| haxxiy said: Power consumption and manufacturing node are factors here, though. The Tegra X1 consumed 10 - 15 watts to deliver 500 - 600 GFLOPS and even then it had to be underclocked to fit on the Switch. The figure you're quoting probably refers to the 30W TDP option. The Xavier chip under similar power constraints is a 600 - 800 GFLOPS chip. Even when you factor in the IPC gains of the Volta microarchitecture, it's unlikely the average improvement for games would reach a 2 times increase. Now, we do more or less know how the next three or so upcoming nodes will perform in terms of feature size and power consumption. How close to a PS4 Pro a ~3 nm or so Switch 2 would perform, though, remains to be seen considering we know nothing about future architectural improvements or which clocks or die size Nintendo would use to fit their power and cost constraints. But to assume it could match it certainly risks falling into the same optimistic trap a few members here fell into some four years ago, when they were sure the Tegra X1 could deliver a portable console at least matching the Xbox One. And we know how that one turned out. |
I don't think it's exactly the same trap. In that case, people erroneously assumed that much quoted 1 TFLOP of FP16 performance was going to be a match for the Xbox One because they didn't understand what that performance indicator meant. In reality it was always going to be around half the performance of the Xbox One at the very least, and since it was underclocked we know that it's a bit less than that even.
What I AM falling for, however, is the assumption that mobile technology will improve at approximately the same rate over the next 4 years when indicators show that performance increases year over year are reducing (though more for the PC GPU market than the mobile market). But it's all speculation at this point and, you're right, I am being a bit too optimistic. I think it COULD hit PS4 Pro performance, but WILL it? Probably not. Nintendo hasn't been known for pushing the envelope in graphical performance in 19 years. The Switch is the most "beastly" thing they've made since the Gamecube, and it's only a powerful device when taken into account it's price point and portability. They'd rather make a large profit off the Switch 2 than they would play the power game.
