SuperChunky Discussion - Real NS Power

[fleischr]

vivster said:

fleischr said:
My thought is that the Switch has a Tegra X2 + an additional GeForce GPU.

For games that support it - in mobile mode it'll run just with the Tegra chip. When docked, the extra GeForce GPU kicks in everytime for full HD console support - but if a a game like Skyrim remastered couldn't run on just the Tegra alone, it could still use that extra GPU, but at the expense of shorter battery life.

There is so far no indication that there will be an additional GPU. Tegra X2 should be just fine in playing old games like Skyrim and every single Nointendo game for that matter. All we can hope for is an overclocked mode when docked.

Frankly an additional GPU would make the whole system very clunky from an architectural standpoint. The all in one approach is absolutely fine and will make things very comfortable for Nintendo and the developers. Adding another GPU in the dock would make the console more expensive and basically ruin the whole concept.

But it wouldn't be a conventional GPU. It wouldn't be a GTX1050 or anything like that. Instead, I'd picture it as a very very small, lightweight GPU that would be easy to add to the Switch tablet.  Perhaps even a customized secondary Tegra chip?

The Tegra X2 comes in at roughy 0.75 teraflops (compared to XB1's 1.3 and PS4's 1.8). Even for all the power efficiency benefits ARM provides + optimization wonders Nintendo and Nvidia can do, I don't see how the Switch gets even close to the XB1's power level with just that. But at that level, only a small amount of extra GPU is really needed to be in the realm of X1 power levels.

None of the rumors about Switch have ever indicated that it would only be half the power or less of the XB1 or PS4 - but rather "just below" the XB1 in power level. Half is not "just below", it's signficantly below.

The architecture is actually there. NS's use case - especially for this kind of hardware setup - is very, very similar that nVidia's Optimus technology. http://www.geforce.com/hardware/technology/optimus/technology.