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DF: Nintendo NX Powered By Nvidia Tegra! Initial Spec Analysis

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ZOONAMI

Junior Member
Lcgeek what's all this streaming stuff you're talking about? Are the base stations scds and when lots of NXs docked nearby each other it boosts performance combined with an MS like cloud farm for additional computations? Warm? Is nintendo using nvidia geforce now servers to improve performance of the NX? Something like that?
 
I like to speculate about the behind-the-scenes workings of Nintendo at times like this. I'm starting to think that fusing portable and home devices together makes so much sense because a) it's something they've practiced many times in the past, b) have an opportunity to do so now more than ever (Nvidia needing a win, tech progression) and c) is something that, more interestingly, may detract from standard console lifetime procedure and the failure of the Wii U.
It'd be interesting to discover that Nintendo is seizing this opportunity to actually take a breather from the home hardware process and bide time for a more revised, concentrated effort 6 or so years down the line. The reason the console market is volatile is due to time constraints, from the consumers and the manufacturers. Nintendo may have bought themselves a lot of space.

Thoughts?
 

EhoaVash

Member
I'm sad about this. Very disappointed that Nintendo might go the route of a overclocked Wii u. I like the part about taking games on the go, but after enjoying their Wii u offering. I really wanted to move on.

I'm tried of Nintendo games not having any anti aliasing, and textures that look muddy in some games ( xenoblade X )

I really wanted to see zelda, Mario, pikmin, etc in next gen ps4 level graphics. But if it's the tegra x1, then man am I disappointed. From a lot of their Wii u offerings you could see the Wii u holding back their ambition in some games ie xenoblade X, Zelda botw. Using tegra x1 might give a better performance but it will still look last gen :/

Sigh...that rumor about x2 definitely will not be happening at this late stage of the game.
 

sfried

Member
I'm getting confused with this thread. Can we clarify the acronyms being used here?

I take it:
X1 = nVidia Tegra X1, not XBoxOne.
X2 = nVidia's next line in the Tegra arcitecture
Pascal = nVidia's newest line of architecture. Used in its GTX 1080, 1070, 1060, and TITAN X(P)
Maxwell = nVidia's previous generation architecture. Used in GTX 980, 970, GTX TITAN, and GTX TITAN X (not P)
AMD64 = the 64bit instruction set started by AMD, used throughout the industry. Does not particularly refer to an AMD chip.
FinFet = Related to Dolphin? (Which has nothing to do with GCN)
GCN = Graphics Core Next. Not GameCube Nintendo. No duct taping involved.
I'm sad about this. Very disappointed that Nintendo might go the route of a overclocked Wii u. I like the part about taking games on the go, but after enjoying their Wii u offering. I really wanted to move on.

I'm tried of Nintendo games not having any anti aliasing, and textures that look muddy in some games ( xenoblade X )

I really wanted to see zelda, Mario, pikmin, etc in next gen ps4 level graphics. But if it's the tegra x1, then man am I disappointed. From a lot of their Wii u offerings you could see the Wii u holding back their ambition in some games ie xenoblade X, Zelda botw. Using tegra x1 might give a better performance but it will still look last gen :/

Sigh...that rumor about x2 definitely will not be happening at this late stage of the game.
I thought we just established that the (nvidia Tegra) X1 is no "overclocked Wii U"? And the fact is, it could very well be an overclocked Tegra X1.

Unless its a brand new kinda of Tegra X1. A Pascal based X1 that is even smaller than its original. It would make sense too, given the headroom it would allow (like aforementioned overclocking).
 

SirShandy

Member
Übermatik;211762161 said:
I like to speculate about the behind-the-scenes workings of Nintendo at times like this. I'm starting to think that fusing portable and home devices together makes so much sense because a) it's something they've practiced many times in the past, b) have an opportunity to do so now more than ever (Nvidia needing a win, tech progression) and c) is something that, more interestingly, may detract from standard console lifetime procedure and the failure of the Wii U.
It'd be interesting to discover that Nintendo is seizing this opportunity to actually take a breather from the home hardware process and bide time for a more revised, concentrated effort 6 or so years down the line. The reason the console market is volatile is due to time constraints, from the consumers and the manufacturers. Nintendo may have bought themselves a lot of space.

Thoughts?

Nintendo is always tinkering with different hardware, but I have doubts they'll ever return to the traditional cutting edge hi spec home console. I imagine in the future they'll definitely tinker with AR or VR concepts, and the like.

I think what they are doing with the NX as rumored makes perfect sense for them, even if people have trouble seeing its place in the current market.

The central goal here for nintendo is creating a one stop shop for all the popular franchises that are associated with them across their handheld and home consoles, now in a single form factor.

The balance they're striking here with the hardware power, whether making use of the Tegra X1 or X2, is necessary to do this. Even if they made separate handheld and console products they would still need to be within similar power levels, or that would kind of defeat the intended production goal of a shared library (not having to create two versions of the same games to play to each hardware's strength.) That is why the hybrid approach makes sense.

The risks of making a powerful home console is that, if western third party did not jump entirely on board, nintendo is left with a high cost console that they are mostly supporting, versus a more attractively priced cheaper console that they are mostly supporting. The other risk here being that, if they are the ones mostly supplying software, a cutting edge console would lengthen production times and would become more expensive if they wanted to make proper use of the extra horsepower (look at Sony 1st party.)

So from a risk reward perspective, a situation where nintendo has the full brunt of their software teams working towards one product, in a pipeline that they are comfortable with and can be expedient with, the NX is one of the more sensible paths they could have taken.
 

Futurematic

Member
FinFet = Related to Dolphin?

Process node upgrade involving 3D transistors allowing increased density and higher speeds. 14/16nm (non-Intel) is basically their 20nm node but with FinFet because TSMC/GloFo were wrong about 20nm not needing FinFet, which is why that node sucks so much. By most accounts TSMC 16nm (which Nvidia uses) is also better than Global Foundries 14nm.
 
I'm sad about this. Very disappointed that Nintendo might go the route of a overclocked Wii u. I like the part about taking games on the go, but after enjoying their Wii u offering. I really wanted to move on.

I'm tried of Nintendo games not having any anti aliasing, and textures that look muddy in some games ( xenoblade X )

I really wanted to see zelda, Mario, pikmin, etc in next gen ps4 level graphics. But if it's the tegra x1, then man am I disappointed. From a lot of their Wii u offerings you could see the Wii u holding back their ambition in some games ie xenoblade X, Zelda botw. Using tegra x1 might give a better performance but it will still look last gen :/

Sigh...that rumor about x2 definitely will not be happening at this late stage of the game.

The X1 running at its standard clock rate is an enormous step up from the Wii U, just read some of the comparison posts in this thread. Also the X1 CPU is a huge step up from even the Xbox One (correct me if I'm wrong there) which will be the baseline for all AAA multiplats this gen.

A console running on a stock Tegra X1 will be very comparable to XB1/PS4 power when considering Nvidia vs AMD flops, the better CPU and the more modern feature sets. How that is used in the NX "portable" and "docked" modes remains to be seen, but the X1 is nothing to sneeze at.

This is before we even consider the potential of a customized Pascal X1, which would make sense if the active cooling report is accurate.
 
Nintendo is always tinkering with different hardware, but I have doubts they'll ever return to the traditional cutting edge hi spec home console. I imagine in the future they'll definitely tinker with AR or VR concepts, and the like.

I think what they are doing with the NX as rumored makes perfect sense for them, even if people have trouble seeing its place in the current market.

The central goal here for nintendo is creating a one stop shop for all the popular franchises that are associated with them across their handheld and home consoles, now in a single form factor.

The balance they're striking here with the hardware power, whether making use of the Tegra X1 or X2, is necessary to do this. Even if they made separate handheld and console products they would still need to be within similar power levels, or that would kind of defeat the intended production goal of a shared library (not having to create two versions of the same games to play to each hardware's strength.) That is why the hybrid approach makes sense.

The risks of making a powerful home console is that, if western third party did not jump entirely on board, nintendo is left with a high cost console that they are mostly supporting, versus a more attractively priced cheaper console that they are mostly supporting. The other risk here being that, if they are the ones mostly supplying software, a cutting edge console would lengthen production times and would become more expensive if they wanted to make proper use of the extra horsepower (look at Sony 1st party.)

So from a risk reward perspective, a situation where nintendo has the full brunt of their software teams working towards one product, in a pipeline that they are comfortable with and can be expedient with, the NX is one of the more sensible paths they could have taken.
This. This so much.
 

Lonely1

Unconfirmed Member
The X1 running at its standard clock rate is an enormous step up from the Wii U, just read some of the comparison posts in this thread. Also the X1 CPU is a huge step up from even the Xbox One (correct me if I'm wrong there) which will be the baseline for all AAA multiplats this gen.

A console running on a stock Tegra X1 will be very comparable to XB1/PS4 power when considering Nvidia vs AMD flops, the better CPU and the more modern feature sets. How that is used in the NX "portable" and "docked" modes remains to be seen, but the X1 is nothing to sneeze at.

This is before we even consider the potential of a customized Pascal X1, which would make sense if the active cooling report is accurate.

Bolded isn't true.
 

Inuhanyou

Believes Dragon Quest is a franchise managed by Sony
A console running on a stock Tegra X1 will be very comparable to XB1/PS4 power when considering Nvidia vs AMD flops, the better CPU and the more modern feature sets. How that is used in the NX "portable" and "docked" modes remains to be seen, but the X1 is nothing to sneeze at.
.

Nah. Or have you not played the shield TV?

The X1 is nothing to sneeze at, its console level without a doubt. But we're talking about a handheld here, be aware.
 

jdstorm

Banned
The X1 running at its standard clock rate is an enormous step up from the Wii U, just read some of the comparison posts in this thread. Also the X1 CPU is a huge step up from even the Xbox One (correct me if I'm wrong there) which will be the baseline for all AAA multiplats this gen.

A console running on a stock Tegra X1 will be very comparable to XB1/PS4 power when considering Nvidia vs AMD flops, the better CPU and the more modern feature sets. How that is used in the NX "portable" and "docked" modes remains to be seen, but the X1 is nothing to sneeze at.

This is before we even consider the potential of a customized Pascal X1, which would make sense if the active cooling report is accurate.

You are completely ignoring the power draw and battery life part of the equation. The NX is a portable device. It needs to run longer then 20 minutes* on the systems internal battery. You also have to be able to hold it without burning your hands.

Even if you were running an OC X1 with a fan and a heat sink (like the rumoured Dev kit. It wouldn't get close to Xbox one performance. )Best case scenario it's 2/3rds as powerful. With Neo likely on the market and Scorpio due holiday 2017 that's not a great place to be in
 
Bolded isn't true.

Care to elaborate? And when I say comparable I don't mean better or worse, I just mean a similar overall level of performance. Between the different architectures this hypothetical NX does some things better than the XB1/PS4 and some things worse.

Nah. Or have you not played the shield TV?

The X1 is nothing to sneeze at, its console level without a doubt. But we're talking about a handheld here, be aware.

The shield is running an Android overhead playing ports of games completely unoptimized for its hardware. Shield performance won't be the same as that of a Nintendo console built from the ground up with games optimized for it, even if it's using the same hardware.


I'm really just talking about how this chip or even the mention of Tegra seems to make people think the NX will be at a similar or worse power level than the Wii U, which isn't true even in a downclocked portable mode. A hypothetical upclocked console mode could be at an overall level comparable to the XB1 at least, if not slightly below it, but again this all depends on how they plan to utilize the dock.

You are completely ignoring the power draw and battery life part of the equation. The NX is a portable device. It needs to run longer then 20 minutes* on the systems internal battery. You also have to be able to hold it without burning your hands.

Even if you were running an OC X1 with a fan and a heat sink (like the rumoured Dev kit. It wouldn't get close to Xbox one performance. )Best case scenario it's 2/3rds as powerful. With Neo likely on the market and Scorpio due holiday 2017 that's not a great place to be in

If you've read some of my other posts you'll see that I'm not ignoring that. Even at the end of the post you quoted, I mentioned that the performance will greatly depend on how the X1 or whatever variant they use is clocked due to it having handheld and dock modes. Also in my mind 2/3 XB1 power is certainly considered "comparable." I was mainly responding to a post which assumed that X1 means barely above Wii U in power.
 

BDGAME

Member
Is this posted here?

http://forum.jogos.uol.com.br/rumor-bombastico-do-nintendo-nx--lcd-expansao-_t_3784407

This guy tell in may what we are discussing right now. He said:

- NX is a hybrid
- removable screen
- you can customize the control
- the chip is named Tegra N1 and it is more powerful than X1
- the price of screen is U$ 100,00 or 200,00,depending on the resolution
- controls cost U$ 50,00 each.
- you can put chips in the carts to expand the power (like in the Nes)

Remember that all that was told in last month.
 

Proelite

Member
Is this posted here?

http://forum.jogos.uol.com.br/rumor-bombastico-do-nintendo-nx--lcd-expansao-_t_3784407

This guy tell in may what we are discussing right now. He said:

- NX is a hybrid
- removable screen
- you can customize the control
- the chip is named Tegra N1 and it is more powerful than X1
- the price of screen is U$ 100,00 or 200,00,depending on the resolution
- controls cost U$ 50,00 each.
- you can put chips in the carts to expand the power (like in the Nes)

Remember that all that was told in last month.

Bolded sounds like misunderstanding.

Maybe he meant the dock?

Good find.
I think it's new thread material.
 
Is this posted here?

http://forum.jogos.uol.com.br/rumor-bombastico-do-nintendo-nx--lcd-expansao-_t_3784407

This guy tell in may what we are discussing right now. He said:

- NX is a hybrid
- removable screen
- you can customize the control
- the chip is named Tegra N1 and it is more powerful than X1
- the price of screen is U$ 100,00 or 200,00,depending on the resolution
- controls cost U$ 50,00 each.
- you can put chips in the carts to expand the power (like in the Nes)

Remember that all that was told in last month.

I love the Tegra N1 name. I hope they call the NX the Nintendo N1
 
Bolded sounds like misunderstanding.

Maybe he meant the dock?

Good find.
I think it's new thread material.

Some NES carts featured additional enhancement chips that allowed the system to access more ROM. Later instalments saw greater additions including the ability to include more audio channels, access more sprite tiles at once and enable scanline counters etc.
On a few occasions the entire Gameboy chipset was included, which gave the NES access to more VRAM.

The real achievements in on-cart enhancement chips came later for the SNES, though, including the SuperFX RISC CPU that many recognise today. There were a fair few, so check out the list here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Super_NES_enhancement_chips

Achieving something similar on NX carts may also be possible, but it depends entirely on form factor and planning. Future expansion of in-cart technology may be something Nintendo account for.
 

Lonely1

Unconfirmed Member
Care to elaborate? And when I say comparable I don't mean better or worse, I just mean a similar overall level of performance. Between the different architectures this hypothetical NX does some things better than the XB1/PS4 and some things worse.

CPU might be, but even an overclocked X1 would be significantly less powerful than the Xbox One on the GPU department.
 
The more I read about NX the more I'm convinced that Nintendo, in practice, is abandoning the home console market to become a portable only company. This machine is hardly going to compete against PS4/X1 in therm of both power and marketshare and doubtly the third-parties are going to support them now at full force at this point.

IMO, this will cause a confusion among Nintendo's audience. Who'll be NX's audience? Nintendo's DS/3DS portable audience or Wii/Wii U home console audience? Wii blue ocean audience who they lost and will try to grab back? Pokémon Go audience? I think Nintendo will have some trouble to find their own audience in the NX.
 

Astral Dog

Member
You are completely ignoring the power draw and battery life part of the equation. The NX is a portable device. It needs to run longer then 20 minutes* on the systems internal battery. You also have to be able to hold it without burning your hands.

Even if you were running an OC X1 with a fan and a heat sink (like the rumoured Dev kit. It wouldn't get close to Xbox one performance. )Best case scenario it's 2/3rds as powerful. With Neo likely on the market and Scorpio due holiday 2017 that's not a great place to be in

its clear they are not able to compete with the NEO and Scorpio, thats why they are doing a (powerful) portable hybrid., but i mean, even if the new Nintendo system was PS4 or slightly above levels of power to remain competitive, we would still be hearing this.
the big question is third party support.
 
Well on Google translate a member said that the photo he provided was a photo of rasphery connected to a screen. Perhaps we can debunk it?

He said that picture was meant to show how the controls detached from the screen, not that it was a picture of a devkit or prototype. Doesn't really debunk anything.
 

MuchoMalo

Banned
Reason I'm speculating around ~75mm is that I expect it to be smaller than the high end phone SOC's. A9 is ~100mm on 16FF and A9X is 147mm. I don't really expect Nintendo to go for a higher cost SOC than those.

Size isn't the only factor in cost. Far from it, actually. 50-75mm2 would likely mean 4 cores and one SM, so there definitely wouldn't be a need to overclock the X1 in the dev kit. I'm confident that we're looking at something much larger than that. Also, the A9 is only about $20.

On another note, I found this note about the "X2" very interesting:

The chip also has unified memory so there's faster communications between the CPU and GPU. The Parker chip is likely made using the 16-nanometer FinFET process, in which the transistors are stacked for performance and power benefits.

The bold makes it very similar to console APUs. That combined with being compatible with a dedicated GPU makes Parker the ideal chip hybrid. I'm sure that Nvidia at least pitched the chip to Nintendo, but I also believe that Nintendo refused because reasons.
 

sfried

Member
This makes me think of two things:

1. What will happen with Nintendo's deal with AMD/ATi/ArtX?

2. Moving forward, will Nvidia be their main supplier of GPUs? If so, will they run into the same issues that the XB360 had with running BC on Original XBox titles?
 

nordique

Member
What we have, though, is leaks by devs saying the CPU performs sufficiently better than Jaguar, as little as that might mean.

What kind of ARM chip/number of cores/configuration would be needed to outperform the 8 core Jaguars in the XBO/PS4?

(Apologies if this specifically has been discussed already -_-')
 
What kind of ARM chip/number of cores/configuration would be needed to outperform the 8 core Jaguars in the XBO/PS4?

(Apologies if this specifically has been discussed already -_-')

Blu answered a similar question from me before. IIRC, I was something like this:

Octocore A57s @ 2GHz would be more than a match for the CPUs in XB1/PS4.

Octocores A73 would surpass them by quite a bit.
 

Spectone

Member
Process node upgrade involving 3D transistors allowing increased density and higher speeds. 14/16nm (non-Intel) is basically their 20nm node but with FinFet because TSMC/GloFo were wrong about 20nm not needing FinFet, which is why that node sucks so much. By most accounts TSMC 16nm (which Nvidia uses) is also better than Global Foundries 14nm.

FinFET is a particular way of making transistors on microchips. FinFET transistors use less power than older technologies. They operate at lower voltages, can be made smaller than 20nm and they run 30% faster.
 

blu

Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.

Kathian

Banned
According to Pixel C benchmarks, the X1 CPU is poor.

Thats a PC though. Games consoles just don't target CPU power. Which tbh is why it being better or worse than X a bit negligible.

The bottleneck in a handheld is going to be memory. This is just going to be a next gen handheld imo with the power implications of that. 3D will be dropped which helps but still there is going to be a big (imo) trade off between visuals and resolution and frame rate.
 

00ich

Member
The more I read about NX the more I'm convinced that Nintendo, in practice, is abandoning the home console market to become a portable only company. This machine is hardly going to compete against PS4/X1 in therm of both power and marketshare and doubtly the third-parties are going to support them now at full force at this point.

IMO, this will cause a confusion among Nintendo's audience. Who'll be NX's audience? Nintendo's DS/3DS portable audience or Wii/Wii U home console audience? Wii blue ocean audience who they lost and will try to grab back? Pokémon Go audience? I think Nintendo will have some trouble to find their own audience in the NX.
Imo the nx seems to get a lot of things right.
It doesn't fight for a place at the household's main screen or in your pocket.
It's hardware is not exotic and shouldallow for good quality ports with reasonable development costs.
I just hope it's cheap. Meaning below 300$.
 

Durante

Member
Thats a PC though. Games consoles just don't target CPU power. Which tbh is why it being better or worse than X a bit negligible.
Well, what you quoted was a reply to a question about the relative performance of the two CPU architectures, which it answers.

If they want to (and prioritize it), matching the PS4/XB1 CPU-wise is the smallest issue in this hybrid.
 

KingSnake

The Birthday Skeleton
I was thinking a bit about X2.

Nintendo was willing to work with Nvidia on 3ds using Tegra, which wasn't exactly cheap at that time and the rumours say it was dropped because it didn't meet the power consumption target.
With Wii U they rather targeted power consumption/efficiency than CPU/GPU power and cost didn't seem to be a top priority.

So using a X2 doesn't seem too far fetched in my opinion, seeing as it supposed to be more efficient than X1. Or some kind of custom X1 in between.
 
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