Emily Rodgers said active cooled, what I wonder is if the fan is in the tablet or the dock.
Maybe the dock is so fat because it has a fan in it, blowing air in the bottom vent of the Switch and up out the top. While mobile the seemingly large heatsink if it goes from top to bottom would provide decent passive transfer to air being open on both sides, and while docked the docks fan would let it run at full clock speeds.
If all that is right it's remarkably close to what I wanted and envisioned back when the NX was rumoured to be a tablet. A thickish tablet with a pass through heatsink that would be cooled on the dock.
Yep, I thought of that as well, everything mobile tries to make the outside case as thin as possible, even 3.5 mm headphone jacks are many times rounded around because the case is even thinner than the jack, but in the dock case, you can see how much space is there between the USB ports, if it's all empy why would they need it that big.
We can conclude something, if there is a SCD of any kind, there has to be a special hw link connector on the bottom of the Switch tablet, along with HDMI and USBs
Even if you have to buy SCD as a separate brick, it will need that special connector, so it has to be hiding somewhere, it's not going to be USB, the connector would need to allow many many GB/s of throughput and no USB is capable of that.
Now whether dock only has cooling and no SCD could be the case as well, but yeah the cooling channel would then be routed underneath the switch, that would be intake, and the exhaust on the top, makes sense and it's the only possible choice, the sides can't have any holes they are for controllers to snap on to, the bottom is all covered up, so the Dock has to have an opening inside it's hangar. okay it could be on the back side where the labels are it may not need to be on the bottom.
Some people even said oh if the dock will make Switch to upclock it's hardware that will split community, hah I mean that's the point, I'm not interested in a mobile console, if the dock doesn'thave SCD I'm not buying the console, since even if it's upclocked it won't get near PS4, upclocking won't magically increase RAM size or Caches, so I'm not sure why are some of the mobile people so selfish they want it all for themselfs, it's meant to be a hybrid that's why it's called Switch.
I don't think we should expect anything other than a resolution boost for the TV, if the developers have it programmed from the start(depending on the game).
I agree becuase this is nintendo we know since Wii, but I am totally open that I'm biased a bit and hope it has a SCD, otherwise it's a hard sell for me and other hardcore old cats, but as I get older I need more challenge, I hope first parties won't be so easy it's getting ridicolously too easy, Retro Studios needs to make it harder whatever they're doing, not for the initial game, but I always loved the Hard Mode in Metroid Prime, I hope with better HW they can put Nightmare mode ontop with more enemies I'd so much love to see that, infact if we get a metroid prime remake with remastered audio and textures to heat everybody up before the next big thing i'd be sold.
And you see I don't talk much about battery, but I can relate, I hope you guys get extra external battery attachements quickly after it goes to sale, I have Samsung Galaxy S5 already I only need the camera for misc stuff otherwise I don't need any other mobile devices since I play only a few games on the PC as well.
She was making enquiries on whether you can use an external gpu via USB C.
She was also trying to link whether switching to external graphics would cause a delay the same way the Switch has a delay when being docked. I guess ultimately trying to insinuate that the dock has an external gpu that connects via USB C, and when you dock the Switch it has a brief delay while switching to the external gpu.
She really needs to stop with that.
Any "delay" when docking is likely just the normal hdmi handshake time when connecting a device and changing resolution.
I'm confident that Nintendo only has one Nvidia SoC on the system, that has different power states and clock frequencies. Any perceived performance difference when portable is down to the SoC downclocking. Although again I'm not necessarily convinced of visible performance differences in games, a game like Mario Kart wil run at 60fps regardless, the only difference in my mind will be resolution. I'm doubtful games will have better AA, textures etc when docked.
Yes the delay may just be the HDMI negotiation, meanwhile the clocks and hw refresh would be all done silently on the Switch, but it has to wait for HDMI negotiation to figure out what the max specs of the TV are so the HW adjusts it's output signal.
Yes, no way, even if there is no SOC on the Dock, only RAM, it would need a super fast special link.
The positive thing with the Switch could be that Nvidia have designed a powerful SoC that wouldn't normally make sense in a portable only device due to the heat and battery considerations, but when docked it wouldn't apply, and then when portable they'd simply reduce the clock frequency to fit inline with a portable device. The other advantage would also be that the Switch is actively cooled, so the SoC could run at an even higher frequency than if it was in a portable only, passively cooled device.
Interesting, that could make sense with the press release announcement of notifying "scalable processor" ... but people get fooled by the word "custom", it's always custom with consoles, it doesn't mean necessairly more powerful.
When I asked Emily about it a few weeks ago, she said it would be a handheld with active cooling, meaning the fan is in the tablet.
I think that's plausible because devices with passive cooling usually don't have output or intake channels like this, they just have ribs or dots on a larger area, seems like a fan could be inside, or wait, it could go again with the other side that it's meant to be as a fan exaust but the fan being in the dock and channeled through there only when docked, like the earlier ideas suggested.
As I said the reason tablets and phones aren't more powerful isn't really because the technology isn't there, it's more down to heat and battery concerns.
While docked those concerns wouldn't apply.
Higher clock speeds when docked is pretty much 99% in my opinion. It makes perfect sense. Battery life or heat isn't a concern at that point.
All I'd say is that doesn't mean "overclocked" though, as that technically means that it would be run beyond manufacturer specifications. It's more that when the device is undocked the SoC is "underclocked"
Yes that's right, John Carmack with his GearVR experiments, i've been listening to his keynotes and tweets, he's always been saying about heat and battery when it comes to GearVR, and of the android OS not allowing him to maximize all the resources, he was trying to put max power and overheat all cores and he had trouble with all the background processes trying to meddle with the VR app and slowing it down, he jokes he wanted Samsung to make a special piece (cheat) of HW command that when activated from GearVR it would throw all the OS system processes and background apps on one underclocked CPU core to get the heck away so he can squeeze more out to get better VR experience ... *evil laugh*
Ofcourse let's remind that people shoudn't use "overclocked" term, that's not right at all, the Switch will run with elevated clocks, or "boosted" clocks, or "Max Performance" mode, or "max power" which will be normal, overclock signifies something done out of bounds of the original intent, in this case the Max Power mode will be intended and ofcourse covered by warranty.
Wii U graphics are fine for me, I don't need this illusive dock to turn Switch into PS4 Pro territory. Just make it all smooth and give me 1080p. That's really all I want out of the dock.
With more room to spare, you don't need to think it in a way of piling up the graphics, but you can have more things happening on the screen, even with Metroid Prime which should be kept true to it's genre, I don't think it would be bad by using up the available power to display all kinds of things in the background, not all on the number of enemies or action, I don't want to turn it into some kind of a SeriousSam esque, but when you get into a big room, the ones were a battle usually breaks out, or one of those where only once in the progression moves out, you could have one big fight with no problem on 1080p@60 - and with boss fights you'd just have more opportunities in spicing up the whole room, the level of detail, all that that goes with metroid prime, you have all kinds of missiles, bombs, lazers, all that counts as objects on scree, I think there's a big fps drop when some of those artillery bombs land and there's a lot of smoke, yes, smoke, steam, fog, a ton of particles, that's a big resource hog. And the view distance, at least not so much in Metroid Prime when it's not meant to be open world and that's not a bad thing in this genre, they would not be forced to always confine the game path with huge rocks on all sides, and things could go on over there, not necessarily player accessible or controllable, but maybe we could see things like the Pirate Frigate crashing, or at least the cutscene of it, and maybe you'd be able to see better from some viewpoint, in MP1 you can only see like one small side of the Frigate. And the whole MP3 intro in space, you don't need to make MP into Starfox, but you can show that cutscene that much better if you have more processing power without turning the game into something else.
In MP3 you have that planet when it's suspended up in the atmosphere, on Elysia, but they did a good job making that with the static background, the whole thing is just 2D image, the dust below and the clouds above, there's no dynamic anything, I'm okay it's not needed for this type of game, but surely it does make it a bit better if they CAN do it. So even if it's not the focus, I rather have gameplay top notch, however, when the gameplay is perfect, all the other things still count because they "add ontop" and that's what raises the whole feel of the game to make it from a great to a legendary status, when all those things come into play, the audio as well, audio's much more important that people think because it's something that plays in the background and if it's not good you'll notice, if it's good you'll just not think about it, and if the bitrate is great it makes it even better, many games skimp on audio quality, because it somehow seems like it's less important.
All these things could be applied when they fit, without dictating the gameplay or affecting the FPA genre.
Super smash bros could turn that into 120FPS haha, for professional tournaments. For example, certainly this is not a joke, the new UHD recommendations like Rec 2020 do have 120p in mind. And hey, the Rec 2020 color space or HDR/WCG is like the best example of what I mean, stuff like that can be applied over the old IPs without affecting their original gameplay feel at all, only improving them, so this is what more GPU room offers.
It ofcourse all depends on the director and the supervisors to really have all the details in check and really not , because with all these extra power, generally speaking, it's easy that developers could get spoiled and just totally change the whole direction, kinda oh see we can do this and that now, and it's kinda a game that get's designed around some kind of a graphical demo, which is not optimal.
Interestingly, that picture should kill any speculation that there's some sort of extra processing hardware in the dock. To support the kind of bandwidth between the dock and the console that a coprocessor or GPU would require you would need some sort of wide, many-pin connector along the bottom of the console, and you can't see anything like that in the picture. USB-C isn't going to cut it.
What is the white bar on the bottom then, it could be a female connector with white color inside of it and you can from that picture only see a tight angle, I can even see the pins if true. Now yes, i'm biased toward a SCD either in Dock or External Sold Separately, but it does kinda look like a barcode as well, so not sure, the image is not high-rez enough.
But come on people, who says this is the final look, the WiiU Gamepad also changed quite noticably, buttons moved, curves, geometry, sticks, etc.
Laura asked on twitter how external Graphic Cards work with USB-C on a pc, so Switch could really use USB-C or she working on something different.
Look, people, there is no way USB Type-C is used, it's not even USB3, it would have to look like this:
It's not enough even for just HDMI output even at max, not even mentioning input passthrou - The USB-C is used for charging and to connect devices, extra battery packs, possibly some kind of pairing if that doesn't already work wirelessly.
Emily Rodgers said active cooled, what I wonder is if the fan is in the tablet or the dock.
Maybe the dock is so fat because it has a fan in it, blowing air in the bottom vent of the Switch and up out the top. While mobile the seemingly large heatsink if it goes from top to bottom would provide decent passive transfer to air being open on both sides, and while docked the docks fan would let it run at full clock speeds.
If all that is right it's remarkably close to what I wanted and envisioned back when the NX was rumoured to be a tablet. A thickish tablet with a pass through heatsink that would be cooled on the dock.
Those 2 wide holes could be the ventilation channels, simply placed on the back side vs on the bottom side as I originally speculated, but they don't look like holes, it probably covered by an anti-dust mesh (long post already so I cut your image out)
EDIT1:
The IR pointer thing is probably real (but anything "real" in such situations we need to read as 99%) I was about to make the suggestion at some point but forgot.
http://letsplayvideogames.com/2016/...ight-joy-con-offers-ir-pointer-functionality/
EDIT2:
Okay, after all this, I'll share my wildest idea yet, what if the JoyCons sides are modular, or more appriprately, extendable, not the JoyCons it self having a SCD, but that you could buy separately, extra "JoyCon shaped" Expansion units that you would attach on the sides when you don't need the JoyCons since you're docked, and you could buy ones with more RAM for example or more CPU, but I think for simplicity they may come with a SOC, of 1 ARM CPU with 4 Cores, and let's say 1GB of more RAM and sold for 30 dollars for example, so the SCD connector could be hidden in there where the JoyCon attachments are, but more deeper inside the rails, but the JoyCons wouldn't use that extra high-speed bus, they would just use their own input connector also in there that we can't see.
We could be in for those Expansion pack & Rumble Pack times again. The joycons could actually be purely wireless without needing the input connector, but im not sure how well will that go with hardcore tournaments if the lag issue isn't fully optimized. The Pro controllers could have an option to be wired through their USBC and to the Dock external USB port.