The X1 devkits already use a fan though. So either the devkits are just temporarily using older overclocked chips (necessitating active cooling) or they plan to have a fan in the final units for cooling.
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Nintendo NX rumored to use Nvidia's Pascal GPU architecture
- Thread starter nhlducks35
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Eolz
Member
It's possible in theory.
Yeah, I think people are misconstruing that information quite a bit... WSJ were probably talking in terms of yield/power consumption or something.
Skittzo0413
Member
If we take that term "computer" to mean a device relative to its form factor aka another handheld, then I guess that analysis could make a lot of sense.
Once more there is no reason to make a stand alone console because the hybrid is the console replacement. The beauty of this hybrid concept is that 3rd parties are more or less forced to deliver a HD version which massivly increases the software output compared to the Wii U (assuming there are different power levels).
From a business perspective a console has little chance to succeed compared to a hybrid or handheld. Let´s say Nintendo makes a 4TF machine at 400$ (rumored Neo numbers), while the handheld costs 200-250$. Obviously the higher cost lead to a higher entry barrier and most customer will chose the handheld.
Another problem is the big power difference between the console and the handheld. The bigger the gap the more ressources are required which increase the development time and lead to less software output. Just look at the PS4 first party output, most games require at least 3 years but Nintendo can just take all their Wii U projects and put them on the NX with little effort.
The sales will be heavily skewed towards the handheld. The japanese 3rd parties will put their games on the handheld (higher installbase) and avoid the console (see Wii U). They are not forced to develop a console version compared to the hybrid. Western 3rd parties won´t care at all because the audience is already non existent (but a strong hybrid + big installbase has at least a little chance to move AAA western software at a low attach rate). This will lead to less sales because there are fewer games and therefore Nintendo will sell few software on the Console even if they can increase their output compared to the Wii U thanks to the shared development. Most customors will buy the handheld because this way they´ll get the same first party games plus 3rd party games.
In the end we are looking at the same exact 3ds/Wii U situation. Some Wii U titles are heavily restricted or done cost efficiently because the sales potential is low. Just look at SF, Paper Mario, Mario Tennis or the AC game. I doubt Zelda:BotW would have been made as a Wii U exclusive. Nintendo will ask themselves if it´s worthwhile to develop expensive HD games if they can make more money at less risk and investment. The answer is obviously no.
Don´t expect a new console anytime soon. It makes far more sense to upgrade the hybrid after 2 or 3 years to milk their fanbase (like PS4 Neo or the new 3ds).
Yes i can see this happening, but again, why describing the NX as something that blows the Wii U out of the water and it's somewhat "close" to the One? If it was "only" noticeably more powerful than the Wii U but still far from the Xbone (the 256-384 gflops ballpark we're reading here), i think the wording would've been different, not to mention the other reports we've heard.
Everything points out to a device noticeably less powerful than current gen consoles, but not closer to the Wii U than to those. Or at least that's how i'm reading it, which is why i'm looking for alternative explanations about what's going on.
No i think you're right, although lherre said that the fact that he didn't hear anything about that doesn't necessarily mean that it's not the case (or that this is something that it's already been finalized). DF not reporting about it is more "suspicious", in the sense that it's a hint towards the fact that it's not gonna happen, but who knows.
Was this part of the WSJ report?
Isn't this basically the SCD patent?
No, but this Pascal-based Tegra NX would be in the mobile space.
James Scott
Banned
In my original predictions in the original NX speculation thread I actually stated that I expected a handheld first with a home console soon to follow. Threw out that idea with SMD64's leak.
I wonder if that's what's going to happen. Would be weird to make a NintendOS with systems acting "like brothers" with only one handheld. Though the TV connectivity on this new device is suspect.
The rumored specs are much higher than I was expecting with the handheld, so I'm happy either way. Will be interesting to hear just what's left to announce
I wonder if that's what's going to happen. Would be weird to make a NintendOS with systems acting "like brothers" with only one handheld. Though the TV connectivity on this new device is suspect.
The rumored specs are much higher than I was expecting with the handheld, so I'm happy either way. Will be interesting to hear just what's left to announce
Plinko
Wildcard berths that can't beat teams without a winning record should have homefield advantage
Yes, pretty much. Guess I was wondering more what kind of power boosts we could see with this. My guess is this is what Nintendo has in mind, and we see a SCD sooner than later.
Initial rumors were that the "handheld" would come first with the "console" coming in a year or so. Perhaps the "console" in the rumor was an SCD to upgrade?
Hero of Legend
Member
Maybe there is a standalone home console coming out in like 2019, but until then the NX is still more powerful than the Wii U, so they can use it as a home console too. If and when this hypotetical new home comes out, being able to connect the "hybrid" to the TV will still be a neat option, especially for those who don't want the other machine.
There's actually an explanation for that statement that it's different from "this will be a high end console". Think of Quantum Break. It's a Xbox One game that runs like ass on high end PCs. In fact, it's impossible to run at 60fps with a "current gen CPU and a near top of the line GPU". There's no reason to assume that the demo they saw was perfectly optimized for that setup, hence why it didn't run great. Still, they said it was rather impressive, which isn't something they would say about the "Wii U+" graphics suggested here.
Maybe, yeah. I don't think we can really discard any option about how it will work until we actually see this thing.
It's a reasonable thing to question, at least Nintendo thinking about future systems, it wouldn't be worth mention if it was just one form factor.
Father_Brain
Banned
No, that was some guy on a forum.
WSJ's Mochizuki did say this in an email last fall:
...but as he himself acknowledges, that's vague, and his subsequent reporting from last week explicitly calls it a hybrid, so yeah.
No. That came from a forum user on a different website.
I'm with you.
Because the wiiu is dying they would use this handheld also as console. Because it could run ported games from ps4 probably. That way they could have a big library and forget the wiiu. So yes it would be some kind of replacement too until next gen comes.
It would be the only way to make profit and get back in the race with their competitors(but still doing it on their way and still get 3rd party support).
The dev kits are using a standard X1 in full (or more) mode to run code + overhead.
Any one who's undershooting whatever the X1 can do stock (minus some-% on the overhead costs) is playing against the odds even if this "lolNintendo" because no one is shipping out dev kits like this that they plan to then severely undercut with the next generation of chip (no less) a couple of months later with the retail product. The fact that the X1 is actively cooled is not, however, an "oh shit" moment since we don't know what that fully entails, it doesn't tell us if that is necessitated by the code (optimized or not) or by the overhead or by both, and so on.
The games being developed simply would not work in the scenario where "lolNintendo" is put into affect and we get something so drastically below even the stock X1. This goes for third and first party titles, the internal dev teams don't have some magical other unit or were somehow told "oh hey, you're getting actually Y".
Even if you assume some nonsensical 50% overhead and unoptimized spaghetti code, that's still nowhere near the nonsense that has been floating around in the last few pages. And even that mess of a situation would still double the WiiU. In a handheld.
You're right, it was a mod or admin of that Nintendo forum i think. This was the actual follow up from WSJ about the "industry leading" stuff
Eolz
Member
Maybe. Again, there's always the third pillar excuse (they can say later it was a successful experiment but consoles are coming back as well for those wanting more).
They really need to be clear at the reveal and interviews afterwards...
Father_Brain
Banned
Without context, it's even possible that Mochizuki's sources saw something like the ProtoStar demo and mistook it for something that would require high-end PC/console hardware. If that sounds far-fetched, it really isn't - IGN ran a report in 2010 that cited developer sources likening 3DS' performance to the PS3/360, presumably based on little more than its support for some modern shader effects like normal mapping and self-shadowing.
What I mean is that having 8 cores is extreme overkill for a Wii U-level machine, even if those cores are A53s. 4 would make more sense with terrible specs like those. Granted, I'm extremely confident that there will be two SMs anyway, but a quad-core A53 @1.7GHz should be enough power for two Pascal SMs @500-600MHz. 8 cores for one SM is just pointless.
Read the post I was replying to. I believe that he was implying that devs simply don't know about the underclocked mode, and the system would simply dynamically underclock and lower the resolution of games in handheld mode. That's not possible.
Seriously, nobody was thinking this.
I can follow you and also agree for most parts.
But, I assume that sony and ms is also bringing the ps4 neo and xs to keep the console longer alive. Sony told with the ps3 that they wanted to give it a lifespan of 7years. I think they want to expand the lifetime with ps4 neo for even 4y+ if they can. Games are getting way to expensive. 100m$ is the max budget and they have reached that point.
Knowing this. The handheld could have a long lifetime, this is what Nintendo also expect for the nx.
But what happens after 4y's, i don't think they could survive another 3y extra when next gen comes using their handheld.
The only solution maybe are the extra power base station and maybe some upgrade. But i doubt it would get many support.
But the companies that building consoles thinking of upgrading their systems like apple/android does are wrong. I don't believe people would upgrading their console,it's not as important as a smartphone they carry everyday.
Beside all this, we don't know what would happen with vr. Maybe it replace the traditional way of playing games.
Read my other post, i wasn't saying that, but i didn't explain that part very well so i can see why people would misunderstand it.
Read my other post, i wasn't saying that, but i didn't explain that part very well so i can see why people would misunderstand it.
Alright, fair enough lol
James Scott
Banned
Yeah, that's one way to look at it. They do need to replace Wii U and 3DS soon so a hybrid like system could do the trick while they work on/consider a console for 2018/19
Yep, while looking back Iwata didn't discard the idea of a hybrid, it does indicate that they have the capability to create multiple devices. Part of Iwata's reasoning was to reassure that they weren't leaving the hardware business but that they were more passionate than ever. Deciding to only make one device with their OS would go against that.
Yes. Yes. Exactly.
Starchasing
Member
What do you mean by this?
What do I mean by what?
Do you know what kind of game quality whe can expect for the nx?
Interesting. So we have sources saying pascal and sources saying maxwell.
James Scott
Banned
If you looked at some early 3DS show cases it did look to be on par with 360 (RE revelations) so I guess that's possible.
I hope the NX has nice shaders to pull off the same trick.
That's what I've been thinking too. I think we talked about it last week sometime.
I suppose the "sources" Digitimes references to is the EuroGamer's article where they state it's X1 in the dev kits. Anyway, it's better to not take DigiTimes so seriously.
Plinko
Wildcard berths that can't beat teams without a winning record should have homefield advantage
This is interesting. How reliable has digitimes been in the past?
Sounds like something that aliens would bring here to destroy our world.
Starchasing
Member
I did not understand the paragraph... are you saying that in the worst case scenario, the nx would be twice as powerful than wii u?
Starchasing
Member
Some of us are very happy about this!
Yes. Thats the scenario where the X1's are being used at stock (active cooling for whatever reason) because they have 50% overhead on tools and spaghetti code. Basically 50% of the units capabilities are just used to negotiate bad code, observer tools, and so on, and only the remaining 50% is actually running a game.
That still give you a performance envelope of double the WiiU's.
And I highly doubt that that is the case.
The other point was that actively cooled or not, doesn't actually tell us much of anything other than for whatever task it is expected to currently do, it is doing it with too much heat. This could be because it has a lot of overhead (see above) or because the Pascal replacement is expected at similar performance levels but without needed active cooling. Or both.
Right now, ballparking at "whatever X1 can do at stock" is probably not a bad ballpark, give or take. But we have people going mining or shooting for the stars on nonsensical hyperbole trails.
Is VR still out of the picture?
https://m.reddit.com/r/NintendoNX/comments/4waqse/speculation_might_the_nx_function_as_vr_or/
Looks like he has some good list pointed out
https://m.reddit.com/r/NintendoNX/comments/4waqse/speculation_might_the_nx_function_as_vr_or/
Looks like he has some good list pointed out
Digitimes isn't reliable. They change their story every time new leaks or information pop up.
Not at all. First it was production starting in H1 CY 2016 with estimated demand for 20 million units sold in 2016 but only meeting production for 12 million, then it was production delayed to Q1 2017 with production cut from 20 million in the first year to 10 million, and now it's production moved up to Q4 2016 and them hearing about Tegra X1 all of a sudden. Either NX is in development hell with initial plans to launch this summer, or they're full of crap. Someone's gonna make a thread eventually, though.
Even disregarding all the other rumours which make this highly unlikely, wouldn't the low resolution screen (540p or there abouts) make this inappropriate for VR?
OG_Original Gamer
Member
So what is the NX platform, and why did Iwata emphasize that NX represents a platform?Platform suggest that anything NX is handheld or home console. With Iwata passing could Nintendo direction have changed?
Is it possible Osiris info is from Japanese devs who would be much further along in the development process, and have gotten SCD kits already.
Is it possible Osiris info is from Japanese devs who would be much further along in the development process, and have gotten SCD kits already.
Yeah, my median estimate would be around 300 Gflops (FP32) or so, which, incidentally, is 50% more powerful than current high-end smartphones, while pushing a (likely) much lower resolution screen (and that's not taking into account architectural differences).
You could easily beat Wii U's CPU with a 1W budget. That would give you either 8x A53 at 1.7GHz or 4x A72 at 1.2GHz. Or you could mix and match with 2x A72 at 1.4GHz plus 6x A53 at 1.1GHz. All three of those options would be closer to PS4's CPU than Wii U's.
You could do that in a regular handheld with 3 SMs and a ~3W TDP. It's very much at the upper end of what I'd consider feasible, but you wouldn't need a tablet form factor for it.
Father_Brain
Banned
WSJ's reporter is Japan-based.
ethomaz
Banned
You can add 4 SMs because that is the number I think nVidia will use to Tegra X2.The bolded isn't true. In fact, pretty much the opposite is true, as in a tightly thermally constrained environment (i.e. a handheld) the marginal benefit to increased parallelism (i.e. more SMs) can be quite large.
To demonstrate, let's look at a power curve for Pascal I've put together. Unlike my previous power curves for A72 and A53 CPU clusters (which are based on solid real-world data from Anandtech and should be considered reasonably accurate), this is a much more rough approximation based on just four data points:
- TSMC's claims of "40% higher speed" and "60% power saving" over 20nm, each applied separately to the TX1's GPU drawing 1.5W at 500MHz (divided by 2 for 750mW per SM).
- Power draw readings from the GTX1080 before and after overclocking (full board power readings, minus GDDR5X, divided by number of SMs).
Obviously I'm extrapolating a lot from fairly poor data, but hopefully it should be in the right ballpark, and enough for our discussion in any case. (I should also note that this isn't strictly a measure of power draw for the SMs themselves, but rather a measure of the draw of an entire Pascal GPU "per SM", so including other components like ROPs, TMUs, etc., assuming they're always in roughly the same proportion to SMs). In any case, here's the power curve:
The important thing to note is that, like virtually all IC power curves, it's not linear, and for a given increase in clock speed you require a much larger increase in power consumption to get you there. What this means is that you'll get better performance by using more SMs at a lower clock speed than fewer SMs at a higher clock speed.
Let's look at the clock speed (and raw floating point performance) that could be achieved with different numbers of SMs within the power constrains we might expect for a handheld GPU:
1x SM:
1000 mW - 780 MHz - 200 Gflops FP32 - 400 Gflops FP16
1500 mW - 915 MHz - 234 Gflops FP32 - 468 Gflops FP16
2000 mW - 1025 MHz - 262 Gflops FP32 - 525 Gflops FP16
2x SM:
1000 mW - 595 MHz - 305 Gflops FP32 - 609 Gflops FP16
1500 mW - 700 MHz - 358 Gflops FP32 - 717 Gflops FP16
2000 mW - 780 MHz - 400 Gflops FP32 - 800 Gflops FP16
3x SM:
1000 mW - 510 MHz - 392 Gflops FP32 - 783 Gflops FP16
1500 mW - 600 MHz - 461 Gflops FP32 - 922 Gflops FP16
2000 mW - 670 MHz - 515 Gflops FP32 - 1030 Gflops FP16
As you can see, a 3x SM configuration can achieve nearly the same performance with 1000mW that a 2x SM configuration can with twice that, and a full 50% more than a 1x SM config can manage with 2000mW at hand.
This isn't to say that I expect a 3x SM GPU in the NX, but there would certainly be a sizeable performance jump over 2x SMs if they decided to do so.
Said that anything under 5000 mW is a option for NX.
LordOfChaos
Member
It's 50% more Gflops at any rate, I believe Imagination's PowerVR still has the efficiency thing down compared to anyone else and their 200Gflop GPUs usually edge out anyone elses 200Gflop GPUs.
Case in point, the highly impressive iPhone 6S GPU "only" weighs in at 115Gflops and gives everything else a run even a year after launch (it's slipping in the graphs now, but for something so old it still impresses, and does so with far less paper gflops than others...And without overheating and severe throttling in minutes...Apple knows how to pick 'em). The GS7 is closer to 265-300 depending on the model.
It's very possible NX to be the basis for a platform going forward/ There could be other devices built on similar architecture further down the line. That doesn't mean that it will happen all in 2017. Could be 2-3 years before another device comes. Or there could be no other device yet in development. Maybe all depends on this NX device's success.
Or maybe Iwata used platform to not give any hint about what they're working on. Why would they hint that 2-3 years before release when they're very secretive even about the games they're working on a lot of the time.
Otakumegane
Member
If the device is a tablet as I am now on the side of, I understand that we can sacrifice die size limitations and give it some increased power draw. My question is, because Nintendo needs a bigger screen and maybe a bigger battery, doesn't the device end up being that much more expensive?
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