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Gonintendo: Reddit NES Classic teardown reveals innards more powerful than 3DS, Wii

B

bomblord1

Banned
http://gonintendo.com/stories/26796...-tech-specs-put-it-above-3ds-wii-in-some-ways

Smarter people have looked at the NES Classic Edition innards and deciphered just what's tucked away inside the system. Believe it or not, most of these specs are above what is offered in the Wii and 3DS.

SoC: Allwinner R16 (4x Cortex A7, Mali400MP2 GPU)
RAM: Hynix (256MB DDR3)
Flash: Spansion 512MB NAND
PMU: AXP223
Click to expand...

It started with a Gamespot teardown


Which lead to this reddit thread
https://www.reddit.com/r/nintendo/comments/5avo9m/nes_classic_hardware_if_this_picture_is_true/

that concluded
SoC: Allwinner R16 (4x Cortex A7, Mali400MP2 GPU)

RAM: SKHynix (256MB DDR3)

Flash: Spansion 512MB SLC NAND flash, TSOP48

PMU: AXP223

Unless they actually wired that USB port for data there's no easy way to add games.

Yes it's more powerful than a 3DS.
Click to expand...

It's being reported on by a few sites

That's pretty cool I wonder if someone will find a way to load custom firmware on it and try some homebrew/other emulators and games. Would be neat if it could handle SNES or even N64 (going by what the 3DS can do)
 
B

BY2K

Membero Americo
Could they really do otherwise? Having the parts to make something less powerful would probably be more expensive to manufacture old ass parts.
 
I

Inuhanyou

Believes Dragon Quest is a franchise managed by Sony
Technically, its probably impossible at this point for them to not make a unit stronger than 3DS and the Wii....

Even though it sounds like a waste just to emulate NES games...

Even the lowest of the absolute low parts these days have ram that can get to half of 360's total RAM capacity. That kinda shows as stretched thin 360 was at the end of its day
 
J

James Scott

Banned
I wonder how much the 3DS's components would cost without the screens, speakers, nor battery.
Vita TV is pretty cheap for what it is.
Though it's also $60 with 30 games included so I wonder just how much they're making from this. Can't imagine it's much
 
G

ggx2ac

Member
Interesting, I forgot that ARM have their own GPU line: Mali.

Because I could never figure out before now what Nintendo were using to power this thing because I doubted it would have been retooling Wii or 3DS innards.
 
L

Luigiv

Member
luoapp said:
So it's still software emulation...
Click to expand...

If you were expecting anything else you're delusional. Off the shelf NoCs are rubbish and FPGAs are needlessly expensive. Not to mention, "real hardware" would severely limit what they can do with menu's and save states.
 
A

Azure Dream

Member
James Scott said:
I wonder how much the 3DS's components would cost without the screens, speakers, nor battery.
Vita TV is pretty cheap for what it is.
Though it's also $60 with 30 games included so I wonder just how much they're making from this. Can't imagine it's much
Click to expand...

Other than probably a tiny amount paid to a handful of 3rd parties for their titles, counting the games as cost against the unit is silly. These are NES ROMs that have existed for ages now, not brand new games.

They didn't even include the expanded Donkey Kong NES they released on Wii. Other than a few edits for seizure prevention and text issues, which they've already done for Virtual Console previously, it's just about legal and making sure the emulator works.
 
M

Megasoum

Banned
Like some have said, at this point it would be a lot more expensive to user parts that are less powerfull than a 3DS or a Wii than it would be to use modern parts.

Also, my guess is that they wanted to do the R&D once on the parts and the board so that they can use the same hardware in the future SNES Classics and N64 Classics.

That way all they have to do if they want to release the two follow ups is to make the casing, the controllers and the emulator (which they already have because of the Virtual Console anyway).
 
A

Affeinvasion

Member
The interesting thing here is that they could probably use the exact same innards for SNES and up versions of this thing in the future.
 
M

M3d10n

Member
The Mali400 is a vintage GPU in mobile hardware timescale.
(But it's still used in budget phones to this day).
 
I

Inuhanyou

Believes Dragon Quest is a franchise managed by Sony
ShadowFox08 said:
Not that it matters, but how much more powerful is this than the Wii and 3DS?

GPU for wiki says something like 5 GFLOPs
Click to expand...

sounds about right. The PS2 has roughly 6GFLOPS in it. GC has about 8 and Wii has 11GFLOPS.

Ouya has 12...OG Xbox has 20.

PS1, N64 and Saturn would all be below 1 GFLOP combined
 
L

Luigiv

Member
M3d10n said:
The Mali400 is a vintage GPU in mobile hardware timescale.
(But it's still used in budget phones to this day).
Click to expand...

Cortex A7's are pretty oldschool too. The whole SoC is probably a pretty old design at this point, but I imagine they're cheap and readily available for wholesale purchase at this point in time. Hense why Nintendo would go with something like this.
 
JaseMath

JaseMath

Member
If I knew anything about soldering and Raspberry Pi and whatever else, I would dedicate a lot of time toward making the NES Mini an emulation dynamo.

But I don't, so...
 
R

random25

Member
It's not really a surprise. 3DS is like a 6yr old design, and Wii is so much older. With the mobile SoC tech fast evolving ever since the smartphone boom, the SoC used here will obviously be more powerful than both while also being cheap in 2016.
 
N

Nessus

Member
I wonder if this was chosen with an eye towards an SNES Classic and an N64 Classic using the exact same internal hardware.
 
K

KingBroly

Banned
Nessus said:
I wonder if this was chosen with an eye towards an SNES Classic and an N64 Classic using the exact same internal hardware.
Click to expand...

If they could, it'd be amazing

but it'd also be aggravating knowing that Nintendo could've just released a Nintendo Classic Edition with NES, SNES and N64 games on it instead of separate devices.
 
T

ThatsMytrunks

Member
If they're cramming this in a $60 plug and play system, we can expect the Switch to be significantly more powerful than the Wii/3DS.

Or crazy cheap.
 
B

Beer Monkey

Member
More powerful seems reasonable, doesn't mean higher cost necessarily.

KingBroly said:
If they could, it'd be amazing

but it'd also be aggravating knowing that Nintendo could've just released a Nintendo Classic Edition with NES, SNES and N64 games on it instead of separate devices.
Click to expand...

It'd cost a couple hundred bucks and people wouldn't want it. The games have license fees and opportunity cost.

Also, there's a lot of potential revenue in new accessories and controllers.

If I were an accountant I'd absolutely tell them not to do it.
 
L

Luigiv

Member
JasonMCG said:
If I knew anything about soldering and Raspberry Pi and whatever else, I would dedicate a lot of time toward making the NES Mini an emulation dynamo.

But I don't, so...
Click to expand...

Really wouldn't be that hard, you'd just need to unsolder the flash chip and solder on a SD card reader in it's place. Once you do that you force install Linux onto the thing and you're golden for a Raspberry Pi like mini computer experience.

That said, you'd probably be better off buying a Raspberry Pi 3, which is actually more powerful and actually has usable I/O out of the box (which the NES mini does not).
 
D

Deleted member 465307

Unconfirmed Member
Based on the rumored and heavily speculated specs of Switch, is there any way the work put into building the emulator of this console could translate to Switch's Virtual Console? I don't know what an A7 is relative to whatever CPU Switch is likely to have.

NES Mini looks like a really nice package. I'll consider picking it up as an impulse buy if it ends up being easily available in 2017. SNES Mini is where the real interest lies, though.
 
I

Inuhanyou

Believes Dragon Quest is a franchise managed by Sony
KingBroly said:
If they could, it'd be amazing

but it'd also be aggravating knowing that Nintendo could've just released a Nintendo Classic Edition with NES, SNES and N64 games on it instead of separate devices.
Click to expand...

They gotta make that coin. I aint mad if the build quality is right.

I don't expect a N64 variant. The games are far more complex, and the controllers are much more complicated. Emulation is slightly more tricky despite the hardware being capable, and the games around then start to loose their 'retro' appeal.

I'd make do with a SNES and a NES version
 
R

Regiruler

Member
It has a lot more breathing room than a 3DS. Even if it was a contemporary it could easily be more powerful for a lesser price.
 
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