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Darc Requiem said:
Fight-the-Streets said:

I guess Nintendo still would have used a Tegra X1 SoC just much more customized for optimization which would have resulted in slightly better capabilities. The best Nvidia could offer by 2019 was a Tegra X2 (Parker) but this SoC was manly optimized for the automobile industry and would have brought basically no technical improvement for the game industry in comparison to the Tegra X1. As the Tegra X2 uses a 16nm FinFET+ manufacturing process compared to the 20nm of Tegra X1 it would have been more power efficient and therefore, would have given a longer battery life. However, as the Tegra X2 was still new in 2018/2019 (and manufacturing of the Switch would have started even earlier) the price for it would have been expensive and Nintendo surely would not have used it.

Nvidia actually offered a more capable SoC to Nintendo for the Switch. They offered them a Pascal based SoC for not much more than the X1. Nintendo opted to save a few pennies. For good or ill, Nintendo's cost conscious nature is why they dated back to the 19th Century.

Do you have a source for Nvidia offering Nintendo a stronger chip for not much more? I'd love to get some details.

Last edited by curl-6 - on 17 October 2021