| JustBeingReal said: TBH NX could have a base dock, with that GPU inside and a smaller AMD APU in the tablet 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. |
The concept of separate GPUs or even CPUs, each for different mode: mobile/console, seems insanely wasteful.
It means a large chunk of hardware budget is power that is not being used in any given mode.
Theoretically one could access both, but I'd guess performance will be worse vs. unified solution, and development will be much more difficult.
The obvious solution is simply to have unified, advanced GPU/CPU which can down-clock and de-activate cores that aren't needed,
e.g. in mobile mode which will target a lower resolution frame buffer, while console mode will output 1080p with fully activated GPU/CPU.
That just results in two quality settings to tweak, but using same architecture, vs. effectively distinct architectures rather hard to develop for.
When I read the EG story, I read them speculating that Nintendo will use Tegra 2, and have a product quite distinct from Tegra 1/ Shield.
Not sure why that possibility is discounted completely in this discussion.
