Maxwell X1 is bigger and is less power-efficient. That would be terrible for something that is also portable. It also makes sense for Nvidia to push their new Parker chip, which they are also pushing for cars, instead of suddenly making millions of the old Maxwell chips using 20nm. They would make less chips per wafer. Not sure that's really cheaper and has a few negative impacts on the Switch as previously mentioned.
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Nintendo Switch: Powered by Custom Nvidia Tegra Chip (Official)
- Thread starter ekim
- Start date
Maxwell X1 is bigger and is less power-efficient. That would be terrible for something that is also portable. It also makes sense for Nvidia to push their new Parker chip, which they are also pushing for cars, instead of suddenly making millions of the old Maxwell chips using 20nm. They would make less chips per wafer. Not sure that's really cheaper and has a few negative impacts on the Switch as previously mentioned.
ShadowFox08
Member
If its close to xb1 in power, then that wouldn't be much of an issue. Heck we've already gotten confirmation from devs that it isn't hard to port games on switch. We'll get a couple big name games at launch, but the main thing is sales. If enough people buy the switch and the 3rd party games, and if the publishers and devs get a profit from it, then the games will continue being made. That's how it works. Developers won't keep making games for platforms if they aren't making money from it.
LordOcidax
Member
Agree with you, doesn't have any sense to use old technology. Also.., I think the Nvidia statement was very clear.
Do you have a link for that? Not that I don't believe you, it's just that I haven't been into tech discussion at all for a while now so I'd like to know what developers have to say about it.
Its why I liked the marketing piece we saw so far. You didnt see one kid in the ad. It also felt more... grown up.
I think perhaps they are going to try to market the Switch to teens/ adults.
frankie_baby
Member
a bad android port, hmmmmm
ShadowFox08
Member
Well its more like rumors/leaks if anything. But a couple of sources have said its easy to develop games for and port from PS4/Xbone. It supports Unity and Unreal Engine 4 as well.
http://wccftech.com/rumor-nintendo-nx-power-closest-xbox-run-ps4xo-games-modification/
Buggy Loop
Member
JoshuaJSlone
Member
Games don't include multiple sets of textures specifically for different resolutions, so there's no reason to load up a new set. They'll work with different sizes of the texture depending on how it's used on screen. Move right up to the wall in 720p and it will use the largest version of the wall texture, beyond what it will use when the wall is further away in 1080p.
If a dev really thinks the majority of the time their game will be portable maybe they'll figure 1080p isn't worth bothering with. Or if they're trying to scale down a game originally designed for the higher spec machines, maybe it's a sacrifice they'll make. But otherwise for games designed with Switch in mind, it's a machine several times as powerful as Wii U and with several times the RAM, so no immediate reason to skimp.
Schnozberry
Member
Android.....lol
Games running in a Java VM with very little low level API access to speak of. It's a miracle so many of them turn out so well.
3 months ago active cooling was just a thing present in the first devkit and surely not in the final product. But 500gflops is still a possible scenario, but far from the best case now.
Even with rumors of bad battery, meaning they are probably trying to underclock the tegra to make it tolerable ?
Bad battery would rather point towards better performance, no? Anyhow, bad battery in the devkit says nothing.
Edit: and what performance do you want to estimate: the one on battery or the one plugged in?
I don't think there's even a single footage of a Vulkan game or tech demo running on any Tegra chip.
Solid SOAP
Member
I wouldn't complain to much about bad battery performance. The way I see it, I wouldn't be surprised if under the circumstances that this sells well, that they release a superior model somewhere down the line that allows for better gaming performance and a superior battery ala the 3DS-->n3DS.
-shadow-
Member
September 2001 was the release in Japan. So yeah, 15 years now. Honestly this is really amazing that they've managed that long on a single design. Can't imagine how much money they ended up saving for the Wii because of this. And how much they've wasted for the WiiU later on.
Wasnt the WiiU also under clocked in the months leading up to the finalisation of the system? Would they really make the same mistake twice in a row? The CPU ended up being the biggest problem with both 3DS and the WiiU and even Iwata mentioned at some point they themselves were limited by it.
Thanks, but i was talking more on the tech side rather than the marketing deals one.
Is the Swift powerful enough to handle ports of those kind of AAA games?
Maybe it's just my mind that can't wrap around it, but i can't imagine current-gen games to run on a portable machine without melting it lol
Oh, yeah. I read that article some time ago. I thought you meant new comments about it after it was revealed.
I still think third party support is going to be a problem for Nintendo but now that Epic officially supports the console with Unreal Engine 4 and others such as Unity are widely available there should be less excuses when it comes to port stuff to Switch.
We can't tell for sure without knowing clockspeed etc.
Wait for the games direct. If there are ports coming we'll surely see some then.
Bad battery (and again, with those specs and what this is actually running, "bad" is mislabel) is an issue for mobile mode. But a fan in the console hint strongly at the console going at full or near full clock in docked mode, else they'd go for just lower clocks and passive cooling, like the Pixel C which also is a Tegra X1 and run only passive cooling with a peak clock of 850 Mhz (about 400 Gflops).
out of my ass speculation... but considering most current AAA titles can be played on relatively low end PCs i think it's possible here and there.
in terms of what's strictly possible, if you look like cross gen titles like MGSV and Tomb Raider on the 360 it's definitely doable but it's a long shot anybody's going to go the extra mile to optimize like that
D
Deleted member 465307
Unconfirmed Member
"the games direct" *sigh* I can't wait for it!
JoshuaJSlone
Member
Yeah. Hard to believe they've been messing with GameCube-related hardware for essentially half of their time as a console manufacturer.
We don't have enough solid info yet, really. In many cases it might be feasible, but not without technical compromises. How extensive those are, we really don't know enough yet. But just as Xbone games might lack compared to PS4 versions, Switch is probably another step or two down yet.Philippo said:
RAM is another big unknown. If it had RAM to match PS4/Xbone but worse processors, then we might imagine a theoretical scenario where most games could be made to load and run with few changes but at an awful frame rate. If it's got significantly less RAM then that's another thing they've got to put more work into cutting back the use of.
Anything with GOOD optimization?
Beyond3d forums
TLZ
Banned
MGR is more of a CPU heavy game then it is GPU because it was designed for PS360 that had plenty of CPU performance. How well do the ARM cores compare to those last gen consoles? It's amazing it goes through so many hoops and layers of abstraction and runs as well as it does.
Schnozberry
Member
Schnozberry
Member
A57 cores, if that's what was used, are better than Jaguar clock for clock, but it will depend on clock speed how it competes with the Xbox 360 CPU. They were clocked high and have very good SIMD engines. Revengeance didn't perform especially well on the PS3 or 360 either, so it may not have been very well optimized to begin with if it was a 360 port.
MGR and such were outsourced ports with little effort. ARM cores can actually be very good. I mean the what that has been stated on Switch is its CPU is noticeably better than what is in PS4/XBO.
Throw in Android being a CPU hog and well you end up with those results. Switch will benefit greatly from a ground up OS designed in cooperation with Nvidia for maximum gaming performance.
Schnozberry
Member
The advantage the the Tegra in the Switch has over AMD in this regard is that Nvidia Shader Processors can handle two FP16 instructions per clock cycle, whereas the older AMD architectures in the PS4 and Xbox One have to emulate FP16 calculations at higher precision, taking up an entire clock cycle and not gaining any performance.
In terms of FP16/32 support in games, it seems to be a crapshoot depending on the engine used and the construction of the scene.
OG_Original Gamer
Member
Now the PS4 Pro does double FP16.
Schnozberry
Member
Correct. It uses a Polaris GPU and has support for it for games that offer Pro Performance Enhancements.
That's why i asked "on average" what to expect, for games like CoD, AC, etc. I understand the advantages/disadvantages of fp16/32. That's why i asked if my reasoning was correct. If 1/3rd of instructions runs at fp16, that you "gain" 166GF assuming the chip is capable of 500GF at fp32. If it's evenly split, you gain 250GF for a total of 750.
Spyder_Monkey
Banned
Source is bullshit.
Pancake Mix
Copied someone else's pancake recipe
I'm sure you're right to an extent, but we can assume that Nvidia was willing to take far lower margins than they're used to, like with any console project. So like you said, some elements of truth, but maybe with a little bullshit too.
Also, as for an incentive that's not talked about to go with the big N, well, Nintendo is no stranger to plastering their CPU/GPU venders on the boxes (GameCube and Wii, both on the retail box and the hardware itself) so Nvidia could get some huge advertising from this that Microsoft (IIRC) and Sony (definitely) didn't provide them. Also, I do think their pride was hurt that they didn't get the 3DS contract and were subsequently shunned by both Sony and MS this gen. Now they'll be right back in the game with a member of the big three.
TyMiles2012
Member
ARM for Android emulates extremely well on x86 using BlueStacks so I assume so. Of course nothihg will be emulated, but I think the code is simpler. I'm not familiar with this stuff though. Just a guess.
Schnozberry
Member
I don't think the gains will be anywhere linear like that, but it will provide a huge efficiency and performance boost for games that make heavy use of FP16. I believe Frostbite and UE4 on mobile already do, so perhaps those engines would make more sense than the full fat versions for something like the Switch.
Schnozberry
Member
Yes, it should be compatible will all of the Nvidia proprietary tech. They made specific mention of physics tools in their press release. I'm interested to see how much of the tools for the Geforce Cards like Multi Res Shading and Nvidia specific low cost anti-aliasing methods made it over.
Akhe
Member
In what way?
Schnozberry
Member
Reads like a statement carefully ran through lawyers to avoid NDA problems.
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