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Ventura Beat: Nintendo Switch graphics are based on Nvidia's Maxwell Architecture

I think VC is largely contracting the right people. M2 and NERD are by far the best at it and I would be more than happy if they were contracted to make more emulators for Nintendo.

EDIT: Noooo top of the page D:
 
Oddduck said:
Does this kill the chances of retail units being Pascal-based?

There were rumors that production had already started on retail units.
Click to expand...

The Dev Kits and the Retail Kits are not built by the same people. They wouldn't absolutely have to use the same hardware, though I'd wager it unlikely they would differ significantly.
 
timshundo said:
Me: "Switch will be a Portable Wii U, graphics wise. Readjust your expectations."
Y'all: "BS! It'll cost Nintendo MORE to order old chips and make nvidia produce outdated processors than to just use Pascal! Some Pascal chips get up to [number] gigaflopz so the Switch will be current-gen quality at least when docked! Pascal has already been out for 6 months, totally enough time for implementation! BotW is a Wii U port so of course it won't accurately represent the Switch's power!"

EVERY Nintendo console launch...
Click to expand...

Thraktor said:
I have a few immediate thoughts after reading through the article:


  • Firstly, it's worth noting the difference between Maxwell and Pascal is almost entirely down to the manufacturing process. Maxwell was made on 28nm (and in the case of the TX1, 20nm) whereas Pascal is made on 16nm. The actual architectural difference between the two is minimal, and aside from improved color buffer compression, largely irrelevant for a device like the Switch.
  • Despite that, the article never makes any mention of the manufacturing process. I find that extremely strange, as it's obviously the defining difference between the two sets of GPUs.
  • In fact, the article gets the difference between the two completely the wrong way around, saying "Nintendo’s box is relatively small, and so it has to fit into the heat profile of a portable device, rather than a set-top box. That’s another reason that explains the older Maxwell technology, as opposed to the Pascal’s state-of-the-art tech." Pascal is literally a more power efficient version of Maxwell, so the incentive would be the other way around.
  • The author says "we expect the Nintendo Switch to be more than 1 teraflop in performance", which is notably higher than even those of us who were expecting Pascal were considering (I literally posted earlier today with a 500-750 Gflop estimate). If this is a Maxwell chip, then that would mean at least 4 SMs (512 "CUDA cores") at 1GHz, as they're not going to be able to push much past that on 28/20nm. This is a much larger GPU than most people would have been expecting.
I see a few different scenarios here:


  1. The Switch SoC uses Maxwell at 20nm, and simply has a much larger GPU than anticipated to account for the performance.
  2. Nintendo looked at the feature-set planned for Pascal when design started, realised that the new features were largely irrelevant, and decided that they would save time and just use a straight-forward die shrink of Maxwell to 16nm instead. That would technically be a Maxwell GPU, but would be almost completely indistinguishable from Pascal in terms of performance.
  3. The sources are wrong about Maxwell, the 1 Tflop performance, or both.
Basically, if you're to take the article as being accurate, then the only worthwhile takeaway is this quote:



A Maxwell Tflop is identical to a Pascal Tflop, and it's largely irrelevant to us whether they achieved that by using a larger Maxwell GPU on 20nm/28nm at a lower clock or a smaller Pascal GPU on 16nm at a higher clock.
Click to expand...

Needs to be quoted again, since this forum's has the tech knowledge of the average senior citizen.
 
z0m3le said:
It's unclear, what would be interesting to know is if they shrunk maxwell (x1) to 16nm for the 3d transistors, not sure there is really a difference if they did, as maxwell on a newer process could probably be just as stable at 1.5ghz, of course even if pascal is used, it might not be clocked at 1.5ghz when docked anyways, so there isn't much to worry about except battery life.
Click to expand...

Yeah we need to know process before freaking out. I didn't think pascal brought much to the table other then the power saving advantages of being on a smaller process. If they can shrink maxwell then that should be ok. If they're shipping fat maxwell then maybe we can look forward to a switch mini in a couple of years..
 
ggx2ac said:
Last I remember, you said it was going to be worse than Wii U.
Click to expand...
If there are actually two levels of graphical power depending on if it's docked or not, I'd get the feeling that it'll barely reach Wii U levels when running off battery. From a $249/$299 perspective, that feels accurate to me knowing Nintendo's history with hardware, and I still think it's a great feat for them! The Switch will almost exclusively be a portable for me and my situation and I ain't complaining. Gimme dat Splatoon port and I'm gold.
 
Schnozberry said:
The Dev Kits and the Retail Kits are not built by the same people. They wouldn't absolutely have to use the same hardware, though I'd wager it unlikely they would differ significantly.
Click to expand...
Considering x1 and pascal are very similar, with the difference being entirely the process node AFAIK, I am not sure you could call it significant. It will be interesting if this is 16nm and they still call it maxwell, it could be 20nm but I don't see how they can only produce 2m by launch if that is the case.
 
"powerful enough for cartoon graphics" and "can't run xbone games but might be close to xbone in power, derp". Also, none of their sources could tell them the fab proces while they were at it? I'm sorry, I can't take this seriously.
 
Meh the difference in graphics is negligible. The only concern I have with maxwell is the efficiency vs Pascal. Hopefully the battery life isn't hindered, and as the report from NateDrake shows, it doesn't seem like it will be.

Nvidia worked for 500 man years on it so I trust it to be modern and work well.
 
This means that the Switch doesn’t have as much visual horsepower as the PS4 when played on a television, and it may not be able to handle 4K graphics, either. If Nintendo had waited for Pascal, it would have had to push back the launch date of the Switch. We’re not so sure if the Switch is weaker than the Xbox One, as the performance may be close.
Click to expand...

Isn't this what everyone expected?
 
timshundo said:
If there are actually two levels of graphical power depending on if it's docked or not, I'd get the feeling that it'll barely reach Wii U levels when running off battery. From a $249/$299 perspective, that feels accurate to me knowing Nintendo's history with hardware, and I still think it's a great feat for them! The Switch will almost exclusively be a portable for me and my situation and I ain't complaining. Gimme dat Splatoon port and I'm gold.
Click to expand...

So you're going against people who actually know about tech based on... feeling.

nice
 
I love how the article goes full on concern mode with the whole "It may not be able to output 4k graphics" stuff.

I mean really? REALLY? People were expecting it to do 4k? In that slim, tablet form factor? Personally I'm amazed people even thought it would be as powerful as a PS4. Look at the size of the PS4 slim. Then look at the size of the Switch. Cramming all that into a tiny tablet? People have been at the paint fumes again.
 
Isn't there a power difference between maxwell and pascal tegra? With the shrink nvidia could have put more transistors in for the same overall power draw as maxwell - or did they just focus on power efficiency with it and keep similar power to maxwell?
 
We already knew it wouldn't put out PS4 graphics so not really concerned here. I think his highlighting "cartoon-style games" is a weird and not very relevant observation.
 
Cartho said:
I love how the article goes full on concern mode with the whole "It may not be able to output 4k graphics" stuff.

I mean really? REALLY? People were expecting it to do 4k? In that slim, tablet form factor? Personally I'm amazed people even thought it would be as powerful as a PS4. Look at the size of the PS4 slim. Then look at the size of the Switch. Cramming all that into a tiny tablet? People have been at the paint fumes again.
Click to expand...
Well they seem to be able to cram an Xbox One into a Switch, so...
 
mrklaw said:
Isn't there a power difference between maxwell and pascal tegra? With the shrink nvidia could have put more transistors in for the same overall power draw as maxwell - or did they just focus on power efficiency with it and keep similar power to maxwell?
Click to expand...

That depends on the chip, whatever is in Switch is custom. At the same power consumption Pascal will be more powerful. With the same number of transistors, Pascal will use less power.
 
mrklaw said:
Isn't there a power difference between maxwell and pascal tegra? With the shrink nvidia could have put more transistors in for the same overall power draw as maxwell - or did they just focus on power efficiency with it and keep similar power to maxwell?
Click to expand...

Pascal Tegra is pretty much just Maxwell Tegra die shrunk. Pascal has a few features that are more advanced but for the most part they are nearly identical. Obviously Pascal tegra can run cooler and use less power etc. but in the end they could get the same kind of results just Taking an X1. Modify it however Nintendo likes and say drop it to 16nm

Xavier will be the next big step forward for Tegra that people thought Parker would be. A single Xavier is supposed to deliver the performance of 2 Parker chips while Parker is a souped up maxwell
 
mrklaw said:
Isn't there a power difference between maxwell and pascal tegra? With the shrink nvidia could have put more transistors in for the same overall power draw as maxwell - or did they just focus on power efficiency with it and keep similar power to maxwell?
Click to expand...
Pascal uses less shaders at higher frequencies to beat Maxwell. The GTX 980 uses 2048 shaders (16SM) @ just over 1.1ghz to hit 4.6tflops. GTX 1060 uses 1280 shaders @ ~1.7ghz for 4.3 tflops. It does all this on less power (120watts vs 165watts) otherwise the architecture is pretty much identical from a flop to flop perspective.
 
-Mutsukki- said:
So you're going against people who actually know about tech based on... feeling.

nice
Click to expand...

I always see a lot of "here's what's technically possible" but not a lot of "here's what's technically possible for a probably-$250 console made by a historically-thrifty company that just spent a crapload on R&D and doesn't care about the race the other two consoles are constantly running."

In the end we have: leaks saying "2-3x Wii U power," leaks that say "pretty much a Wii U," gameplay from a few first-party games that look Wii U-ish in graphical capability, and Nintendo's history with hardware. I think that makes it clear where to safely set expectations.
 
timshundo said:
I always see a lot of "here's what's technically possible" but not a lot of "here's what's technically possible for a probably-$250 console made by a historically-thrifty company that just spent a crapload on R&D and doesn't care about the race the other two consoles are constantly running."

In the end we have: leaks saying "2-3x Wii U power," leaks that say "pretty much a Wii U," gameplay from a few first-party games that look Wii U-ish in graphical capability, and Nintendo's history with hardware. I think that makes it clear where to safely set expectations.
Click to expand...

There has not been a single leak that says pretty much a Wii U. I mean for all the shit this thread is creating they are saying around Xbox One level power.
 
antonz said:
There has not been a single leak that says pretty much a Wii U. I mean for all the shit this thread is creating they are saying around Xbox One level power.
Click to expand...

It's funny how some take the Maxwell part of it's as truth while skipping the ~Xbox One perf part.
 
timshundo said:
I always see a lot of "here's what's technically possible" but not a lot of "here's what's technically possible for a probably-$250 console made by a historically-thrifty company that just spent a crapload on R&D and doesn't care about the race the other two consoles are constantly running."

In the end we have: leaks saying "2-3x Wii U power," leaks that say "pretty much a Wii U," gameplay from a few first-party games that look Wii U-ish in graphical capability, and Nintendo's history with hardware. I think that makes it clear where to safely set expectations.
Click to expand...

500 GFLOPS is pretty safe to guess at this point--and I sure as hell doubt that performance on handheld.
 
antonz said:
There has not been a single leak that says pretty much a Wii U. I mean for all the shit this thread is creating they are saying around Xbox One level power.
Click to expand...
Seems to be besides the point. Strange garbled news perceived as bad news must mean the worst news and folk wisdom upheld! There've been too many good Switch stories lately. I was beginning to feel something must be creeping up myself, being an anxious Nintendo fan, but this isn't really much of anything without a fuller, clearer picture.

Mix of vindicated Nintendo hate/Nintendo lowballing/Nintendo disappointment/Nintendo anxiety all brought on by something that is very unclear as to what it portends, if true.
 
z0m3le said:
Pascal uses less shaders at higher frequencies to beat Maxwell. The GTX 980 uses 2048 shaders (16SM) @ just over 1.1ghz to hit 4.6tflops. GTX 1060 uses 1280 shaders @ ~1.7ghz for 4.3 tflops. It does all this on less power (120watts vs 165watts) otherwise the architecture is pretty much identical from a flop to flop perspective.
Click to expand...
Tegra version of Pascal also has proper support for FP16.

edit: Somehow got this bit wrong here, Maxwell has FP16 as well.
 
rekameohs said:
I think it's safe to say that a sizable percentage of GAF users only read thread titles when posting.
Click to expand...

A huge percentage of GAF useres wants to see Nintendo go third-party...

Its kinda of pointless debating about specs right now since we are at a month before the big announcement. They question will ultimately be "who will be on board"? We have names (of companies) but no titles to announce (as of yet)...well, several have already gave us the slip, and the fact that most of the rumors have been positive so far speaks good things.
 
Well let's all just assume the worst of the rumours going around guys. I don't care if it's only 3x Wii U and uses Maxwell. So long as I get all the main 3rd party ports on it. Sony seems out of the portable game and there's no hint coming from Xbox, so this could be the only chance of a true portable gaming console. I like Nintendo games but man playing Dark Souls, Assassin's Creed, Witcher etc.. Alot of the action RPG games I missed out on because I had to be glued to a fixed TV screen but can now play during my commutes and down time would be a dream. If the Switch can't deliver on this I'd be so disappointed.
 
Thraktor said:
I have a few immediate thoughts after reading through the article:


  • Firstly, it's worth noting the difference between Maxwell and Pascal is almost entirely down to the manufacturing process. Maxwell was made on 28nm (and in the case of the TX1, 20nm) whereas Pascal is made on 16nm. The actual architectural difference between the two is minimal, and aside from improved color buffer compression, largely irrelevant for a device like the Switch.
  • Despite that, the article never makes any mention of the manufacturing process. I find that extremely strange, as it's obviously the defining difference between the two sets of GPUs.
  • In fact, the article gets the difference between the two completely the wrong way around, saying "Nintendo’s box is relatively small, and so it has to fit into the heat profile of a portable device, rather than a set-top box. That’s another reason that explains the older Maxwell technology, as opposed to the Pascal’s state-of-the-art tech." Pascal is literally a more power efficient version of Maxwell, so the incentive would be the other way around.
  • The author says "we expect the Nintendo Switch to be more than 1 teraflop in performance", which is notably higher than even those of us who were expecting Pascal were considering (I literally posted earlier today with a 500-750 Gflop estimate). If this is a Maxwell chip, then that would mean at least 4 SMs (512 "CUDA cores") at 1GHz, as they're not going to be able to push much past that on 28/20nm. This is a much larger GPU than most people would have been expecting.
I see a few different scenarios here:


  1. The Switch SoC uses Maxwell at 20nm, and simply has a much larger GPU than anticipated to account for the performance.
  2. Nintendo looked at the feature-set planned for Pascal when design started, realised that the new features were largely irrelevant, and decided that they would save time and just use a straight-forward die shrink of Maxwell to 16nm instead. That would technically be a Maxwell GPU, but would be almost completely indistinguishable from Pascal in terms of performance.
  3. The sources are wrong about Maxwell, the 1 Tflop performance, or both.
Basically, if you're to take the article as being accurate, then the only worthwhile takeaway is this quote:



A Maxwell Tflop is identical to a Pascal Tflop, and it's largely irrelevant to us whether they achieved that by using a larger Maxwell GPU on 20nm/28nm at a lower clock or a smaller Pascal GPU on 16nm at a higher clock.
Click to expand...

Thank you for clarifying this.
 
Schnozberry said:
The Tegra X1 (Maxwell) was the first Nvidia Chip to support the new FP16 setup. Even if Nintendo were using a chip derived from the X1, they would still see FP16 benefits.
Click to expand...
Wow.
How did I make that mistake. :D

Tegra Maxwell was big reason why we hoped that workstation Pascal would have FP16.
 
I really don't see why this is suddenly a doom-and-gloom stuff. Assuming this is even true, Maxwell is still a very capable chip with only its power consumption being a negative. We're talking about a custom Tegra processor here, so anything we know about certain chips may not be true in the case of Switch.

Since its initial reveal, people have already accepted that it's not as powerful as a PS4 and it's already more powerful than a Wii U. The only debatable thing here is how close it is to XBO. At the end of the day, the lineup of games will always be the major factor on the console's success, and processing power and whatnot is just but a secondary thing.
 
wtf... this sounds like BS. pascal should run cooler than maxwell at the same frequency, and use less power because it's mostly a die shrink of the maxwell architecture. in addition, desktop pascal is completely different from mobile pascal in terms of heat. a mobile pascal chip would be designed to produce less heat by cutting the number of SM units dramatically and reducing clock speed so that performance is much lower as well.

it's almost like these people didn't know what they were talking about when they wrote the article.
 
So if this article is true (and OMG how badly written it is) the switch is more powerful than a lot of people here expected. I mean, the consensus was clearly below XboxOne.

But why all the morons saying "lol nintendo being cheap", "lol every nintendo new console", "they're doomed lmfao"?
 
Herb Alpert said:
So if this article is true (and OMG how badly written it is) the switch is more powerful than a lot of people here expected. I mean, the consensus was clearly below XboxOne.

But why all the morons saying "lol nintendo being cheap", "lol every nintendo new console", "they're doomed lmfao"?
Click to expand...
Because people want, expect, or fear that a certain vision of Nintendo be realized.
 
Thraktor said:
I have a few immediate thoughts after reading through the article:


  • Firstly, it's worth noting the difference between Maxwell and Pascal is almost entirely down to the manufacturing process. Maxwell was made on 28nm (and in the case of the TX1, 20nm) whereas Pascal is made on 16nm. The actual architectural difference between the two is minimal, and aside from improved color buffer compression, largely irrelevant for a device like the Switch.
  • Despite that, the article never makes any mention of the manufacturing process. I find that extremely strange, as it's obviously the defining difference between the two sets of GPUs.
  • In fact, the article gets the difference between the two completely the wrong way around, saying "Nintendo’s box is relatively small, and so it has to fit into the heat profile of a portable device, rather than a set-top box. That’s another reason that explains the older Maxwell technology, as opposed to the Pascal’s state-of-the-art tech." Pascal is literally a more power efficient version of Maxwell, so the incentive would be the other way around.
  • The author says "we expect the Nintendo Switch to be more than 1 teraflop in performance", which is notably higher than even those of us who were expecting Pascal were considering (I literally posted earlier today with a 500-750 Gflop estimate). If this is a Maxwell chip, then that would mean at least 4 SMs (512 "CUDA cores") at 1GHz, as they're not going to be able to push much past that on 28/20nm. This is a much larger GPU than most people would have been expecting.
I see a few different scenarios here:


  1. The Switch SoC uses Maxwell at 20nm, and simply has a much larger GPU than anticipated to account for the performance.
  2. Nintendo looked at the feature-set planned for Pascal when design started, realised that the new features were largely irrelevant, and decided that they would save time and just use a straight-forward die shrink of Maxwell to 16nm instead. That would technically be a Maxwell GPU, but would be almost completely indistinguishable from Pascal in terms of performance.
  3. The sources are wrong about Maxwell, the 1 Tflop performance, or both.
Basically, if you're to take the article as being accurate, then the only worthwhile takeaway is this quote:



A Maxwell Tflop is identical to a Pascal Tflop, and it's largely irrelevant to us whether they achieved that by using a larger Maxwell GPU on 20nm/28nm at a lower clock or a smaller Pascal GPU on 16nm at a higher clock.
Click to expand...

This should be in the OP to make the first page even more embarrassing.
 
The God said:
Is it? are people expecting better triple a third party support this time?
Click to expand...

I guarantee you that Skyrim and Just Dance will not be the only multiplatform games on the Switch.

timshundo said:
Me: "Switch will be a Portable Wii U, graphics wise. Readjust your expectations."
Y'all: "BS! It'll cost Nintendo MORE to order old chips and make nvidia produce outdated processors than to just use Pascal! Some Pascal chips get up to [number] gigaflopz so the Switch will be current-gen quality at least when docked! Pascal has already been out for 6 months, totally enough time for implementation! BotW is a Wii U port so of course it won't accurately represent the Switch's power!"

EVERY Nintendo console launch...
Click to expand...

You're still wrong though so what's your point?
 
sfried said:
A huge percentage of GAF useres wants to see Nintendo go third-party...

Its kinda of pointless debating about specs right now since we are at a month before the big announcement. They question will ultimately be "who will be on board"? We have names (of companies) but no titles to announce (as of yet)...well, several have already gave us the slip, and the fact that most of the rumors have been positive so far speaks good things.
Click to expand...

People's desires for a 3rd party Nintendo are awful. Especially when you read stuff in this thread on Sega and why they no longer have to make all the variety of games anymore. http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1321749

Sega doesn't have too because they no longer have a system. Because they no longer have to fill in gaps in lineups. Because they don't have the money anymore. There's a ton of reasons Sega doesn't have to do what they did anymore from when they were 1st party.

Would be the same exact situation with Nintendo as with any 1st party company going 3rd party. You're talking heavy restructuring and downsizing. Not all of the talents will be able to stay and thus a drop in quality. Sega lost a lot of subsidiaries and studios as well, so would Nintendo. You're favorite studios that made your favorite Sega games? They don't exist anymore or don't even do anything anymore outside of phone games.

It kinda infuriates me to see.
 
So not only do these idiots somehow said that Pascal would be hotter and larger than previous chips (except the opposite is true), they also said the Switch is going to be at least 1TF anyway?

Seriously, this is idiotic. I think we can safely throw this rumor into the trash pile.
 
timshundo said:
Me: "Switch will be a Portable Wii U, graphics wise. Readjust your expectations."
Y'all: "BS! It'll cost Nintendo MORE to order old chips and make nvidia produce outdated processors than to just use Pascal! Some Pascal chips get up to [number] gigaflopz so the Switch will be current-gen quality at least when docked! Pascal has already been out for 6 months, totally enough time for implementation! BotW is a Wii U port so of course it won't accurately represent the Switch's power!"

EVERY Nintendo console launch...
Click to expand...

You're still embarrassingly wrong though. Did you just read this poorly written thing?
I guess the author has as much knowledge as you have.
 
Candescence said:
So not only do these idiots somehow said that Pascal would be hotter and larger than previous chips (except the opposite is true), they also said the Switch is going to be at least 1TF anyway?

Seriously, this is idiotic. I think we can safely throw this rumor into the trash pile.
Click to expand...

Apparantly more people say Maxwell, but it's not a problem. The article is stupid though.
 
Milly Osworth said:
This should be in the OP to make the first page even more embarrassing.
Click to expand...

I don't even know what happened to OP. They made an update like on page 2 or 3 but never added that to the OP either. Now we have tech people in the thread making excellent posts and those should be in the OP as well to clarify issues etc.
 
sfried said:
A huge percentage of GAF useres wants to see Nintendo go third-party...

Its kinda of pointless debating about specs right now since we are at a month before the big announcement. They question will ultimately be "who will be on board"? We have names (of companies) but no titles to announce (as of yet)...well, several have already gave us the slip, and the fact that most of the rumors have been positive so far speaks good things.
Click to expand...

Citation Needed. Also those people don't understand the business of making games.
 
I'm not familiarized with hardware arquitecture, but considering Switch is more a portable than a home console, I didn't expect it to be very powerful.

And it has UE4 support, that was pretty surprising for me.

And we all want Switch to be cheap, right?
 
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