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Soundwave on 22 June 2024
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Tico said:
Soundwave said:

Blame COVID, because it's pretty obvious the OLED was being prepped as a Pro/4K model otherwise. They opted to nix it and slap an OLED screen on instead but got stuck with a 4K dock + 4K altered chipset that they had already R&Ded and designed. So they basically just kept the dock and newer chip, even though there was no point to it. 

I think you are wrong about the real power of Mariko and about 4K.


Devices that generate heat have a regulator that reduces the power. The first steam engines had a regulator. And today's machines that generate heat also have a regulator. The regulator makes the system always work below its capacity: normally 20% or 30%.


Switch generates heat. Therefore, it surely has a regulator that forces the equipment to operate below its power. As simple as that.


Of course, you can disable the regulator. But what you now have is a switch without a regulator, not a more powerful switch. As simple as that.


If the available production lines produce 4K chipsets, it is faster and cheaper to put that chipset in the OLED than to set up a new production line.

The Mariko chip is much more power efficient and can run the full clocks, that's the point. At full clock on a Mariko people are getting the same 2 1/2-4 hours battery life the original Switch did. The Switch will shut itself down anyway if the heat gets too high internally, at overclock the Mariko chip basically runs as hot as the OG Switch does at its stock clocks. 

This is simply just what the chip can actually do, the original 20nm process was not a very good one and held the chip back, its why Nvidia never used that node again. 

Ask yourself a simple question, why would Nintendo add 4K video output to the dock (thus requiring basically a new dock essentially to have to be mass produced) and also changed the chipset inside the OLED models itself to be able to output 4K/60. These are non-necessary hardware changes that mean they physically had to go out of their way and mass produce a new dock and a new chip when they could have just used the old one and saved money. 

They were making a 4K model IMO (at least a model that can display above 1080p, which would then be marketed in whatever way), they pulled the chute because it was something that maybe they thought they needed in 2017-20 (back half upgrade), but COVID gave them such an enormous boost that really all such a model would have done at this point would be to hurt some of the appeal of the Switch 2. We've just seen a generation where Sony/MS have basically been selling 'next-gen consoles' for almost 4 years now with almost entirely last gen games with improved performance. Nintendo probably looked at that and said "well we might want to save options for higher than 1080p resolution and increased frame rate in games for the next system at this point". 

Games like Tears of the Kingdom and Breath of the Wild etc. will probably make Nintendo a lot of money at 4K/60 on the Switch 2 and be a factor in people wanting new hardware as much as people have been content to buy PS5 or XSX and just keep playing COD, Fortnite, GTAV, etc. just with improved settings. Why waste that sales appeal on a Pro model if you don't really need the sales boost, it's better the Switch 2 has that one of its selling points (better performance for your Switch 1 library).