Wait, so the leaker himself explicitly said the A73 (or A72) piece is his own speculation? I thought the OP stated that there was some power draw reason why it couldn't be A57 based on his info. If that's all 100% speculation then that certainly changes the picture for me.
Well, I can't speak for what the leaker said precisely, but the reddit translation says the following:
*Speculated CPU is arm A73 pascal, much powerful than X1, when tested it only shows ARM_V8 structure hence the speculation
z0m3le then says that it has to be A72 or A73, as A57 wouldn't be able to clock this high. This is true if we were talking about actual game clocks for portable mode, but from the evidence given to us all we can say is that these are the clocks used for thermal stress testing, which may bear no relation to clocks used in game. And from a stress testing point of view, A57 cores could absolutely get to 1.78GHz on 20nm, so there's no way to rule them out.
Thraktor, let me blow your mind.
What happens if you downclock a GTX 1060 to 768mhz? You get 1.77 teraflops.
1770 / 384 (Switch docked gpu) ~ 4.6094
720p to 1080p is a 2.25 time bump in resolution. Switch provided 2.5 the power in dock mode. An extra of 11%.
1080p to 4k is a 4 time bump in resolution. The SCD would provide 4.6094 times the power. An extra of 15%.
I don't see the reason to take a GPU like GP106 and clock it that low, compared to using a smaller (and cheaper) Pascal at higher clocks. As a point of reference, GP104 (which is the chip used in the GTX1080, with twice the SMs of GP106) consumes just 36W at 1GHz. A GP106-equivalent at 1-1.2GHz would probably only consume Wii U levels of power, and could be cooled with a fairly small heatsink and fan.
I want to see this SCD also be Nintendo's VR solution with a 1080p screen in it, but it set fire to peoples eyes due to it also containing a fucking 1060.
So long as it comes with a neck brace to handle the weight I'm fine.
Seriously, though, although I'm intrigued to see what kind of craziness would result from Nintendo's strap-a-Switch-to-your-face VR patent, I'd really prefer if they just supported OpenVR headsets if they ever do VR. I don't own a separate TV for each of my consoles, and I'd prefer not to have to deal with a separate headset for each of them either.
I mean, if devkits are already out with an SCD, shouldn't this thing be coming out relatively soon? Like early next year?
It's hard to say. If it's just an off-the-shelf GP106 being used as a substitute while a custom chip is developed, then it could be a while. Nintendo were using kits with off-the-shelf Radeon GPUs for Wii U about two years before it launched. On the other hand if it's a late dev kit and they're just using the GP106 as-is (or have a similar custom GPU already completed) then in theory it could be released as early as the end of this year.
It could just be test cases.
This supposed dock would costs several (3-5) hundreds of dollars, lol. I can't see it hitting retail for at least a year if not two.
Well, it may not have to be that expensive. In its most stripped-down form (where it's just the GPU and 4GB of RAM) it could conceivably be (relatively) affordable. The GP106 is about 200mm² (compared to about 300mm² for PS4 Pro and potentially ~400mm² for Scorpio), it would have half the RAM of the PS4 Pro, and it wouldn't include a controller, disc drive, hard drive, or a number of other components. In theory it could be quite a bit cheaper than the "competition". Of course in this scenario you need a Switch for it to work, so the total cost of both a Switch and an SCD would almost certainly be more than the cost of a PS4 Pro or a Scorpio.
Alternatively, if they were to take the route of making it a fully-fledged home console, then you have to add the cost of a CPU, a controller, potentially a hard drive, etc., etc., and you're into PS4 Pro/Scorpio territory.
I imagine they would sell it as a bundle. This would basically act as a complete console to compete with PS4 Pro and Scorpio for the attention of people who want 4K gaming. Existing Switch owners could purchase just the dock in order to upgrade at a lower price. Assuming they can develop games to scale easily between each configuration, this would be a pretty good value proposition for current switch owners to upgrade for a lower price, and also for developers to easily make games for a wider range of consumer preferences.
EDIT: To explain a little bit more clearly, the proposed Switch configuration would ideally be able to run the same game in every graphics mode, which would seem to me to avoid the trap set by previous add-on setups like 32X or Sega CD. If anything, it might widen the audience for an individual game by being able to cater to a larger range of consumer tastes, such as a standard low cost Switch option for casual gamers vs the Switch + SCD bundle for gamers who care about 4K.
The problem with selling it as a bundle is that you have to include all the Switch's components (screen, battery, etc., etc.) in the cost, pushing the price up above PS4 Pro and Scorpio even though much of the target audience may not have any interest in the portable component. It would be cheaper, and sell to a wider audience, if they made it a stand-alone device which, if the player wants, can interact with their Switch. They could potentially sell it in an optional bundle with the Switch (Sony sold PS4 + Vita bundles for a while), but I can't see them doing that as the main SKU.
Didn't Todd Howard from Bethesda say he saw the most impressive demo he's ever seen from the Switch? The SCD patent is as old as the collaboration with Nvidia per Semiaccurates original leak, what if Nintendo has been shopping around this power dock with the switch from the beginning?
I'm with Skittzo0413 on this, I think it makes most sense as a demo of the HD rumble (which would be nice to see in Skyrim, actually). Besides, these dev kits were supposedly only manufactured in November, and if they had been demoing anything similar to this since last E3 I'm sure we would have heard of it.
Since no one actually reads the foxconn leak: "the software demo testing is millions of fish and running almost 8 days, there's no single frames drops" This was at the 1.78ghz and 921mhz. What we know of X1 would lead us to believe that such a demo would throttle.
It would lead us to believe that it would throttle
in the Shield TV. Throttling is a function of power delivery and cooling, which can change from one device to another even with an identical SoC. Switch could have more effective cooling, or be capable of delivering more power to the SoC, or it could simply have higher thermal limits applied, for the sake of the test (as they're stress-testing the cooling system).
Extra memory on the SoC seems unlikely. The leaker states a 10x10mm die area which is already smaller than the X1 having eDRAM or eSRAM takes a lot of die area that reduces the space available for the actual GPU on the die.
It depends on how much memory is added. Switch wouldn't need a full 32MB due to the tile-based rendering, so they could have only added a couple of MBs, which would be within the margin of error for a chip measured in millimetres on each side. There's also hardware they could remove from the TX1 (such as some of the video codec block) to reduce the size.
My mind can't roll with this from a messaging standpoint.
Reggie goes on talk shows and says the entire console is in the tablet, there's nothing in the dock.
They reveal the thing and set everyones minds to it having X level of performance. The keynote happened, advertising started, the site is up, gameplay video is up.
And then...What? Maybe a year or two down the line they advertise the new hardware addon? It just feels messy to me somehow, even more than the Pro/Scorpio.
There's also the technical side, with everything they've said it's a USB C port on the Switch, 5Gb/s if gen 1, 10Gb/s if gen 2...Thunderbolt 3 at 40Gb/s limits a card like the 1060 to ~85% of its performance.
There's also that it's Nintendos fanbase, how many would spend maybe 550 dollars for the more powerful version of their console? And if a small number of people buy it, who would develop for it? You could say first party games matter most on Nintendo platforms, but do those need a dock with roughly a 1060? They could use some AA and AF lipstick, sure, but...
I guess I just have a lot of questions
Yeah, it's confusing.
I should say that I do absolutely expect Nintendo to release new Switch hardware over the next few years, but I was assuming something along the lines of:
2017: Switch
2018: Switch Pocket (~5" screen, cheaper, no removable controls, no dock, uses Switch SoC at portable clocks)
2019: Switch Home (traditional home console, maybe 1.5-2TF for 4K Nintendo games and 1080p third party ports)
Nintendo have talked about iOS and Android and "brothers in a family of systems" for quite a while, and from both technological and business points of view it makes sense to have a few different form factors which all play the same game. Having a hybrid as the first one also makes some kind of sense in terms of trying to hit as wide an audience as possible before the more specialised devices hit.
That said, the concept of a SCD dock doesn't really fit that narrative. Instead of a "buy whatever you want, they all play the same games!" message, it's a "buy this device, but only if you have this other device" message, and if it's as powerful as the rumour suggests then there's also "oh, by the way, some games will only play on the second device, but you still need the first device to use the second one". It also just seems like overkill for what Nintendo would want or need from a home console-like setup.
But there's not a whole lot else the rumoured dev kit could be. A portable or hybrid Switch 2 with a GP106 is obviously preposterous. A dedicated home console wouldn't have any need for a screen attached. I'd happily subscribe to any other explanation of what it might be, but from the possibilities I can think of the "turbo dock" seems the most likely, and the fact that it fits Nintendo's SCD patent is another point in its favour.
Regarding USB-C, Nintendo is free to use its own alt-mode without restricting itself to USB 3 or Thunderbolt or anything like that, and benefits from the fact that it would be a direct connection, with no signal degradation which would be expected over a long cable. USB-C alt mode gives (as far as I can tell) 10 data pins to play with, which would be enough for, as an example, a dual-lane PCIe 3 connection, providing 2GB/s (16Gb/s). Of course they could use whatever protocol they want, but PCIe is a useful short-range example.