sc94597 said:
Basically none of this is likely true, other than arguably the CPU comparison, which does roughly correspond to 1/3rd of the other 9th Gen systems. The handheld GPU mode would have to be clocked at 260Mhz to be a "0.8 TFLOPs system." That would be a lower handheld clock than Switch (not that this can't happen, but it is unlikely), and much lower than the minimum clock-rate of Ampere chips in an active power state. That's almost the idle clock rate of consumer Ampere chips (210Mhz.) With the leaked clocks (which multiple insiders seem to be quite confident are real) we're looking at 1.71 TFLOPs in handheld mode, and 3.1 TFLOPs in docked mode. "1/5th the GPU compute" of the Series S is laughably wrong. But would make sense if one is assuming it is a "0.8 TFLOPS system." Handheld mode is more like 1/3rd of a Series S if we are generous and accept the 3DMark benchmark test. Generous, because the Series S doesn't have infinity cache nor the memory capacity of the RX 6600 (even if down-clocked), being used as its proxy, the RTX 2050 being used as the Switch 2's proxy has memory capacity bottleneck issues that can only be partially alleviated by system memory, and feature advantages like DLSS are not being considered. But yeah, 1/3rd of the Series S in raw GPU compute should be the rough estimate, with docked mode being something like 3/5ths of a Series S. DLSS can cut into some of that, as we are seeing with cross-generation games allowing handheld mode to achieve an upscaled 1080p-equivalent and docked mode 1080p (or higher) - equivalents. The games speak for themselves. The Switch 2 might struggle with GTA 6, but I don't think it is an entirely impossible port either. I anticipate that the game will run pretty decently (at low settings) on current performant PC APUs, and the Switch 2 handheld mode isn't too far off from those performance-wise. Probably more possible than the Witcher 3 was on Switch. |
You seem to be focusing on what the chip can potentially do rather than what the battery system can provide for 2 hours. Yes we can all understand the potential for the chip to be more powerful but the reality is for portable use it has to be be powered by a battery. 0.8 Teraflops is surely all it is going to be capable of with a 10Nm/8Nm fabricated chipset. I'm surprised that video had docked performance so low but I guess that means they can have it cooler running, more reliable and cheaper power components. My original guess was between 600 and 800 Gflops in portable mode so my guess for this was at the higher end where as for docked mode by guess was 2-2.4 Teraflops and this is at the lower end. Ultimately my guess was based on how the original Switch was downclocked compared to the underlying chipset in the Nvidia Shield. There is nothing new here in how Nintendo downclocks hardware and chooses the cheapest manufacturing options.
800 Gflops is still a huge upgrade on the original Switch which was more like 120-170 Gflops in portable mode. That is definitely a generational leap and with DLSS on top we are looking at that pixel count boost that Nvidia has claimed of 10x.
Who would even want a portable system that lets say can only be powered for an hour before recharging which is what higher gflops figures would have meant. Surely as a practical gaming piece of hardware we want at least 2 hours which over time will shrink a bit anyway. Lets not forget higher current drain shorten's battery life too. A laptop with a 30W current draw will have a much shorter lifespan for the battery unit in general than a Celeron laptop that only draws 12W max. This could be part of Nintendo's plans to restrict current for reliability and lithium battery lifespan benefits. My ryzen laptop needs a replacement battery but my Celeron laptop gives me up to 18hrs runtime and despite being much older the battery pack is still in perfect health with pretty much full capacity because the chipset only sips energy from the battery pack. I can use that Celeron laptop all day without issue. The Ryzen laptop at best was under 2 hours for gaming and went under 1 hour before the battery pack finally failed. The Ryzen laptop has a GPU of about 1.6 Teraflops (3500U), the Celeron laptop about 120 Gflops (Celeron N4120). The Ryzen laptop sounds like a jumbo jet taking off when gaming, the Celeron doesn't even have a fan just a heatsink. There are great benefits to being lower powered as well as disadvantages. Nintendo's sweetspot in performance vs battery life maybe a better choice overall than just focusing on performance for a short period of time. Yes of course they could have had more performance or more battery runtime if they had coughed up for a 5Nm fabrication process but this is Nintendo and they went as cheap as possible.
