| bunchanumbers said: Sickening if true. Nintendo had better options and ignored them. Polaris 11 offers 2.5 TFs and retails for $99. They could have made a nice console with this. Instead we're going to get a 2 year old mobile chip. Not too industry leading to me. |
The RX 460 hits 2.157TFlops at 1206Mhz, still you're right about the rest.
TBH NX could have a base dock, with that GPU inside and a smaller AMD APU in the tablet, then also share gaming workloads over wifi or mobile internet to allow for current gen Xbox and Playstation levels of graphics on the go. Nintendo could partner with a mobile ISP to create a PS+/XBL style subscription, which also allows people to have mobile internet on the device and play their games anywhere.
Nintendo doesn't even need to wait for Zen, they could just forgo having it be a part of an APU/SOC and use it in an MCM, like they did with Wii U.
Considering that Microsoft were also able to get Backwards Compatibility into XB1, to run 360 games, even though they went with AMD for their CPU there's nothing stopping Nintendo from doing something similar with NX, so that they can run Wii U and maybe even Wii games on the portable console.
There seems to be way too many negatives involved in using Nvidia, especially in going with Tegra.
AMD leads in the console industry, they would fit the bill of providing industry leading chips, within the dedicated gaming device market. No one said the chips in NX were industry leading compared to the PC or Server markets.
RX 460 would certainly be a cost effective, energy efficient option for Nintendo to use, Nintendo could easily put out a system that is both a console and a portable, with superior performance compared to PS4 for $299. Seems like a base dock with 2.2TFlops of AMD hardware, which can stream games or share workloads with an incluced tablet device would be far more interesting than a weak portable console/tablet device, with detachable controllers.
Don't get me wrong, I like the design in Eurogamer's NX diagram, the ability to play local multiplayer anywhere is great, but the lack of hardware performance and built in, familiar technology for developers to have access to just seems like a waste too me.
Nintendo would at least have a fighting chance to get reasonable 3rd party support in going with AMD's own GPU tech. Hell they could just stick with cheaper 28nm tech for the console part and then use 14nm for the handheld to house more power efficient tech for on the go.
AMD still makes more logical sense too me.
