Skittzo0413
Member
I would guess that Mario is still fairly early in the development stages and running on a development PC, whereas that Zelda footage was likely right from the Wii U build.
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Nintendo Switch: Powered by Custom Nvidia Tegra Chip (Official)
- Thread starter ekim
- Start date
I would guess that Mario is still fairly early in the development stages and running on a development PC, whereas that Zelda footage was likely right from the Wii U build.
Like the fact that nintendo is going full power should be bigger news.
Rogue Agent
Banned
When rumours suggest below Xbox One performance and more powerful than Wii U, does that apply to handheld mode or docked mode?
Both, I think. If we think it's a TX1, it does 512 GFLOPS at 1GHz on FP32.
That's when docked, pushing 1080p. If it pushes 720p, that's half the pixels, and we can consider the frequency halves, which gives us 250 GFLOPS.
Considering the Wii U has 176 GFLOPS, that's already better. The one has 1.3 TFLOPS.
That's all speculation, though.
Care to provide any evidence that Pascal cards are horrifically bandwidth constrained? (At the typical resolutions people would be expected to use them, at least).
Yes, bandwidth per compute is a silly metric, that was my point (as that's effectively the way the "insider" on the Anandtech forums was calculating things). Bandwidth per pixel is a more fair comparison, if the devices you're comparing use the same graphics architecture. The bandwidth consumption of a GCN 1.0 era GPU accessing an uncompressed buffer using immediate-mode rasterisation will be very different from a Pascal GPU accessing a compressed buffer using tile-based rasterisation (especially if we don't know the cache configuration of the latter).
Do you have any sources on features being dropped from mobile specifically due to lack of precision in FP16? (I'm not doubting that there are such features, I've just had a difficult time finding reliable info on this kind of stuff online.)
With mid-range smartphone SoCs jumping straight from 28nm to 16/14nm, I think it's safe to say that 20nm is just straight up uneconomical at this point, and if there's any capacity left it's being used for legacy products (Apple still sells some devices that use the A8, for example). The only possible reason Switch would use a 20nm chip would be if Nvidia had entered into a large wafer commitment with TSMC for 20nm and offered Nintendo an obscenely good deal in order to use it up, but I very much doubt that that's the case.
It's worth keeping in mind that Nintendo's decision to use eDRAM on Wii U's GPU prevented them from using 28nm, even if they had wanted to.
I don't think this is true at all. While nobody (to my knowledge) has actually decapped Wii CPUs & GPUs from across the production timeline, later models definitely had smaller package sizes, required smaller heatsinks and consumed less power, all of which would definitely indicate that they performed die shrinks just like MS and Sony.
A 6" 720p display has a PPI greater than any of Apple's Retina Macs and only slightly lower than their Retina iPads. Let's not pretend that this is going to be a pixelated mess in comparison.
JoshuaJSlone
Member
NippleViking said:
If you're comparing just one eye's view of the top screen, then the Switch screen would be 960% of the pixels, or an 860% increase. If you consider both left/right views of top screen plus the bottom screen, Switch would be about 343% of the pixels or a 243% increase.GhostTrick said:
It's entirely technically possible, even without Nvidia's involvement (Apple's iPads now have adaptive refresh rate displays). It'd definitely be a nice feature if it's cheap and easy to implement, although it could make TV play feel a bit stuttery in comparison.
Schnozberry
Member
Hitting a locked 30 or 60 might be easier docked. Having adaptive refresh would be more beneficial on the go.
Just saw this video of Metal Gear Rising comparison between X360 and Shield TV
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwz65Bvxrv8
Is the Shield TV performance a good indicator for level of performance we can expect from Switch?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwz65Bvxrv8
Is the Shield TV performance a good indicator for level of performance we can expect from Switch?
Again, that's a developer's choice, and also a Nintendo one, to a point. It's possible, but it's not certain. Nothing is, unless nintendo come out and say that they need every game on this to be programmed for 720p in mobile mode and 1080p in docked mode. Which i don't think they'll do tbh. As i see it, it's possible, but not probable.
Skittzo0413
Member
I've seen this thrown around a bit but never gotten a real answer on it:
Would it be possible for the Switch to utilize the Nvidia PC streaming that the Shield products have? Most people say it's unlikely but I'm curious why.
Is it an additional hardware expenditure? Does it open up the Switch much more easily to hacking/homebrew?
Would it be possible for the Switch to utilize the Nvidia PC streaming that the Shield products have? Most people say it's unlikely but I'm curious why.
Is it an additional hardware expenditure? Does it open up the Switch much more easily to hacking/homebrew?
Patches on the cards just ups expense for Nintendo and 3rd parties. No need for that, all patches, dlc and saves should be stored on system/expanded memory.
The ShieldTV is running Android so no, while it may be the same architecture, it's much much slower than an equivalent console. The shieldTV is like 3 times as fast as the X360 but the games works worse on it.
Rogue Agent
Banned
Thanks. If this speculation is close to reality, then that would be really great.
MGR was also ported by Nvidia rather than Konami/Platinum. Outsourced ports generally aren't the best way to judge system capability even without a resource hogging mobile OS running on top of them.
Mainly because this is a Nintendo product, not an NVidia product. It probably has nothing to do with their goals.
Skittzo0413
Member
What kind of downside is there to providing PC streaming functionality? Nintendo's goal should be to make the product as appealing as possible to as large a market as possible, so if there is no hardware/hacking reason why Nvidia gamestream could be a bad thing then I don't see why they wouldn't include it.
Nintendo probably won't want people using their hardware to buy other vendor's software.
Vampirolol
Member
Because they are Nintendo.
Did you even read the post you're quoting? The implication is that the choppiness is due to the editor of the commercial not having enough footage to last through the shot, so they just stretched out the material they were given.
Skittzo0413
Member
I guess I can see both pros and cons in that area.
Pros:
-more people buy the hardware, higher install base means more people have the option to buy Nintendo software
-Switch is seen playing PC games like the Witcher 3, it gives people the impression that you can play all multiplats on it
Cons:
-Nintendo misses out on the revenue from PC games
-Third parties see less of an incentive to put their games on Nintendo's hardware when PC ports will work fine
--Nintendo makes less revenue from third parties overall
So while it would likely increase the install base and maybe increase the amount of software sold, it could very badly damage their licensing revenue from third party games. That makes sense then, thank you for helping me work it out.
For the 7.9" iPad mini that is more comparable to the 6" Switch, the PPI on the Retina iPad is 326 PPI. That is a 30% difference. Not spitting difference or slightly lower.
KojiKnight
Member
Yeah, but you have to power those extra pixels... It's much better to aim for slightly lower IQ to maintain the power/framerate/battery balance.
It's incredible how much confusion and worry can come from a small error like that. The funny thing is that it was probably Wii U footage as well.
Unless the chips were already manufactured (which doesn't make sense in the context, because Nvidia states that Switch uses a custom chip), I don't see why even such a commitment couldn't be re-negotiated into a 16nm one. Especially since TSMC claimed several times in their earnings info that they get better margins for this fabrication node.
We are really in a situation in which Pascal architecture is the best solution for everybody involved.
brain_stew
Member
720p is absolutely the right compromise for the portable system. It's a quantum leap over previous handhelds, will keep performance and battery life in check while maximising the amount of games running at native resolution.
Combined with modern temporal AA it should produce a very smooth image on the 6" screen.
Combined with modern temporal AA it should produce a very smooth image on the 6" screen.
BlastProcessing
Member
The honest answer is in around 3-4 years.
Nothing that I can find easily, it was something I heard asked of an engineer on a stream (and I don't remember where as it was a while ago). I don't know how significant the differences are though, I got the impression that it is mostly all there. I also got the impression that it was also more of a case of features lagging rather than outright impossibility.
The 8-Bit Raider
Member
I don't understand, my Note 5 has a resolution of
1440 x 2560. Am I misunderstanding the question?
Edit: It just hit me that a similar resolution on a "gaming device" would have a huge effect on cost.
Very few if any games you play on it render at that resolution. Any actual intensive games are far sub-native.
The 8-Bit Raider
Member
Yeah, I suppose that makes sense overall though I suspect that the Nvidia Shield has come close or actually been able to hit that on some games....Doom 3 I believe but I would have to check.
Edit: Doom 3 would be part of the "very few" you mentioned.
It would be good on the go alright dips under 30 wouldn't feel as bad. Really happy Nintendo have gone with this platform. It'll give them a good path to upgrade for the next few gens. Especially with nvidia going all in on tegra for automotive. They really milked the IBM GameCube tech so this will be much better if they go the same route.
Don't think what I said doesn't mean I don't want choice. For it to be OK to me, two things need to happen.
1) The price of the console has to be reduced. Wii U wasn't, It was expensive for what it was and then you pretty much had to have an external HDD.
2) It needs an internal slot for the drive where you don't have to have a stupid externally connected device.
My real issue is for people who want to go digital, or if AAA's want patches it's almost certain to require additional storage and I think it's a little misleading for a company to sell a machine as a complete system when it's almost required.
The iPad mini main function is to display text, per-recorded video and mostly static GUIs. The main function of the Switch is to display graphical intensive games per the trailer. So no, is not "more comparable".
Im certain that Doom 3 doesnt run at at 1440 x 2560 on any Shield device.
The 8-Bit Raider
Member
My apologies, I mentioned Doom 3 with the original posters 1080p question in mind.
Gsync and lightboost are hardware hacks to make up for the fact microsoft won't do it's job. If nintendo were smart enough and paid for the tech such features done by the OS would leverage immense benefits to consumers.
Will they is another matter. Yet while I love nintendo engineers they often have to deal with limits and have poor awareness. All 3 of the big companies do in leveraging some of the new big tech we have had in the last decade that applied to gaming right would have huge pay offs.
Skittzo0413
Member
Based on Nvidia's blog post it seems like Nvidia is supporting the Switch quite heavily with the tools on their end, so there might be more of an equal partnership in designing the OS/features than we've seen with previous Nintendo features.
Also, earlier this year you were talking about how the NX CPU performed decently ahead of that of the XB1, and that you'd know more as the next devkits were released in August. Do you know if any of that has changed, or if there's any other info you can share? Definitely understandable if you can't
You can't compare amd/ibm flops with nvidia flops, they say.
You actually think that a 6" device is more comparable to 10", 12", 15" and 24" devices than a 7" device?
Nah. Custom chip and it won't hindered by Android's OS.
Spiral Insanity
Banned
Jesus, March is so far off.. I can't wait to get one. I also want to hear about their eShop/VC strategy.
Nostremitus
Member
Not to mention battery life.
Look at the Doom 3 BFG port. More than 2x res and still slightly better performance. And it was already a well optimized game on 360.
That sounds convincing to me, but god, Nintendo should have known better than to put footage in their reveal trailer that actively makes the system look like it's struggling to run a Wii U game.
Pretty much all GPUs these days are bandwidth constrained relative to compute, especially ones that have over 5x the compute power of console and less than twice the bandwidth. Compute scales faster than bandwidth, and it's a problem. See 4K and VR if you think this is merely academic as opposed to something people in the industry take seriously.
As for the XBO vs TX1 situation, Nvidia's bandwidth optimisations aren't going to net significant enough performance increases to offset only having 25.6GB/s of memory bandwidth.
I do see a lot of people engaging in insane amounts of fudge factoring without a single piece of evidence though. Apparently fp16, color compression, "NV FLOPS", and tiled rasterization somehow mean the TX1 level hardware likely to be in the NS is somehow a portable XBO or PS4.
ShadowFox08
Member
Any updates on the hardware?
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