Alternate history: Switch a generation earlier

[Pemalite]

HoloDust said:

Pemalite said:

The point I am trying to convey is that the development environment for Tegra 3 was very immature and it can be a far more memory-rich environment which was a bottleneck on other SoC's.

There was no low-level nVidia based API's like there is with Tegra X1 and the SDK's were very immature.. Obviously in a closed environment like a console a lot of those overheads can go out the window.

Also... We need to remember that the Transformer Prime originally came with DDR2-500Mhz Ram. Not LDDR3-1600Mhz Ram.

Bit of a difference there that held the GPU back in the original prime... 2GB/s vs 6.4GB/s. So it's obvious it's going to come up short against the MP2 because of that, let alone the MP4.

Here's Transformer Pad Infinity with DDR3-1600 (6.4GB/s)

https://www.anandtech.com/show/6073/the-google-nexus-7-review/5

I think even if you account for everything else, 543MP4 is just much, much faster than Tegra 3.

Again, you posted offscreen rendering that favors PowerVR. Also the Infinity only came with 1GB of Ram, not 2GB.



This paints a very different picture... And harkens back to several posts back that it would be hard to tell them a part.
Also note the Tegra 3 running at a higher resolution than the top two iPads. (Which are always performant due to Apples Metal API and OS optimizations, the lower resolution just helps.)

curl-6 said:

Could a docked configuation with higher clocks and memory bandwidth a la the real Switch give a Tegra 3 powered device the push to outperform Vita by a significant margin?

In anything fillrate intensive, Tegra 3 would win anyway if it had full bandwidth and 2GB of Ram.
It's going to be hard to tell them a part though.

A dock could provide the extra capability to boost GPU clocks by a good amount.

We need to remember that Tegra has never been the market leader in ARM SoC's, it's never even been the fastest chip... But when you see what developers can do by leveraging nVidia's development environment... That's what sets them apart.

I.E. Playing Shadowgun on Tegra which is a Tegra Enhanced game (nVidia THG), gives us full geometry and textured vegetation instead of sprites, improved shaders etc'.
Sonic 4 off the Tegra zone also has improved visuals borrowed from the XBLA and PSN releases and comes very close to the Xbox 360/Playstation 3 releases in many aspects.

Making games look good is not always about having the most performance, it's often about having the best development tools to make the process more efficient.