| Soundwave said: If all these mobile chips can run graphics better than a PS3/360 so easily and they're sooooo much more powerful, then where are the games? I don't really buy that it's just because no one wants to try. Most mobile games look well below even PS3/360 level. |
Half Life 2, Portal 2, Bioshock, Resident Evil 5, Doom 3 not enough?
The issue is the controllers. Or lack there-of. You can't just take an FPS like Overwatch and whack it on a touch screen and wish everyone "Good Luck".
Plus there are a massive amount of mobile handsets that are low-end still using ARM A7 or such CPU cores with 1Gb of Ram equipped with a pathetic Mali 400 GPU.
| Soundwave said: I think there definitely is an issue with pushing these chips to max performance, what ends up happening is they get too hot and eat too much battery to be pushed that hard for 3 straight hours. |
I think you are overblowing the situation to much.
* The CPU in the Switch had it's clockrate reduced by 900mhz~. - The CPU is responsible for a large % of power consumption and heat.
* The Switch has a fan to aid cooling.
* They could build the chip at 16nm/14nm Finfet instead of 20nm Planar.
* Switch has a smaller, Lower Resolution, Lower powered screen.
* Has a larger Z depth for larger battery.
* Even Thermal throttled the Google Pixel C is faster than the Switch.
* Flagship handsets not only have more power than the Switch, but also don't thermal throttle to a similar degree.
Ergo. There is zero reason for the Switch having the limitations that it has.
| Soundwave said: I have a pretty powerful Macbook Pro that can run Bioshock Infinite, but when I play it without the laptop plugged in, even with low screen brightness, I get maybe 1 hour of battery life. |
The Macbook Pro is using hardware that is orders-of-magnitude faster and more power hungry than the Switch. Not an accurate representation.
| Soundwave said:
You can only have a GPU that uses maybe 4-5 watts. Your CPU needs 1-2 watts. Your LCD needs 1-2 watts. WiFi consumes electricity, and I'm sure there's miscellanous things that need power above that too. You're already pushing right there like 9 watts ... this would kill even the giant sized iPad Pro battery (38.8 wH, a massive 1000+ mAH) in about 4 hours. The Tegra X1 Shield console was using a whopping 19 watts at max load, that would destroy that battery in under 2 hours. |
Total platform power consumption is typically more important than what the SoC might use. Intel hammered this point home with Medfield.
You could take any flagship SoC out of a Phone and whack it into a Tablet and power consumption would be higher than the phone. There is a fundamental reason for this.
| Soundwave said: A Tegra X1 runs at 10 watts maximum (full clock) ... that means it would kill that 5200 MaH battery in less than two hours. |
Based on what?
P=V*I, then 5*3.7=18.5W (Assuming as Lipo's are typically 3.7v.)
Now Anandtech did some testing and the GPU in the Tegra X1 by itself was using 1.51w by itself.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8811/nvidia-tegra-x1-preview/3
Thus to power just the GPU you are looking at 12.25 hours.
nVidia's Jetson platform, powered by Tegra was recorded to be using 5.7w of power under a full Cuda load, which is 3.2 hours.
But this ignores everything I laid above with the smaller, lower resolution more energy efficient screen, 900mhz of the clockrate shaved off the CPU and more.
There is no reason for Nintendo to castrate the SoC to this degree other than costs, especially if it's battery life is still not at a minimum of 5-10 hours.
| Soundwave said: More likely the Tegra chips consume more electricity than people think. That Shield Console with the Tegra X1 consumes almost *20 watts* when it's really being pushed ... that's a ridiculous power draw for a mobile chip. |
Shield TV is also using a CPU that is twice as fast as the Switch.
It is also using faster, more power hungry DRAM.
Power consumption was recorded at the wall, so if the PSU is only 80% efficient, that alone could account for several watts of power consumption as well. (It's not unheard of having PSU's that are 60% efficient.)
Apples to Apples.
| Soundwave said: You can't just devote your entire electrical "budget" to your GPU either ... your CPU, your RAM, your LCD screen, your WiFi antenna, your flash memory, etc. all need electricity too, those don't magically run for free. |
That isn't what we are saying.
| Soundwave said: So 76% of 19 watts means the docked Switch should be running at around 14-15 watts docked. That is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too hot for a mobile device unless you have an absolutey monstrous battery. That would kill even a laptop battery in under 3 hours. |
And this is where you loose any credability.
Power consumption doesn't work like that.
What if I told you, that the Switch could use more power than the Shield TV? Voltage has a direct relationship with power consumption and heat.
If you bin your chips better you can use chips which have better power characteristics to hit lower voltages, so you can have faster chips that use less power. Nintendo tends to be "cheap" on it's hardware components since the Wii era, they are likely not aggressively binning.
| Wyrdness said: They can advertise it as a family car it still doesn't change his point because as far as portable platforms go the is only one choice people have after Vita and 3DS, the marketing is a tactical approach as they're marketing it more as a portable device that can compare with home platforms. This gives it a more cutting edge appeal for those coming from 3DS and Vita as the jump from those devices is huge, connecting to a TV doesn't really mean competing with MS and Sony as PCs can connect to TVs as well. |
No. It is not the only choice.
And yes. It is competing with the Playstation, Xbox and PC.
| TheSpindler said: Sorry I can't see the logic in this. The Wii U came out when the PS360 was out and was still bombing then and getting ports. How powerful it was seemed to have very little to do with it, and the ports it was getting weren't flying off the shelves either. |
Whilst the SNES and NES had competitors who could beat Nintendo in the hardware stakes... It wasn't a generational difference.
The SNES most certainly held it's own with the likes of StarFox, Mario Kart and SGI pre-rendered games like Killer Instinct and Donkey Kong.
--::{PC Gaming Master Race}::--
