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Nintendo Switch Dev Kit Stats Leaked? Cortex A57, 4GB RAM, 32GB Storage, Multi-Touch.

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conpfreak

Member
540p on a 1080p TV ? No thanks.. and in portable mode ? lol I dont want to imagine that iq

Did you play games during the PS3/360 generation? There was a lot of this and nobody complained too much. There is a lot of sub-Full HD games this generation as well. I still spend quite a lot of time gaming on my PS3 and 360 on my 4K and the games still look really good.
 

Cerium

Member
The article also clearly states that there could be more CUDA cores, so this information "briefed" to developers has in no way been confirmed:

Why would they even speculate about this if they believed these specs were confirmed?
That whole paragraph is an explanation of why there probably aren't more cores.

And what reason would Nintendo have to lie to developers and describe the system as weaker than it actually is?

I think it's time to start coming to terms with the dark truth.
 

KingSnake

The Birthday Skeleton
You really think an NDA would stop a developers from saying something? I even think we had multiple devs that came out with the "I have a friend working on it" saying Wii u was crap. Now here is my opinion on Switch. It's either better than anyone is expecting and that's why we don't have bad news. Scenario 2 (probably the most likely) is it is just good enough to not say anything bad about. It can get ports, it will be amazing for nintendo, indies, and mobile developers and that's it. That's basically what we are seeing or not hearing.

These are devs who were working on games for Wii U and came out publicly. Come one, they wouldn't have done this if they were under NDA. And that's why was so damaging in fact for Wii U. Devs stating things under anonymity wouldn't have been the same.

If a user would came now on GAF and post something similar he would be scrutinised to hell and back.
 
That whole paragraph is an explanation of why there probably aren't more cores.
And what reason would Nintendo have to lie to developers and describe the system as weaker than it actually is?

I think it's time to start coming to terms with the dark truth.

But that's not what you claimed. You claimed that this article confirms 256 CUDA cores, and while it says more is unlikely, that speculation alone clearly indicates that they have not been able to confirm 256 CUDA cores. Why the hell would they even be speculating on any of that from that paragraph if anything here was confirmed?

As far as I can tell from the article, the only thing they have seemingly confirmed is the clock speeds. The configuration is still unknown.

As to your edit, I don't think DF has said Nintendo briefed developers on those exact specs. Even if that is what they meant, that could very well be a baseline expectation as these specs were in the devkits at some point before July. For that matter we have no idea WHEN devs were briefed on these specs. So the fact that DF is not considering any of those specs confirmed tells me that they don't know what the final hardware will be.

And I'm definitely bracing for the worst now. I would gladly accept what they say if not for the fan making no sense to me, but I'm certainly willing to accept that they may have needed the fan and that it's not as big a point of failure as I thought.

It clearly states Nintendo is telling developers that's how many cores there are. I doubt Nintendo is lying to its developers. You're setting yourself up for brutal disappointment.

Read my edit responding to your edit. The specs listed there were in the devkits at some point before July. This could easily be what DF meant by "briefed developers on these specs"- they did so some time before July.
 

Cerium

Member
But that's not what you claimed. You claimed that this article confirms 256 CUDA cores

It clearly states Nintendo is telling developers that's how many cores there are. I doubt Nintendo is lying to its developers. You're setting yourself up for brutal disappointment.
 

BDGAME

Member
540p on a 1080p TV ? No thanks.. and in portable mode ? lol I dont want to imagine that iq

Battlefield 1 already do that. That game is rendering at 540p and using chessboard upscale to show 1080p on screen.

If switch use that for all the most advanced games, the visuals will not look bad.
 

Lom1lo

Member
Did you play games during the PS3/360 generation? There was a lot of this and nobody complained too much. There is a lot of sub-Full HD games this generation as well. I still spend quite a lot of time gaming on my PS3 and 360 on my 4K and the games still look really good.
Yeah I did, were there many Games in that range? I have ark on Xbox one in mind, it is sub HD and still higher than 540p. It looks terrible.
And remember in portable mode there are only 40% of the Power available.
I hope devs reduce other factors and keep the Resolution minimum at 720p.
 

KingSnake

The Birthday Skeleton
Four 1GHz A57's are well within porting distance to 6 1.6GHz Jaguars. YET those A57's are not above said Jaguars, neither in single-threaded performance nor in MT. That means devs will have to mind the CPU side of ports again*. Which is where my two personal let-downs from the DF article stem (taken at good faith):

1. For once (since the Cube, which, mind you, had its narrows compared to some of its competitors, but was a fair draw overall) nintendo had the chance to make a console where devs could just have a worry-free experience with the CPU side of things in multiplats.
2. For once nintendo could make a console where quantitive advances in tech pushed their vision a generation ahead of every body else - that perfect tech storm I was talking about with LCCGeek the other day. A hybrid console carried on a new fabnode, with a non-compromise CPU (A72) and a state-of-the-art GPU (Maxwell+), backed by competent sw support.

Clearly (1) is not happening now - it's business as usual for the devs working on ambitious multiplats. As re (2) - somebody somewhere at nintendo decided cost and homogeneity across the two modes were more important. I can surely understand that line of thinking - it's the safer one. But not the more progressive one.

Anyhow, I needed to vent a bit. Not the gamer in me, mind you, but the technologist in me.

* Heck, they might have to mind the CPU side of some wiiU ports as well.

Yeah, I think this is the most disappointing thing about the latest info, the wasted potential.

I didn't feel disappointed in Wii U because it was really like a house renovation, sometimes building a nicer floor on the top of the ugly ground floor doesn't turn nice.

But now when they have the possibilities of building something from scratch and they had also great tools, something somewhere went wrong and the potential was wasted.

And it's especially disappointing because the other aspects of Switch will probably be great: cool design, some awesome engineering according to the patents and possibly a good price. Could have been the perfect storm indeed. Maybe there will be an awesome price to compensate.
 

conpfreak

Member
Yeah I did, were there many Games in that range? I have ark on Xbox one in mind, it is sub HD and still higher than 540p. It looks terrible.
And remember in portable mode there are only 40% of the Power available.
I hope devs reduce other factors and keep the Resolution minimum at 720p.

https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/list-of-rendering-resolutions.41152/

There is a incomplete list in that link that gives an idea of the variance of resolutions in the library. Also, don't get hung up on that 40% number. That number refers to the GPU, which is based on a incomplete assessment of unconfirmed specs.
 
Sounds like the only good thing we can hope from that, is that the good architecture would lead to hardware refresh regularly if it sells well. Switch Pro in 3 years.
I wonder if Nintendo themselves will decide to go ahead and upclock them and slightly increase the speed of the fan via firmware down the road. This is assuming that it is 4x A57s instead of something stronger like A72s. I also wonder if it has active A53s in there.
 

Persona7

Banned
32gb. Is this still true, because I haven't read the thread much.

This was part of the leak by Emily Rogers but nobody knows if this is the premium or basic model. I would assume the basic model would be doubled.

So it's either 16->32 or 32->64
 

AmyS

Member
2 SMs on 28nm ?

Oh man....

Edit: Then please let Switch be only one of several Nintendo machines that are "like brothers in a family of systems" like Iwata said back in 2014.

Even if that just means SCD.

Come on.
 

Schnozberry

Member
2 SMs on 28nm ?

Oh man....

Edit: Then please let Switch be only one of several Nintendo machines that are "like brothers in a family of systems" like Iwata said back in 2014.

Even if that just means SCD.

Come on.

The 28nm thing was something invented out of whole cloth to explain things that people are having a hard time accepting. People should stop spreading it.
 

Vena

Member
It's always worse than we think.
And this rumor was only one person in this thread afaik.

I expect between 1-2gb, that makes more sense to me.

The WiiU's bloated OS is 1gb, why would this be... larger?

Only stated by Vern and nobody else.

Edit: at least now I can believe that it won't have a browser. With the CPU that underclocked who knows how well it handled the OS and the games all together.

There's almost zero chance this has only four cores. I can't see it. This is either going to have a couple of little cores for handling OS and off-gaming features (like the recording feature), or it has more than four cores and some of them are used for non-gaming purposes.
 

KingSnake

The Birthday Skeleton
There's almost zero chance this has only four cores. I can't see it. This is either going to have a couple of little cores for handling OS and off-gaming features (like the recording feature), or it has more than four cores and some of them are used for non-gaming purposes.

Maybe it gets a Gamecube's PowerPC to power the OS. That would explain also the VC. /jk
 

Cerium

Member
The specs listed there were in the devkits at some point before July. This could easily be what DF meant by "briefed developers on these specs"- they did so some time before July.

When you listen to your brain and not your heart, when you read all the available information objectively, do you really believe that's the case? When you look at that paragraph explaining why you shouldn't expect hidden cores, when you read that Nintendo is telling developers it's 256, what conclusion do you draw? Put wishful thinking aside for a moment.
 

Vena

Member
Maybe it gets a Gamecube's PowerPC to power the OS. That would explain also the VC. /jk

lol

I think there's something amiss with what we know about the CPU, the VC is especially a big ??? for the GameCube because unless NERD did something magical, I am not sure how they can get around the CPU bottlenecks usually associated with software emulation with this CPU.

But then I am coming at this from Dolphin on PC, which is largely single thread clock limited.
 
The WiiU's bloated OS is 1gb, why would this be... larger?



There's almost zero chance this has only four cores. I can't see it. This is either going to have a couple of little cores for handling OS and off-gaming features (like the recording feature), or it has more than four cores and some of them are used for non-gaming purposes.
Well, even the Wii, 3DS, and Wii U had this little ARM9 @ 100+MHz (fan-named Scarlet for the Wii) for some background stuff.
 
When you listen to your brain and not your heart, when you read all the available information objectively, do you really believe that's the case? When you look at that paragraph explaining why you shouldn't expect hidden cores, when you read that Nintendo is telling developers it's 256, what conclusion do you draw? Put wishful thinking aside for a moment.

You must be missing the parts of my posts where I'm accepting what DF is speculating to be what we're getting...

All I'm saying is- from a objective and logical read of that article, they have clearly not confirmed those specs. Why would they be saying they've now confirmed the clock speeds but not the GPU/CPU configurations? Why would they be speculating that there COULD be more CUDA cores, no matter how unlikely?

AGAIN: It's very likely that what they're saying about overall performance is correct and I've accepted that. But they are not claiming to be confirming the GPU/CPU configurations in that article.
 

Vena

Member
This is what I was curious about in a previous post (here):
9ezIOwj.png

But I can't figure out why you'd do something like that (adding an extra SM and then further clocking down) than just downclock 2SMs less rigorously. Is there some sort of battery/power gain in this or is it a shot idea?

The hypothetical of the 3SM with lower clocks puts it right at the original 2SM performance in just mathematical terms, which is why I was curious. 512 vs. ~590.
 

KingSnake

The Birthday Skeleton
For me, considering the info that we got from insiders and the chronology of those leaks it really seems that initially in the devkits there was a standard TX1, a Jetson board practically and that the restrictions regarding the clocks (and maybe new devkits) were communicated afterwards. That's practically the only way the info fit well in the timeline.

It could even be combined with a fan no longer being in the tablet, although that would make quite strange the vents seen in what seems to be already a retail unit (Fallon).
 
Maybe it gets a Gamecube's PowerPC to power the OS. That would explain also the VC. /jk
Lol. They did do things like that for the DS, 3DS, and Wii, and Wii U (they basically have a shrunken Hollywood GPU in the latter), so it is not unusual for Nintendo to add customization to aid BC.
 

Oregano

Member
For me, considering the info that we got from insiders and the chronology of those leaks it really seems that initially in the devkits there was a standard TX1, a Jetson board practically and that the restrictions regarding the clocks (and maybe new devkits) were communicated afterwards. That's practically the only way the info fit well in the timeline.

It could even be combined with a fan no longer being in the tablet, although that would make quite strange the vents seen in what seems to be already a retail unit (Fallon).

We would have almost certainly has some kind of leak specifically calling out a downgrade though I think. There's no way there wouldn't be a revolt if they pulled such a downgrade.
 

KingSnake

The Birthday Skeleton
Lol. They did do things like that for the DS, 3DS, and Wii, and Wii U (they basically have a shrunken Hollywood GPU in the latter), so it is not unusual for Nintendo to add customization to aid BC.

Could they actually evolve a PowerPC core into a mobile one? I mean they tormented the poor little processor so much between from GC to Wii U that nothing would surprise me anymore. We need Blu's take on this one.

We would have almost certainly has some kind of leak specifically calling out a downgrade though I think. There's no way there wouldn't be a revolt if they pulled such a downgrade.

Leaking info to Eurogamer is also a kind of revolt. But in the end, the system seems relatively easy to work with, so I don't think there are that many reasons for revolt.
 

Enduin

No bald cap? Lies!
This is what I was curious about in a previous post (here):


But I can't figure out why you'd do something like that (adding an extra SM and then further clocking down) than just downclock 2SMs less rigorously. Is there some sort of battery/power gain in this or is it a shot idea?

The hypothetical of the 3SM with lower clocks puts it right at the original 2SM performance in just mathematical terms, which is why I was curious. 512 vs. ~590.

Thraktor posted about this a bunch and basically yes, more SMs at lower clocks means less power for equal or greater performance to fewer SMs at higher clocks.
 

KingSnake

The Birthday Skeleton
Just look at what eurogamer is getting from their "sources." Long story short if a dev wanted us to know switch sucked and was a waste of time porting games to we "could" have heard it by now.

What is this new info that DF got if not someone wanting us to know that the system "sucks"?
 

Shahadan

Member
Just look at what eurogamer is getting from their "sources." Long story short if a dev wanted us to know switch sucked and was a waste of time porting games to we "could" have heard it by now.

Yeah well, not so sure about that. Unlike Wii U this thing has so far positive buzz and is planned to sell rather well, and we haven't even seen games.
Thrashing a potential good source of revenue even anonymously is not a good idea at this point.
 

Vena

Member
What is this new info that DF got if not someone wanting us to know that the system "sucks"?

Nah this is a technical spec for retail, this is probably just a normal leak from SDK updates like with the Neo. DF is itself rather positive on the whole thing anyway, so it doesn't really paint a negative picture.
 

KingSnake

The Birthday Skeleton
Nah this is a technical spec for retail, this is probably just a normal leak from SDK updates like with the Neo.

Yeah, probably. With all the Nvidia tools and OpenGL and Vulkan compatibiltiy, big engines support and so on I don't think devs have actual reasons to complain. Wii U situation was totally different because the tools and the support really sucked even long time after launch.
 
At this point nobody knows what the actual architecture configuration is going to look like, and all we have is a few clockspeeds, speculation, and "leaked" information that may or may not be accurate, and may or may not be old information (ie; an old config, or build of devkit - or even an old "plan").

As such, I think trying to nail down the exact power of the system is pretty pointless with this amount of confirmed information. The range of possibilities in the final product and the possibility of unknown unknowns is too high.

We can claim clockspeeds of three parts, which may or may not be the entirety of the system's processing power, and may or may not include the OS as a resource hog.

Not much to say yet, IMO.
 

Vena

Member
Yeah, probably. With all the Nvidia tools and OpenGL and Vulkan compatibiltiy, big engines support and so on I don't think devs have actual reasons to complain. Wii U situation was totally different because the tools and the support really sucked even long time after launch.

Also came at the same time as the Vulkan info, so it just feels like a final info dump on the system going out.

Though its only partial at Euro, since they only have a very small piece of the picture as they only seem to have clock numbers... which is a bit weird.
 

Oregano

Member
Yeah, probably. With all the Nvidia tools and OpenGL and Vulkan compatibiltiy, big engines support and so on I don't think devs have actual reasons to complain. Wii U situation was totally different because the tools and the support really sucked even long time after launch.

They would have reason to complain if their target hardware had its CPU power cut in half four months before launch though. That would be a massive issue.

EDIT:
Also came at the same time as the Vulkan info, so it just feels like a final info dump on the system going out.

Though its only partial at Euro, since they only have a very small piece of the picture as they only seem to have clock numbers... which is a bit weird.

Clock speeds is like one of the only spec figures Nintendo gives out to developers.
 

KingSnake

The Birthday Skeleton
They would have reason to complain if their target hardware had its CPU power cut in half four months before launch though. That would be a massive issue.

I'm trying to figure out which of the games we kind of know already would be really impacted byt this and I don't find one.

The wiiU had a great browser with a much weaker CPU

Much weaker is a stretch. But that was more me being facetious.
 
Could they actually evolve a PowerPC core into a mobile one? I mean they tormented the poor little processor so much between from GC to Wii U that nothing would surprise me anymore. We need Blu's take on this one.
That actually would be a very good reason why the Switch needs a fan even undocked.. lol.

Seriously, I believe the PowerPC architecture is too power hungry. It has been rumors that Nintendo has previously attempted to use PowerPC Gekko into a portable.
 

Dekuboy

Neo Member
So some things I need to say about this now.

First, people who are crying about 32gb internal memory: We can have sd cards afaik and also we have cardridges, which is way better than anything else. There isn´t a hdd where you can buy 1tb for <50€, it is probably something like SD and 128gb SD are 100€.

Second, at all these people who are crying with "what only 720p my mobile phone does 1080p/1440p" Yes it does, but don´t forget ps4pro can´t even do last guardian on 1080p with more than 30fps.

And at last, after reading the eurogamer leak which is claiming that the tweet is real and after reading thraktors post I can now be relieved and don´t believe it. The person who tweeted this, literally claimed to know about the switch before the trailer and said "Nvidia? No emily is wrong it will be amd like SMD64 said". And now after the trailer suddenly this came up. No thanks :)
 

AlStrong

Member
But I can't figure out why you'd do something like that (adding an extra SM and then further clocking down) than just downclock 2SMs less rigorously. Is there some sort of battery/power gain in this or is it a shot idea?

The hypothetical of the 3SM with lower clocks puts it right at the original 2SM performance in just mathematical terms, which is why I was curious. 512 vs. ~590.

A GPU is more than just ROPs and shaders, but if you do keep downclocking, you're also reducing performance on the geometry setup (the front end of the rendering pipe).
 
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