ArchedThunder
Banned
Won't happen. The memory alone makes it so you won't be able to run Switch games on a Shield even if they crack the Switch wide open.
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Confirmed: The Nintendo Switch is powered by an Nvidia Tegra X1
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Won't happen. The memory alone makes it so you won't be able to run Switch games on a Shield even if they crack the Switch wide open.
LordOcidax
Member
What other mobile chip can fix this issue? Just asking...That explains some stuff. Give me that hybrid 1st party library ninty, it's not happening so far.
And the others :
Isn't this too big to be a portable?
But yes, good point. If you consider this to be a portable gaming hardware, it's as good as the Vita when it was released
.I still consider the Switch like the WiiU's successor, maybe I'm wrong.
ArchedThunder
Banned
And the others :
Isn't this too big to be a portable?
But yes, good point. If you consider this to be a portable gaming hardware, it's as good as the Vita when it was released
I still consider the Switch like the WiiU's successor, maybe I'm wrong.
You can't put it in your pocket but it's still portable.
And the others :
Isn't this too big to be a portable?
But yes, good point. If you consider this to be a portable gaming hardware, it's as good as the Vita when it was released
I still consider the Switch like the WiiU's successor, maybe I'm wrong.
Very few people outside of GAF think that.
echoshizzle
Neo Member
The chip means nothing to me after playing BOTW. Seriously, the fact the Switch doubles as a portable system still boggles my mind.
If anything, they are getting a killer profit margin off the units and will be able to drop the price more rapidly than we would normally expect. This is great for both consumers and Nintendo.
If anything, they are getting a killer profit margin off the units and will be able to drop the price more rapidly than we would normally expect. This is great for both consumers and Nintendo.
Let me guess, you haven't seen a Switch in real life?
Because almost everybody in the launch thread, including me, was surprised about how small the Switch actually is. It might not fit in a normal pocket, but it's very portable.
ArchedThunder
Banned
As far as mobile devices go, it's pretty damn powerful.
RichiRamjag
Member
Surprised the heck out of me. Perfect for traveling.
This confirmation from chipworks didnt obviously kill the dream. I guess i just wanted to vent. Still an Underpowered CPU compared to the Xbox one/PS4 was the biggest legitimate reason the WiiU struggled to get 3rd party ports, so shipping the Switch with a similar issue is just dumb.
As for price. An Iphone costs about 250USD to produce. Assuming Nintendo wrote off R&D as a sunk cost, and were happy to work with very slim margins they could have gotten very close to that device at the 299USD pricepoint
The weird thing is that Anandtech reports that the customer interconnect is only capable of cluster switching while other articles (for instance http://www.hardwareluxx.com/index.p...8-nvidia-launches-maxwell-based-tegra-x1.html) report the contrary. One of them must have interpreted Nvidia's presentation incorrectly. I tend to trust Anandtech more, but I am looking for a more authoritative source from Nvidia nonetheless.
Unfortunately, Nvidia's white paper does not really settle it:
http://international.download.nvidia.com/pdf/tegra/Tegra-X1-whitepaper-v1.0.pdf
Was the Vita a powerhouse in 2011?
Is it even possible for a portable console to be a powerhouse?
I imagine it would require some significant reworking of the chip layout and microcode. The cache and other components would connect to the cores in an entirely different way.
Samsung and Qualcomm have plenty of chips that use HMP which have found their way into devices at various price points, so the tech is fairly established and affordable. I've never heard of them retroactively adding the feature to older chips using a big.LITTLE config though.
Jonneh3003
Banned
And the others :
Isn't this too big to be a portable?
But yes, good point. If you consider this to be a portable gaming hardware, it's as good as the Vita when it was released
I still consider the Switch like the WiiU's successor, maybe I'm wrong.
It's really not too big to be portable.
Okay, cool.
Now how much does it thermal throttle since it has no fan to use when playing games?
Fair point on the Apple SOCs, although it's not like Nintendo could have licensed them.
NOLA_Gaffer
Banned
As someone that really detests the size of the XL-sized hardware Nintendo has pushed on us, the Switch has really grown on me.
Admittedly I don't really take it out of the house like I do with my 3DS.
And the others :
Isn't this too big to be a portable?
But yes, good point. If you consider this to be a portable gaming hardware, it's as good as the Vita when it was released
I still consider the Switch like the WiiU's successor, maybe I'm wrong.
No? I have no idea why people ask this when the top selling flagship phones right now are phablets and don't really fit in your pocket well. It's in a tablet form factor and people carry iPads and Kindle around with them all day no matter what age group.
Osiris
I permanently banned my 6 year old daughter from using the PS4 for mistakenly sending grief reports as it's too hard to watch or talk to her
NVIDIA didn't use ARM's GTS for big.LITTLE support, instead it used it's own custom cluster migration that limits the use of either the cluster of A57's or the cluster of A53's.
See:
Why is the shield $200 USD? Lower specs (less RAM, half the storage), and of course, no screen no Li-ion battery etc etc.
I'm definitely in the "powerful enough" crowd. For me, the PS4/XOne gen hasn't resulted in any games that are meaningfully improved by power from the PS3/360 gen. Zelda, on Switch, is more interactive in the ways I care about (systemsy interactions and openness) than most games I've played on my PS4.
All of this to say that I think Nintendo hit a sweet spot that I'm totally fine with.
All of this to say that I think Nintendo hit a sweet spot that I'm totally fine with.
Astral Dog
Member
Impressions were calling the screen quality pretty good actually
It's a match made in heaven. The new Shield Tablet 2017.
Even assuming identical GPU performance, I would go with Nvidia over Qualcomm 10/10 times for driver support alone. As for Apple, it should be obvious why that will not happen.
Neff
Member
I'm sure you're not alone. Personally speaking, I think the ratio of power/size/price for Switch is very attractively balanced, and I've been nothing but impressed by the unit so far. Also, I'm less impressed by raw technological power in an era where it's becoming more and more difficult to maximise it. We're at the point now where a game with healthy financial backing and pure talent behind it can look more impressive than a less well-made game on more powerful hardware.
Brown makes the switch truly next gen tho
Wrong wrong wrong (Pixel c has Tegra X1 too)
The Tegra X1 is GPU wise(which is what most count in games) one of the best mobile GPU even today, also having Nvidia technology and drivers is a big advantage gaming wise compared to Qualcomm or even Apple
icecold1983
Member
Pretty obv. You had to be a pretty dedicated nintendo belieber to think any other outcome was even remotely as likely
You need to remember that the tx1 in the pixel c has much higher clocks than switch in portable mode. Even with the faster clocks the pixel c isnt much faster than an iphone 6s. The iphone 7 series has completely surpassed tx1. On the cpu side tx1 has always been very meh
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9972/the-google-pixel-c-review/2
Wrong wrong wrong (Pixel c has Tegra X1 too)
The Tegra X1 is GPU wise(which is what most count in games) one of the best mobile GPU even today, also having Nvidia technology and drivers is a big advantage gaming wise compared to Qualcomm or even Apple
You need to remember that the tx1 in the pixel c has much higher clocks than switch in portable mode. Even with the faster clocks the pixel c isnt much faster than an iphone 6s. The iphone 7 series has completely surpassed tx1. On the cpu side tx1 has always been very meh
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9972/the-google-pixel-c-review/2
Prisoner KSC2-303
Member
All this just reminds me what a wild ride the rumours threads were - from the "industry leading chips" in the WSJ article to 10k and his super console theories. In comparison, this is the least unexpected thing. The old rumours threads make for interesting reading now though.
LordOfChaos
Member
Just applying Occam's razor here between the two statements, if Nvidia put the effort into making a CCI that can support all cores at once, why has it been off in every implementation of TX1?
Even tablets, where the power saving A53s would have been a huge boon and where Nvidia suffers on battery life.
AyaisMUsikWhore
Member
I would like this to be the case but this is Nintendo we are taking about. The price drop will need to happen out of desperation and this system still has at least two more years before that could be a possibility. Of course that is determined more by whatever developments Sony and Microsoft make in the same time
TheGreatMightyPoo
Banned
You must not have played FAST RMX in portable mode.
wonderful103
Member
I hope you didn't buy a PS4 or an X1 either. They launched with hardware that was about the same oldness.
Let's pretend mobile phones don't throttle aggressively.
Nintendo should be able to an achieve a much greater scale and therefore should be able to buy materials at a much cheaper price than NVIDIA when it comes to ordering components that make the Switch.
Not in practice
Thanks!
I get the feeling that all the marketing that Nvidia did over the Shield and Shield TV (game console performance in portable form type stuff) was targeted at courting Nintendo into this big win. Especially when you consider multi-generational products that will come with Nintendo locked in. Nvidia doing the API and all that other software ground worked, is just another show of how locked in Nintendo is now. I guess they could have picked a worse partner.
I'm actually excited, because I feel that any software I buy for the Switch now, will easily be forwards compatible with future devices. Perhaps there will have to be some transfer tool if Nintendo can't figure out the account system properly, but I don't see any reason why they wouldn't just be compatible.
As for my 3DS, I gotta keep that thing forever, so I can play my purchases lol...
For sure not in an usable way for games.
-COOLIO-
The Everyman
all the more reason, i wish we had a standard controller and $60 games on mobile.
JB2448
Member
Let's also pretend that you'll be able to pick up an iPhone for $300 day one.
Not at all, GPU and Ram wise Switch is better, also iPhone 7 couldn't run Switch games for lack of cuda cores and Nvidia technology and drivers
The X1 remains as one of the most powerful mobile options out there. Even the latest A10 Fusion from apple has only just caught upto what the X1 can do in benchmarks. Obviously TX2 is more powerful but its only now getting to reach development partner levels. It was not anywhere near ready for Nintendo let alone when Nintendo came to Nvidia for a chip.
Nintendo did not cheap out or cut corners. They worked within what was available and realistic for mass production.
Nintendo did not cheap out or cut corners. They worked within what was available and realistic for mass production.
Mercador
Member
Though, you can do more things with the Shield...
Not the iPhones, I think it was Anandtech that tested this but it showed iPhones sustain their performance pretty well. Of course undocked the Switch drops it's clock to like 300 Mhz so it doesn't really matter does it?
When did I say iPhone 7? Not that iPhone 7 doesn't give the Switch a run for it's money in portable mode.
Doesn't it mean that Switch GPU is just a downclocked Shield TV GPU?
What CPU is in the Shield TV? I know it has a gigabyte less than Switch.
This.
LordOfChaos
Member
Nice work man. The tiny variances I'm seeing around SRAM particularly are probably just etching and exact alignment differences.
Funny that people were making fun of the idea that Nintendo walked in on the perfect storm of Nvidia not being able to move enough TX1s to not hit a large wafer agreement fee....
Pretty well seals that it's identical. Wish we could see this puppy in a proper larger tablet, but the Nintendo deal seemed to make Nvidia cancel all work on that front. Wonder if someone else is still allowed to buy it?
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