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Nintendo Switch pro rumored to feature next-gen NVIDIA Lovelace architecture

Schnozberry

Member
They are talking about cost-effective RT. ST on NVidia graphics cards comes for cheaper by IIRC 30%. SMH.

If we're being honest with ourselves, Nintendo should not be spending any of it's limited power envelope on Switch for real time ray tracing. It would just mean resolution drops and lower framerates, which eliminates most of the benefit anyways.
 

DaGwaphics

Member
Have people forgotten that switching to a new arch doesn't necessarily tell you anything about power. Would probably be a nice uptick at 5nm, what level of performance could realistically be expected at the 10-15w range?
 
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Astral Dog

Member
Normally i would agree that raw horsepower is not the Nintendo way...but smartphones and tablets keep getting more and more powerful and don't take 5 years between iterations. If i was Nintendo in such a complex marketplace and on the back of massive Switch revenues i would differentiate myself with innovative tech that smartphones just wont use and invest in R&D on a bespoke chipset with my silicon partner to ensure that power wise my hardware is relevant to the conversation of what else is out there....

I sincerely doubt we will get ps4pro level performance unless this is a complete hardware revision. Base XB1 is more realistic even though I think DLSS magic rather than raw horsepower will achieve it.
Its still gonna be a decent upgrade over the og Switch, but not really able to handle this gen big console games its just a Pro revision after all. 'Hardcore' gamers are always talking about how Nintendo lags behind the competition because they don't like their hardware but the reality is they have been doing everything right with the Switch, hardware, design,marketing,price, software its an incredibly successful product if the market thought it was too weak or lame they wouldn't be buying it in 2021.

Smartphones and tablets may have better specs on paper, but nobody is gonna put Breath of the Wild on them, or sell third party games at $60 on those things 🤷‍♂️ For better or worse Nintendo Switch is still the best place for console quality gaming on the go

Edit:also rushing out a system to play the tech race is not always the best option for a gaming company like Nintendo, when Switch 2 comes out it needs to be a big jump visually, BUT at an affordable price and with tons of software, that takes many years to plan Switch had a great first year.
 
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Elysion

Banned
I wonder if it‘s possible that some of the leaks got mixed up? Because from what all those recent rumors are saying, the Switch Pro sounds almost too good to be true for a mere mid-gen refresh from Nintendo. Maybe it’s actually like this: there will be a new Switch model this year, but it just has a bigger (OLED) screen and a modest increase in clocks and battery life; but at the same time Nintendo is also getting close to finalizing the specs for an actual Switch successor that is to be released within the next two years, and has already begun to send out early dev kits to a few select 3rd party developers. Maybe the leaker(s) got incomplete information for both of these, and assumed it was about the same thing?

This would explain some of the weird details that don‘t really fit together: like why this new Switch is supposed to have a significantly more powerful SoC, along with Nvidia‘s DLSS tech for easy upscaling to 4k, but still only uses a 720p screen. There’s an enormous gulf between 720p and 4k (or even 1440p), way bigger than the difference in power and resolution between docked and handheld mode on the current Switch. Am I supposed to believe that DLSS is going to be reserved for docked mode only, while all those fancy tensor cores will be left idle in handheld mode? Kind of a waste of precious silicon, no?

I guess for handheld mode they could try to render internally at something like 360p and then use DLSS to upscale to 720p (because 360p is one fourth of 720p, just like 1080p is one fourth of 4k). However, the (max) resolution in docked mode on the current Switch is 2.25x the (max) resolution in handheld mode; if the difference for the Switch Pro is similar, it would mean if they used 360p internal resolution in handheld mode on the Pro, and we multiply that by 2.25, we’d get an internal resolution in docked mode of only 540p. I find it hard to believe that they‘d be able to go from such a low internal resolution all the way to freakin‘ 4k (or even 1440p). They‘d need a substantial amount of tensor cores to achieve something like this (all of which have to fit into a mobile SoC), and I don‘t know if that‘s realistic for a mere hardware refresh from Nintendo.

Edit: This all could be resolved quite elegantly if the Switch Pro used a 1080p screen. In that case, they could render games internally at 540p in handheld mode, and use DLSS to scale them up to 1080p. And in docked mode (multiplied by 2.25) they would use an internal resolution slightly above 720p, and could upscale from there to 1440p. The system would be much more balanced in that case, because the gulf between docked and handheld mode wouldn’t be so huge, and the tensor cores wouldn‘t be rendered useless when undocked; DLSS would increase the resolution in both modes by a factor of 4, and the current power difference of 2.25 between both modes would be roughly maintained. But since all rumors seem to point toward the Switch Pro having a 720p screen, I can‘t help but wonder if some of the leaks and rumors got mixed up somewhere.
 
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ultrazilla

Member
4k, dlss, nintendo fans keep dreaming, with soc shortages, there is no way, nintendo is paying top dollar for these new chips, hardware revision, with small increse in performance using same soc, is what's gonna happen.

You sit when you pee and still miss the toilet.

200.gif
 

HAL-01

Member
I know I said this would be a next gen switch but jfc no it won’t have ray tracing. If we’re lucky it will marginally outperform a PS4 on raw gpu power
 

Schnozberry

Member
That would probably be enough. I'm just wondering aloud if they would hit PS4 levels of native performance.

Yeah, I think it could be close in docked mode. Handheld mode could potentially be quite a bit better than OG Switch, particularly when you're only talking about driving a 720p OLED.
 
Yup it’s Nintendo .. even Game boy was underpowered ..
They go for proven hardware for their systems .. we will get Tergra 2 🤣
I'm still of the opinion that we'll see the Xavier NX in the new version.
It ticks most of the boxes.

- Relatively old tech that's being superseded and phased out in modern hardware
- Available in quantity, sold as a separate board and as a devkit/enthusiast kit since early last year
- Makes for a measurable upgrade over the current Switch hardware
- Does have Tensor cores for 'deep learning acceleration applications'
- Same board footprint as the Tegra X1, same low TDP
- Has "NX" in its flippin' name
 

NeoIkaruGAF

Gold Member
Threads like these put crows at serious risk of extinction, whatever the outcome.

I’m not believing any rumors until N themselves spill the beans, but it’s pretty much assured that I’ll buy even a modest hardware revision if it makes games run better. Native 1080p is fine, but I’m all for better performance and maybe better Joycons.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
I'm still of the opinion that we'll see the Xavier NX in the new version.
It ticks most of the boxes.

- Relatively old tech that's being superseded and phased out in modern hardware
- Available in quantity, sold as a separate board and as a devkit/enthusiast kit since early last year
- Makes for a measurable upgrade over the current Switch hardware
- Does have Tensor cores for 'deep learning acceleration applications'
- Same board footprint as the Tegra X1, same low TDP
I think it is possible, they have even additional machine learning accelerator cores on top of the Tensor Cores, but I bet Nintendo will just shut them off in firmware to save power like they did for the big.LITTLE feature in the current Tegra.

I would have preferred a more modern update to the GPU: something small but based on the feature set of the current Ampere architecture... but hey... it is Nintendo.

I think their teams will try to go full 4K@60 in docked mode, but that will mean making it more work for them and possibly again lack of good AA (a pattern)... I would love Nintendo devs with a fast Zen 2/3 + 16-32 GB of RAM + fast SSD and a GPU on the level of the other two next generation consoles in performance and features... see what they deliver almost free of performance concerns.
 

llien

Member
A modern ARM core will certainly be more performant than a Jaguar Core clock for clock, which was a poor performer even when it was current market technology.
Jaguar cores actually had excellent perf/watt, one of the best back then, even rivaling Intel's mobile chips, close to Atoms, who actually beat many of that time ARMs at it.
"modern ARM core" is too vague a statement. We have tiny-whinnies and then we have M1, which is bigger than Renoir Zen3 core.
 

KungFucius

King Snowflake
It's going to flop. No one buys a Switch for cutting-edge graphics. Nintendo doesn't do well following up on a popular product since the SNES. They need to just do a minor spec refresh and release something different next time.
Because they failed last time they will fail again? OK. Clearly the next thing they release will not be cutting edge, but there is no reason to think that a more powerful next gen Switch can not be successful. It is the only portable / dockable gaming platform out there and it plays Nintendo games. They can make a next gen version successful if they don't fuck it up.

I am still struggling to see what the strategy is here. If it is next gen then I think it is way too early. They have Switch titles announced to launch next year and are behind on Zelda and Metroid. A mid gen refresh that just enhances existing titles is lame but kind of makes sense given Nintendo's willingness to confuse the market. Its not really what people like me want. I want a leap ahead with games developed to take advantage of that. I am OK if it is a Nintendo leap which is marginal, but I want more FPS, more shit loading on screen, etc. I don't want a New 3DS thing where my kid would not notice the difference outside of the packaging.

The article cited calls it next gen, which means it will have exclusive games that wont work on the base Switch. So they could make it something that will be fully BW compatible and then move all future development to it quickly. The previously promised Switch games would get 2 versions and all new games would be on the new system after Zelda, Metroid and Splatoon 3 are released. Maybe the supply chain info is really just Nintendo starting to line up parts for a much later release. Some of the most recent reports hinted at spring 2022 which would be 5 years after the switch launched. That is typical for a generation. I really think they would need to discontinue the old Switch ASAP when the new one launches though. They can't have Switch, Switch Lite, Super Switch all on shelves at the same time.
 

kraspkibble

Permabanned.
I wouldn't raising hopes about Nintendo hardware. Even with DLSS.
you don't know shit about DLSS then.

DLSS is what Switch needs. it's a perfect fit. a game like Witcher 3 which runs at 540p undocked today would be able to run at 1080p in handheld mode on a Switch Pro which would put it at a similar level of performance as the PS4 version. in docked mode it could go up to 1440p. now remember that Witcher 3 is one of the worst performing games on Switch.

Breath of the Wild could run at 1440p in handheld and 1800p docked. Of course it would make no sense to run BOTW at 1440p in handheld because the screen will still only be 720p. imagine what Nintendo could do if they made BOTW2 run at 540p and upscaled to 720p. instead of rendering those 180 vertical pixels they could use that power in other areas of the game. DLSS does have an overhead but it's not much. it's basically free performance. to run it at "4K" they'd only need to render at 1080p. they can do 900p with BOTW1 so it's really not gonna take them much to hit "4K".

if you think DLSS sucks imagine how hard it would be for nintendo to cram in the hardware to push games at native 4K. it ain't happening.
 

FStubbs

Member
But the OG Switch is using an ARM Design from 2012, and not even at it's full clock speed.

It doesn't have to be Apple's latest core to be a significant improvement in both performance and power consumption.
I don't think it was possible to create a handheld console in 2012 as powerful as the Switch. If it were, the Vita would have had that level of power.
 

Astral Dog

Member
you don't know shit about DLSS then.

DLSS is what Switch needs. it's a perfect fit. a game like Witcher 3 which runs at 540p undocked today would be able to run at 1080p in handheld mode on a Switch Pro which would put it at a similar level of performance as the PS4 version. in docked mode it could go up to 1440p. now remember that Witcher 3 is one of the worst performing games on Switch.

Breath of the Wild could run at 1440p in handheld and 1800p docked. Of course it would make no sense to run BOTW at 1440p in handheld because the screen will still only be 720p. imagine what Nintendo could do if they made BOTW2 run at 540p and upscaled to 720p. instead of rendering those 180 vertical pixels they could use that power in other areas of the game. DLSS does have an overhead but it's not much. it's basically free performance. to run it at "4K" they'd only need to render at 1080p. they can do 900p with BOTW1 so it's really not gonna take them much to hit "4K".

if you think DLSS sucks imagine how hard it would be for nintendo to cram in the hardware to push games at native 4K. it ain't happening.
Interesting, , but 1080p on a handheld is a waste when 720p is the limit, but this DLSS for Pro and next gen Switch would solve the iq issue once and for all, no need to render that many pixels natively even 540p would look very good,720p great if upscaled.

Won't look as good as native 4K, but its an impressive approximation for a small tablet device that needs a lot of resources to keep up with the graphics
 

Schnozberry

Member
Jaguar cores actually had excellent perf/watt, one of the best back then, even rivaling Intel's mobile chips, close to Atoms, who actually beat many of that time ARMs at it.
"modern ARM core" is too vague a statement. We have tiny-whinnies and then we have M1, which is bigger than Renoir Zen3 core.

I guess I was referring to the cores that Nvidia would be licensed to use. A78's or similar. In the PC world, Jaguar Cores were typically found in netbooks. They were decent at performance per watt, and they are area efficient, but they always clocked low and had dismal single core performance. An A78 core can perform 16 FLOPS per cycle compared to 8 with a Jaguar core.
 
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Pasedo

Member
General rule I've found for Nintendo is what ever the average rumoured specs are, regress it about 7.23 years in core hardware and factor in one component that might have only been around in the last 2 years.
 
General rule I've found for Nintendo is what ever the average rumoured specs are, regress it about 7.23 years in core hardware and factor in one component that might have only been around in the last 2 years.
Eh that isnt how it works, that kind of scenario was purely because of Iwata because when Yamauchi(NES-GC) was president the tech was standard. Maybe the new guy brings higher-end tech. He stated as much in the past.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
Eh that isnt how it works, that kind of scenario was purely because of Iwata because when Yamauchi(NES-GC) was president the tech was standard. Maybe the new guy brings higher-end tech. He stated as much in the past.
One has to hope, but in the end as Switch is showing... Nintendo can make a good amount of successful games, Indies seem to find it a fertile ground, and with some efforts the biggest of the big third party games find a home there.

I would want a modern feature set and the possibility to enjoy more performance modes (maybe RT) when docked on the Switch Pro.
 
One has to hope, but in the end as Switch is showing... Nintendo can make a good amount of successful games, Indies seem to find it a fertile ground, and with some efforts the biggest of the big third party games find a home there.

I would want a modern feature set and the possibility to enjoy more performance modes (maybe RT) when docked on the Switch Pro.

Hopefully, the issue with the Wii type of console versus a higher-end system(the tech was only 2 years old in comparison to the Wii which was really just a Gamecube with upgraded clocks) won't deter them from it.

While the sales of the hardware dont tell us much, the software tells another story in terms of business. The home console Nintendo systems sell at 1:10 hardware versus software while their handhelds sell 1:5.

Hopefully, their thinking is that of the hybrid nature of the Switch, that their home console part of it wasn't quite good enough which is why Switch software sales is more like home consoles. Which is why they would see DLSS and such from NVidia as a game-changer.


Lot of "hopefully" from me though.

 
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you don't know shit about DLSS then.

DLSS is what Switch needs. it's a perfect fit. a game like Witcher 3 which runs at 540p undocked today would be able to run at 1080p in handheld mode on a Switch Pro which would put it at a similar level of performance as the PS4 version. in docked mode it could go up to 1440p. now remember that Witcher 3 is one of the worst performing games on Switch.

Breath of the Wild could run at 1440p in handheld and 1800p docked. Of course it would make no sense to run BOTW at 1440p in handheld because the screen will still only be 720p. imagine what Nintendo could do if they made BOTW2 run at 540p and upscaled to 720p. instead of rendering those 180 vertical pixels they could use that power in other areas of the game. DLSS does have an overhead but it's not much. it's basically free performance. to run it at "4K" they'd only need to render at 1080p. they can do 900p with BOTW1 so it's really not gonna take them much to hit "4K".

if you think DLSS sucks imagine how hard it would be for nintendo to cram in the hardware to push games at native 4K. it ain't happening.
What are you talking about? I'm among very first who tried DLSS and beilived in it. Follower you may call.
I mean it's Nintendo - so hardware can be worse than everybody thought.
 
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What are you talking about? I'm among very first who tried DLSS and beilived in it. Follower you may call.
I mean it's Nintendo - so hardware can be worse than everybody thought.

The first iteration of DLSS was shit, actually worse than the resolution it scales off. DLSS 2.0 is a massive improvement. Like night and day.

 

Woopah

Member
General rule I've found for Nintendo is what ever the average rumoured specs are, regress it about 7.23 years in core hardware and factor in one component that might have only been around in the last 2 years.
The situation and market realities of a Switch premium revision in 2021 are different from a Nintendo launching the Wii or DS in the mid-00s.
 

StormCell

Member
What are you talking about? I'm among very first who tried DLSS and beilived in it. Follower you may call.
I mean it's Nintendo - so hardware can be worse than everybody thought.

There's a few grains of truth in that statement. There is a wildcard or two in play, though, which is that Nintendo seems to pony up top dollar on a gimmick or two. The Switch has HD rumble, which is just an expensive rumble feature that is kind of cool. The Wii U was built around an expensive gamepad with a touch screen. These are not cheap gimmicks, mind you. A significant chunk of the console cost goes to these gimmicks. I consider $25 for HD rumble to be a premium price. I also believe that Nintendo had always chosen a gimmick or two in each of its consoles. SNES's big gimmick was mode 7. N64's gimmick was 3D with controls to match. GameCube's gimmick was expensive 1T-SRAM, which they managed to do a lot with even if it hamstrung third party developers.

Switch has a few tricks, indeed, but DLSS seems like a perfect match for a company working in a certain niche form factor that requires punching above their weight while not matching home console competitor prices.

That, and at this point there's so much smoke that there's bound to be a fire. These fires don't always make it to market, though. There was a much more powerful Wii on the drawing board that would have more closely matched the competition, but given their position and the gamble they were taking Nintendo wisely hedged their costs by going with the less expensive Wii.
 

KingT731

Member
There's a few grains of truth in that statement. There is a wildcard or two in play, though, which is that Nintendo seems to pony up top dollar on a gimmick or two. The Switch has HD rumble, which is just an expensive rumble feature that is kind of cool. The Wii U was built around an expensive gamepad with a touch screen. These are not cheap gimmicks, mind you. A significant chunk of the console cost goes to these gimmicks. I consider $25 for HD rumble to be a premium price. I also believe that Nintendo had always chosen a gimmick or two in each of its consoles. SNES's big gimmick was mode 7. N64's gimmick was 3D with controls to match. GameCube's gimmick was expensive 1T-SRAM, which they managed to do a lot with even if it hamstrung third party developers.

Switch has a few tricks, indeed, but DLSS seems like a perfect match for a company working in a certain niche form factor that requires punching above their weight while not matching home console competitor prices.

That, and at this point there's so much smoke that there's bound to be a fire. These fires don't always make it to market, though. There was a much more powerful Wii on the drawing board that would have more closely matched the competition, but given their position and the gamble they were taking Nintendo wisely hedged their costs by going with the less expensive Wii.
This is true however when Nintendo does pay up for their "gimmicks" everything else seems to suffer. There is always some type of drawback but with the success of the Switch I would hope that they splurge a bit more on the next product overall.
 

tkscz

Member
Regardless of Ampere or Lovelace, it's not enough information to mean much of anything in terms of capability.

We don't know how many CUDA or Tensor cores it'll have, or what speed they'll run at.

While still in sampling and not available publicly, the Tegra Orin can fit 2048 Ampere CUDA cores on a board small enough to fit into a handheld/tablet chaise, no doubt the Lovelace cores being on 5nm process would allow for more. But even with that many cores, if they run at the speeds the current switch runs at (340MHz in handheld mode I believe) then you're still looking at TFLOP rates of ~1.4TF/s (Yes I know TFLOP rates aren't the end all be all. Treating it as such makes TFLOPs the next Bits, but it just a part of the type of performance to think about).

Hell, we don't know if they would do something dumb like having Ampere or Lovelace cores but there only being like 256 or 512 of them and still run at 340Mhz, wasting the potential they could've had, but that battery life would be insane.
 

StormCell

Member
This is true however when Nintendo does pay up for their "gimmicks" everything else seems to suffer. There is always some type of drawback but with the success of the Switch I would hope that they splurge a bit more on the next product overall.

You hit the nail on the head with that statement. Don't ever send Nintendo to the grocery store, because if something catches their eye you are getting Great Value everything else that week. And you can forget having mayo on your sandwiches.
 
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