| Soundwave said: I never said they'd use that exact chip, I said they would want something from AMD that has similar type of performance at a similar power envelope. |
Ya that can only be an x86 APU, not an ARM processor since AMD makes no such products. That's exactly what many here are trying to tell you but you keep discussing scaling up A9X made by a completely different firm - Apple. Do you think if AMD could produce a chip that's a scaled version of A9/A9X they wouldn't have done so by now? AMD has no ARM SOC with A9/A9X level of performance scheduled to launch in 2016 so what is this magic ARM SOC chip AMD could sell to Nintendo?
| Soundwave said: 35 watts for 800 GFLOPS give of take isn't even that great to be honest considering that it's probably less than 2.5x the Wii U and the Wii U is a 40nm chip from 2010/11 at 31-32 watts. |
No 2.5X greater than 800GFlops takes us near PS4's GPU rating. The Wii U is nowhere close to that. I bet the Wii U's maximum single precision output is around 350-400 GFLOPS. The Wii U seems to have a maximum memory bandwidth of just 12.8GB/sec.
A very close GPU family that resembles the Wii U is HD4650 series with 320 stream processors and 16GB/sec memory bandwidth. Nintendo likely used the more modern HD5xxx derivative though but still that's miles behind HD7790 level in Xbox One and HD7850+ level in PS4. It's no wonder developers couldn't easily port 3rd party games to the Wii U because the GPU performance level in it could already be purchased September 2008 more or less.
| Soundwave said: And they utilize GFLOPS in different ways, but I still maintain I would not be surprised at all if an A9X allowed to operate and scaled up to a massive 35 watt power envelope would probably beat that Carizzo. |
But Apple will not sell A9X to Nintendo and AMD makes no such products and has no such products in the pipeline in 2016. So no, there is no mythical ARM SOC Nintendo could use that could beat Carizzo.
| Soundwave said: I wouldn't be surprised if it was fairly equal to the XBox One. |
In this very thread, you have already been proven wrong on this point. Even if we literally doubled the perfomrance of A9, that barely gets us to beat Surface Pro 3, which itself gets pounded by the best Intel APUs, and those are destroyed by HD7790 - the GPU in the Xbox One.
Go read the responses already as it's all laid out for you. Stop ignoring facts. Unless you are an Apple shareholder, this A9X and NX rumors are baseless.
| Soundwave said: What will end up happening is many devs will end up just optimizing for the handheld spec because it'll likely be the top selling version by far, and then the console people will be stuck with portable games on the TV. So in that case you want some real grunt power to the handheld. |
Or Nintendo integrates an x86 APU and an 3rd party ARM SOC into the home console - let's call it NX Home. The NX Portable would be a separate device. Everyone who would have the NX portable, would be able to play all NX Portable games on the NX Home. What that means is if you buy an NX Portable game, you get 2 games in one. That's the point of a uniform eco-system. This way the home console can be made powerful enough for 3rd party XB1/PS4/PC games and have interoperability with the NX portable.
Trying to cram a very powerful ARM SOC into the NX portable that would also be able to function as a solid home console would be prohibitevely expensive. In fact, from a technological point of view, there will not be any ARM SOC powerful enough to even match the Xbox One in 2016.
| Soundwave said: $350 is too much for the console too, seeing as how PS4 will be $300 by next fall ($50 cut this year, $50 next year sounds about right). |
They could make it as powerful at least as powerful as the XB1 and sell for less than $350. How? Ship it with a standard controller. Ship it with no optical drive (digital distribution games only). Ship it with minimal profits on hardware like Sony/MS are doing. It's common sense that if Xbox One would sell for $299 by 2016, Nintendo can likely aquire similar hardware for $299. But since it'll be nearly 3 years since the chips in PS4/XB1 came out, it should be possible to acquire even greater level of perfomrance for $100-110 for a 2016 AMD APU. Alternatively, AMD is far more desperate right now to win business than it was during 2013 when their finances were in better shape. That should allow Nintendo to negotiate an even better deal than what Sony/MS got in 2013 because AMD literally needs every revenue stream it can get right now.
Nintendo is in the best possible position to introduce a great console since XB1/PS4 are going to be 3-years-old, but it's just about what they want out of their console and who are they targetting.
You have also ignored a point raised earlier how many an ARM SOC only corners Nintendo into future options for NX2, NX3, etc. because to make the next versions of their consoles BC, they would need an ARM SOC design or if they switch to x86, they'd need a secondary ARM SOC which adds cost.
3rd parties would have a lot of trouble porting x86 code games if the NX is solely an ARM SOC design like the A9X.
