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JustBeingReal on 30 March 2016
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JEMC said:
JustBeingReal said:

There was a rumor about an NX handheld, that had performance closest to XB1, but that it could stream gameplay or act as a source that streams footage to your TV through a wireless HDMI dongle.

Sounds pretty legit since Polaris would ...

And that's where it stops making sense.

Let's keep things sensible, shall we? No console that launches this year will have a Polaris based GPU. It's too new, too expensive and in too limited quantities to make any kind of sense to use them. Even the PS4/X1, that launched in late 2013, used graphic tech from early 2012 (which is when the HD 7870 was launched), because by then there were no problems with availability and the cost was low enough to make them feasible.

The NX won't have Polaris (or Zen, for the same reasons).

Actually it stays making sense thanks, considering that Polaris desktop and laptop parts are coming July to September it's entirely logical that Nintendo could have a SOC with those parts in it's system at the end of 2016.

Cost wise the actual chips used in a GPU usually account for about 1/3rd of the price of a retail Card's RRP, considering AMD plans to release a 40 CU model, which has performance of an R9 290x at under $349 thise would be entirely feasible for a dedicated gaming handheld device.

Costs are based on how many chips you can get off of one wafer, 14nm makes it possible to get many APUs off of one wafer and that basically improves the cost per unit considerably. New doesn't necessarily mean expensive, actually output being high makes costs cheap.

 

Please don't insult people by making out that this isn't sensible, when it actually is. I provided the source for a rumor and actually explained how it could be feasible for a handheld device. The tech exists, is launching to the mass market this year (the fabs are high performance, not low output), within the desktop and laptop markets, which are usually later to get newer parts than the server market is.

AMD wouldn't be releasing to the consumer market if volumes weren't high enough and the potential for handheld sales is high, so it makes perfect sense for this to be used in such a device.

The only real question is whether Nintendo would want handheld with that level of performance. Maybe they are going to bring a dedicated console, which would still need Polaris and Zen to be small form factor like Nintendo have shown themselves to be interested in using for their consoles since the Wii.