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[Astral Dog]

Not to crap on this speculation, because I think it's interesting and worthwhile trying to figure out which leakers are most reliable for future leaks, but personally I kind of don't care anymore.

We know what Switch games look like now. We know in handheld mode that it is at least as powerful as a Wii U (Breath of the Wild in 720p with fewer framedrops than seen at E3, which could be down to being a newer build, but could not be) and that when it's docked it's about twice as powerful.

Whatever process it uses, whatever SOC from Nvidia it's using... we know what it can do now. We know it's battery life.

We've seen what Steep looks like on it (no last gen versions, doesn't appear to have had its gameplay compromised in the port). What Skyrim looks like (not based on the last gen versions).

So yeah, I don't care what the chip actually is. We've got a good idea of where the systems capabilities sit. It's out in a month and a half, we aren't going to see huge improvements in the launch titles between now and then. Whether they're getting this level of improvement over the Wii U with direct to metal access to a less powerful chipset, or with the horsepower of a more powerful chipset, the Switch seems at worst like a 2x improvement over the Wii U as a dedicated console (based on Zelda and Mario Kart), and about Wii U equivalent as a handheld.

At some point, maybe we'll be lucky again and someone will do full xrays of the chips so we can get more idea of what's going on inside them, and we can finally know if this leaker was right or not.

But yeah, personally I'm done guessing how powerful the system is, now that I know what the games look like.

I think its beyond Wii U as a handheld too,but obviously the same resolution
Games will lóok better than BoTW some day. And SMO is a big jump from 3DW! Check the launch trailer for both

 

[Mister Wolf]

BoTW was said to make the battery last 3 hours already, wasn't it? If they unlocked more power later...

I will bring a usb battery pack and the same charger I use for my phone.

 

[lenovox1]

This is "X1 hidden dgpu" levels of reaching. The games themselves bear credibility to DFs leaks. Why would a pascal GPU be struggling with 1080p?

Pascal=Maxwell but manufactured on a smaller node, to repeat.

Nintendo's chip is custom either way.

 

[lwilliams3]

I'm on my phone so I'll try to accommodate you, here is A57 on 20nm:
1ghz draws 1.83 watts on a quad core.



And here we see A72 doing 1.7ghz at about 1.9 watts.

Battery calculations would be really hard to precisely pin down either cpu or gpu since there is a vague number for battery life and there are other factors beyond the soc that needs to be taken into account.

Going by benchmarks, how would 4x A72s @ 1.76GHz run compared toA57s @ 1GHz? Would this basically match up with the 8x Jaguars in the PS4/XB1?

 

[Vena]

I don't know. The performance we have seen from the actual games seems consistent with TX1, down to DOF causing framedrops due to bandwith issues.

No one has said anything about changes in the bus, so this is a rather irrelevant point.

 

[koss424]

yeah.....

im gonna wait for system teardown videos in March

im hoping for good news

I really don't' understand this. If the games look good, and the they're fun to play, and the system works as advertised why isn't that all that matters? It's like we forgot what it means to be gaming enthusiasts and are all now tech engineering enthusiasts.

 

[z0m3le]

Going by benchmarks, how would 4x A72s @ 1.76GHz run compared toA57s @ 1GHz? Would this basically match up with the 8x Jaguars in the PS4/XB1?

It should match up to the ps4 cpu. If this did happen current game builds might not benefit from the increased clocks and would make sense why Nintendo said they are target 1080p for Zelda. If the build is a couple months old, the performance could be issues with that.

What is interesting about this thread is the leak is getting every non assumption right, and had to have seen those clocks somewhere since they line up with power consumption and multipliers of the chip the customization is based on.

 

[Mr Swine]

I think people hope to much on A72 or A73 CPU's for the Switch. A 16nm Maxwell is probably out of the question since Zelda has a bit of performance problems. If this was true that there is a better CPU and 16nm GPU wouldn't we have heard some leaks from other sources by now? I think that Eurogamer has the closest specs for the retail unit despite it being several months old

 

[LordOfChaos]

It should match up to the ps4 cpu. If this did happen current game builds might not benefit from the increased clocks and would make sense why Nintendo said they are target 1080p for Zelda. If the build is a couple months old, the performance could be issues with that..

This is a stretch. At the same clocks, Jaguar and A72 will trade blows by micro-benchmark, that's a bit higher clocked (10%) than the base PS4, but that has 7 (one partially) available cores to a game. Four A72s aren't going to match that, except per-core.

Now, 8 A72s would be amazing and I would agree those would match and exceed the PS4, but that's my dreamland.

 

[Nategc20]

4g is unnecessary. No reason to even implement it unless it's an adapter.

 

[Kissenkopf]

I think people hope to much on A72 or A73 CPU's for the Switch. A 16nm Maxwell is probably out of the question since Zelda has a bit of performance problems. If this was true that there is a better CPU and 16nm GPU wouldn't we have heard some leaks from other sources by now? I think that Eurogamer has the closest specs for the retail unit despite it being several months old

The recent demo the people played at the events where an old one. Did Zelda at Treehouse had any performance issues? I dont wanna sound like i know anything but it was just a guess from my side because Zelda was clearly just the E3 demo put on the switch at the event but on the treehouse they had a new version.

 

[Mr Swine]

The recent demo the people played at the events where an old one. Did Zelda at Treehouse had any performance issues? I dont wanna sound like i know anything but it was just a guess from my side because Zelda was clearly just the E3 demo put on the switch at the event but on the treehouse they had a new version.

I have a hard time believing that Nintendo would put time and money (man power) to port the old E3 demo from Wii U Switch only to have a brand new one just for the Treehouse guys and gals.

 

[Skittzo0413]

It should match up to the ps4 cpu. If this did happen current game builds might not benefit from the increased clocks and would make sense why Nintendo said they are target 1080p for Zelda. If the build is a couple months old, the performance could be issues with that.

What is interesting about this thread is the leak is getting every non assumption right, and had to have seen those clocks somewhere since they line up with power consumption and multipliers of the chip the customization is based on.

The 4g part still sticks out to me as being a bit odd. Why wouldn't Nintendo have disclosed that yet if it was true? Seems very hard to believe.

I think people hope to much on A72 or A73 CPU's for the Switch. A 16nm Maxwell is probably out of the question since Zelda has a bit of performance problems. If this was true that there is a better CPU and 16nm GPU wouldn't we have heard some leaks from other sources by now? I think that Eurogamer has the closest specs for the retail unit despite it being several months old

16nm does not automatically mean better performance. 16nm is likely more important from a power consumption perspective, as the performance on 16nm for the same core configurations would be almost exactly the same as 20nm. And we still don't know what build the Zelda demo at the event is based on. Someone on this thread said it was 1.00 and other have said it had a different build number like 0.1S or something.

I think it would be best to wait for clarification from Eurogamer or Digital Foundry about this potential information, or better yet, calculations from Thraktor!

 

[Kissenkopf]

I have a hard time believing that Nintendo would put time and money (man power) to port the old E3 demo from Wii U Switch only to have a brand new one just for the Treehouse guys and gals.

Normally I would agree but the weather forecast thing was missing at the event demo so i guessed it was the old e3 demo. And you could see it at the treehouse demo.

 

[Zedark]

Normally I would agree but the weather forecast thing was missing at the event demo so i guessed it was the old e3 demo. And you could see it at the treehousw demo.

Hmm, that's interesting. The demo at Jimmy Fallon also had the forecast, so strange if they went for an older demo at the show floor.

 

[Instro]

Seems a bit odd that Nintendo wouldn't mention any of this though. I mean with those CPU/GPU specs they would pretty much be about as cutting edge as it gets, and provide about as much power you could get out of a device that size.

 

[ShadowFox08]

They were producing 20k of these a day, that is a lot of devices to scrap...

Also the GPU performance is only 20% greater, nothing that is going to transform what we knew about the graphics capabilities.

The CPU on the other hand would move from being about equal to 4 PS4 CPU cores to faster than all 8 PS4 CPU cores. I'd like to add that this makes sense with michael pachter's dev info, where he was told by a developer working with Switch that it is the easiest of the 3 to develop for, that would lead me to believe that it has more CPU power in fewer cores, since that is the biggest headache with hardware.



He saw the clocks on the screen.

He also got the weight right as well, so he physically touched them and weighed them too.

Wait.. But not only is it running at a 20% higher clockspeed(from 768 to +900), if its Pascal, it should have a 40% boost in power at the same clock speed as a maxwell(or 60% power savings). So theoretically couldn't we look at a 40% power boost over Maxwell, if its running at 768mhz(like eurogamer's clock speed)?

 

[Skittzo0413]

Wait.. But not only is it running at a 20% higher clockspeed(from 768 to +900), if its Pascal, it should have a 40% boost in power at the same clock speed as a maxwell(or 60% power savings). So theoretically couldn't we look at a 40% power boost over Maxwell, if its running at 768mhz(like eurogamer's clock speed)?

No, at the same clock speed the performance will be almost exactly the same (I think there's a small jump from architectural improvements if it's Pascal), but the power consumption will be lower. I forget which is 40% and which is 60%, but it's basically all the same thing.

It consumes less power per clock rate, essentially. The same clock speed gives you the same performance.

 

[lwilliams3]

Seems a bit odd that Nintendo wouldn't mention any of this though. I mean with those CPU/GPU specs they would pretty much be about as cutting edge as it gets, and provide about as much power you could get out of a device that size.

Nintendo generally don't talk about specs, even if it's positive. A good example is the n3DS that doubled the CPU cores and triple the max clockspeed from the original 3DS. Nintendo simply said that the CPU was higher; people were generally shocked when they found out what they did.

 

[Goodlife]

I can't believe people genuinely believe Nintendo would sell a console with with these rumored specs at just 300 dollars.

Me being dull, I know, but what difference would clock speed make to the price?

 

[LordOfChaos]

Nintendo generally don't talk about specs, even if it's positive. A good example is the n3DS that doubled the CPU cores and triple the max clockspeed from the original 3DS. Nintendo simply said that the CPU was higher; people were generally shocked when they found out what they did.

Was the higher clockspeed released later on? When I had last checked the word was, as we Canadians would call it, a double-double.

 

[Ocarina_117]

Could someone summaries or point out good posts to read for my less tech savvy self?

 

[Instro]

Nintendo generally don't talk about specs, even if it's positive. A good example is the n3DS that doubled the CPU cores and triple the max clockspeed from the original 3DS. Nintendo simply said that the CPU was higher; people were generally shocked when they found out what they did.

Fair point of course. Seems like it would go a ways to helping show the value of the device, but whatever. I guess we'll find in a couple months.

 

[Soroc]

Is this theoretical 20% enough to add AA. That's all I need at this point. I need AA for docked mode, the shimmering and jaggies make my eyes bleed.

 

[Astral Dog]

Seems a bit odd that Nintendo wouldn't mention any of this though. I mean with those CPU/GPU specs they would pretty much be about as cutting edge as it gets, and provide about as much power you could get out of a device that size.

Its still significantly weaker than a PS4 or Xbox ONE even Docked,the games will speak for themselves (or dont)

 

[bomblord1]

Its still significantly weaker than a PS4 or Xbox ONE even Docked,the games will speak for themselves (or dont)

PS4 yes Xbox One not sure. I think it may be within spitting distance.

 

[Skittzo0413]

Could someone summaries or point out good posts to read for my less tech savvy self?

I'll try to summarize:

The Foxconn leak from back in November seems to have been at least partially legitimate. There is no way someone would randomly guess the battery capacity or the blue and orange neon joycons, or the joycon shoulder buttons labeled "SR" and "SL".

This same leak also suggested that the GPU max clock speed would be a bit (20%) higher than what was later reported by Digital Foundry. It suggests the SoC is on a 16nm node, rather than the previously assumed 20nm node, which would point to an improved battery life but not necessarily more performance.

The leak also claims that the CPU cores are A72 or A73 which are much better than the previously rumored A57s. It reports that the CPU max clock speed is 1.78GHz, while DF reported it would be 1GHz.

We are trying to figure out what time period DF's clock rate information comes from, because Laura suggested that the October devkits were more powerful than they previous July devkits that the leaked specs (not clocks) come from. If DF's clock speed info comes from July, then this would suggest those speeds have been raised. If it comes from December/November, then it would suggest the clock speeds have been lowered.

It's also possible that the Foxconn leaker speculated/assumed certain details like the 16nm node and A72/A73. The clock speeds however seem far too specific and fit what we know about Tegra too well to be random guesses.

So we're basically waiting for either clarification from Eurogamer/Digital Foundry and/or calculations regarding the battery size, battery life, and how these leaked specs would fit in there, as battery size and life are now known, confirmed quantities.

In other words, it's too early to tell if this is legitimate or final hardware info.

 

[plagiarize]

Its still significantly weaker than a PS4 or Xbox ONE even Docked,the games will speak for themselves (or dont)

For what it's worth, to my eyes, Steep is running at 720p with reduced particle effects based on the limited footage we saw.

For reference, it runs at 900p on Xbox One and 1080p on PS4.

30 fps on all of them.

 

[Zedark]

Could someone summaries or point out good posts to read for my less tech savvy self?

The Foxconn leak mentioned states that the GPU (graphics processor) might run at higher clock speeds, which means the GPU might be 20% stronger than expected. This would mean the dock would be (before accounting for the advantages given by different system architectures) at around 1/10 of PS4 power in undocked mode instead of the previous 1/12. Also, the CPU (used for amongst other things game logic) is said to be much better, PS4 level or above, and that would mean that porting games would be a lot easier than anticipated as devs won't need to adapt their AI and such. Thraktor pointed out that, even if these specs were true, we might not see them in regular games but only in emulated virtual console games, as they require a lot of cpu power.

The leak has had all its other rumours confirmed except for 4G internet, so there is some credibility to it. Still, the leak could definitely still be wrong about the clock speeds and chip types, since those are quite different observations than the other leaks it does.

 

[Tookay]

I have a hard time believing that Nintendo would put time and money (man power) to port the old E3 demo from Wii U Switch only to have a brand new one just for the Treehouse guys and gals.

Pretty sure people have seen different version numbers attached to the on-floor demos versus the Treehouse one.

 

[Vena]

Hmm, that's interesting. The demo at Jimmy Fallon also had the forecast, so strange if they went for an older demo at the show floor.

They probably didn't want to recompile, debug, and test another demo build. That shit takes time.

 

[bomblord1]

For what it's worth, to my eyes, Steep is running at 720p with reduced particle effects based on the limited footage we saw.

For reference, it runs at 900p on Xbox One and 1080p on PS4.

30 fps on all of them.

That's what I think we've all been hoping for 720p Xbox One games.

 

[dampflokfreund]

4g is unnecessary. No reason to even implement it unless it's an adapter.

It's not. Playing online everywhere with the Switch is a killer feature. If they include that in the montly fee for online gaming it will be a selling point for many.

 

[Zedark]

They probably didn't want to recompile, debug, and test another demo build. That shit takes time.

That is quite possible, but it would also mean that the complaints about the WiiU version being much older than the Switch version would be would be invalid, meaning that we can compare the two. Or am I missing something here?

 

[guek]

It's not. Playing online everywhere with the Switch is a killer feature. If they include that in the montly fee for online gaming it will be a selling point for many.

How much a month though and through what carrier network?

Verizon would probably ask for like $30/mo, the bastards

 

[ShadowFox08]

It should match up to the ps4 cpu. If this did happen current game builds might not benefit from the increased clocks and would make sense why Nintendo said they are target 1080p for Zelda. If the build is a couple months old, the performance could be issues with that.

What is interesting about this thread is the leak is getting every non assumption right, and had to have seen those clocks somewhere since they line up with power consumption and multipliers of the chip the customization is based on.

If its indeed as powerful as ps4's CPU, it lines up with the scd(power proportion wise when comparing to xbone and ps4 gpu and CPU) though not only would we need a gpu boost, but a RAM one as well. Nintendo may never take full advantage of the CPU, as there doesn't seem to be much of a point imo, until we get the scd perhaps(assuming all of this is true).

 

[andymcc]

I wonder if the neon system WAS supposed to be the Splatoon bundle. The colors match, like it's been said in here. Maybe Nintendo was intending Splatoon 2 as a launch title and it just wasn't ready.

 

[Starfish Hero]

I have a hard time believing that Nintendo would put time and money (man power) to port the old E3 demo from Wii U Switch only to have a brand new one just for the Treehouse guys and gals.

The old demo is probably more stable. Better to show off all the new effects in a scripted/controlled situation like the Treehouse than on a floor demo that can crash without supervision.

 

[Vena]

That is quite possible, but it would also mean that the complaints about the WiiU version being much older than the Switch version would be would be invalid, meaning that we can compare the two. Or am I missing something here?

Well, I meant that they likely had some working demo for Switch from god knows when and they left it at that. That build could be months old, could be from E3, etc. Demo builds generally are not going to keep being made because they eat a significant chunk of time out of real development.

 

[Shahadan]

I wonder if the neon system WAS supposed to be the Splatoon bundle. The colors match, like it's been said in here. Maybe Nintendo was intending Splatoon 2 as a launch title and it just wasn't ready.

I agree, seems like a strange coincidence and releasing those colors in a separate pack for no apparent reason seems random as hell to me.
Would give credence to other rumors about a splatoon pack. Boo ;(

 

[Donnie]

This is a stretch. At the same clocks, Jaguar and A72 will trade blows by micro-benchmark, that's a bit higher clocked (10%) than the base PS4, but that has 7 (one partially) available cores to a game. Four A72s aren't going to match that, except per-core..

No, A57 at 1Ghz trades blows with Jaguar at 1.6Ghz. Clock for clock its faster, A72 even more so.

 

[bomblord1]

How much a month though and through what carrier network?

Verizon would probably ask for like $30/mo, the bastards

Crazy thought what if Nintendo partnered with some wireless carrier and offered it as part of the monthly online fee?

 

[ShadowFox08]

No, at the same clock speed the performance will be almost exactly the same (I think there's a small jump from architectural improvements if it's Pascal), but the power consumption will be lower. I forget which is 40% and which is 60%, but it's basically all the same thing.

It consumes less power per clock rate, essentially. The same clock speed gives you the same performance.

Sorry, thanks for the clarification. I realized almost right away after I made the post also that the Pascal allows for higher clock speeds for same power consumption.
Yeah, its 40% power or 60% power efficiency iirc.

So the +900MHz at 20% more performance totally makes sense. 20% boost from what we currently know though is pretty significant if you ask me. Especially for handheld.

 

[ShadowFox08]

Its still significantly weaker than a PS4 or Xbox ONE even Docked,the games will speak for themselves (or dont)

20% boost with architectural differences should theoretically make it half as powerful as xbone docked in fp32 mode, no? I can imagine 720p switch games while xbone games run at 900-1080p. Imagine unreal at fp16..

The portable needs to be as powerful as possible, considering the dock would mainly just be used to increase resolution and nothing else, right?/:

 

[z0m3le]

If its indeed as powerful as os4's CPU, it lines up with the scd, though not only would we need a you boost, but a RAM one as well.

Yeah if the SCD happens, it would likely just be a GPU with its own vram and a hard drive for HD texture patches.

You'd expect 4x to 5x the power of the docked switch, so around 2 tflops, though switch could have an upgrade before that that is 1080p, and switch would run on full clock with new games.

Basically you'd have a 393gflops or 472gflops switch at all times and display 720p on the go and docked, then the new one would be 2.5x faster or 1180gflops and they would then make the SCD a 4k dock with 5tflops or so of performance.

This is all hypothetical

 

[aBarreras]

Crazy thought what if Nintendo partnered with some wireless carrier and offered it as part of the monthly online fee?

and what about other countries? because im pretty sure that if they didnt bother to launch TiVii here in mexico they wont care about us having 4G

 

[eighty(one)]

Hahahahaha, no. EG has way more credibility than 'my chinese uncle at Nintendo' while the performance and showing of the Switch thus far all match a bog-standard TX1. Bright colours in a Nintendo product are the lowest hanging 'proof' I've seen ascribed to a source in a while.

He knew exact weight of the system without the joy cons, the joy con features and the colors, almost 60 days before this reveal on 1/13...

 

[Wil348]

Yeah if the SCD happens, it would likely just be a GPU with its own vram and a hard drive for HD texture patches.

You'd expect 4x to 5x the power of the docked switch, so around 2 tflops, though switch could have an upgrade before that that is 1080p, and switch would run on full clock with new games.

Basically you'd have a 393gflops or 472gflops switch at all times and display 720p on the go and docked, then the new one would be 2.5x faster or 1180gflops and they would then make the SCD a 4k dock with 5tflops or so of performance.

This is all hypothetical

SCD? I've see a few people throw that around and I'm not sure what it means haha.

EDIT: Nevermind, Switch Compute Dock I'm guessing

 

[LordOfChaos]

No, A57 at 1Ghz trades blows with Jaguar at 1.6Ghz. Clock for clock its faster, A72 even more so.

https://browser.primatelabs.com/v4/cpu/compare/1482641?baseline=1610738

A57 1.40 GHz
1 processor, 8 cores

AMD A6-6310 @ 1.80 GHz
1 processor, 4 cores

Single threaded comparison adjusted for clocks is in Jaguars favor. By a lot, and not just by AES or something skewing a result.

Where do you get 1GHz A57 beating 1.6GHz Jaguar?
That's nowhere near reflected in even a single micro-benchmark here, let alone the overall score.

After this sanity check I'll stick to my guestimation of 8 A72s at the same clock being what it would take to match the PS4s CPU.

 

[VegaShinra]

I have a hard time believing that Nintendo would put time and money (man power) to port the old E3 demo from Wii U Switch only to have a brand new one just for the Treehouse guys and gals.

Treehouse were playing a build labeled 1.0 and was likely the complete game. The demo on the showfloor wasn't.