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NateDrake: Switch Final Devkits being shipped, Battery should be 3DS-like (5-8 hours)

T

trixx

Member
That would be absolutely amazing if they manage to pull that off. Sheesh

Doubt it though gameplay gonna be like 4 hours medium brightness with wifi on for Zelda. Gamepad lasted 5 hours at times I think, usually 3 hours of gaming was enough though, can't lie
 
I

Instro

Member
Well the Shield tablet was managing 3+ hours gaming time on an older chip with a much bigger and higher res screen. 8 hours of straight gaming obviously isn't happening, but 4-5 hours of intensive gaming seems fairly reasonable with a 6" 720p screen on the new chip. Particularly given the rumors that the Switch is downclocked when portable. Assuming the battery is of decent size anyway.
 
I

Instro

Member
trixx said:
That would be absolutely amazing if they manage to pull that off. Sheesh

Doubt it though gameplay gonna be like 4 hours medium brightness with wifi on for Zelda. Gamepad lasted 5 hours at times I think, usually 3 hours of gaming was enough though, can't lie
Click to expand...

Well the WiiU gamepad shipped with a very small battery. Even the "high capacity" battery they came out with later was only 2550mAh
 
N

NateDrake

Member
Steve Youngblood said:
This is not in anyway, shape or form me trying to sound incredulous in regards to the source of the information here, but the closer you get to 8 hours, the more it sounds like an absolute pipe dream to me if you're talking about active gaming. 8 hours of internet browsing? Yeah, I'd believe it. 8 hours of playing Breath of the Wild? I am extremely skeptical. I'm skeptical of even hitting 5 in that use case.

Again, this is not me trying to call out NateDrake. If Kimishima or Reggie publicly stated this I would still be raising a very skeptical eyebrow.
Click to expand...

Perfectly reasonable. It's a range I've heard they are targeting. Could be it closer to 5hrs or 6hrs? Absolutely. But that is why it is a range of between 5-8hrs.
 
N

Neoxon

Junior Member
NateDrake said:
Perfectly reasonable. It's a range I've heard they are targeting. Could be it closer to 5hrs or 6hrs? Absolutely. But that is why it is a range of between 5-8hrs.
Click to expand...
But that's the key-word, targeting. It's not that I doubt your sources. But from what I'm reading of what you said, it seems like 5-8 hours is what Nintendo is hoping to hit. And while I do hope Nintendo reaches their goal, if they do is uncertain (unless you have more intel).
 
N

nekomix

Member
If the downclocking rumor is true and it can go to that extent, it means it is pretty powerful because pushing pretty decent graphics @720p for 5 straight hours without sweating and then it upclocks for the screen... it can be promising. But all of this is with a big IF.
 
G

guybrushfreeman

Unconfirmed Member
Even 5 hours would be pretty surprising. Mobile phones with smaller screens don't last that long playing games and the chipset should drawing either as much power or a little more. It would be welcome for sure but it seems unlikely. 3-5 hours seems like a high end estimate given what we know to me. Lower wouldn't even surprise me if the GPU ends up drawing more power than the average smartphone
 
G

guybrushfreeman

Unconfirmed Member
Instro said:
Well the WiiU gamepad shipped with a very small battery. Even the "high capacity" battery they came out with later was only 2550mAh
Click to expand...

We just saw then unit and it's quite thin. There's certainly not a magic giant battery in there. This is all about how low the power draw is in portable mode

Edit: I need to stop double posting, sorry
 
C

Cuningas de Häme

Member
I have always been able to use Wii U pad for hours, when everyone says that it has shitty battery. I use the lowest brightness etc...There is lots of ways to make battery last longer.

If people get their panties all rustled up, maybe this info should just be shared in the Switch discussion thread? That's the civilized way, lots of other stuff to speak too.
 
N

Nategc20

Banned
Lol, this thread got turned to shit by the police. Amirox levels of derailment...I was just waiting for the bans for a legendary thread.
 
S

ShadowFox08

Member
Polygonal_Sprite said:
Nate, you have one mission left should you choose to accept it...

We know a bit about the CPU.
We know about the RAM.
We know about the VC.

Find us a ballpark number for the GPU.

176 - 512 Glops or 512 - 1 Tflop ?.

I have faith that you can find this info out and make our Holidays happy !!
Click to expand...

Something tells me that Pascal is indeed being used.. And Nintendo chose the 60% energy efficiency over the 40% power increase from X1 to get the 5-8 hours of battery. That's my guess... :(:

I'm interested in the amount of RAM just as much as GPU, as it gives a pretty good indicator of power. If its really 4GB as emily rogers said in late october, with 3.2GB for gaming, then it should be at least 3x as powerful as the Wii U, which is over 500 GFLOPS. If ind it hard to stomach an 80% xbone with only 4GB of RAM. Here's hoping the switch RAM gets upgraded to 6 or 8GB in the last minute(or at least 6).
 
G

Gleethor

Member
wildfire said:
If this really is 80% of the Xbox one in dock mode and still had the life span of the 3ds while in handheld mode, I'll be left in awe of what they achieved.
Click to expand...

Dude I'm already in awe of what they've achieved. Engineering this thing must've been a a pain in the ass.
 
E

Easy_D

never left the stone age
I'm just gonna assume 5 hours in a best case scenario to prepare myself.

ShadowFox08 said:
Something tells me that Pascal is indeed being used.. And Nintendo chose the 60% energy efficiency over the 40% power increase from X1 to get the 5-8 hours of battery. That's my guess... :(:
Click to expand...

Any power "wasted" for portable mode battery can still be tapped while in docked mode. Granted, if portable mode is a limiting factor for games, I wonder if devs would bother even if it's powerful enough, especially if Nintendo mandates that games be playable in portable mode firstly and docked mode second. Which could pose a problem.
 
D

daffy

Banned
nekomix said:
If the downclocking rumor is true and it can go to that extent, it means it is pretty powerful because pushing pretty decent graphics @720p for 5 straight hours without sweating and then it upclocks for the screen... it can be promising. But all of this is with a big IF.
Click to expand...
The downclock/upclock isn't confirmed at all and you seem to have accepted it as reality already so may as well go all in.
 
S

ShadowFox08

Member
Easy_D said:
I'm just gonna assume 5 hours in a best case scenario to prepare myself.



Any power "wasted" for portable mode battery can still be tapped while in docked mode. Granted, if portable mode is a limiting factor for games, I wonder if devs would bother even if it's powerful enough, especially if Nintendo mandates that games be playable in portable mode firstly and docked mode second. Which could pose a problem.
Click to expand...

Is that really true? Can they really fluidly chose 40% extra power in dock mode, and 60% energy efficiency in portable?

Power shouldn't be a factor. Activision's treyarch wii team ported the call of duty games on the Wii with great success A console that was well over 10x less powerful than ps3/360, with identical gameplay(albeit 30fps).

The Switch supposedly supports the latest Unity and it has a really easy CPU architecture. In terms of ports, I'm sure it will do fine, albeit downgraded resolutions and less graphical enhancement. The biggest factor is sales. As long as the Switch sells and people buy the 3rd party ports in mass numbers--surely enough for profit, 3rd party ports would continue to be made.

I'm thinking dock would be the default mode for devs to work on. Power is probably going to be at 50% when in portable mode. It's going to behave like a laptop in powersaver mode when its not being charged.

daffy said:
The downclock/upclock isn't confirmed at all and you seem to have accepted it as reality already so may as well go all in.
Click to expand...

Its not, but Laura Kate Dale is on a roll lately, and its nothing complex.
I'd honestly be surprised if it wasn't true. It would just behave like a laptop works with and without a power supply connected.

Normal clocking speed when docked, and downclocked when using handheld mode. Makes sense for 1080p games on dock.
 
Toadthemushroom

Toadthemushroom

Member
Dat Pascal.

Since the development kits were using the old X1 this seems reasonable - the custom Pascal-based Tegra that Nvidia have designed for this form factor and use case is going to be more efficient than a chip from the Shield TV which already delivered about 3 hours' battery life.
 
Toadthemushroom

Toadthemushroom

Member
What are the odds that quick charging would make it to the Switch? Not a must-have feature for phones that generally last all day, but if I can plug in my Switch before the journey home in the evening and get it back up to a less anxiety-inducing battery level in little time that would be amazing.
 
G

Gamer @ Heart

Member
ShadowFox08 said:
Something tells me that Pascal is indeed being used.. And Nintendo chose the 60% energy efficiency over the 40% power increase from X1 to get the 5-8 hours of battery. That's my guess... :(:

I'm interested in the amount of RAM just as much as GPU, as it gives a pretty good indicator of power. If its really 4GB as emily rogers said in late october, with 3.2GB for gaming, then it should be at least 3x as powerful as the Wii U, which is over 500 GFLOPS. If ind it hard to stomach an 80% xbone with only 4GB of RAM. Here's hoping the switch RAM gets upgraded to 6 or 8GB in the last minute(or at least 6).
Click to expand...

Don't do this to yourself. They started production on the retail units months ago. There is no last minute upgrading at this stage.
 
S

ShadowFox08

Member
Gamer @ Heart said:
Don't do this to yourself. They started production on the retail units months ago. There is no last minute upgrading at this stage.
Click to expand...

I'm not expecting it, especially considering that Emily Rogers said that retail units will have 4GB. But the speculation of sub x-box one specs and matching it tortures me ;_________;

giphy.gif



5-8 hours of gaming.. I'm guessing 8 is on low brightness with wifi turned off with a VC game playing. +5 hours for Switch games.
 
S

sanstesy

Member
Malcolm9 said:
Is yours broken? I easily get 7-8 hours out of mine.

Anyway, this seems pretty decent for the Switch considering games will be bigger than what the 3DS gave us.
Click to expand...

Yeah, no. Thing lasts at most 5 to 6 hours on my end and I bought a PS4 April this year.
 
M

Mariolee

Member
Stumpokapow said:
Let me clarify:
- We sometimes verify people that claim to actually be in the industry, but it's pretty rare.
- The manner of verification is to give them a cursory ask of who they work for and/or if they are reporting something second hand, who their source works for. In some extreme cases this has involved a follow-up on Linkedin. We can only verify that someone is theoretically in a position to know the things they're saying, not that what they're saying is true. It is not possible to verify a priori that something is true--no one moderating GAF is doing so in their capacity as a game developer (although a few moderators here are developers) or a game journalist (although a few moderators here are journalists)
- The main purpose of verifying people is so when they make claims, and then those claims don't come true, we know it was because things changed rather than them being full of shit. So for example if the battery life ends up being 3-5 hours or 8-10 hours, then this claim is wrong, but how will you know whether it's wrong because the information was wrong and you shouldn't have trusted it, or because it was right but things changed?
- Unfortunately because we're pretty good at blocking or banning sources that end up completely incorrect, we create an incentive for fakers or people exaggerating what they know to make vague claims and teases. One of the things that frustrates me the most about this category of rumours is that even if they're a GAF member, there's no way to hold them accountable.
- It's not clear how we would verify a random YouTube video maker. They have no public identity to verify, they don't claim to be in the industry so we can't connect them to a company, and if they had any evidence they were willing to share they'd presumably have shared it in their video, right? So what would you have us do?
- I don't think anyone should believe anything that can't be disproven, and the vague and more Nostradamus-like the claim, the more likely you should consider it bogus.
- I do think you should trust mid-to-large size commercial journalistic outlets rather than random freelance fan journalists.

- Most of the "actually trustworthy" "insiders" who provide information are still pretty unprofessional in terms of how they choose to relay information that they haven't adequately confirmed, or in terms of misrepresenting their certainty, or their source's certainty, or their own ability to verify their source's credibility. I don't think it makes sense to dig in deep against specific people, but by far the biggest category of people we've had to deal with is not people totally making up fake stuff, it's people who have very poor discretion about trusting their sources and overplay their hands. That's my sense of what happened with Verendus, for example (although I can't know for sure), as well as other past NeoGAF would-be insiders like thuway and famousmortimer.
Click to expand...

Thank you for clarifying. I can see how from your position multiple threads like this with undisprovable claims can be frustrating (even if I don't agree with how you presented that view in your first post). It definitely makes me realize that there's only so much a moderator on GAF can do, and for so long people have just assumed that if it's on GAF it's true. To know that the vetting process is actually pretty limited, though effective, is interesting to say the least.
 
K

Kathian

Banned
If it's 3DS life that's fine but thats not 5-8 hours!

It's never going to have phone battery life as you know it's not a phone.

4 hours is the sweet spot for me and if USB charged I hope a battery brick will do the job.
 
P

Phoenixus

Member
I imagine the battery in the switch screen unit, and the two in the Joy-Cons will work in tandem, and all three are charged at once when docked or plugged into USB. Hoping the Joy-Cons will have a good battery life when separated as well.
 
Stilton Disco

Stilton Disco

Member
5 hours is fine by me, so that's a huge relief!

If this means we're still just getting 32gb's of internal storage and expensive, slow arsed MicroSD only expandable storage, that kind of sucks for the whole 'home console games on the go' angle though.
 
E

EVH

Member
5 hours is better than what a fucking iPad running games would last, so I take that as max duration.
 
M

mrklaw

MrArseFace
all I'm taking from the new numbers is 'better than 3' and 'kinda like 3ds numbers'. The higher range will almost certainly never be hit with gaming or high brightness/using speakers instead of headphones.

The thing I really want though, is decent standby life. If I'm using it mostly handheld, I want the battery to not fuck itself over in a few days like the 3DS does. Maybe I can't expect Vita levels of god-like standby time, but it needs to be way better than 3DS.
 
R

Raet

Member
So do you guys think the better-than-expected battery life suggests an efficient Pascal architecture, what we all probably hope for, or an underpowered chip (what the "lol Nintendo" crowd expects)?
 
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