bigdaddygamebot
Member
I can't keep track of these things. Is that 4 or 8 Gamecubes duct taped together then?
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A Nintendo Switch has been taken apart
- Thread starter Dystify
- Start date
I can't keep track of these things. Is that 4 or 8 Gamecubes duct taped together then?
You want to point out a single post in this thread from such a person? I'm pretty optimistic and even I think fp32 472gflops is the best we can assume and that the nvidia advantage over AMD is going to be in the TEENS at best, fp16 being the best case scenario would allow it to be noticeably weaker than XB1, but run the same games at reduced quality, if all the stars align that is.
Skittzo0413
Member
The Denver cores there are a big red flag to me. Going from A57s in one devkit to Denver in another would be a problem for developers, right? That honestly doesn't look like the most reliable leak.
First of all, can you back up your claim that Snake Pass on XB1 is 1080p/60fps? I've never seen any XB1 footage and the PS4 version is 1080p 60fps but not a locked 60fps, while the Switch footage is 1080p and locked 30fps. And was also ported just a month ago, so it might not be the final version.
And second, we're saying it's possible that the Switch can get close to those levels effectively for exclusives, and not likely for ports. Any console will perform a lot better for a properly optimized exclusive than it will for a multiplat, this isn't some magic or secret sauce. The Switch is no exception there. If the Eurogamer clocks are final, we'll essentially have a ceiling of "effective PS4/XB1 GFlops" around 800-900 I think. A bit higher for the Foxconn clocks.
ShadowFox08
Member
Could be 40-50% as powerful as xbone, after counting architectural differences. Not counting fp16 though.
Schnozberry
Member
Anybody seriously considering the idea that Nintendo would move from A57 to Denver just for giggles in between dev kit revisions is huffing paint.
He is assuming a custom CPU, not knowing that it is one. Though Nvidia's Tegra Volta is suppose to have a new custom CPU iirc, so who knows, since we have no confirmation of final hardware. This is all google translated, so not the best way to read this stuff.
The big reason to believe this IMO? it's a defective unit, that he seems to have access to, the 4th CPU doesn't read right according to the picture as far as I can tell. Also this picture happened within a day of the tear down and from china which is where the tear down came from... Seems like a pretty reasonable assumption to look this leak over more.
http://tieba.baidu.com/photo/p?kw=n...d81463e01213fb80ebd847d433fd12f2eb8389478/pn1 here is the original, maybe someone can translate this?
Edit: was there any back story to the unit in the OP? China doesn't have a retail unit for sale AFAIK, wouldn't this unit being in China mean it is a defective unit, such as a devkit? I don't think it would be possible to get your hands on a retail unit very easily, since they ship from Foxconn directly outside the company and defective units are destroyed, right?
I just can't read through that, I get a headache. Is it translated with Google?
Can you quote the part that says that the benchmark is running on the teared-down unit in the OP? And why is it believable?
Edit: I managed to push myself to read the whole thing, I still don't see how it's linked with the unit in the OP. Bonus: somebody in the main thread warning that the poster of the images is a scammer.
randomdevdude
Neo Member
If Eurogamer is right the CPU is woefully underpowered.
Negotiator
Member
Why edit the post?
blu
Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
A multitude of mobile GPUs that are still in use today use only fp16 in their fragment shaders.
BTW, what's local promotion?
runnin_blue
Banned
"Woefully underpowered"
As compared to what? You are a dev, looking at the most impressive/powerful portable system ever and you say the CPU is woefully underpowered? Ok.
EDIT: Oh, I see you deleted your original post. Changed your mind about being mod-vetted hey?
first try was much better
Polygonal_Sprite
Gold Member
Nintendo want you to focus on the Switch unique selling point - a modern console that you can take on the go with you. Not raw specs which would be directly compared to PS4 Pro and Scorpio specs and laughed at.
I like your avatar
mario_O
Member
Chickened out?
I still think you're right. But it will be an incredible handheld-tablet anyway.Skittzo0413
Member
Nintendo want you to focus on the Switch unique selling point - a modern console that you can take on the go with you. Not raw specs which would be directly compared to PS4 Pro and Scorpio specs and laughed at.
I like your avatar
I'm pretty sure Nintendo stopped releasing specs for their consoles ever since Sony managed to twist their Gamecube specs such that people still to this day think it was way weaker than the PS2. They now see no benefit in officially announcing specs if anything they say can be turned against them in some way.
Better to let everyone expect very little then (potentially) exceed expectations.
In your original post why did you keep saying "likely" for everything if you have a source with the official specs?
Skittzo0413
Member
It's just a little odd to me to claim to have a legit source showing specs, then claim that it's likely X or Y, rather than saying it definitely. Oh well, if he/she doesn't want it out there that's fine.
Has anyone figured out yet what the unit from the OP is? A final retail unit really doesn't make sense due to showing up torn down on a Chinese website days before the press are getting theirs.
calc84maniac
Member
I'm pretty sure local promotion would mean using FP32 in intermediate steps (that is, input and output are FP16 but the calculations inbetween might have to be higher precision to avoid inaccuracy).
Though I guess the main reason you'd do that instead of straight FP32 would be for memory usage or bandwidth reasons?
blu
Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
Switch's SoC has been 'indirectly' confirmed to be TX1 based to hell and back. I'm not sure what you're trying to prove here.
BTW, for the record: the one canonical way to confirm what uarch Switch uses would be to read MIDR_EL1 register (main ID register, Exception Level 1), which holds that info in plain sight. Alas, that register is normally above user-space privilege (Exception Level), and it's upon the good will of the kernel to pass down this info. Or pass it down truthfully, and not as 0xdeadbeef.
Ok, makes sense. For some reason when I read it I was thinking in graphics algorithms terms, and not just straight type promotion.
Not necessarily. For instance, you may have an accumulator that gathers quantities from a loop - even though all such quantities might be fp16, and the accumulator be eventually reduced back to fp16 before further use, the very act of doing the accumulations as fp32 could produce more precise results.
I'm guessing his info leads him to believe DF clocks are final, but he doesn't know definitively.
Next Friday can't come soon enough, I say.....
Which would make sense as the Gflops mentioned would be doable for a Tegra in half precision. There's nothing surprising about that number.
I'm not entirely sure the statement that the switch CPU is woefully underpowered is entirely fair. Just by looking at dmips. Is equivilent to a 2ghz espresso for general purpose code. And in terms of simd and other features it's a huge leap. I think for for Devs it will be a case of "it's nothing special but we can work with it and at least it's not killing us like the Wii u ppc did"
I think its more that its without context. If the CPU is well balanced relative to the rest of the hardware than the context makes the statement meaningless, or if not then the statement makes sense. But to just compare it against different hardware in completely different regimes and form factors, and call that woefully underpowered is a case of missing the forest for the trees.
Its really more a matter of bottlenecks and imbalances in hardware, and of course what is tenable to achieve at a given time for a given price.
Running a Pentium III with a 1080Ti is woefully underpowered.
blu
Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
My dual-socket Tualatin would like to have a word with you ;pRunning a Pentium III with a 1080Ti is woefully underpowered.
I know the point you are making but comparing the size of an electronic doesn't really mean much. Otherwise those 60s era pcs would rock. Maybe switch is a quantum computer
More seriously while the bandwidth of switch appears low the Maxwell chips have some very nice tech to make it less impactful overall. Tile based rendeting and delta color compression so itll punch anove weight. I am hoping for 60% of an xb1 in docked mode.
Good to know your true expectations.
In defense of myself, tell me, Do you never read people thinking it can use pascal and have 600 or more GFlops? Am I the first to tell about the possibility of it use A72 CPU? How many people do you seem hopping for a 30% better permanece in practice than in paper because Nvidia?
The only thing I do is put all these expectations together.
http://m.neogaf.com/showthread.php?t=1342575&page=100000
People assume it is 1080p 60fps on that thread and no one try to fix it. So I assume it's true.
Size? Really?
I mean, is there a weak argument than the size?
Schnozberry
Member
Yeah, as with everything, you have to ask "compared to what?"
It's a huge upgrade from Wii U, and it fits in a tiny little tablet form factor. You can say "they should have crammed in 4SM's, 4 A73 + 4 A53 cores, 6GB of RAM on a 128-bit bus, an all day battery and a 1080p display" all day, but then again who is going to buy it for $600-700?
That's great to hear. I was kinda worried it'd be too heavy to play in bed for long play sessions.
Schnozberry
Member
Actually, it's a stronger argument than you think. The laws of thermodynamics are a real thing that must be obeyed.
blu
Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
It's a physical world these things operate in. Size does matter.
Skittzo0413
Member
Have you actually read that thread? As you can tell I posted in it quite a bit. There's only PS4 footage shown, not XB1. And most people seem to agree that the PS4 footage is not locked at 60fps.
EDIT:
Snake Pass to me is an example of a game that shows off how well the Switch will punch above its weight. You have the PS4 version struggling to maintain 60fps, and the Switch version locked at 30fps with essentially the same visuals (I've heard different lighting but I haven't seen any appreciable changes) which, theoretically would put the Switch version at >50% of the PS4 version.
Whereas people going by pure flops keep reminding us that the Switch has less than 25% the flops of the PS4 going by the July devkit specs and Eurogamer clocks. So performing >50% should indicate that flops tell a very small part of the overall story.
Its Quite Toasty
Banned
Around 30 n64's
Darklor01
Might need to stop sniffing glue
Does Ouya count as a console?
Lots of talk about how switch can be stronger than we think, but for me, that game give us a good idea of what is possible:
Snake Pass is 1080p 30fps on switch and 1080p 60fps on Xone.
That game beauty, but it's slow, with not much thing on screen and a repetitive scenery.
If Switch can't make a game like that run in the same quality of the Xbox one, then, it is weaker to that machine, don't matter how much FP16 and Nvidia GFlops help it.
OK... does the XBox One version run at 1080p 60fps? Because I haven't seen that confirmed. Even if it does you're assuming that means it could look better on XBox One but not so on Switch. Well what if it's unstable 60fps on Xbox One and stable 30fps on Switch? What would that tell us? Also what on earth does any of that have to do with fp16?, this is a port and not a UE4 game afaik.
Skittzo0413
Member
It is a UE4 game actually, and I don't know where he got that performance on XB1 from because it's 1080p and an unstable 60fps on PS4. There's no XB1 footage yet as far as I can tell.
If Nintendo would treat this as a handheld first that you can play on a TV rather than a console that you can take on the go, their situation would be much better. Its an amazing handheld.
But they're going with "homeconsole first that you can take on the go" narrative,and that's why comparisons to competitors are warranted.
But they're going with "homeconsole first that you can take on the go" narrative,and that's why comparisons to competitors are warranted.
You're talking complete nonsense. Nobody thinks Switch is 600Gflops fp32, I really don't think you understand what you're reading here (no offence, just you clearly don't have a good understanding of the English language).
BTW if those A57 CPU's weren't "underclocked" they'd be twice the performance of PS4's CPU cores, imagine if those dogs were underclocked..
Fair enough, but like you I've been unable to find any info on the XBox One version.
LordOfChaos
Member
Well, yeah, that's actually a good argument, since we only have 3.5 years of fabrication plant advancement to account for and the Switch most likely isn't even using the most advanced ones. You can only cool so much chip in such a small enclosure feasibly, and can only have so much die size to improve performance without raising cooling costs within a budget.
Think of how much GPU you can manage in a 4 pound laptop vs a 12 pound desktop. Even if the desktop is from 2013 and the laptop is from now, it's not enough to overcome the thermal gap.
Especially as we now see a 120mm2 die, similar to a TX1, and most things are pointing to 20nm so far.
it's both but it's clearly a handheld first
who cares about PR spin, just look at the actual hardware
I thought Nintendo was actually pitching it as a hybrid, not cementing if it was either and NoA was saying a home console on the go.
Because it matters if Nintendo treats it as the 3DS successor.That would mean its gonna get an amazing stream of games.
As a home console,it has less chances of getting third parties due to power gap.
So your entire argument is based on nobody correcting an assumption?, amazing. Are you even serious here?
BlastProcessing
Member
well like I said it's both. it's also already getting a bunch of games that would be right at home on 3DS. focus less on the PR and more on what's actually happening. let the pudding be the proof, as they say.
mario_O
Member
All Nintendo's ads show both modes, docked and handheld, even the tabletop mode. And people in the West prefer home consoles, they're not going to downplay it.