobile or tablet device and have an intensive game on it, battery will most likely die in the same period.

Hell, Pokémon GO drains my phone battery in an hour and a half of non stop play

 

[Speely]

Serious question :

How many hours last an iPad playing an intensive 3d game?

About 3 hours

 

[sprsk]

I don't play games on my phone because of how bad they drain battery. If I do it's something super light (no 3d graphics).

It's one thing to use your phone for things like twitter and video, but games drain the shit out of battery even on the highest end phones.

 

[kinggroin]

This sounds like about what I expected. Anyone going, "3 HOURS?!?" are either being disingenuous with their reactions (because it's fun to play the hyperbole game) or were completey delusional fanboys.


This thing is packing above Wii U level hardware, on the go. Y'all fucking nuts if you expected much more than 3 while playing something as nice looking as that Mario game or Zelda. Big ass tablets with worse gfx fair about the same.

 

[mrklaw]

Higher clock speeds when docked seems completely reasonable without having any additional hardware in the dock itself. Modern GPU/CPUs overclock almost effortlessly on the condition that the power draw can match the load, and cooling is adequate to prevent overheating.

Really, I don't even see this as a device that gets a performance boost when docked, so much as a device that is downclocked when portable. As long as Nintendo built the hardware in mind with stabilised docked power and cooling, having the GPU (and maybe CPU) downclock when portable is a sensible decision for a device that has to conserve battery power.

Overly simplistic maths probably, but wouldn't you need a doubling (halving) of clockspeeds to go between 720-1080p?

 

[kinggroin]

Overly simplistic maths probably, but wouldn't you need a doubling (halving) of clockspeeds to go between 720-1080p?

It may only be running at 720p to conserve battery, not because it's starved for performance.


Look at it this way. Its natural power state allows for 1080p effortlessly, but clocks speeds are reduced significantly for the sake of battery life when portable, meaning 720p only (which is probably the screen's native res too)


Edit: mrklaw...I'm an idiot. Didn't realize EatChildren literally said what I did. My bad.

But no, if it's already built for a game to run at 1080p/60fps hen it OBVIOUSLY can run the same game at 720p/60fps right? How far it down clocks depends on a couple things at least:

1) How much battery it needs to conserve
2) How low it CAN go in clock speed before performance is an issue at 720p (that could be anywhere between a theoretical 50% to anything lower than full power mode...depends on how the game utilizes the hardware)

 

[BreakAtmo]

Do you think that Switch might eventually cause MS and Sony to consider having FP16 enabled in future hardware?

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/d...tation-4-pro-how-sony-made-a-4k-games-machine

- Enhanced 16-bit half-float support

- New features from AMD roadmap - the ability to run two FP16 operations concurrently instead of one FP32, plus the integration of a work scheduler for increased efficiency

"Finally, there's better support of variables such as half-floats. To date, with the AMD architectures, a half-float would take the same internal space as a full 32-bit float. There hasn't been much advantage to using them. With Polaris though, it's possible to place two half-floats side by side in a register, which means if you're willing to mark which variables in a shader program are fine with 16-bits of storage, you can use twice as many. Annotate your shader program, say which variables are 16-bit, then you'll use fewer vector registers."

 

[fabricated backlash]

Serious question :

How many hours last an iPad playing an intensive 3d game?

About the same, if not less. Battery tech is severely behind.

 

[Durante]

Hmm, the quote above only indicates FP16 using half the register storage space, it doesn't really confirm that they compute at double the rate. (I haven't read the whole thing)

 

[oti]

I don't play games on my phone because of how bad they drain battery. If I do it's something super light (no 3d graphics).

It's one thing to use your phone for things like twitter and video, but games drain the shit out of battery even on the highest end phones.

Actually when I think about it I do the same. I ignore all 3D Android games because the controls are bad and the battery drains way too fast. I only play games like Hearthstone or Lara Croft GO but even those games I'll maybe play 5% on phone and 95% on tablet at home.

 

[Sesuadra]

Hope my flights are not over 3 hours then, or I'm left twiddling my thumbs
Or playing on my Ipad ¯\_(&#12484_/¯

There could always be battery packs etc.. though...

History repeating....♫

You'll probably be able to use a power bank. I mean even if it uses a proprietary way to charge it, there will be 3rd party USB Cables pretty fast, just like for the 3DS.

 

[Triggerhappytel]

I love watching GAF melt down about the most minor of issues. Just how long do you guys want to play portable Switch for? Five hours? Ten? Twenty?

Nothing is ever good enough.

Pretty sure if it was 8-10 hours most people would be perfectly happy with that.

 

[Maximus.]

3 hours seems comparable to the battery life of a smartphone if you were to strictly game on it with higher end graphics, unless I am mistaken?

I really hope the final units have better battery than 3 hours though.

 

[Painguy]

There are two components to this. The one question is how valuable it is in principle. To that I'd say quite valuable, there are a lot of calculations in graphics which can be done just as well in FP16 as in FP32. Of course, it will never be all of them, so you can't just take the FP16 numbers directly either, even for the most optimized games.

The other part of it is how much it will actually be used. That is a lot more murky, as it will depend on developers performing platform-specific optimization for NX which doesn't really benefit them on most other gaming platforms. This is a question that depends on individual developers, and also on how easy the toolset and/or common third party engines make using it.

Appreciate the answer man. That second bit I feel will really be the key. I'm not sure if the drivers can optimize for something like this or not, but either way I'm gonna keep my expectations on the lower end.

 

[SivArcher]

All I read from the thread is "mediocre" battery life, where is the 3 hours ?

 

[Zedark]

All I read from the thread is "mediocre" battery life, where is the 3 hours ?

She does mention it in the article (I think, at least she tweets about it), but she later Clarification that 1) this is based on a devkit, which also has to power extra development hardware, and 2) she isn't sure whether this means 3 hours at maximum load or a maximum of 3 hours without a specific load mentioned. She said she would inquire and return to us with the result in the next couple of days.

 

[wowbaggerBR]

Battery technology hasn't really evolved in line with technology.

If you play any mobile or tablet device and have an intensive game on it, battery will most likely die in the same period.

Hell, Pokémon GO drains my phone battery in an hour and a half of non stop play

Exactly, so you don't make a home console portable since it won't do much away from a regular power source.

 

[Ushay]

Better bomb like the Wii U than explode like the Galaxy Note 7 I guess.

Eyyyyyyyyyyyyy lmao

In 2017, if this thing can't render at 1080p for TV screens I'd be disappointed. From the information we have is that possible?

 

[titiklabingapat]

You guys are honestly asking for far too much. 3 hours for such extensive graphic processing on a mobile device with today's battery tech is probably the most reasonable they can do it without making the device a big hulking mess. Even modern smartphones drain that fast if you play graphic intensive games.

 

[mrklaw]

I'll probably need a second charger for playing in the home. Like the wiiU I often ended up sitting near a power socket and bought a separate charger because of the poor battery life (eventually bought a bigger battery)

 

[sfried]

Do you think 6 months will be enough time to improve battery performance margins (Further SoC optimization and refinement)? Or do these Tegra SOCs actually come "as-is" without the ability to be "custom-made to spec"?

My guess is battery life will be similar to OG 3DS, which wasn't great, but was servicable.

Eyyyyyyyyyyyyy lmao

In 2017, if this thing can't render at 1080p for TV screens I'd be disappointed. From the information we have is that possible?

From what I've read so far, it might be (?) upclocked/base-clocked when docked. Those whole reports about the dev kits making "audible" active cooling noise is perhaps starting to make sense.

Also the teaser showing the unit itself having vents answers on of the questions I've had if the idea of it being "boosted" while docked were real. I guess the fans just kick in while it's plugged in for power.

 

[Waji]

You guys really expected more?

It was exactly my reaction.
I remember the 3ds not having that much more at the beginning, maybe with 3D I don't remember. I'm sure people were already saying it was crap by that time.
But we're talking about a XenobladeX(2) going on your handheld, so I wasn't expecting that much battery.

We'll see how it is in the end, but it's better to always expect the least.

 

[R00bot]

Honestly who is going to be out of the house and needing to play games for more than 3 hours. This would be a problem if it was a purely portable system because you'd end up tethered to the charger, but with this you can just dock it and relax on the couch while still playing.

 

[WaterAstro]

3

Spoiler

hour

DS

It's just a dev kit though. Could be very different.

I remember when the DS devkit was just an exposed PCB with screens on it.

 

[LaronX]

Pretty sure if it was 8-10 hours most people would be perfectly happy with that.

8-10h screen on time on a 720p or higher display. Jesus people where are you from that magic like that happens. The issue I have the the "3h" drama is A) it's a dev kit. I wouldn't be surprised if they literally reused the WiiU gamepads battery, which lasts exactly 3h, and plan on something else later. B) most seem to ignore it is 3h screen on time. As a comparison hood phones should get 4-5 on a smaller display. So expecting 10 is missing regality. It should last that long in sleep if not longer, but it won't have that much screen on time. 4-5 h would be ideal, but on the go 3h can be enough , but is on the lower end and should be more.

 

[RowdyReverb]

Higher clock speeds when docked seems completely reasonable without having any additional hardware in the dock itself. Modern GPU/CPUs overclock almost effortlessly on the condition that the power draw can match the load, and cooling is adequate to prevent overheating.

Really, I don't even see this as a device that gets a performance boost when docked, so much as a device that is downclocked when portable. As long as Nintendo built the hardware in mind with stabilised docked power and cooling, having the GPU (and maybe CPU) downclock when portable is a sensible decision for a device that has to conserve battery power.

This is my reasoning as well. I'm wondering if the device even has fans that are only active/necessary while in dock mode.

 

[Waji]

Do you think 6 months will be enough time to improve battery performance margins (Further SoC optimization and refinement)? Or do these Tegra SOCs actually come "as-is" without the ability to be "custom-made to spec"?

If the "main" leaks are true and considering the time frame, it should, the Switch would be in early stage of production.
So if you want a new version, wait 2, 3 years to have the NX-XL/Color whatever.

 

[Camp Freddie]

You'll probably be able to use a power bank. I mean even if it uses a proprietary way to charge it, there will be 3rd party USB Cables pretty fast, just like for the 3DS.

Hopefully. Though if they don't use a 5v supply, you won't be able to just stick in a USB adapter.

 

[Daphnes Nohansen Hyrule]

give me 4 hours please

 

[Oregano]

Higher clock speeds when docked seems completely reasonable without having any additional hardware in the dock itself. Modern GPU/CPUs overclock almost effortlessly on the condition that the power draw can match the load, and cooling is adequate to prevent overheating.

Really, I don't even see this as a device that gets a performance boost when docked, so much as a device that is downclocked when portable. As long as Nintendo built the hardware in mind with stabilised docked power and cooling, having the GPU (and maybe CPU) downclock when portable is a sensible decision for a device that has to conserve battery power.

It's also worth noting/repeating that it's an existing feature of the Nvidia Shield Tablet called Console Mode. It turns off the screen and renders at higher res(I think?).

We also see that the screen of the Switch is definitely off when docked.

 

[Kissenkopf]

I can see this thing bomb like the Wii U

You say that in every fucking thread. O__o

Who are you? Happy Nintendo Gamer?

 

[Zedark]

If the "main" leaks are true and considering the time frame, it should, the Switch would be in early stage of production.
So if you want a new version, wait 2, 3 years to have the NX-XL/Color whatever.

Remember that this information is based on a devkit, which were most likely handed out way before the system allegedly going into early production. So they most likely will have had time to improve life, and that is assuming that the battery life of the actual product is the same as that of the devkit.

 

[UnemployedVillain]

If the "main" leaks are true and considering the time frame, it should, the Switch would be in early stage of production.
So if you want a new version, wait 2, 3 years to have the NX-XL/Color whatever.

Not sure how you arrived at that conclusion from any of the leaks. There seems to be a fundamental lack of understanding of what a dev kit is. It's a device that's suppose to accurately replicate (but early on, approximate) what developing on the final hardware should be like. As a result, depending on what version of the kit devs:
1. Don't necessarily have the same hardware as the final retail device. Just chips with similar performance
2. Have a bunch of extra debugging/development related hardware and software running on them
3. Usually are a tad bit more powerful than the device (at the least have more RAM) to compensate for #2

So essentially, while a dev kit showing that docking improving performance and that the device has a touch screen can be assumed as being the case on the real device, the battery life isn't necessarily indicative. Not to mention that while chips can't change late in the game, things like RAM, batteries, physic appearance tweaks, and anything that doesn't require actual long term engineering, can change fairly late. As long as they're before the manufacturing of retail devices starts

 

[m00h]

As long as the battery life isn't below 3 hours, I'll be perfectly fine with it. 3 hours is a lot of time if you're on the go, tbh.

 

[TLZ]

You say that in every fucking thread. O__o

Who are you? Happy Nintendo Gamer?

Not Too Happy Nintendo Gamer