Nintendo has a history of not sharing the tech specs of their consoles. At this point their reveal process for the Nintendo Switch (NS) is even more of a pain in the ass as all they've shown so far is core functionality; home console + portable console in one.

Due to the small tablet-like form, many are jumping to dillusions that NS will be barely the power of the WiiU and once again impossible to support the myriad of 3rd party games. Others are grasping at any rumor and arguing that NS will be above Xbox One and potentially PS4 levels. Both of these extremes are based on nothing but opinions and bias either against or for Nintendo, respectively.

But let's take a grounded approach to what we do know, to give a legitimate approximation of what NS will actually contain within its dreamy interior.

List of Partners

Will you just look at it?

Bethesda, CRIWARE, FROM SOFTWARE, EPIC... These are game creators and technology giants that previously have not supported Nintendo specifically due to its lack of powerful architecture. Bethesda specifically stated earlier this year that they would not support "NX" unless it was at Xbox One levels. Unreal Engine 4 requires certain technology to be supported as such only UE3 was available on WiiU. What you see here is a list of middleware used in all AAA game development. Software that produces highly scaleable software for all major game developers. This simple fact that these companies are listed are reason alone to strongly support the concept that NS is well within the realm of XboxOne / PS4 in architecture and general technology support.

Tegra Inside

"Nintendo Switch is powered by the performance of the custom Tegra processor. The high-efficiency scalable processor includes an NVIDIA GPU based on the same architecture as the world’s top-performing GeForce gaming graphics cards."

Tegra's latest flagship is the X1. We know Tegra has been working on what has been lovingly titled the "Parker" but of which we only know rumored details including the GPUs are based on Pascual technology. We know that these SOCs are designed specifically for mobile technologies and that Tegra has decided to not continue their gaming "Shield" line which normally is their platform to advertise their latest mobile tech.

We have to assume that Nintendo is at least going with an X1 but could be going with a Parker as the base architecture prior to customization.

Tegra X1 as compared to WiiU and for top-end we'll toss in the next Tegra SOC Parker.

Active Cooling

Images of the NS clearly show it has an active cooling system. This futher supports the idea that the system will need to remove a lot of heat being generated, most likely when docked and needing to upscale the images to TV resolutions.

Summary

Looking at this data we can draw some conclusions.
1) NS is clearly going to be a lot more powerful than WiiU. That is obvious.
2) NS is not going to be more poweful than the Xbox One. That is obvious.
3) Tegra CPUs are as good and better than what Xbox One and PS4 contain.
4) Based on customization with a Parker, the NS could be very comparable to that of Xbox One, but that will depend on a lot of other tech that I don't have data for my table including specific trade-offs in teh GPU, RAM, memory bandwidth, etc.

All in all, you cannot toss out the NS as technically incapable of playing AAA 3rd party games. You cannot make claims that it will barely beat that of the WiiU.  We will need to wait until January 12 to see if Nintendo actually releases the specs or if someone else breaks it down similar to how we've gotten Wii and WiiU data post launch. Of course January 12th and the time leading up to launch will answer the biggest and most important question, what games will be supported and how will they play?

Sounds good to me!

Where did you get that idea from?

If I had to guess, it was from here

http://www.notebookcheck.net/SoC-Shootout-x86-vs-ARM.99496.0.html

Its the only place that I could find that could suggest it.

I'm gonna just leave this here.

https://www.google.com/amp/www.polygon.com/platform/amp/2016/10/20/12288138/how-powerful-will-the-nintendo-switch-be-xbox-one-ps4-comparison

Performance is not going to be close to an even an XBox One in real world.

Ask yourself why Bethesda would show Skyrim ... why not Fallout 4? Probably NS can't run Fallout 4. Skyrim is a 5 year old game. 

There needs to be seperate hardware in the dock for NS to match an XBox One S. A Tegra X2 is a decent little mobile chip but it's not close to an XBox One S.

The memory bandwidth is a big issue in comparing for Switch too.

Seems pretty old. I'll wait for game performance, but it would be weird and pretty pitiful if the Tegra actually outperforms a full blown APU.

From Software, Bethesda, EA will just port 1 and 2 games and thats it. Dark souls will not do well on a nintendo system

I'm not fan of handheld gaming, but I like NS concept from the technical side, so I'm eager to see what they've put inside.

If Pixel C can run Tegra X1 @850MHz built on 20nm in 7mm thick case, it's fairly certain that 14-15mm thick NS can handle X2 built on 14/16nm running at least at that clock, and most likely higher.

Of course, as I said on numerous occasions, in theory it's even possible there is something like PS4 Pro's GPU approach in NS - "First, we doubled the GPU size by essentially placing it next to a mirrored version of itself, sort of like the wings of a butterfly....We just turn off half the GPU and run it at something quite close to the original GPU (in PS4 mode)" -  so, again in theory, custom X2 x 2 @1.5GHz for docked, actively cooled mode and just one downclocked X2 for handheld mode.

That said, this is just a wild theory, knowing Nintendo it's very unlikely they went with that, but I'd love to see someone (Sony?) trying to pull something like that off.

"Unreal Engine 4 requires certain technology to be supported as such only UE3 was available on WiiU."

Like the technologies found on the underpowered smartphones that UE4 has supported since 2014 or even earlier. You can't draw conclusions about power based on that.


And that's a nice partner list, yet, Nintendo chose a 5 year old game to put in their an important video reveal that everyone was waiting for. If a game like Final Fantasy 15 was included, it would've broken the internet. But Nintendo simply didn't choose a better example that shows third-party support because they couldn't.