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mutantsushi on 15 December 2016
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bunchanumbers said:
mutantsushi said:

Wait... A last-gen GPU architecture is "best you can hope for"?  A last-gen fab node is "best you can hope for"?
I mean, I was clear in my last post, out powering full consoles is not 100% realistic, 
but using best architecture/fab possible gets you the best possible, why would you not hope for that?

Yes. Considering this is Nintendo this is the best we could hope for. Nintendo isn't going to go full modern. They are going to go with cheap. When has Nintendo ever went state of the art? Maybe N64? This is the best case scenario. Nintendo and power doesn't go together anymore. Its time to accept that. 

But like I wrote...  14nm is not the best, full modern, state of the art.  
Samsung 10nm partner of NVIDIA is going commercial with that in timescale of Switch.
Sure, it's likely Nintendo will not use 10nm, although they should, since TSMC other NVIDIA partner will also soon launch that node,
and prices will drop thruout lifetime of console, with advantage of more transistors per wafer area meaning cost is not overall issue.
(smaller nodes in fact are key to lower prices for powerful CPUs, so avoiding it is not truly a price-centric strategy)