bonzobanana said:
Again your view which is more fair than some that Switch is between wii u and xb1 in performance still gives a false impression. It's very much close to the wii u side and in comparison with the ps3 and 360 has significantly less cpu and memory bandwidth resources. The wii u didn't have significantly more gpu resources than 360 or ps3 those have areas of superiority. The wii u had a slighter later feature set but a low 176 gflops performance. The gflops figure is still important even between generations. I don't agree with your comments at the end they are more defensive than realistic. No the Switch doesn't have more cpu resources than 360, admittedly its more close than the ps3 comparison but the 360 still has signficantly more. As for 720p to 1080p increased native rendering that is all the docked boost is used for. It's the same game and assets just an increased resolution. About 200 gflops to 400 gflops is all that its doing. It's exactly the same game. The core game engine always has to run with a 13,000 mips cpu resources and a maximum of 200 gflops compatible gpu requirements for the game engine itself even if it gets resolution boost when docked. Most games are nearer 150 gflops to enable decent battery life. That's its base level performance, signficantly less cpu resources than ps3 and 360 but more than wii u. Roughly about equal gpu gflops, 150-200 gflops vs 176gflops plus up to 24gflops of wii gpu assist and 60GB/s of 32MB memory, 200 gflops plus cell assist, 240-250 gflops with 10MB of 256GB/s ultrafast memory for frame buffer. Yes it has more memory which is a huge boost and there are features of the gpu the older generation consoles don't have but it still overall is a performance level which can be beaten by ps3 and 360 for many types of games. Again we simply aren't seeing hardware pushing games on Switch currently. It's pretty lightweight cartoon graphics and even with those the Switch can struggle with resolution, lack of anti-aliasing and frame rates. It is at an extremely low performance level even with those games and the evidence is over-whelming. The Switch is struggling to perform much beyond wii u and there is no surprises in that based on its Tegra X1 and use of very low clocks for cpu especially. What's more on my linx vision gaming tablet I often stream from my low performance Athlon 5350 small form factor pc under my tv. It's not great performance to say the least on the Athlon. To run Fallout 4 well I reduce the resolution to 720p and detail to low levels. On my tv this looks like crap but on my 8" 720p linx vision screen streaming it actually looks really good as the lack of anti-aliasing, lower texture quality and other issues can't really be seen on such a small screen, its very forgiving. On the even smaller Switch screen it will be even more forgiving. My point is you can get away with poor quality visuals on a portable. Even my Linx Vision has signficantly more cpu performance than Switch. Again no excuses this time when multiformat games like Skyrim and Payday 2 come out. With the ease of development on Switch there is no reason to believe these games won't make maximum use of the hardware and we will have multiformat games that we can compare to their versions on other hardware. While these games are old they are resource hungry enough to push the 360 and ps3 hardware. We won't have to estimate the performance level anymore we will have the evidence. Whether that means my estimates for the Switch performance level goes up or others go down is another matter. I just hope we don't have all the normal Nintendo excuses from the fanboys. If its higher than I expected I will obviously realise the gpu architecture improvements and tile based rendering made a signficant boost and accept it, no question but I also hope if it shows signficant weaknesses in the Switch versions the Switch performance level reality will be accepted by others. I guess skyrim indicators that the Switch is sub 360/ps3 performance would be less than native resolution while portable, obviously low frame rate issues, simplified game world somehow, reduced content, reduced texture quality to those of a very low level that even some windows tablets can run. Reduced non player characters, reduced weather effects, simplifed character animations or other tweaks to increase performance. Missing fine detail like the little ants running across the tree stumps. Pop-in or texture pop-in plus reduced view distance. Lots of variables. The main weakness in the Switch is cpu performance so I would expect Bethesda to prioritise the physics engine and remove cpu generated weather effects and perhaps thin the game slightly of NPC's. Again lets not forget the Switch is signficantly lower performance than the Shield box and this a summary of how the Shield compares to 360 and PS3. The Shield isn’t completely devoid of mainstream fare, either. It’s powerful enough to handle some games from the previous console generation, including Borderlands 2, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, Portal, Half-Life 2, and Resident Evil: 5. Unfortunately, there aren’t many of these games, and their visual quality doesn’t quite hold up to their original console versions. If your primary goal is to revel in last-gen gaming, consider picking up an Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 on the cheap. As you can see below 360 on left, Shield on right, shadows and lighting quality reduced on Shield and that's with double the cpu resources of Switch and somewhere between 2-3x the gpu resources of Switch as the Shield operates at full gpu speed and doesn't have to downclock for a portable mode. I'm just making the point my predictions are based on the evidence, those who are claiming the Switch is higher performance are those making the stretch. We already know the much more powerful Shield box struggles to match ps3 and 360. This is hardly that surprising its a mobile chipset with low cpu resources. |
You dont know what are you talking, Switch in capabilities is somewhere between Wii U and XB1 (not to mentione PS3/Xbox360), but in tech/ architecture Switch is even more advanced than XB1.
Wii U GPU didn't had significantly more GPU resources than 360 or PS3 but it was more capable GPU in any case. The gflops are not nearly important if you comparing different generations, tech and architecture. 360/PS3 GPU is from Nvidia tech/architecture from 2004/2005, Wii U GPU is AMD/Radeon GPU tech/architecture from 2008/2009. Also you completely ignoring fact that Wii U 4x more RAM than PS3/Xbox360, so like I wrote, Wii U had slower CPU but more capable GPU and more RAM.
You do realise that ARM A57 core on same clock is stronger than PS4 Jaguar CPU!? ARM A57 is modern tech and architecture and its quite capable CPU, its definitely much more capable than Xbox360 CPU, while PS3 CPU is totally different story, PS3 CPU is even stronger than PS4 CPU in some operations.
Point is that Switch has so much more power that is able to run MK8D at 1080p/60fps on Switch compared to 720p on Wii U and thats Wii U game not from ground made Switch game, you need around 2.5x stronger hardware to run 720p game at 1080p resolution. Switch has power that could run any PS3/Xbox360 game at 1080p with better frame rate. Are you relly trying to compare gflops from Nvidia tech/architecture from 2004/2005 and 2nd generation of Nvidia Tegra tech/architecture from 2015 and taking that like proof of power!? Thats crazy, Switch GPU even in handheld mode is more stronger and capable than PS3/Xbox360 GPUs. Also interesting how you completely ignored fact that Switch even in handheld mode has 4x more memory than Wii U and 8x more memory than PS3/Xbox360 (one of biggest bottleneck for PS3/Xbox 360).
Fact that Switch is able to run MK8D in 1080p, fact that ARMS runs at 1080p/60FPS, fact that few multplatform games comparisons (Lego City, Thumper, or Snake Pass) tells us how much stronger and more capable Switch is compared to PS3/Xbox360/WiiU. And like you wrote, we still didnt saw games that push Switch hardware that will really show for what Switch really is capable.
You need to understand that Nvidia made new tools, system design, system software and APIs specifikly for Switch that will use most of Switch hardware, games will much more optimised for Switch and they will use much more from hardware than they ever did for Shield. Comparing Shield and Switch is like you comparing PS4 and PC with similar specs, of course that PS4 will have far more optimized games that will use much better power from PS4 hardware compared to PC.
