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Miyamotoo said:

My bad, XB1 operates at 1.75GHz.

Yeah, I know that, but ARM A57 was in Switch was heavily constrained buy 20nm, thats why has 4 core and operates at only 1GHz.

ARM A57 was designed for 20nm.

The issue with the Switch is that... It's not going to have short, bursty processing workloads.

For example, in a typical mobile device the A57 would clock up to 2ghz whenever there is demand and race back to idle... For example, you open up the browser and the CPU will clock to 2ghz during the initial load and then settle down to it's idle clocks, there isn't a need for the full clockrate when browsing a webpage.
This phenomenon is known as "race to idle" - Where you want the processing done as fast as possible so the chip can enter a power saving state.

The Switch on the other hand doesn't get that privilege... Video games, demanding video games will peg every single core at 100%, which means there will be significant power drain, it cannot race to idle because there is always more work to be done.
That's not a design issue with the Switch or the A57 or the node it's fundamentally on, that's just the nature of the processing load.

So Nintendo rightfully opted to limit clockrates and voltages so that power consumption will always be in check for CPU loads.

THAT is the real reason why the Switch's CPU's are at only 1ghz.


Miyamotoo said:
Thats just jump when you talk about same clock and some Core count, tell for instance about how much difference we talk only if Switch 2 uses for instance A76 6-Core CPU clocked at 2GHz compared to A57 4-Core 1GHz? And its safe to say that potentail Switch 2 will use more stronger CPU than A76.

I would be very surprised if the Switch 2 used anything less than a 6-core complex to be honest.

Whether the Switch will use A76 or a newer derivative is still up for debate though, nVidia has Denver remember, they might wish to push their own CPU design over ARM's direct architecture.

Miyamotoo said:
Like you wrote earlier, 8-Core ARM A57 at 1.7GHz would be very comparable to PS4/XB1 CPU. I was very clear that PS5/XB2 will again have stronger CPUs than Switch 2 in any case, I dont arguing that. But with all that on mind, Switch 2 could easily have stronger CPU than PS4/XB1 have, and IMO that would be enough to run 4K PS5/XB2 games at least 1080p in docked mode maybe even in 1440p with maybe some other downgrades, and that was my main point.

I think you might find that because of the large CPU performance delta between Xbox One/Playstation 4 and Xbox Two/Playstation 5, that the Switch 2 will struggle to get demanding ports, especially ports that leverage Ryzen to it's absolute fullest extent, that's not to say the Switch 2 won't get ports, it should get some, not every game is going to be running stupidly complex simulation on the CPU next gen... And the Switch 2 should get those if the developer/publisher bothers.

The jump from Jaguar to Ryzen is a significantly larger one than what you will get with Switch and Switch 2. - Nintendo simply lucked out as AMD didn't have a decent CPU for the consoles, let alone PC.

The Switch 2 should be able to match or exceed base the Xbox One/Playstation 4 CPU's. - By how much is yet to be determined for obvious reasons... The Xbox One X's CPU does muddle things though as it does offload some processing and has the highest clockrate.

Miyamotoo said:
Well that's my point, Tegra X2 would alow Switch to have higher CPU and GPU clocks than currently has, even higher memory bandwith (double compared to current one).

Indeed. Or Nintendo could have kept the same performance level and increased battery life substantially.
I am sure Nintendo had it's reasons for opting for the old chip that it did.

It's still a very capable device though at the end of the day, it just could have been that little bit more.

Miyamotoo said:
Switch has enough power to run some games at higher resolution than it does currently, but doesn't have enough CPU power to maintain probably even 20 FPS in that case. From specs reveal devs said that biggest bottleneck is A57 that has 3-cores available for games and operates at only 1GHz. Next biggest bottleneck is RAM bandwidth, when you look hole Switch configuration, GPU is biggest advance of Switch hardware and after that size of RAM.

I think you are trying to paint to much of a black and white scene.
Whether the CPU, GPU or Ram is the biggest limiter really comes down to the individual games themselves.

Some games will drive home the CPU loads more than others... Whilst other games will push the GPU harder.

Miyamotoo said:
I am pretty sure it will be, they several times said they considering Overwatch for Switch, probably it will be E3 announcement same Rocket League and Fortnite were.

It's just one of those games that just makes sense for the platform. - Plus Overwatch is not technically demanding anyway, it can run on a toaster... And even when downscaled to low visual settings still looks semi-decent thanks to blizzards atypical strong art style.





--::{PC Gaming Master Race}::--