TheLegendaryWolf said:
That wouldn't be difficult since I can see the Switch being somewhat future-proofed with the dock, which I predict will have boosted power down the line. |
That is entirely dependent on how the Switch Interfaces with the Dock.
If it uses USB, then No. There will be zero "Future proofing" with the dock. Period.
If it uses PCI-E or an interconnect that uses PCI-E, then it's entirely possible.
| shikamaru317 said: Unfortunately it's pretty much too late, by now they'll have already begun manufacturing them in order to meet launch demand in March. Sure they could delay it to Holiday 2017 and switch from Tegra X1 to Tegra X2, but that would be expensive for them now that they've already started manufacturing them. They could up the clock rates via a firmware patch, but that would kill the battery life in handheld mode. |
Doesn't matter when they started to roll out production.
Microsoft increased the clockrate of the Xbox One after production started.
Sony did a similar thing with the PSP's CPU as well.
But like you said... Battery life. But considering mobile phones will have more power than the Switch...
| Veknoid_Outcast said: Failed with Wii? Anyway, why care? You game on PS platforms right? Why do you need ANOTHER platform that plays all the third party games you'll play on PS4 or PC? What harm is an underpowered Nintendo console doing to you? |
It is called "Choice". - You should never attack consumer choice. Ever. You are a consumer.
More choice is always a good thing.
| dahuman said: You know, I wonder if the hardware in the Switch is so customized that it might have good eSRAM or eDRAM in it. Also, it's not like you can directly port PS4 games to Xbone either, you'd need to downgrade the Xbone ports anyways. |
The days of heavily customized hardware are over.
eSRAM/eDRAM is also likely not going to happen, a device at such a low performance level simply doesn't need it with an Efficient architecture like Maxwell pushing things.
| Soundwave said: To get a 400-500 GFLOP chip inside a portable that runs for 3+ hours at full tilt without throttling and without becoming dangerously hot, you probably need a 10nm chip and that's simply not available today easily. |
Far from it.
14nm LPU can get pretty copetitive with 10nm LPE in terms of power consumption and performance.
Phones will have more power than the switch, you need to keep that in mind.
shikamaru317 said:
The standard formula for getting gflops for a GPU, unified shaders x clock rate x 2 Tegra X1has 256 shaders, and Eurogamer/Digital Foundry claims that Switch's clock rate is 768mhz docked and 307mhz undocked. 256 x 768 x 2 = 393,216 flops or 393 gflops 256 x 307 x 2 = 157,184 flops or 157 gflops |
The "X2" is only used if there are two floating point operations per cycle.
| KLAMarine said: Did some research and these calculations check out. Seems awfully low. My current question now is can this at least outdo a WiiU? According to http://www.eurogamer.net/amp/digitalfoundry-2016-nintendo-switch-spec-analysis "Even a 307.2MHz GPU based on Maxwell technology should be capable of out-performing Wii U", it can. Better than WiiU is the minimum I can accept. |
Vastly superior to the Wii U. There is more to performance than "flops".
The Switch will be far more efficient and do more work per "flop" than the Wii U could ever have hoped.
The Switch will sit between the Wii U and Xbox One in terms of performance, that hasn't changed since we discovered it is Tegra powered.
The only thing people are struggling with is how close it is to the Wii U/Xbox One in terms of performance... And sadly they are using flops alone to work that out which is highly inaccurate.
| dahuman said: I think keeping expectations low is definitely the way to go with this one, though I wouldn't flag it as truth until the teardown happens. What if this thing has 260 CUDA Cores instead!?!?!?!? |
Because it wouldn't. nVidia wouldn't build a Tegra chip with such a layout.
| curl-6 said: I think a lot of people need to adjust their expectations regarding Switch. This isn't a PS4/Xbone competitor. Think of it more as a 3DS/Vita successor. |
It would be a couple generational jumps from the 3DS though. :P
But it is also competing with the PC, Android, iOS, Xbox and Playstation 4, so comparisons with those other platforms is going to be natural.
| mutantsushi said: 14nm is NOT cutting edge when 10nm is being introduced, it boosts performance 30% for same juice, but Nintendo can't manage it. To be clear, whatever Switch achieves in docked mode is irrelevant because games also need to run in portable mode, |
14nm is most certainly cutting edge. 4th gen 14nm can give 10nm LPE a run for it's money.
Besides Samsung 10nm node is going to use a 14nm BEOL anyway.
It also has nothing to do with Nintendo. Nintendo isn't building these chips, nVidia designed them, then a fab like Samsung/Global Foundries/TSMC, fabricates them.
Nintendo only designed the switch, then they contract the building of all the components to a heap of other companies and even contracts the assembly to yet another company. (With their input along the way of course.)
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