The "new" Switch and an old discussion rekindled

[farlaff]

Pemalite said:

Soundwave said:

Some configs of USB 4.0 are fast enough for an external GPU type set up ... it could use the same size connector, but it depends if Nintendo really cares to use something like that. 

USB is high latency. It's crap for multi-GPU. It's also got a polling rate of 125hz verses interrupt.

USB 4.0 V2's max bandwidth is only 120Gbps (14.4GB/s) but those are asymmetrical speeds it is limited to 40Gbps in the other direction (5GB/s), SLI/Crossfire requires communication in both directions... And that is before we include encoding/decoding overheads of the protocol which lowers even those numbers.

Base USB 4.0 is 1.2GB/s. - Not enough for multi-GPU.

SO while you do have external GPU's via USB 4, they tend to come with a massive corresponding hit to performance, frame pacing issues, micro-stutter and more issues.

Plus PCI-E 4.0 x8 levels of bandwidth is starting to become a limitation in terms of GPU bandwidth.

This is also Nintendo, they aren't going with the highest spec, most expensive, most power hungry implementation of USB 4.0. That would be silly, they might as well just invest that extra controller silicon space into a beefier GPU and be done with.

How would a Thunderbolt 4 port fare in such cases?

Last edited by farlaff - on 04 May 2023