So, in your specialist opinion, do you think it will have active cooling in handheld mode?
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Nintendo Switch: Powered by Custom Nvidia Tegra Chip (Official)
- Thread starter ekim
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So, in your specialist opinion, do you think it will have active cooling in handheld mode?
I dont think "whitout any issues" means no sacrifice. The specs as a Whole cpu aside are most likely going to be a significant downgrade from XBox one. I think the Switch is going to be impressive for a portable device, but it is a portable device.
The biggest problem with Nintendo games is the horrible image quality. I'm playing Color Splash and even though the art is amazing the anti-aliasing is really bad. In this highly fictional scenario of Nintendo developing games for PC some downsampling and a good AA would fix most the problems and the games would look absolutely gorgeous. I give you example. Play Super Mario Galaxy on Dolphin with 4x rendering resolution of original Wii, add some MSAA, enable AF and download the high res texture pack. The game looks really really good for almost 10-year-old game running on a 15-year-old tech. Only thing that tells you it's not a modern game are the lighting effects. And finally think Mario Kart 8 with some downsampling, AA and AF. Runs on a toaster but would look great on a high end system.
It won't be on par with XB1. It just means it's easy to port to. Which it should be expected if Nvidia is handling the tools.
KojiKnight
Member
Of the two, it's going to swing closer to xb1 than it is wii u. Enough for standard current gen ports of most games? That's still up in the air.... But man, I'm not going to lie and say I'm not drooling after seeing what Nintendo could do with just Wii U on Ganges like Captain Toad
Super optimized exclusive games are going to look and run fantastic, no doubt about that.
There are too many things unknown now to draw a clear conclusion where it will be by comparison to Xbone: clocks, FP32/FP16 balancing, Pascal/Maxwell architecture. But the safe bet is that it won't be on par.
What's pretty clear is that it will be much more powerful than Wii U when docked, even assuming Maxwell and only FP32 because otherwise it wouldn't need active cooling.
What's pretty clear is that it will be much more powerful than Wii U when docked, even assuming Maxwell and only FP32 because otherwise it wouldn't need active cooling.
Graphically the A10 is pretty similar to the Tegra X1. They trade blows pretty evenly with Tegra better in some spots and A10 better in others.
The custom Tegra in the Switch is based on technology that hasn't even been released yet in a mobile form factor. Nvidia, in a roundabout way, basically confirmed that it's Pascal which would make it more closely related to the X2 than X1. It should be more powerful than iPhone 7.
It will almost certainly have much more ram than an iphone, and will be more specialized towards gaming.
Also when it comes to games, developers will not be limited by the file sizes users are willing to download on a phone and first party will optimize the shit out of it.
So for games probably switch, overall maybe apple idk.
EhrgeizVII
Member
To be honest, even some Vita games (Killzone!) look better than 99% of games available on mobile today. GPU prowess doesn't really matter on phones, they will never use it to full potential.
Not trying to say you're wrong, but what do they gain other than whatever the margins are for each sale?
At the moment visibility for gpu providers on consoles is pretty weak. I wonder if we'll see some nVidia logo on boot or anything like that.
Wasn't the Shield pretty much Nvidia saying "look at what we got, partner with us" anyway? This is a huge deal for them and they hope they'll get more partnerships after this.
JoshuaJSlone
Member
I still wonder if they might sideways end up a PC publisher by releasing their mobile games as Windows universal apps in addition to iOS and Android.sanstesy said:
First of all, people talking about X1 are talking about Tegra X1, not about Xbox One.
Secondly, the CPU has been rumored to be more powerful since 6 months ago, and it's not far fetched since the XBO and PS4 have shitty CPU's.
Thirdly, the Tegra X1 reaches 500GF... but the handheld only does 720p, and given the fact that XBO/PS4 games are often held back by the CPU and not GPU, it's not at all unthinkable that the Switch could do in 720p what the other consoles do on 1080p, or at least come close enough.
Again, i'm talking about an average, not linear. And i'm talking "ballpark" not "exact". Just to get an idea. 5%? 25%? 60%?
It says in the description it was filmed offscreen with a phone. It's also clearly blown up. Horrible video. Just link to the original Nvidea footage and let people make up their own mind.
I don't know if I remember correctly, but I think Mario Run has only been announced for iOS and Android. I don't think Nintendo has any plans for Windows Phone.
Principate
Saint Titanfall
The switch will do 720p on the handheld mode, with a down clocked cpu and tegra to save battery, in the console mode it will be held up to exact same stands as the XB1 and PS4, with the most likely case of it being played on a 1080p tv.
KratosEnergyDrink
Member
To be honest almost no publisher has plans for Windows phone. It's really dead, despite Microsoft made really some efforts to establish it in the mobile market.
JoshuaJSlone
Member
Nor was Miitomo there. But if their mobile games become a bigger deal and/or MS gets more of the mobile market, they might consider it.
There is no confirmation of this. In fact, Lherre said he had not heard of two different performance envelopes just a few months ago.
Also, even if there is going to be downclocking, chances are it won't be the CPU.
He's not wrong about it being held to the same standards as PS4/XB1. Whether it actually reaches those standards is another matter.
blu
Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
Yes, for such a hypothetical split that would be correct. Of course it all comes down to the split. The assessment of that could be tricky, but let's try to hypothesize:
1. Vertex positions generally need maximum precision - 1-unit errors in viewport coords can cause high-visibility high-freq artifacts - shimmerings, etc. So all vertex pos transformations are better left in fp32.
2. Likewise with geometry shaders - while some base computations could be done in fp16, the eventual MVP transform is best left in fp32 - i.e. all geometry-shaded vertices have to eventually pass a fp32 MVP.
3. Everything that ends up as shading though is very error-resilient - starting from normal transformations for lambertian terms, color blends and factorisations - pretty much everything which is not a tex coord for a dependent texture read could go as fp16. And then even some tex coords could go fp16, given a sufficiently-low tex res.
4. An exception to (3) are shadows - PCF shadows, etc, could exhibit crawling artifacts and/or perforations if stored or carried (read: sampled and/or filtered) in under-precision, particularly along the edges.
5. Then come post-effects, where tone-mapping could be a real wild-card - one might or might not get banding artifacts if those were carried in fp16 depending on the paramers of the scene lighting. But let's say that to be on the safe side fp32 would be the preferred format.
Again, these are all off-the-top-of-my-hat musings. One normally takes a pipeline, sits there with a few shaders in mind and experiments.
How? Windows phone have 0.4% of the marketshare. It's dead. The gap is 100x grand canyon compared to PS2 with its competitors.
The Tegra line won very little contracts therefore Nvidia had to release their own devices that used their mobile/tablet technology.
These devices sell at best a couple of 100K.
The entire mobile division is therefore quite useless if they won't find a meaningful contract to provide chips for (in fact they had to shift their focus on other business like automotive).
Nintendo is the best match because it's the leader in the handheld gaming business which is a branch for which Tegra X1/X2 should be more suitable.
Now they are sure to ship from a couple of 100K units with their Shield devices to a at least a couple of 10 million units.
Blackpuppy
Member
One thing to keep in mind here is that Nintendo is finally going for a modern architecture. Not the speediest, mind you, but modern. People should not expect Nvidia "secret sauce" to put it on par with pS4 or XB1, but this modern architecture will definitely help port new games over with removed features (lower resolution, lower AA, lower texture resolution etc etc).
The problem with the WiiU was that it was using an ancient CPU for the sake of backwards compatibility. Sure, games custom tailored to the hardware will work out ok, but newer games were out of the question.
The problem with the WiiU was that it was using an ancient CPU for the sake of backwards compatibility. Sure, games custom tailored to the hardware will work out ok, but newer games were out of the question.
Given the hybrid nature of the device, it's actually the speediest right now. Minus the RAM ammount, which is 4GB and could be more.
DownGrader
Member
Dee Dah Dave
Member
I'm going to guess the real world performance and graphics will be something like 75% XB1 at 720p.
Hoping they go native 1080p though when docked and lower graphics if needed. Then in handheld mode they downclock to ~60% and games run at ~720p.
720p on the TV would be disappointing.
Hoping they go native 1080p though when docked and lower graphics if needed. Then in handheld mode they downclock to ~60% and games run at ~720p.
720p on the TV would be disappointing.
Annoying Old Party Man
Member
What's the most impressive game out there, right now, for Shield? I haven't seen anything approaching near PS4/XB1 levels to feel confident that the system will be able to receive ports of said systems, if Switch is based on a modified Maxwell chip.
DownGrader
Member
I want Switch games to look prettier on TV, but what you've described sounds horrible.
Blackpuppy
Member
There are great ports of Doom3 and RE5 that you can find on Youtube. Keep in mind that it's running on an unoptimized gaming OS (Android) so it hasn't really seen its full potential.
Look at the Vita: the hardware is basically an iPad 3 and developers got some very pretty games out of that machine that you would never find on an iPad even today.
I've said it before
I expect
Switch Tablet udocked
Uncerclocked to conserve battery life
No fans or cooling system turned on
720p
Switch Tablet docked
Clocked to its full potential
Fans and cooling system in the tablet turns on
720p to 1080p or better graphics depending on the game. (E.g Smash Bros will be 1080p, Zelda will be 900p etc)
I expect
Switch Tablet udocked
Uncerclocked to conserve battery life
No fans or cooling system turned on
720p
Switch Tablet docked
Clocked to its full potential
Fans and cooling system in the tablet turns on
720p to 1080p or better graphics depending on the game. (E.g Smash Bros will be 1080p, Zelda will be 900p etc)
Annoying Old Party Man
Member
Yeah I know but still... all I see is good enough PS3 level games, and that is very worrying by itself.
Bidermaier
Member
This is certainly the most exciting implementation of the "Graphics don't matter" mantra I can think of.
Of course graphics matter but racing against the PC and pushing people to go 4K/VR is just not nice (and I am a PC gamer myself)
This high power mobile path is an elegant, and probably successful way to avoid that race.
Of course graphics matter but racing against the PC and pushing people to go 4K/VR is just not nice (and I am a PC gamer myself)
This high power mobile path is an elegant, and probably successful way to avoid that race.
Dee Dah Dave
Member
Why?
Lower but still decent graphics with good framerates would be better than 720p games on the TV. That resolution is abysmal for 2017+ and needs to die!
Plus if there are clock speed differences between docked and un-docked mode. I would prefer that the only thing that changes is the resolution. It makes development much more straight forward and provides exactly the same experience on the NX, no matter how you choose to play.
There aren't really many games that try to push graphics on mobile market because it's really not financially viable. Why invest in great graphics when you can make money easier by not doing that.
You won't see anything PS4?Xbone like in a long time on mobile because you can't charge $60 on a game. Nor $50, $40 and not even $30. The only chance for a change is VR.
DownGrader
Member
I don't want have more framerate drops, less visual effects and (if Nintendo decides to use quality AA/AF this time around) antialiasing. I really couldn't care less about resolution - at least for 3D rendering, - and, in the case of arbitrary resolution bump, I want Nintendo to at least give the choice to display the picture "as is" to TV.
blu
Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
The bolded.
It's possible. The switch device is bigger than your average tablet, it's similar to some Windows tablets with active cooling. It has fan holes. In portable mode it's probably going to be passive cooled and GPU is going to run on base clock. In docked mode it will be overclocked and fans activated to provide a resolution bump.
blu
Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
Likely.
No because it is, but if the leaks were correct this should mean Pascal. NateDrake was very confident about that info.
Considering the fact that Wii U run most of the games at 720p and some at 1080p and that even a moderate estimation puts this at 3*Wii U gflops when docked, I would say that's very likely that 1st party games will run at 1080p on TV.
Dee Dah Dave
Member
It would be dumb not to use the new Pascal variant. Even if only for power efficiency and not extra performance.
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