According to a new report, Switch games can use 3 out of 4 CPU cores and 3 out of 4 GB of RAM. Which means that 25% of the system resources (1 core + 1 GB of RAM) is reserved for the operating system and background tasks.

Over the weekend we spoke to a Switch indie developer, who confirmed the recent Switch hardware specs, and revealed to us who much of the system resources games can actually use. We’ll have the full interview up later this week.

The Wii U had 2 GB of DDR3 RAM, but half of that was reserved for the OS — the same amount that the Switch OS uses.

By comparison, the Xbox One has 8 GB of RAM, where 3 GB is reserved for the operating system. The PS4 reserves about 2 GB for the OS.

Both the Xbox One and PS4 are reported to use 2 cores for the OS as well (an update last year made the 7th core available for PS4 games, but only under certain circumstances).

Comparing the three systems and their RAM use, it would looks like this:

• Switch: 4 GB RAM – 3GB for games
• Xbox One: 8 GB RAM – 5 GB for games
• PS4: 8 GB RAM – 6 GB for games (see correct data below)

Overall, it seems that the Switch is roughly on on par with the other consoles in this regard, as all three use about 25% of the system resources for the OS (the Xbox One a bit more).

Source

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As many would have guessed! But after the X1 news, it seems like Switch OS is using similar resources (1CPU+1GB) as the WiiU. And doing it in a more efficient way, the system is snappy as hell (nothing like the WiiU).

Should be noted they use different types of ram.
XBO is DDR3
PS4 is DDR5
NS is LPDDR4

Is this good?

Why?

Why dont they have full access to all 4? they have 8 cores in there right? 4big and 4small ones? why not use the small ones for the OS and other stuff?

 Its why the PS4 has cheap memory (compaired to XB1 esram + ddr3 combo), thats still high memory bandwidth.

It uses the same type graphics cards normally do.

Very slow ram, makes a big difference you can see it with the PS4 / XBox One difference, altough the Xbox has a nice memroy buffer the faster ram is one of the things that has helped the PS4 a lot.

On PS4 pro the increased speed of ram gives faster texture loading etc, very noticable in comparison movies and one can only start to imagine when the scorpio's 320GB/s speed of GDDR5X hits its going to impact games a lot to, espcially in 4k.

Now 4Gb total and 3 available is good for a handheld, but the discussion always comes back to this, its almost half the ram of the 5.5 available on PS4 / Xbox and its slower but the Switch doesn't compete with these consoles, but when you port games the ram difference will be one of the factors developers will need to do a lot of work to work around.

When you build a game from the ground up for the switch however, this is a very good amount, which is why everyone should hope the console sells well and people will take the time and effort, third parties too.

Nope.

One core and 1 GB of RAM is wasted for no reason. Why don't they use dynamic resource allocation and more efficient programming, so that the unused core and unused memory can be used for games?

You do not need a whole core for the OS and you do not need 1GB of RAM. Instead they should kill / freeze and swap out everything that is not required while gaming. Encryption, security and networking takes a small amount of CPU and memory, but not enough to reserve 25% of all system resources available. This is not an efficient design decision but it can and should be changed.

Noob question here: Doesn't the Tegra X1 have 4xCortex-A57 + 4xCortex-A53? Why isn't the A53 quadcores used for the OS?

Like you mention in the later parts, it's Low Power DDR due to its portable nature.

Yes from what I understand its a big+little chip, so it has 4 big cores, and 4 weak cores.

I dont understand why nintendo didnt just make use of say 1 or 2 of the weak cores for the OS, so they could have more CPU for gameing, with a extra BIG core for that.

"As many would have guessed! But after the X1 news, it seems like Switch OS is using similar resources (1CPU+1GB) as the WiiU and doing it in a more efficient way. The system is snappy as hell."

It's also barebones as hell.

Don't get me wrong, I think efficiency is more important than having a pretty OS, but a lot of features are still missing.
The Switch OS is far from doing what the PS4 and One OS does.

People are going to say : "but the PS4 and Xbox One had 4 years, when they launched they were missing features"

Yes but most of those features were new features, features that weren't available on PS3/360. Here Nintendo had 4 years to look at what their competitors were doing and build the features that were the most used and demanded by players. Everything was already paved.

Where is the VC? Vocal chat? Apps? Video Streaming? Trophies?

Why does Nintendo always go out of their way to try and not meet people expectations? From a business standpoint, It kind of baffles me every time.

I understand why they delayed the internet browser though. They need to make sure people can't hack the machine through it. That's of the utmost importance for the future of the system. I know, turns out they managed to hack it anyway, but well...