Definitively yes
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Digital Foundry: Nintendo Switch CPU and GPU clock speeds revealed
- Thread starter Vashetti
- Start date
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Definitively yes
prag16
Banned
We don't know. Don't listen to anybody that claims to be certain.
Best guess is... Probably, but maybe not drastically.
exmachina64
Banned
Wow, this was a hot topic.
Not surprised by this, but hopefully it has games I'll enjoy.
Apology accepted.
Not surprised by this, but hopefully it has games I'll enjoy.
Apology accepted.
This really only appeals to the core Nintendo fans. Third party support has to be there and the price has to be lower. You are not going to sell many consoles going on a price war with other home consoles an order of magnitude stronger.
prag16
Banned
Pump the brakes on this "drastically weaker than a PS3" assumption. Almost certainly false.
Hence the low clockrates and fan. /Shrug
ebullientprism
Member
Anyone expecting more was setting themselves up for a disappointment.
Anyway, hope its 199. Even 249 would be stretching it.
Anyway, hope its 199. Even 249 would be stretching it.
It has the potential to hurt Nintendo if that makes the price too high.
Let's say I don't care about owning a handheld. I just want the new Nintendo console (besides the Classic Mini, hur hur) and don't intend to take it out of the living room. So I'm faced with the prospect of paying for capability I don't want or need. Obviously, the cost to produce this thing would be cheaper if it didn't have a screen built into it.
This is why price is critical. PS4 slim/XB1 S are $250-300. Switch is considerably less powerful. Folks in this category will not want to pay more than $199, unless they are diehard Nintendo fans that absolutely need to have it. That pool of customers was not large enough to make the Wii U a success.
Price should be as low as possible in that space too. Decent Android tablets can be found in the $100 range. Not to mention...the Switch isn't really a handheld. It will not be portable enough for a good many people.
My original model Vita just barely fits into my coat/pants pockets. If I do get the Switch, it won't be something I take with me on the train into the city, or shove into my pocket on the way out the door. It's too damn big!
To assume that the handheld market is the same size now as it was a few years ago is misguided at best, dangerous at worst. And once again...Switch isn't really a "handheld."
If my console of choice doesn't sell well, it means that developers produce fewer games for it, and then, the length of time it's supported with new games is drastically reduced. It also takes the public opinion of the hardware maker down a notch, meaning that their next console (if they choose to produce one) faces more of an uphill climb. They need to prove to consumers that they've learned from their mistakes, and that this time, your purchase will definitely be worthwhile.
This is yet another reason, I believe, why the $199 price tag would help Switch considerably.
It's not "almost certainly false" it is 100% certain in every conceivable scenario.
Toadthemushroom
Member
Yeah, generally smartphone chips are designed to get the task done as quickly as possible, then go back to sleep.
Apple's SoCs don't throttle either, starting with the downclocked iPod Touch 6th gen:
On last year's iPhone 6s performance never drops below 95% when under load:
prag16
Banned
There's still the slight possibility that they cut the sp count. I agree it's extremely unlikely but meh, Nintendo. Who thought the Wii U would be 176GF..
exmachina64
Banned
IN HANDHELD MODE.
This would still be false.
It's still completely false
Considering digital foundries article there's really no way they could have cut the SM count.
D
Deleted member 752119
Unconfirmed Member
All true, but also it's not just that the other consoles are more powerful but that they also have the types of games that are popular in the mainstream, both as exclusives and third parties. It's also unclear if the ideas of the Switch will catch on outside the Nintendo fanbase. The market for portables in the west will continue to decline and Japan is a relatively small market. Do people care about local MP in public? Much less on such a small screen? Etc.
I see what they're doing as a good way to appeal to their base of people that still stuck with them through Wii U and 3DS. It will give them all their games on one device, so it's a great way to monetize their base.
Pricing will be key to growing that base though. There's a large chunk of the mainstream gamer market they're just never going to appeal too as those folk only like their CoDs, GTAs, AssCreeds, Maddens, WRPGs etc. But there's another chunk that are lapsed Nintendo gamers who grew up with their consoles, and/or had Wiis that they could maybe get back if the price is low enough and the software compelling enough.
$250 may not be a death sentence to a lapsed Nintendo fan who only has a PS4 OR X1. But it's not a super easy impulse buy for the person who only has a PS4 and sees they can get an X1 and play Halo, Gears, Forza etc. for the same or less than the Switch when they're more into/used to those type of games than Mario, Zelda at al. If the Switch is cheaper, that may push a few of those types to the Nintendo side of the fence vs. grabbing the Sony/MS machine they don't have, or saying fuck it and staying single platform.
Similar logic applies to lapsed gamers who had Nintendo growing up and/or Wiis but don't own any dedicated hardware currently. $250 isn't a death sentence, but every dollar higher price pushes fewer people off the impulse buy purchase and just sticking with gaming on their phone/tablet, or picking up an NES Classic if they are every readily available etc.
lyrick
Member
Still not true
Don't compare PS3 (Pre Tesla) to Switch(Maxwell?). Way too many Generations have passed to try and directly compare the two.
Pre Tesla (PS3) => Tesla (Geforce 8XXX+, 1XX,2XX,3XX) => Fermi ([SM] Geforce 4XX,5XX) => Kepler ([SMX]Geforce 6XX, 7XX) => Maxwell ([SMM] Switch)
I think there may be a case to be made about the CPU, if it is only 4 cores at that clock speed. I cant speak competantly about that though.
Come on, stop it. Don't try to invent some limitations that don't exists for this chip. Check Thraktor's post in this very thread.
Jose92
[Membe
They are available but instead of leaving the older ,20nm , manufacturing line rotting, nvidia can hit two birds with one stone. Use the older technology and recover the costs spent on the R&D of the X1 and get into the console market again. While Nintendo is getting a fairly decent deal in the mix.
Pascal is a customized Maxwell 2nd gen,they share the same architecture.
JoshuaJSlone
Member
As someone who frequents Switch threads here, your post is the first I've heard such a thing. Sounds like somebody's extrapolation of the fact that the several seconds of footage looks more like SM64/SMS than other recent games.TheMagician said:
How fast does a handheld have to be before it stops being a handheld?grim-tales said:
exmachina64
Banned
I'm not trying to directly compare them, but it is a useful frame of reference.
Don't fall in the trap of "generational improvements." That was used as an excuse for why the Wii U would be "stronger than it looks" or "punch above its weight." Those are meaningless terms and people need to temper their expectations.
Before this article, many people on this forum ardently believed Pascal would be used. Every indication we have tells us this is an improved Nintendo handheld with a docked mode, not a powerful console or hybrid device.
I guess if we compare theoretical max performance it doesn't I remember reading a while back some guy from Playstation concocted some incredibly specific scenario where the PS3 Cell CPU could hit 1 teraflop but in reality it was barely 1/10th that and many devs failed to even get that out of it.
Shikamaru Ninja
任天å ã® å¿è
Is there a good speculative comparison of how the Switch chip set will compare to the NVidia shield? I believe the assumption is Switch will have more RAM, but where are the CPU and GPU going to be comparatively?
BigEmil
Junior Member
I refuse to believe that, 2017 hardware compared to 2005 hardware not just speed bump increases but also other improvements made in the tech from archtecure, api, tools and all that tech jazz made big improvements since then too it's not fair to just look at the numbers only also both rendering same amount of pixels the Switch is most definetely more powerful than ps3 and x360 even in handheld mode.
lensoftruth
Member
How on earth did you come to this conclusion?
lyrick
Member
As a PC gamer that has traveled with the Generational improvements I'm calling bullshit on your "frame of reference".
Don't compare PS3 old balls (fixed pipeline?) GFs to Graphics capabilities of more modern architectures.
Beerman462
Member
Seems like they will likely be nearly identical, but at lower clocks. much lower when un-docked. Might have embedded ram like previous Nintendo systems, that could explain the need for active cooling.
You can't directly compare the GFs for sure, because the PS3 also got a helping hand from the Cell in a lot of cases.
LordRaptor
Member
No, I'm saying that the bulk of render cost in deferred rendering is in post processing, not rendering polygons, and its much more likely devs will scale back post process than native render resolution, because that a much bigger win.
Forward rendering is literally this:
[scene resolution render time] + [lighting] + [AA] = renderer cost per cycle, so if one target hardware cant hit the target, you literally have three things you can change to adjust that, the easiest being scene geometry resolution.
Deferred rendering is this:
[geometry render time] + [lighting pre pass] + [Z buffer pass] + [lighting quality pass] + [huge list of bells and whistles] = [composite image]
But on modern hardware geometry render time is fucking nothing. Its insanely cheap to throw around hundreds of millions of polys in a scene.
Polycount basically doesn't matter anymore in making a good looking traditional game because everything now is LODed decimations from baked sculpts, and thats not where renderframe cost savings are going to happen.
martino
Member
we could say that nvidia sells with even more.
business model / margin expected are not the same.
I'm not sure but nvidia probably aim at higher margin than console also making profit on licence/software.
Shikamaru Ninja
任天å ã® å¿è
Say the custom portion mainly pertains to lower clock speeds, mainly for battery life undocked and noise/power consumption docked?
How much of a difference can better and more ram do for the Switch over the Shield?
How much of a factor are Nintendo R&D contributions like IR, accelerometer, gyro, joycons, etc. Better ram, higher quality screen?
Yeah, generally smartphone chips are designed to get the task done as quickly as possible, then go back to sleep.
Apple's SoCs don't throttle either, starting with the downclocked iPod Touch 6th gen:
On last year's iPhone 6s performance never drops below 95% when under load:
Great, so it only eats the battery in a little big over an hour? Doesn't sound great either for a high performance software.
Then I fucked up. I could sworn, there were some questions about the fan. Was it, why would the Switch need a fan, if it was underclocked this hard?
martino
Member
dunno without numbers but my feeling is nvidia greedy margins easily more than cover it.
lwilliams3
Member
Uhh, the Wii U did punch above its weight. The GPU was only at 176 GFLOPS, but it was definitely beyond the 360/PS3 despite their documented GFLOPS. The Wii U's CPU, ended up to be a bottleneck that even Miyamoto admitted.
Anyway, EG's reported that the chipset at least has some of Pascal elements. You rather or not we agree with calling it a Pascal chip, the most accurate label is a "Custom Tegra" that derived from Maxwell.
The big questions are: What are these elements that came from Pascal, and what are the other customizations?
Switch is based on X1, Shield is based on K1, so you can't simply compare flops and clock speeds.
Real world scenarios it should perform significantly better than the Shield. Better featureset, tools, apis, less bulky OS than Android, games tailored specifically for it should make for some impressive visuals despite underwhelming raw power.
This has always been a silly notion to me. Hardware is very important to deliver those games that you want. The hardware specs matter very much. Nintendo's greatest games depended on certain hardware capabilities to deliver the quality gameplay and performance that made them great. That will never change.
Blows my mind that this thing is gonna be Maxwell based and not Pascal.
I guess I shouldn't have expected anything half-way current from Nintendo, but when Nvidia comes out and says it's using "the same architecture as the world's top-performing GeForce gaming graphics cards" I sort of expect them to know what they're talking about.
The Shield TV will be two years old when the Switch comes out, and that thing hardly set the world alight all the way back then.
I guess I shouldn't have expected anything half-way current from Nintendo, but when Nvidia comes out and says it's using "the same architecture as the world's top-performing GeForce gaming graphics cards" I sort of expect them to know what they're talking about.
The Shield TV will be two years old when the Switch comes out, and that thing hardly set the world alight all the way back then.
Toadthemushroom
Member
Not quite - battery life goes down to 67% after an hour (left axis is % for both performance and battery life, right axis is temperature), so it's about 2-3 hours' battery when under load.
Like laptops you're going to get less battery life if you max out the CPU+GPU 100% of the time. Which is a problem for a device that's playing games. But with mixed use the iPhone 6s/7 would achieve 1-1.5 days' battery probably.
The iPad Pro 12", with its larger battery, apparently eats 19% of battery for every hour played, according to a review, so that's about 5-6 hours' battery life and that thing has a huge battery.
Edited because of reading comprehension fail.
Then why don't all Xbone games run at 1080p if it's that easy to compensate for lower FLOPS numbers?
Then why don't all Xbone games run at 1080p if it's that easy to compensate for lower FLOPS numbers?
Beerman462
Member
There are people here who can better explain, but more RAM will allow for bigger textures and allow smoother switching between OS and games/apps, because it can hold more operations in suspension. Faster RAM can feed the GPU and CPU more data more quickly, but others have already said that the rumored/reported bandwidth is more than enough to feed the GPU/CPU as is. Which makes me wonder if embedded ram would even matter if that's the case? 3GBs of RAM is probably enough for the system as is, but more would make for easier porting. A lot of what if's right now, but it's fun to speculate.
I was assuming he meant Shield TV.
I though the xbox one had some kind of weird resolution bottleneck because of the memory setup.
Beerman462
Member
I read that the Embedded RAM was too small to hold more detailed 1080p frame buffers? and the DDR3 was too slow?
Something like that.
Looking at Switch's supposed memory bandwidth I wouldn't even touch this topic.
We are definitely missing something, aren't we? I'm not talking about some secret sauce or something like that, but hardware design is a long process. "Nintendo gonna Nintendo" is just a trolling sentence; there is thinking behind the decissions made. Some points/debates:
Performance/price balance: as many have pointed out, lower clockspeeds don't make the thing magically cheaper, considering you are using the same piece. But it can have an indirect impact on it: if you clock lower, you can get away with using cheaper batteries to get an specific battery life target.
Lack of bad comments: we had several insiders talking about the ease of porting current gen games. Of course the declarations of devs having trouble with the Wii U started closer to launch, but now the partners include devs with little history in Nintendo platforms (I'm sure the Nvidia partnership has something to do with this). And before anyone starts with the "but Skrym and NBA aren't confirmed": if you see the PR responses that "de-confirmed" them, you can note they are obviously instructed by Nintendo, probably because they want to have all the games really "announced" at the conference in January (though I'm far from expecting lots of third party support, by the way).
The leaks contradiction: both the architecture and dev tools seem to be better this time around, but the performance could be a big reason for ports being scrapped. What is even weirder is that a poster talked about a better CPU that XONE/PS4, but some responses here say that Wii U games could have problems being ported given the CPU clocks revealed by DF. Then we have the Maxwell/Pascal debacle in which price and eficiency are strong reasons to go with the newer one. It also seems like the Nvidia blog post is reaching with the wording it uses if the Maxwell rumor is true.
The fan(s): the biggest mistery, considering the last reports indicate the existence of two of them. Explaining it with 28nm seems a little counterintuitive, almost thinking that Nintendo is trying their best to cut the performance of the Switch in pretty incovenient ways. Whatever the reason is, though, it seems more plausible than the higher amount of SMs option (although I would love that being the case).
As I said, I believe there is something that we aren't seeing. Not a miracle that would improve the performance or make the Switch the best console in gaming history, but something like a feature that heavily affects price or a clever application of SCD (which I can't see happening as it's a logistic nightmare). A last minute change could have affected the performance, or maybe they are already designing the "New" version and they wan't it to be quite a leap above the original Switch (which is hard to picture as they would have to target the lower specs too).
As any Nintendo fan I would be happy if the news were fakeor the result of an elaborate scheme by Nintendo's PR team to discover the leakers by feeding employees with contradicting info but that's hardly the case. I suppose we have to settle with the fact that this is going to be less powerful than our pessimistic guesses (and no, nobody expected PS4 levels of performance, but a middle ground between Wii U-XONE) and wait for Nintendo to reveal its cards on January.
PS: I'm no tech expert, so feel free to correct anything wrong.
Performance/price balance: as many have pointed out, lower clockspeeds don't make the thing magically cheaper, considering you are using the same piece. But it can have an indirect impact on it: if you clock lower, you can get away with using cheaper batteries to get an specific battery life target.
Lack of bad comments: we had several insiders talking about the ease of porting current gen games. Of course the declarations of devs having trouble with the Wii U started closer to launch, but now the partners include devs with little history in Nintendo platforms (I'm sure the Nvidia partnership has something to do with this). And before anyone starts with the "but Skrym and NBA aren't confirmed": if you see the PR responses that "de-confirmed" them, you can note they are obviously instructed by Nintendo, probably because they want to have all the games really "announced" at the conference in January (though I'm far from expecting lots of third party support, by the way).
The leaks contradiction: both the architecture and dev tools seem to be better this time around, but the performance could be a big reason for ports being scrapped. What is even weirder is that a poster talked about a better CPU that XONE/PS4, but some responses here say that Wii U games could have problems being ported given the CPU clocks revealed by DF. Then we have the Maxwell/Pascal debacle in which price and eficiency are strong reasons to go with the newer one. It also seems like the Nvidia blog post is reaching with the wording it uses if the Maxwell rumor is true.
The fan(s): the biggest mistery, considering the last reports indicate the existence of two of them. Explaining it with 28nm seems a little counterintuitive, almost thinking that Nintendo is trying their best to cut the performance of the Switch in pretty incovenient ways. Whatever the reason is, though, it seems more plausible than the higher amount of SMs option (although I would love that being the case).
As I said, I believe there is something that we aren't seeing. Not a miracle that would improve the performance or make the Switch the best console in gaming history, but something like a feature that heavily affects price or a clever application of SCD (which I can't see happening as it's a logistic nightmare). A last minute change could have affected the performance, or maybe they are already designing the "New" version and they wan't it to be quite a leap above the original Switch (which is hard to picture as they would have to target the lower specs too).
As any Nintendo fan I would be happy if the news were fake
PS: I'm no tech expert, so feel free to correct anything wrong.
It's Malo, the biggest diva of the Switch threads
LordRaptor
Member
Because I'd imagine if their target rendercost is 32ms and after tweaking they hit that with the PS4 but with the same values its 32.4ms on X1, reducing render resolution in that equation by 1% is trivial, because the difference between 1920 x1080 and a scaled 1920 x 900 is barely discernible to an average consumer.
the difference between 1280x720 and 1280 x 540 is fucking noticable
e: I mean, thats ~ a third fewer pixels
I think that was the original rumor. Though its been debunked as the xbox one has multiple games running at 1080p native.
Well it had something to do with the size and setup of the ESRAM not the actual memory bandwidth
Found it
http://gamingbolt.com/xbox-ones-esr...080p-but-will-catch-up-to-ps4-rebellion-games
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