Phone's CPUs have different target than gaming devices CPUs. Phones target burst performance for rendering websites as fast as possible between long periods of low taxing time, while a gaming device will target sustained performance that must be kept for hours. If this was only "lol Nintendo" thing, then why did godly Sony clocked its high-end handheld (Vita) at 333Mhz on a chip with potential for 2Ghz?
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Digital Foundry: Nintendo Switch CPU and GPU clock speeds revealed
- Thread starter Vashetti
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Phone's CPUs have different target than gaming devices CPUs. Phones target burst performance for rendering websites as fast as possible between long periods of low taxing time, while a gaming device will target sustained performance that must be kept for hours. If this was only "lol Nintendo" thing, then why did godly Sony clocked its high-end handheld (Vita) at 333Mhz on a chip with potential for 2Ghz?
Coffee Dog
Banned
It's an argument for the necessity of it vs cost/portability for the games that nintendo makes.
Aside from massive open world games, most games released this gen were being done years earlier on less powerful hardware (which is a lot cheaper). If your games aren't going to need it, why invest in it?
AtomicShroom
Member
Keep dreaming. I'd be surprised if Nintendo sells it below $299. This is why they're so intent on pushing the whole "home console" narrative. They want you to feel like the fact that you can carry what they call a "home console" anywhere with you to play on the go is such a groundbreaking plus value feature that it warrants a premium price.
wonderful103
Member
dp
So you wanna say whole package right. So if i bought a ps4 or xbox 1 right now, i could use it to play games, surf the web, or as an entertainment system. As of right now, what can the switch really do except for play games. Couple that with the ever decreasing price on the PS4 and X1, and the fact that people can play both first party exclusives and the newest AAA games on those consoles, which seem to have more sales than most of Nintendo's games
PdotMichael
Banned
So Nintendo is making a mistake with releasing a more powerful console?
Yeah, and that specific "secret sauce" that we do not know about yet is theorised by Thraktor to be an increase in computational units (the mentioned SMs in his post) on the chip. The standard Tegra X1 has 2 SMs, but if the custom version in the Switch has 3 or even 4, the graphical power would increase by factor 1.5 or 2.0 respectively. That would be quite the secret sauce in my opinion.
Not gonna happen. At least $250.
Kissenkopf
Banned
Actually it is this way since the early 90s. Nintendo often released the weaker hardware than the competition but they alwqys managed to make the better games. The reason why they are still here and the others are not.
PdotMichael
Banned
It wouldn't be secret sauce but just putting a more expensive and powerful chip in your system
Another question I have is how Nintendo is handling cart sizes and internal storage. Nintendo 1st party games on the WiiU were actually pretty small and Nintendo's developers did a great job of getting games down to 6GBs and often less. But 3rd party games can be huge, maybe pushing the limits on physical media and clogging up internal storage with just a few big 3rd party titles.
ummm...no
According to Emily and VB it's 16-64GB carts. So 16, 32 and 64 variants.
2.5x stronger than a Wii U and equal to a Wii U in portable mode? sounds good to me, why are people complaining
Skittzo0413
Member
Anyway, it looks like it's far too early to draw any conclusions about overall power. This is a very good wakeup call that with Nintendo it can always be far worse than we expect though.
Oh gotcha. Good then, I think that's better for your sanity.
Oh gotcha. Good then, I think that's better for your sanity.
Yeah, okay, but that is kinda just semantics in this case. It is something we wouldn't know about yet, so in that sense I called it secret sauce. It is not a cloud computing type of secret sauce obviously.
EventHorizon
Member
Nintendo could have been concerned that for compatibility the portable mode might need to run faster, so included the fan in the unit to keep the option of increasing the fan speed and upping the clock when needed. Other possibilities include the fact that in portable mode the Switch could be run in less than ideal circumstances. Think of the Switch being used for long periods of time on a playground in the sun in Nevada.
Finally, the problem might be the battery which has tighter heat tolerances, not the computing components. If you combine the more extreme conditions a Switch is likely to be operated in, with its small size, and a battery that needs to be kept coolish, then having a fan on the device makes some sense.
Interfectum
Member
Yup, this is key for me.
th3sicknness
Member
The fan is the real kicker here.. is it at all possible that the fan was added to the patents for the portable device BUT may not be in the final retail product due to moving in another direction in final development?
I know that the portable has vents in it (which would suggest an internal fan), but it doesnt rule out being passively cooled by heatsink and allowing the heat to escape from a vent somewhere or allowing the dock to blow air through the device?
AtomicShroom
Member
From leaks, internal storage is 32GB (with support for more via MicroSD), and Game Cards will start at 16GB for launch, but there's nothing stopping that capacity to increase over time. Plenty to contain most WiiU-caliber games. Nintendo's own Wii U games rarely exceeded 10GB.
Tom Nook Sawyer
Member
Which is why I said 2-3x. LKD suggested a range between $250-300; there's no smartphone at that price that could run BotW
Good job there won't be any big 3rd party games with these specs then./rimshot
Can't say I'm terribly surprised. At the right price, I'm still in. If this thing sells like hotcakes, I'm sure the third party support will be there but don't expect any legit ports. It will very likely be another "Nintendo Machine", which honestly I'm a bit burned out on.
Kissenkopf
Banned
It's more a wake up call for those people who expect Nintendo to build a Xbox one in a handheld while only charging 200 dollar for it and still have a better battery life than the 3DS.
We don't know how all of these things mash together so I would still wait for january until the "Nintendo is doomed" nonsense can begin again.
LightOfTruth
Member
It is not disappointing for being less powerful than a PS4. It's disappointing because it is not a substantial increase in power compared to Wii U. That's all I personally wanted, and most other sensible Nintendo fans as well. I mean this thing isn't even as powerful as a PS3. It hurts to say this as a huge Nintendo fan, but this is a joke. It will release severely outclassed in power compared to other phones and tablets in the market. There's no way to spin this-it is hugely disappointing, and does not instill confidence regarding third party support either.
I'm now expecting this thing to cost $200.
Edit: I was very wrong about the PS3 comment, but my point still holds.
I'm now expecting this thing to cost $200.
Edit: I was very wrong about the PS3 comment, but my point still holds.
Head.spawn
Junior Member
Thread too big.. do we have any Nvidia Shield X1 benchmarks to compare game performance?
I don't know a single person, either online or IRL that has one of those things.
I don't know a single person, either online or IRL that has one of those things.
This is absolutely more powerful than the PS3
Skittzo0413
Member
Yeah I'm wondering the same thing. If that is the case, and there are just 2 SMs and the 4x A57 cores at these clock speeds then I'm betting they're actually going to aim for $199, which would probably give it more success than more power at $250 to be honest.
It's more a wake up call for those people who expect Nintendo to build a Xbox one in a handheld while only charging 200 dollar for it and still have a better battery life than the 3DS.
We don't know how all of these things mash together so I would still wait for january until the "Nintendo is doomed" nonsense can begin again.
I mean, most of us decided that it should be 512GFLOPS when docked at the very least, seeing as how it was based on a Tegra X1 which reaches that performance. The fact that it's far lower than even that is the shocker here.
It's not just possible. It's more than likely.
Kissenkopf
Banned
If it is an increease to the Wii U it is more powerful than the PS3. Come on people...try to think before posting.
maaaaan, fuck muchomalo for creating this narrative that the switch is weaker than the ps3
krizalidzero
Member
They are nice. Games look sharper than an Xbox 360 or PS3, and cleaner too, but they don't look "better" somehow.
Anyway, I am not convinced by this leak.
Joelstinton14
Member
We don't really know what the Switch does until it's reveal in January.
Well i expect it to function a tablet to some degree, have netflix/prime etc. Be able to take it away with me, use it as a handheld, use it when my friends/family are using the tv, be able to play local multiplayer in a number of flexible ways. Also the design of the device is smart and engaging. (On first reveal at least). More importantly, Nintendo were able to demonstrate how the Switch would fit into peoples lives (without revealing the whole thing as well). It is attractive and engaging. It is desirable. Titles like Pokemon Go and Mario Run also shows there a healthy appetite for other games than just latest AAA blockbusters. There isn't a defined way to exist in the industry.
TheGreatMightyPoo
Banned
The light of complete horseshit.
Like a Wii U Pro, but with much better CPU, double the RAM and much better off-screen play.
D
Deleted member 465307
Unconfirmed Member
I haven't had time to read through every response here, so I'm probably repeating what others have already said, but here are my thoughts on the matter, anyway:
CPU Clock
This isn't really surprising, given (as predicted) CPU clocks stay the same between portable and docked mode to make sure games don't suddenly become CPU limited when running in portable mode.
The overall performance really depends on the core configuration. An octo-core A72 setup at 1GHz would be pretty damn close to PS4's 1.6GHZ 8-core Jaguar CPU. I don't necessarily expect that, but a 4x A72 + 4x A53 @ 1GHz should certainly be able to provide "good enough" performance for ports, and wouldn't be at all unreasonable to expect.
Memory Clock
This is also pretty much as expected as 1.6GHz is pretty much the standard LPDDR4 clock speed (which I guess confirms LPDDR4, not that there was a huge amount of doubt). Clocking down in portable mode is sensible, as lower resolution means smaller framebuffers means less bandwidth needed, so they can squeeze out a bit of extra battery life by cutting it down.
Again, though, the clock speed is only one factor. There are two other things that can come into play here. The second factor, obviously enough, is the bus width of the memory. Basically, you're either looking at a 64 bit bus, for 25.6GB/s, or a 128 bit bus, for 51.2GB/s of bandwidth. The third is any embedded memory pools or cache that are on-die with the CPU and GPU. Nintendo hasn't shied away from large embedded memory pools or cache before (just look at the Wii U's CPU, its GPU, the 3DS SoC, the n3DS SoC, etc., etc.), so it would be quite out of character for them to avoid such customisations this time around. Nvidia's GPU architectures from Maxwell onwards use tile-based rendering, which allows them to use on-die caches to reduce main memory bandwidth consumption, which ties in quite well with Nintendo's habits in this regard. Something like a 4MB L3 victim cache (similar to what Apple uses on their A-series SoCs) could potentially reduce bandwidth requirements by quite a lot, although it's extremely difficult to quantify the precise benefit.
GPU Clock
This is where things get a lot more interesting. To start off, the relationship between the two clock speeds is pretty much as expected. With a target of 1080p in docked mode and 720p in undocked mode, there's a 2.25x difference in pixels to be rendered, so a 2.5x difference in clock speeds would give developers a roughly equivalent amount of GPU performance per pixel in both modes.
Once more, though, and perhaps most importantly in this case, any interpretation of the clock speeds themselves is entirely dependent on the configuration of the GPU, namely the number of SMs (also ROPs, front-end blocks, etc, but we'll assume that they're kept in sensible ratios).
Case 1: 2 SMs - Docked: 384 GF FP32 / 768 GF FP16 - Portable: 153.6 GF FP32 / 307.2 GF FP16
I had generally been assuming that 2 SMs was the most likely configuration (as, I believe, had most people), simply on the basis of allowing for the smallest possible SoC which could meet Nintendo's performance goals. I'm not quite so sure now, for a number of reasons.
Firstly, if Nintendo were to use these clocks with a 2 SM configuration (assuming 20nm), then why bother with active cooling? The Pixel C runs a passively cooled TX1, and although people will be quick to point out that Pixel C throttles its GPU clocks while running for a prolonged time due to heat output, there are a few things to be aware of with Pixel C. Firstly, there's a quad-core A57 CPU cluster at 1.9GHz running alongside it, which on 20nm will consume a whopping 7.39W when fully clocked. Switch's CPU might be expected to only consume around 1.5W, by comparison. Secondly, although I haven't been able to find any decent analysis of Pixel C's GPU throttling, the mentions of it I have found indicate that, although it does throttle, the drop in performance is relatively small, and as it's clocked about 100MHz above Switch to begin with it may only be throttling down to a 750MHz clock or so even under prolonged workloads. There is of course the fact that Pixel C has an aluminium body to allow for easier thermal dissipation, but it likely would have been cheaper (and mechanically much simpler) for Nintendo to adopt the same approach, rather than active cooling.
Alternatively, we can think of it a different way. If Switch has active cooling, then why clock so low? Again assuming 20nm, we know that a full 1GHz clock shouldn't be a problem for active cooling, even with a very small quiet fan, given the Shield TV (which, again, uses a much more power-hungry CPU than Switch). Furthermore, if they wanted a 2.5x ratio between the two clock speeds, that would give a 400MHz clock in portable mode. We know that the TX1, with 2 SMs on 20nm, consumes 1.51W (GPU only) when clocked at about 500MHz. Even assuming that that's a favourable demo for the TX1, at 20% lower clock speed I would be surprised if a 400MHz 2 SM GPU would consume any more than 1.5W. That's obviously well within the bounds for passive cooling, but even being very conservative with battery consumption it shouldn't be an issue. The savings from going from 400MHz to 300MHz would perhaps only increase battery life by about 5-10% tops, which makes it puzzling why they'd turn down the extra performance.
Finally, the recently published Switch patent application actually explicitly talks about running the fan at a lower RPM while in portable mode, and doesn't even mention the possibility of turning it off while running in portable mode. A 2 SM 20nm Maxwell GPU at ~300MHz shouldn't require a fan at all, and although it's possible that they've changed their mind since filing the patent in June, it begs the question of why they would even consider running the fan in portable mode if their target performance was anywhere near this.
Case 2: 3 SMs - Docked: 576 GF FP32 / 1,152 GF FP16 - Portable: 230.4 GF FP32 / 460.8 GF FP16
This is a bit closer to the performance level we've been led to expect, and it does make a little bit of sense from the perspective of giving a little bit over TX1 performance at lower power consumption. (It also matches reports of overclocked TX1s in early dev kits, as you'd need to clock a bit over the standard 1GHz to reach docked performance here.) Active cooling while docked makes sense for a 3 SM GPU at 768MHz, although wouldn't be needed in portable mode. It still leaves the question of why not use 1GHz/400MHz clocks, as even with 3 SMs they should be able to get by with passive cooling at 400MHz, and battery consumption shouldn't be that much of an issue.
Case 3: 4 SMs - Docked: 768 GF FP32 / 1,536 GF FP16 - Portable: 307.2 GF FP32 / 614.4 GF FP16
This would be on the upper limit of what's been expected, performance wise, and the clock speeds start to make more sense at this point, as portable power consumption for the GPU would be around the 2W mark, so further clock increases may start to effect battery life a bit too much (not that 400-500MHz would be impossible from that point of view, though). Active cooling would be necessary in docked mode, but still shouldn't be needed in portable mode (except perhaps if they go with a beefier CPU config than expected).
Case 4: More than 4 SMs
I'd consider this pretty unlikely, but just from the point of view of "what would you have to do to actually need active cooling in portable mode at these clocks", something like 6 SMs would probably do it (1.15 TF FP32/2.3 TF FP16 docked, 460 GF FP32/920 GF FP16 portable), but I wouldn't count on that. For one, it's well beyond the performance levels that reliable-so-far journalists have told us to expect, but it would also require a much larger die than would be typical for a portable device like this (still much smaller than PS4/XBO SoCs, but that's a very different situation).
TL
Each of these numbers are only a single variable in the equation, and we need to know things like CPU configuration, memory bus width, embedded memory pools, number of GPU SMs, etc. to actually fill out the rest of those equations to get the relevant info. Even on the worst end of the spectrum, we're still getting by far the most ambitious portable that Nintendo's ever released, which also doubles as a home console that's noticeably higher performing than Wii U, which is fine by me.
Ah, thanks for this. I was wondering what these clocks might say about SM count and knew this report was only half the story. I guess we'll just have to wait to see what the system can do.
Also, your last sentence makes me think of Shadow the Hedgehog. Were you intentionally trying to be edgy?
Graphics Horse
Member
The unit they've shown has some sort of fan vent, I doubt we'd see that disappear in these sort months since its announcement.
Nikana
Go Go Neo Rangers!
Second this
If I've learned anything from Nintendo rumors going as far back as the Revolution days, the negative, less powerful ones are usually the true ones. Unfortunately.
But I can understand people's disappointment, considering the Xbox/PS4 were outdated when they launched and have a very inefficient and weak CPU it was easy to think with 4 years and modern design that Nvidia and Nintendo would be able to make a machine that was at least close to the 3 year old guys while docked and maybe half on the go. It's looking however like that isn't even a close assumption. Doesn't seem like unreasonable expectations honestly and in many threads people were even commenting how "conservative" the estimates were for the NX compared to the WiiU which was admittedly overblown.
And for as long as I've been here(lurking or otherwise) I have yet to see an estimate as conservative as the ones we are seeing in this leak, so it makes sense how this is disappointing, especially with as much as Nvidia has been hyping the heck out of it's work on this thing(which IBM and AMD haven't done in regards to WiiU/Xbone/PS4) I expected some marvel of engineering featuring their most power efficient design to date.
Time will tell, but as I said above, the worst news is usually the right news.
But I can understand people's disappointment, considering the Xbox/PS4 were outdated when they launched and have a very inefficient and weak CPU it was easy to think with 4 years and modern design that Nvidia and Nintendo would be able to make a machine that was at least close to the 3 year old guys while docked and maybe half on the go. It's looking however like that isn't even a close assumption. Doesn't seem like unreasonable expectations honestly and in many threads people were even commenting how "conservative" the estimates were for the NX compared to the WiiU which was admittedly overblown.
And for as long as I've been here(lurking or otherwise) I have yet to see an estimate as conservative as the ones we are seeing in this leak, so it makes sense how this is disappointing, especially with as much as Nvidia has been hyping the heck out of it's work on this thing(which IBM and AMD haven't done in regards to WiiU/Xbone/PS4) I expected some marvel of engineering featuring their most power efficient design to date.
Time will tell, but as I said above, the worst news is usually the right news.
Hallmark of a first class troll. How can someone think it's weaker than a ps3
Wishmaster92
Member
lwilliams3
Member
I don't know about that, but this specs does give the impression that Nintendo and NVidia can easily scale up/down for future accommodate different hardware.
th3sicknness
Member
In order for the Switch to succeed in my mind it has to have the following.
1. Good Battery Life
2. Parity between home console and portable performance
3. 200 dollar selling price
The Switch by far is going to be the most powerful portable gaming device with the best exclusive development behind it.
It seems that the DF leaks have confirmed that the battery life and the parity in performance are a sure thing. The leaks have suggested Maxwell and most likely 20nm so I think it would be safe to assume the price may be ball park 200 dollars.
1. Good Battery Life
2. Parity between home console and portable performance
3. 200 dollar selling price
The Switch by far is going to be the most powerful portable gaming device with the best exclusive development behind it.
It seems that the DF leaks have confirmed that the battery life and the parity in performance are a sure thing. The leaks have suggested Maxwell and most likely 20nm so I think it would be safe to assume the price may be ball park 200 dollars.
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