Support NeoGAF

[blu]

How far behind are 3-4 A57 at 1GHZ compared to 6 Jaguar at 1.6?

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 LCGeek 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.

 

[Herb Alpert]

So I just thought about this- we essentially know based on the patent that the Switch has at least gyro sensors in the main tablet (angular velocity sensors) which indicates that it will be shaken quite often for certain games.

Is there any other device out there currently which has motion controls and also an internal fan? I feel like that's an excellent way to cause a very high rate of mechanical failure, even if the fan is never being run in portable mode...

Maybe they did actually get rid of the fan, which would explain these clock speeds?

I can picture miyamoto doing his tea table thing.

Spoiler

I know he doesn't work on the switch

BTW is Takeda still in charge of hardware? I think this man should have been fired after the WiiU. Their philosophy may have work in the past but it can't in today's world, with all these smartphones and tablets and high end devices people are now accustomed of.

I don't care about an high end Nintendo console. But why are they going SO cheap? Again, it's as if they purposedly gimp their hardware

" ho come on Genyo, your setup is nice but you know the problem!
- ho yeah, boss, OK, I'll downclock this
- phew, seems we just dodge a bullet, we almost came with something descent"

Another question : How downclocking a chip an allow nintendo to save money? Isn't it a proof of a big design flaw?

Of course, we still don't know the full picture, but the WiiU taught me to not give the benefit of the doubt to Nintendo regarding their hardware. We'll see.

Yeah, I'm bitter. I really thought their learned their lesson with WiiU and were starting clean with something not overpowered of course, but descent. Like always with their hardware, it doesn't seem to be future proof at all.

 

[Eolz]

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.

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.

 

[Herb Alpert]

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.

Which will be a joke compared to scorpio and the PS5 that will be announced around that time.

I get Nintendo won't get third party graphically intense western games. No problem for me. But I'd like to play big Square games, bamco titles, from games on the go.

Sigh...

 

[Vena]

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.

We'd first need to find out exactly what brought about the decisions that got us here. A teardown will be very informative, and it could turn out that there was a major engineering wall that they simply couldn't solve given the size. (Of course, I am curious as to what DF's guys have seen on the Switch, because they seem to paint a picture of what they've seen/heard to be punching above its weight for the current hardware as we know it, but that may come down to the API/Vulkan).

I don't generally think their engineers are just throwing random shit together, and (taking Euro in good faith), if they went so far as to absorb Pascal features without actually shrinking down to 16nm, then there was probably a reason.

Same with the CPU being what it is, though on the CPU end I can't actually think of a reason to stick with A57 over A72/A73.

I also really don't think they went a node backwards to 28nm. (Schnozo in the other thread made a good case against 28nm.)

 

[Oregano]

Remember when ShockingAlberto said he was told they're not aiming to make a weak machine?

Good times...

 

[antonz]

And this time we have the opposite!

Spoiler

But its still crap.

Heh. I think most see through the marketing Nintendo is trying to push. Its a handheld that can be outputted to TV. All they need to confirm now is that you can run at full power even in handheld mode and I will be happy.

 

[LordRaptor]

Remember when ShockingAlberto said he was told they're not aiming to make a weak machine?

Good times...

Who's claiming its a weak portable?

 

[Vena]

Remember when ShockingAlberto said he was told they're not aiming to make a weak machine?

Good times...

This isn't really a "weak" machine. For its time, this is considerably better clocked and managed internally than the Vita was with its even harsher underclocking and restrictions.

Its still a pretty solid package for the size, the bigger question that's left in the air is "why is it so much less than we thought it theoretically could have been".

 

[Shahadan]

Heh. I think most see through the marketing Nintendo is trying to push. Its a handheld that can be outputted to TV. All they need to confirm now is that you can run at full power even in handheld mode and I will be happy.

I'm willing to bet they made sure to not allow this.

 

[PdotMichael]

Because they, along with Zelda and Sonic, were formally announced well in advance of the Switch reveal. Since then almost all major 3rd parties and even Nintendo themselves have gone on media blackout not announcing anything else until the Jan 12 event.

So there is a strict NDA except iwhen companies ignore it.

Also it doesn't make sense to deny games which were shown in a reveal trailer.

 

[Oregano]

Who's claiming its a weak portable?

This isn't really a "weak" machine. Its still a pretty solid package for the size, the bigger question that's left in the air is "why is it so much less than we thought it theoretically could have been".

Vena sums up better but yeah... this isn't terrible as a portable but it could be better especially considering how big it is and the fact it has an internal fan.

EDIT:

So there is a strict NDA except iwhen companies ignore it.

Also it doesn't make sense to deny games which were shown in a reveal trailer.

There is no NDA. The four games announced for the system are it. There's literally nothing else. Can't believe you cracked the code.

 

[Vena]

Vena sums up better but yeah... this isn't terrible as a portable but it could be better especially considering how big it is and the fact it has an internal fan.

Can't say for sure. I am not a device engineer, so I can't know why they did what they did. It could be budget related, or it could simply not have been possible given the size of the unit.

 

[Skittzo0413]

Heh. I think most see through the marketing Nintendo is trying to push. Its a handheld that can be outputted to TV. All they need to confirm now is that you can run at full power even in handheld mode and I will be happy.

Like I was saying above, if this truly has a fan and motion controls, there's absolutely no way they would let you run the device at max power (necessitating a fan) without having it completely stationary. Shaking around a device with a moving fan is a terrible idea.

 

[Interfectum]

This isn't really a "weak" machine. For its time, this is considerably better clocked and managed internally than the Vita was with its even harsher underclocking and restrictions.

Its still a pretty solid package for the size, the bigger question that's left in the air is "why is it so much less than we thought it theoretically could have been".

Battery life and price most likely.

~XBO/PS4 system specs, good battery life, decent price

You can only pick two of those.

 

[LordKano]

So there is a strict NDA except iwhen companies ignore it.

Also it doesn't make sense to deny games which were shown in a reveal trailer.

There is a NDA. That's not debatable, it's a fact. NDAs are contracts, and they are different for every game. Some games have got a pass from Nintendo for some reasons, and some others haven't. That's as simple as that.

 

[Oregano]

Can't say for sure. I am not a device engineer, so I can't know why they did what they did. It could be budget related, or it could simply not have been possible given the size of the unit.

I'm not expert either but I'm really not sure the costs would change all that much by being clocked higher... it's weird.

Battery life and price most likely.

Awesome system specs, good battery life, decent price

You can only pick two of those.

Having an internal fan runs counter to the bolded though. It's got the downside to awesome specs without the benefits.

 

[antonz]

Like I was saying above, if this truly has a fan and motion controls, there's absolutely no way they would let you run the device at max power (necessitating a fan) without having it completely stationary. Shaking around a device with a moving fan is a terrible idea.

Unless things have changed its been stated the fan runs even in low power mode.

 

[bomblord1]

That same information quotes 1tflop, you're going to say the cores part is exact info but the flops listed isn't? You can't pick and choose. If developers really were ever briefed with that info it was obviously as a guide to what kind of performance to expect "expect performance like this well known X1 Dev board". That doesn't mean the hardware reaches that performance in a identical fashion.

Obviously we know the system isn't what's actually shown in that spec list because that's just a X1, while this SoC is custom.

It doesn't mention 1 teraflop in the article actually.

 

[Shahadan]

Battery life and price most likely.

Awesome system specs, good battery life, decent price

You can only pick two of those.

Yeah probably. It's a shame since battery and price are not something that can't be changed later, but I guess they don't want to repeat the 3DS launch

 

[Hermii]

Battery life and price most likely.

Awesome system specs, good battery life, decent price

You can only pick two of those.

I would honestly pick specs and price. I would have the cpu as good or better than current gen, and the gpu about a third when mobile.

 

[PdotMichael]

This isn't really a "weak" machine. For its time, this is considerably better clocked and managed internally than the Vita was with its even harsher underclocking and restrictions.

Its still a pretty solid package for the size, the bigger question that's left in the air is "why is it so much less than we thought it theoretically could have been".

Vita and Switch aren't even the same form factor.

People forgetting how spacious the Switch is.

 

[Skittzo0413]

Unless things have changed its been stated the fan runs even in low power mode.

This was stated in the patent application, yes, but things could have easily changed since then. It doesn't have to follow the patented specifications exactly. There are already some key changes between the device in the patent and the device seen in the trailer in October.

 

[blu]

Remember when ShockingAlberto said he was told they're not aiming to make a weak machine?

Good times...

It's not that it's a weak machine (it will be among the top-performing HH gaming devices for a while), it's that it could have been so much more. It could have been the iPhone of consoles - something carried to perfection, that shows people where the future is headed.

 

[Hermii]

It's not that it's a weak machine (it will be among the top-performing HH gaming devices for a while), it's that it could have been so much more. It could have been the iPhone of consoles - something carried to perfection, that shows people where the future is headed.

This thing will be marketed as a home console on the go. If multi platform games are going to be severely gimped, or not even possible to get to run in some cases it's going to hurt it a lot like the Vita.

 

[MacTag]

Vita and Switch aren't even the same form factor.

People forgetting how spacious the Switch is.

It's thinner actually.

 

[EloquentM]

Why not?

Are people just totally cool with Nintendo being lazy? "You KNOW they'd never do something to make their game better, why even expect it?"

It's not that Nintendo are lazy. Instead they're are usually uncompromisingly stubborn with regards to their philosophies. Sometimes with regards to their software it can be a good thing and many times With regards to their hardware and other decisions I can be bad. It's not that Nintendo can't do the things gamers want from. I personally just think they choose not to.

Edit: oh this was in regards to pokemon stars. It makes no sense to completely remaster a game they already made assets for and have been actively developing on for the past few years. That's a waste of money because it'll sell regardless. All I expect is better IQ and a solid fr

 

[LordRaptor]

It could have been the iPhone of consoles - something carried to perfection, that shows people where the future is headed.

I mean... in fairness, the iPhone was a point of technological convergence that defined a paradigm.

The Switch is still fundamentally going to be 'just' a portable gaming device.
It's pretty unlikely to usher in an age of "personal screen gaming".

I mean, its not the OG Gameboy.

 

[Kimawolf]

This thing will be marketed as a home console on the go. If multi platform games are going to be severely gimped, or not even possible to get to run in some cases it's going to hurt it a lot like the Vita.

But we know 3rd party plats can run on the thing. Its like everything before the new rumor was just forgotten or thrown out.

 

[EloquentM]

28nm would be weird because maxwell Tegra wasn't designed on 28nm, but maybe this is the case, what a poor choice to not go with 20nm and no fan though. I think the fan alone is the biggest disappointment, having a vent on top and a fan that shouldn't be there just makes it expensive. Turns a $199 device into a $249 device, but heck if they did get it to retail at $199, that would be pretty cool. I've said it before, I'm fine with the performance, it's really the fan that bothers me

New Nintendo switch in late 2018/early 2019 will have no vent or fan. Save this post

 

[Hoo-doo]

But we know 3rd party plats can run on the thing. Its like everything before the new rumor was just forgotten or thrown out.

3rd party ports could run on the Atari 2600 if developers/publishers saw it as a favorable business proposition. It doesn't mean shit.

Hardware specs have never been the sole deciding factor in whether a certain platform gets a port or not.

 

[nubbe]

New Nintendo switch in late 2018/early 2019 will have no vent or fan. Save this post

It will most likely be beefed up with higher clock and more cores.
Will still need fans but is 150% more powerful

 

[Cerium]

Now we're talking about 28nm, which in horrifying fairness would explain the fan. This is all just really depressing. I'm still preordering day one but it's not shaping up to be the forward thinking device I imagined.

 

[sir_bumble_bee]

Now we're talking about 28nm, which in horrifying fairness would explain the fan. This is all just really depressing. I'm still preordering day one but it's not shaping up to be the forward thinking device I imagined.

Honesty, I'm willing to avatar bet that this won't be the case. In fact, I'm also willing to bet 3SM is the case too.

 

[Donnie]

It doesn't mention 1 teraflop in the article actually.

The article doesn't claim it knows the number of cores either though, I'm talking about the information they claim was shown to devs at some point. They're referring to the same details seen in the op of this thread. The information that both months number of cores and 1tflop performance. Like I said its just a X1 dev kit not Switch. If it was shown to devs it was done so only as a reference of expected performance.

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

So there is a strict NDA except iwhen companies ignore it.

Also it doesn't make sense to deny games which were shown in a reveal trailer.

Nobody said Nintendo's rules make total sense. Would you say it makes more sense that Nintendo chose games they didn't know were coming, and that the two independent publishers used almost exactly the same wording to not-announce them by coincidence?

 

[bomblord1]

The article doesn't claim it knows the number of cores either though, I'm talking about the information they claim was shown to devs at some point. They're referring to the same details seen in the op of this thread. The information that both months number of cores and 1tflop performance. Like I said its just a X1 dev kit not Switch. If it was shown to devs it was done so only as a reference of expected performance.

The article lists 256 Cuda cores and says

Nintendo has briefed developers recently with the same information.

 

[Retrobox]

Honesty, I'm willing to avatar bet that this won't be the case. In fact, I'm also willing to bet 3SM is the case too.

Btw, how much would 3SM lighten up the mood? A bit, a lot?

 

[Zedark]

Btw, how much would 3SM lighten up the mood? A bit, a lot?

Power would increase by a factor 1.5, which would put the Switch in the expected power range, so it would definitely lighten the mood.

 

[bomblord1]

Btw, how much would 3SM lighten up the mood? A bit, a lot?

It would put it back on track of the previous "lowest reasonable estimate". Slightly above. You really shouldn't get your hopes up on that one though.

 

[Hindl]

Honesty, I'm willing to avatar bet that this won't be the case. In fact, I'm also willing to bet 3SM is the case too.

I thought Nintendo had changed, but given these clock speeds it's best to expect the worst. 3SM would be great and explains the fan, but 2SM on 28nm just seems more Nintendo.

Btw, how much would 3SM lighten up the mood? A bit, a lot?

It would pretty solidly boost the power so a lot for me

 

[Donnie]

Now we're talking about 28nm, which in horrifying fairness would explain the fan. This is all just really depressing. I'm still preordering day one but it's not shaping up to be the forward thinking device I imagined.

Also makes no sense and is less likely than extra cores, which would also explain the fan.

Unless, like I said earlier, anyone can come up with a reason that neccesitates that kind of process? (like WiiU needing 45nm for eDRAM). But I personally don't think there is such a reason.

 

[Skittzo0413]

As long as we're reaching about everything and have no idea what's going on (with the clock speeds, power, with having fans in a motion controlled device) let's entertain the idea of an SCD.

Now, I don't think an SCD makes sense. Developers will always be constrained by the lowest possible power level (150GFLOPS in this case). Maybe there is some consideration for people who stick with the lowest possible configuration... like 540p rendering or something. But it still doesn't make sense.

That said, this could explain the presence of a fan. If Nintendo wants to ensure that this device can constantly communicate with an external processor- especially wirelessly- then it would need to have some amount of dedicated processing to that effect. The DF article states those clock rates are available for applications at launch, so it's possible that some of the processing power is going to be reserved for this type of streaming OS function.

This might explain why a fan would be neccessary (and why we have heard reports of a 3 hour battery life, although more recently we do have the 5-8 rumor). This could also explain why the recent FCC filing is a device with 500GB of storage. But it really doesn't make much sense anymore than that.

I dunno. Just spitballing here! The fan is the real reason why all of this makes very little sense.

 

[Raet]

So why do you guys think the system is downclocked even in docked mode?

To preserve battery life in portable mode and a 2.5:1 ratio, or something else?

 

[BDGAME]

Only asking again, is it possible to that machine run modern games using upscale? Like:

- Xbox one have a 1.2 Tf GPU to run games at 1080p

- 1/4 of that is necessary to run the same game at 540p

- Switch have that 1/4 (maybe more if it can use mixed precision)

- developers can port their games at 540p and upscale for 1080p (like ps4 pro do)

If that is possible, what Nvidia tells us about the ports is not a lie. What do you think?

 

[Cerium]

Why are we holding out for 3SM when the article clearly lists 256 CUDA cores and confirms Nintendo is breifing developers on the same? It just seems so dark and hopeless.

I'm stunned that Nvidia proudly boasts of the 500 man years that all went towards producing... this.

 

[Vena]

I'd actually posit a different question:

Take the OP data for the devkit, and now change it to the current clock rates but also increase the core count to 6 (or 8) on the CPU, and the 2SM to 3SM on the GPU. Do you end up with the same performance ballpark?

I wonder this because I'd have to wonder why this unit doesn't have A53s supposedly (and what is taking their space on the die, if anything), and would also potentially answer the fan dilemma without going 28nm (an action against all common sense), and tie up a lot of older rumors.

So do this:
Six (Eight) ARM Cortex-A57 cores: 1020 MHz
NVidia mixed Maxwell/Pascal - 20nm
3SM (384 CUDA cores): 307.2/768 GHz

And then compare it to the OP specs in theoreticals. Where does that put us? I wonder if this doesn't match the "supposed" original performance of the dev kit in a different way, and in turn explains the clock rates.

Why are we holding out for 3SM when the article clearly lists 256 CUDA cores and confirms Nintendo is breifing developers on the same? It just seems so dark and hopeless. That said, as a disclaimer, I have no idea why you would go about it this way.

I'm stunned that Nvidia proudly boasts of the 500 man years that all went towards producing... this.

Because the article also says it doesn't actually know.

 

[KAL2006]

So why do you guys think the system is downclocked even in docked mode?

To preserve battery life in portable mode and a 2.5:1 ratio, or something else?

Thermal limitations. Switch is a smaller system than a NVidia Shield TV.

 

[Skittzo0413]

Why are we holding out for 3SM when the article clearly lists 256 CUDA cores and confirms Nintendo is breifing developers on the same? It just seems so dark and hopeless.

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

Performance at lower clocks could be boosted by a larger GPU (ie more CUDA cores), but this seems unlikely - even if Switch is using newer 16nm technology, actual transistor density isn't that different to Tegra X1's 20nm process - it's the FinFET '3D' transistors that make the difference. A larger GPU would result in a more expensive chip too, with only limited performance gains. And if Switch is using a more modern 16nm Tegra chip, we would expect Nintendo to follow Nvidia's lead in how the new process is utilised.

Why would they even speculate about this if they believed these specs were confirmed?

 

[Lom1lo]

Only asking again, is it possible to that machine run modern games using upscale? Like:

- Xbox one have a 1.2 Tf GPU to run games at 1080p

- 1/4 of that is necessary to run the same game at 540p

- Switch have that 1/4 (maybe more if it can use mixed precision)

- developers can port their games at 540p and upscale for 1080p (like ps4 pro do)

If that is possible, what Nvidia tells us about the ports is not a lie. What do you think?

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