• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

A Nintendo Switch has been taken apart

guek

Banned
Oh sorry, I wasn't aware of that, do you have a link to the info? Thanks.

Well digital foundry did analysis showing it ran identically both on and off the dock. It was a demo build, that's just a fact. The resolution may stay at 720p when it ships but docked and undocked running identically in the final code is unlikely. There's only one graphical setting on the first demo and that's handheld mode for sure.
 

Polygonal_Sprite

Gold Member
Well digital foundry did analysis showing it ran identically both on and off the dock. It was a demo build, that's just a fact. The resolution may stay at 720p when it ships but docked and undocked running identically in the final code is unlikely. There's only one graphical setting on the first demo and that's handheld mode for sure.

OK that makes sense, the test fire should give us a better idea of final resolution. I really hope that both Splatoon 2 and Mario Odyssey are 1080p when docked, Mario especially!
 
I'm guessing Nintendo focuses on handheld mode first so games that are a bit away will be shown in 720p and then later in development they probably optimize for docked.
 

Mokujin

Member
A bit interesting...how many cores does Parker have? A: Not 4, not 6...10. Apparently instead of using DSPs and such Nvidia likes to slap A9 cores here and there to do it instead.

https://twitter.com/RyanSmithAT/status/839308894132301825

Wonder what we'll find on the Switch.

I'm pretty sure Tegra X1 and Switch SoC (which may be the same) also has those
Cortex-Rs and the A9 for Audio (later one being confirmed some time ago)
 
How can you possibly say that ? ARMS is a very limited 1v1 fighting game and MK 8 Deluxe is a port of a Wii U game which is much less complex than BotW's huge seamless World with it's amazing grass and foliage heavy areas (which seem to already be pushing Switch's memory bandwidth to breaking point).

I think the people expecting every Switch game to go from 720p in handheld mode to 1080p when docked are in for a huge disappointment. Different developers will go for different things. I think the best compromise between resolution and improved visuals over Wii U will be found at 900p.

It will be interesting to see what resolution the Splatoon 2 test fire runs at. I just can't see it going from 720p to 1080p at release, same goes for Mario. There has to be a reason they were shown at 720p in the first place.
Which is why I say it depends on the game. BOTW clearly has something going on, it makes the Wii U chug (Not just with the visual setup but also with its CPU and bandwidth associated requirements) and it has odd issues in Switch. So odd that I'm sure once solved the game could run at 1080p on Switch.

Besides, ARMS looks better than the equally limited Street Fighter V, and is full of bandwidth-intensive alpha effects.
 
I'm pretty sure Tegra X1 and Switch SoC (which may be the same) also has those
Cortex-Rs and the A9 for Audio (later one being confirmed some time ago)
When was this?
Which is why I say it depends on the game. BOTW clearly has something going on, it makes the Wii U chug (Not just with the visual setup but also with its CPU and bandwidth associated requirements) and it has odd issues in Switch. So odd that I'm sure once solved the game could run at 1080p on Switch.

Besides, ARMS looks better than the equally limited Street Fighter V, and is full of bandwidth-intensive alpha effects.

The SSV comparison is subjective, and I don't think it's a technological issue with the game. Having said that, it will be cool to see a game that was designed to push the system. ARMS looks promising.
 

blu

Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
Someone pointed it out in one of these threads, but there's a comment regarding this in Nvidia Jetson Forums.-

There is also an ARM Cortex A9 in TX1, it is a dedicated audio processing core, and will not show up as a CPU.

https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/904289/jetson-tx1/does-anyone-get-8-cpus-listed-/

Oh ok. I thought I recall that being mentioned before, but I didn't know if it was confirmed to have that in the Switch. It would make sense, though, and Nintendo has ARMs CPUs that wasn't publically known in all of their recent systems.

I hope chipwork's new article is today. :)
 

LordOfChaos

Member
That thread reads funnily on a number of levels.

HMP won. End of story. You don't do HMP only if you're physically incapable of.

The history of the royal family of Tegras is also the history of a mad rush to market, seemingly every single time.

Chipworks is doing the die shot and releasing it after all? What was the hold up exactly? Just curious.

Speculating, I think like the Wii U, the Switch also uses a flip chip packaging, which makes it harder to properly etch, which may take more time.

Also may just be doing research...
 
Doing those takes time as you have to very precisely take the chip apart and scrape (or disolve) the coatings off to expose the metal.
About the blog, it benefits us in giving us the info and them in giving them publicity.
 

sits

Member
How much would it cost? I'm willing to throw in $20 if we get a fund going :p

I'm down to throw cash there way too.

I'm sure these guys would be more willing if they were compensated for their efforts.

I'm sure this stuff is costly and time consuming.

This. I'm happy to contribute to a "thank-you fund". Sure it won't pay for the shots, but I'd be happy to know it buys them a round on a Friday after work.
 
I have a hard time following this type of stuff due to my own ignorance.

Do we have any ballpark idea of actual specs yet, or is that what the current work is still going towards?
 

LordOfChaos

Member
Think its 4:25 where they are, half an hour to get out of the office. I doubt anyones putting in overtime or weekend work to get a free die shot out. Ah well, maybe next week.
 

OryoN

Member
Chipworks's analysis probably been done. They need extra time to word their analysis/findings in such a way that will reduce the inevitable trauma, meltdowns, and chaos that will ensue. Brace yourself GAF!



Lol, J/k :D
 

Hermii

Member
Chipworks's analysis probably been done. They need extra time to word their analysis/findings in such a way that will reduce the inevitable trauma, meltdowns, and chaos that will ensue. Brace yourself GAF!



Lol, J/k :D
I think most meltdowns happened around the time when eurogamer revealed clockspeeds. There are still some holding out hope for a significant step up from a normal tx1, but if it's revealed to not be the case I don't think it will melt gaf because that's what most expects at this point.

If it's a significant downgrade from tx1 however, that would cause major meltdowns.
 

blu

Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
The history of the royal family of Tegras is also the history of a mad rush to market, seemingly every single time.
I wouldn't be surprised if their dev cycle is largely design-win driven.
 
I wouldn't be surprised if their dev cycle is largely design-win driven.
This is what they've been looking forward to all this time right? A huge design win worth billions of dollars.
AMD went and made APUs with memory controllers theirs didn't have, GPUs three times bigger than the ones on PC APUs modifying the architecture itself, adding True Audio to PS4 before it was released, letting Microsoft add their custom audio shenanigans and a huge pool of eSRAM, all with a fully HSA compliant uncore for both consoles.

And people here are really serious about Nvidia devoting 500 man-years to giving Nintendo a bog-standard Tegra X1.
Even what I'm proposing (16nm, A72s) is more or less what they did with goddamed revisions and with PS4 Pro, a niche thing.
 
This is what they've been looking forward to all this time right? A huge design win worth billions of dollars.
AMD went and made APUs with memory controllers theirs didn't have, GPUs three times bigger than the ones on PC APUs modifying the architecture itself, adding True Audio to PS4 before it was released, letting Microsoft add their custom audio shenanigans and a huge pool of eSRAM, all with a fully HSA compliant uncore for both consoles.

And people here are really serious about Nvidia devoting 500 man-years to giving Nintendo a bog-standard Tegra X1.
Even what I'm proposing (16nm, A72s) is more or less what they did with goddamed revisions and with PS4 Pro, a niche thing.

That's cool and stuff but at some point you need some facts on your side.
 

lutheran

Member
This is what they've been looking forward to all this time right? A huge design win worth billions of dollars.
AMD went and made APUs with memory controllers theirs didn't have, GPUs three times bigger than the ones on PC APUs modifying the architecture itself, adding True Audio to PS4 before it was released, letting Microsoft add their custom audio shenanigans and a huge pool of eSRAM, all with a fully HSA compliant uncore for both consoles.

And people here are really serious about Nvidia devoting 500 man-years to giving Nintendo a bog-standard Tegra X1.
Even what I'm proposing (16nm, A72s) is more or less what they did with goddamed revisions and with PS4 Pro, a niche thing.

The 500 man years supposedly was in reference to the tools and libraries they created as well as the work on the chip
 
The 500 man years supposedly was in reference to the tools and libraries they created as well as the work on the chip

To quote:
Nvidia said:
The development encompassed 500 man-years of effort across every facet of creating a new gaming platform: algorithms, computer architecture, system design, system software, APIs, game engines and peripherals.

So that includes stuff like the OS, the physical build and layout of the device, creating tools for development on the system, optimising for stuff like UE4 and Vulkan, and possibly even the development of things like the dock and HD Rumble - at the very least making sure the Joycons were compatible. It's 500 man-years for the whole thing, not just the SoC.
 
That's cool and stuff but at some point you need some facts on your side.
Well the only hard facts we have are "Custom Tegra chip with the technology in the most powerful GPUs in the world" and "500 man-hours"
The 500 man years supposedly was in reference to the tools and libraries they created as well as the work on the chip
So...half and half? Nintendo sure worked on the API too, which is also supossedly Vulkan with some extensions.
 

ecosse_011172

Junior Member
I think it's fairly obvious that there are no significant performance-improving "customisations", we'll get a bog-standard X1 if we're lucky.

Lovely piece of kit but Nintendo have unsurprisingly remained conservative rather than going with a more cutting edge solution.
 

Donnie

Member
I think it's fairly obvious that there are no significant performance-improving "customisations", we'll get a bog-standard X1 if we're lucky.

Lovely piece of kit but Nintendo have unsurprisingly remained conservative rather than going with a more cutting edge solution.

How is that obvious? I mean we've got no way of comparing what a X1 at Switch clock speeds can do in gaming terms in comparison to what we've seen so far from Switch games. Even if we did these are only launch titles.

BTW are you saying you believe it'll either be exactly the same as X1 or it'll be customised to reduce performance clock for clock compared to X1?, how exactly?
 
How is that obvious? I mean we've got no way of comparing what a X1 at Switch clock speeds can do in gaming terms in comparison to what we've seen so far from Switch games. Even if we did these are only launch titles.

BTW are you saying you believe it'll either be exactly the same as X1 or it'll be customised to reduce performance clock for clock compared to X1?, how exactly?
They spent millions in reducing the size of caches and slowing down the shuffling of data around the die, and to manufacture Maxwell architecture in 45nm. They also cut back the feature set to the equivalent of Direct X 8.1
 
Yeah, downclocking an off-the-shelf product to better match the needs of a dedicated gaminghandheld is such an unique and crazy thing!

oh.. hi Vita!
 

antonz

Member
I think it's fairly obvious that there are no significant performance-improving "customisations", we'll get a bog-standard X1 if we're lucky.

Lovely piece of kit but Nintendo have unsurprisingly remained conservative rather than going with a more cutting edge solution.

The X1 was as state of the art as you could get tech wise. Yeah we now have the TX2 but then again we will have the TX3 next year. Even now the TX1 remains in the top 1% of performance parts for a mobile device.
 
Nvidia just announced the X2. Nintendo wouldn't have been to produce enough (any) consoles for a March release.

At some point it only gets silly with the customized nonsense.
 

Hermii

Member
Nvidia just announced the X2. Nintendo wouldn't have been to produce enough (any) consoles for a March release.

At some point it only gets silly with the customized nonsense.

Yea for PS5 we shouldn't expect anything more advanced than what AMD can offer right now, because Sony has for sure started planning out the thing.
 

wazoo

Member
I wouldn't confuse the weaknesses of a cross gen port with the strength of the hardware.

Switch has more memory than WiiU. This will come as a strength when games will use it. Nintendo focus for Zelda was parity between platforms (any superiority of one will be a backslash from some part of the buyers).
 

mlclmtckr

Banned
When are we going to find out? The suspense is killing me.

Also why the fuck is this a secret in the first place now that I think about it
 

Hermii

Member
When are we going to find out? The suspense is killing me.

Also why the fuck is this a secret in the first place now that I think about it

Chipworks said they hoped to release their analysis by the end of last week. That didn't happen, so I hope early this week.

I guess its a secret because Nintendo wants to avoid comparisons to other consoles, or other mobile devices not designed to operate at peak performance for sustained periods of time.
 

KingSnake

The Birthday Skeleton
Also why the fuck is this a secret in the first place now that I think about it

It's a secret because in the console gaming industry it is still allowed to sell a product without saying what you sell. (this is a thing for all the console producers, they only divulge specs when they want to brag with them).
 

PrimeX

Member
It's a secret because in the console gaming industry it is still allowed to sell a product without saying what you sell. (this is a thing for all the console producers, they only divulge specs when they want to brag with them).

Exactly, and this means that Nintendo has nothing to brag about...
 

Zedark

Member
Exactly, and this means that Nintendo has nothing to brag about...
It is pretty clear this thing isn't as powerful as the 8th gen twins, and divulging specs would only serve to draw in comparisons, which are unfavourable for them. They obviously want to keep the focus on its hybrid nature, and therefore won't tell us about the specs. Seems very logical to me.

Even if we can find out the approximately specs from stuff like this, it still won't get nearly as much exposure as when Nintendo tell us about them.
 
Top Bottom