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bonzobanana on 17 December 2016
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Miyamotoo said:
bonzobanana said:

 

Nintendo's history is that their custom designs are lower performance not higher and if the development kit spec is correct then it still is 25GB/s not 50GB/s. There is a difference between expected performance and desired performance.  We have lots of indicators that Nintendo have gone for a lower spec design than the reference Tegra design and that battery life may have improved to 5-8hrs. In the case of the wii u in the past it was speculated that the wii u would have 800 gflops at the beginning and final actual value was 176 glops and I wonder if we will get a similar ratio here. Maximum claim so far is 1.5 terraflops and that would distill down to 375 gflops for a similar ratio.

Lets not forget that the wii u had an absolutely hopeless cpu arrangement of about 9,000 mips but the Switch's quad Arm A57's are going to be 3-4x that power so that memory bandwidth of 25.6GB/s will also be under greater strain.

Lets take a realistic approach here and work with that 25.6GB/s memory bandwidth and what would be a performance level based on that. The wii u memory bandwidth was half that so you could say using the wii u that would give you 352 gflops and 18,000 mips cpu performance. The ps3 has 25.6GB/s for its video memory and about 19,200 GB/s for its main memory so the Switch represents a reduction in memory bandwidth over the ps3. I think 360 was something like 25.6GB/s for its shared memory with 10MB of high speed memory.

Realistically  if the Switch has some high speed embedded memory like 32MB or 64MB somewhere then maybe up to 500 gflops could be achieved with some bottlenecking issues in memory access but without the high speed embedded memory then a fair bit lower.

With the wii u we can see the memory bandwidth of 12.8GB/s was perfectly judged for a low performance 32bit cpu arrangement and 176 gflops gpu and there is no reason to believe the Switch won't be equally well set up with memory bandwidth being no more or less than needed for the cpu and gpu performance.

I hope no one is disappointed if its as low as 400 gflops or perhaps even a bit lower. Remember Nintendo makes reliable, dependable hardware designed to take some abuse it doesn't make hardware at the cutting edge of technology. We can hope for higher performance but its not really required for a product like Switch.

History in this matter doesn't mean anything, with Switch Nintendo is doing lots a things 1st time in history, but if you really want to go with history, Nintendo always pay attention on memory performance, so hard that memory performance will be only arount 2x times better than Wii Us when rest of specs will be stronger. Those leaked dev kits were not final dev kits, and Emily and Laura said they around 90% accurate not 100% accurate. We dont have any "indicators that Nintendo has gone for a lower spec design than the reference Tegra design". Switch doesn't have anything with Wii U, all around Wii U is totally different compared to Switch, going from intial reveal and hardver/tech, Nintendo is managing Switch for now totaly difrent compared to Wii U.

Also why Switch need active cooling even in portable mode if we know that in portable mode clocks will be lower, and even for stock Tegra X1 easily working without active cooling, so why then active cooling for lower clocks in portable Switch mode!? If you really think that Switch in portable mode will have around Gflops, then passive cooling would be more than enuff.

I dont think all people will be very disappointment with 400 gflops, its not that big difrence compared to 500-600 gflops, but thats basicly worst posible case for Switch in docked mode (and definlty worst posible case that I read that somebode wrote until now), most realistic is 500-600 gflops, high expectations are that Switch will have more SMs that means gflops well beyond 600 gflops around 1TF but that isn't too much likely scenarion same like 400 gflops.

Active cooling because its primarily a gaming device not a standard tablet and because Nintendo makes robust, reliable hardware. Some markets have excessive outdoor temperatures, Australia for example. Many android tablets run excessively hot with passive cooling when used for long sessions of gaming. Lets not forget it could still be a 20nm fabrication process if using the older Tegra. In portable mode the fan may not even be active unless required where as docked it may operate 100% of the time. 

There was a claim at the beginning that Switch would be 2.5x wii u performance overall. Again 400 gflops fits in with that but 600 gflops is probably a ratio of at least 4x performance. 600 gflops seems completely wrong and extremely unlikely but at least we are agreed with 500 gflops is a possibility although that is my maximum figure and your lowest.