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A Nintendo Switch has been taken apart

Rodin

Member
If it's just a bandwidth problem shouldnt the WiiU version perform similar to the the handheld switch performance? The Switch docked performance is similar to the WiiU. I don't think there is much we can tell from what we currently know besides double buffering causing the big ass drops.

I honestly dunno with they used this low ass memory bandwidth ram regardless of whether its the issue with Zelda or not.
No because Switch main pool has much more bandwidth than Wii U, so at the same resolution it doesn't have those issues. GPU is also faster, frame drops on Wii U can be GPU related as well.

The problem with Switch docked is that some effects can't be tiled, so when you increase resolution you're more likely to find some bandwidth constraints if you don't find workarounds. Considering that the port was developed in a short amount of time, they probably didn't have time to fix all the issues.

But yeah, double buffering does the rest. It's possible that these drops were actually to like 27-28fps but thanks to double buffering it drops 10 frames every time.

Woah so I'm not the only one who noticed this.

But it actually rang a bell thanks to the WiiU version (I double dipped), where I cpoukd actually correlate that to the disk noise, whereas this was obviously not possible with the cart version.

Nope, i instantly noticed that this happened with many of the frame drops but got ignored when i tried to report it. A friend received his game and console from amazon today and told me that this happened to him as well.

Chipworks is up, no die shot in the article. (So far at least)
The fan barely moves in portable mode, right? Phones can become very warm when gaming too.

Here's the link
 

Thraktor

Member
Nice work. The other blocks would be this stuff, just out of Nvidias heavily stylized order:

Nvidia_Tegra_X1_SoC.jpg



There's at least two blocks Nintendo may not need or not need such a large version of, but at the estimated die size it would be odd coincidence if they removed a lot and added some stuff and ended up the same size, from what we can tell (still waiting on calipers). If the block capable of 4K decode for instance is still in there, that's certainly of interest (though the USB 3.0 datarate to the dock may make that moot?)

Yeah, the video codec block would be the most likely to be cut in size (the leaked specs from July stated that not all codecs/resolutions would be available to developers, which may indicate what they've cut). We actually know what the USB-C connection is capable of now, thanks to iFixit's teardown:

USB Chipset - Pericom Semiconductor PI3USB30532 - USB3.0/DisplayPort1.2 multiplexer
This handles data communication over the USB-C port, supporting three different modes:
1. USB3.0 (1 lane - 5Gb/s) only
2. USB3.0 (1 lane - 5Gb/s) + DP1.2 (2 lanes - 10.8Gb/s)
3. DP1.2 (4 lanes - 21.6Gb/s) only
There's no USB3.1 (10Gb/s) support, and the DisplayPort connection could support 4K/30fps (with HDR) simultaneously with USB, or 4K/60fps (with HDR) without USB.

In theory it should be able to handle 4K/HDR video streaming, although that would depend on (a) if they decided to keep the h.265 decode and (b) if the DisplayPort to HDMI converter in the dock is capable of supporting HDCP2.2.

The hypothesis I made was, the game is very bandwidth-heavy because of its physics and alpha effects, and since it comes from a system based around having the whole render targets in its 32MB eDRAM, whereas Switch uses tiles in order to have a smaller, cache based, memory pool. Since Zelda was originally designed for Wii U not all of the graphics can be tiled and the game suffers in bandwidth intensive areas and when streaming assets.

That would seem like the most likely culprit. If the rendering pipeline was built around keeping all render targets in Wii U's eDRAM then a move to TBR may well cause issues, particularly for depth of field, alpha effects, or anything else which can't be tiled.
 

LordOfChaos

Member
That article says Posted: March 3, 2017...That's the one they announced for Monday, March 6th? I hadn't seen it before, but the date is several days behind.
 

MegalonJJ

Banned
No because Switch main pool has much more bandwidth than Wii U, so at the same resolution it doesn't have those issues. GPU is also faster, frame drops on Wii U can be GPU related as well.

The problem with Switch docked is that some effects can't be tiled, so when you increase resolution you're more likely to find some bandwidth constraints if you don't find workarounds. Considering that the port was developed in a short amount of time, they probably didn't have time to fix all the issues.

But yeah, double buffering does the rest. It's possible that these drops were actually to like 27-28fps but thanks to double buffering it drops 10 frames every time.



Nope, i instantly noticed that this happened with many of the frame drops but got ignored when i tried to report it. A friend received his game and console from amazon today and told me that this happened to him as well.



Here's the link

Re Zelda

Given the DLC announced, what's the likelihood that the game can be further optimised for Switch? I understand the DLC is only coming to the Switch right?
 
Re Zelda

Given the DLC announced, what's the likelihood that the game can be further optimised for Switch? I understand the DLC is only coming to the Switch right?

No, the DLC is coming to both.

Hopefully they can address the issues in a patch though, Nintendo have done that before with Splatoon.
 

Hermii

Member
That article says Posted: March 3, 2017...That's the one they announced for Monday, March 6th? I hadn't seen it before, but the date is several days behind.

I looked at the article earlier and I'm sure they updated it recently. I'm afraid that's all we got from chipworks:(
 
So no shot of the die? They do a shot of the goddammed broadband controller and not one of the main die?
What about the kind soul who did the one for Shield TV? Will he/she do it?
 

LordOfChaos

Member
Marcan days ago made it clear he has no interest in hacking the Switch or anything else. Its even his pinned tweet telling people to leave him alone

Daw :/

Not Marcan, not Fritz, not sure if Chipworks is still working on it or that was it...Who else may have done it?
 

sits

Member
Can I just ask we don't throw Chipworks under the bus if they don't supply dieshots this time. They've been great to us in the past.
 

Hermii

Member
Good news for you all!!

Part 2 is coming, they hope later this week and it's the one we been waiting for :)

Chipworks is really fast at replying to mails :)
 

LordOfChaos

Member
Wait what? Did they not say it would cost too much?

I don't think? They promised the die shot last week. Fritzchens Fritz was the one who was independently doing deliddings who said it was too expensive, not related to Chipworks.


Might be taking longer because they're doing acid etching?
 
Yeah, the thing came out last Friday, that shit is difficult and delicate.
I love Chipworks man.
Also, this is relieving in a way. I spent a pair of stressing days obsessed over the pic, this helps relativize.
 
No because Switch main pool has much more bandwidth than Wii U, so at the same resolution it doesn't have those issues. GPU is also faster, frame drops on Wii U can be GPU related as well.

The problem with Switch docked is that some effects can't be tiled, so when you increase resolution you're more likely to find some bandwidth constraints if you don't find workarounds. Considering that the port was developed in a short amount of time, they probably didn't have time to fix all the issues.

But yeah, double buffering does the rest. It's possible that these drops were actually to like 27-28fps but thanks to double buffering it drops 10 frames every time.

Interesting. So guven this knowledge we shouldmt expect too many 1080p games unless they are not graphically intense (comparatively speaking obviously)
 
Interesting. So guven this knowledge we shouldmt expect too many 1080p games unless they are not graphically intense (comparatively speaking obviously)

I think it's more going from doing it one way on the Wii U to a completely different way (tile based) on the Switch made it very hard to re-optimize some things.
 

LordOfChaos

Member
I remember the Wii U also used a flip chip design which made a die scan harder (more layers to etch to see the architecture), I think the Switch may have done that too which is why it would take some more time.
 

guek

Banned
I think it's more going from doing it one way on the Wii U to a completely different way (tile based) on the Switch made it very hard to re-optimize some things.

There really should have been a 720p docked "performance mode" for the Switch version
 
I think it's more going from doing it one way on the Wii U to a completely different way (tile based) on the Switch made it very hard to re-optimize some things.
Maybe we won't see some specific effects that require full framebuffers such as DOF? Or is there an algorithm that can do it in a tiled fashion?
Nintendo is obsessed with having sufficient memory bandwidth, they wouldn't make THIS mistake.
 
This too, but it never drops in 720p so better bandwidth management in 900p should bring performances to undocked levels. GPU certainly can't be an issue.
It has similiar drops in handheld-mode, but a lot less frequently.
But seeing that they reduced the drops a lot in the day-1 patch makes me hopeful that they will work on further improving performance in the next months.

I wonder why they went with double-buffering and not triple.
 
Somebody suggested that maybe the stuttering was worse than a steady 20FPS, or maybe dropping to 20FPS reduces the bandwidth need for a moment so that the new assets load in faster and the drop is shorter in time? (Assuming it's a streaming issue)
 

Rodin

Member
Interesting. So guven this knowledge we shouldmt expect too many 1080p games unless they are not graphically intense (comparatively speaking obviously)
We can expect many 1080p games if they're properly optimized for the Switch memory subsystem. Of course a 1080p intensive game ported from PS4 may run at a lower res but that's because the other console is much stronger.

It has similiar drops in handheld-mode, but a lot less frequently.
But seeing that they reduced the drops a lot in the day-1 patch makes me hopeful that they will work on further improving performance in the next months.

I wonder why they went with double-buffering and not triple.

I'm playing mostly in docked mode on my OLED TV but i played several hours in handheld mode and it never dropped to me, so it must be pretty rare.

But yeah, a bit of stuttering with triple buffering would've been preferable to drops straight to 20 imho, and i hate stuttering.


Back on topic, any updates from chipworks about the die shots?
 
Dragon Quest Heroes seems to drop in the presence of alpha effects, which in turn indicates bad optimization for TBR (Could be rendering to texture, who knows) and therefore it's not a good example of what the thing can do.
It's going to be interesting to see games properly optimized for this. ARMS for instance looks beautiful at 1080p60 with plenty of alpha effects...
 

tkscz

Member
Nintendo really missed a opportunity to use 16nm for this console

Can't really use something that didn't exist at the time. While Parker was available, it wasn't meant for games, it was meant for cars. Had 16nm existed, Nintendo most likely would've chose it for battery life alone.
 

LordOfChaos

Member
Can't really use something that didn't exist at the time. While Parker was available, it wasn't meant for games, it was meant for cars. Had 16nm existed, Nintendo most likely would've chose it for battery life alone.


They did fund resynthesizing the PPC750 to 45nm, past where anyone else had wanted it. If they had the will to do so they could have taken TX1 to 16nm, though now I'm speculating as Nvidia's stipulations may not be as agreeable as AMDs and IBMs.

It's why, I think, the Xbox 1st gen never had a shrink, iirc? But I would imagine Nvidia has softened up since then after wanting to get a console win.
 
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