| Pemalite said: 7,600MT/s is 486.4Gb/s.
486.4Gb/s X2 (Two chips) = 972.8Gb/s.
972.8Gb/s /8 (8 bits in a byte) = 121.6GB/s.
For comparison sake...
Playstation 4: 176GB/s.
Playstation 4 Pro: 217.6GB/s.
Xbox One: 68.3GB/s
Xbox Series X: 326GB/s.
Xbox Series S: 224GB/s.
So it definitely beats the Xbox One, but falls short of the Playstation 4.
HOWEVER... There are a ton of caveats to this which the raw numbers which everyone clings to doesn't tell us.
Things like Delta Colour Compression, Mesh Shading, Improved Culling and compression and even things like Tiled-based rasterization that the Playstation 4 and Xbox One didn't have... Means that it has more bandwidth to play with than the 121.6GB/s of memory bandwidth implies.
The real disappointment is the 12GB memory buffer, it's not enough.
But like all things... This is all rumor and not fact at this point.
Not really. It depends how wide you want to take it... Because you can implement LPDDR2 in such a way that it offers more bandwidth than LPDDR5X.
LPDDR5X also does go higher than the rumored 7500MT/s. - 8533MT/s, 9600MT/s, 10700MT/s exist for example, so Nintendo wouldn't be using the latest and greatest in DRAM.
10700MT/s would put the bandwidth at 171.2GB/s which is in spitting distance of the PS4 and more in line with an RTX3050 which would be preferable.
I would have rather liked to have seen 16GB of memory at the very least... The current layout ensures we will have a 96bit or 192bit memory bus, likely 96bit to keep costs down or a silly clam-shell memory layout.
And 12GB is not a lot of memory in 2024, let alone in 2025 and beyond.
16GB is considered the minimum these days... And we need to also keep in mind that Nintendo's OS tends to be memory hungry and will likely steal 2-4GB of that 12GB leaving 8-10GB for developers, which is a pittance.
Remember the Series S is very memory starved and that has over 8GB for developers out of 10GB.
Things like DLSS, Ray Tracing and more want more Ram.
Comparing it to iPad's and Phones is doing the device a disservice, they are utilitarian devices, not purely gaming devices. Ram and GPU is the priority in a gaming device which reinforces the need for different priorities in hardware.
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Nintendos OS isn't memory hungry though. Switch OS uses 1GB. PS4 was 3.5GB for reference, and I believe PS5 is the same. Nintendo could easily keep the memory allotment the same as the OG Switch while still beefing up the OS (making it snappier, added features) since the bandwidth is almost 5x faster. Multitasking would really be the only Achilles heel here.
In addition, 12GB may not be great in comparison to stationary console gaming, but we aren't dealing with that. The texture resolution for the majority of the games is going to be reduced in comparison to what is found on Series X/PS5, and it will still look great on the small screen. It won't look as great on the large screen, but that's the compromise you get when you are limited to mobile specification.
