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Forums - Nintendo - AMD Hinting that they will get the win for Nintendo's next handheld?

nomad on 14 July 2014
phaedruss said:

Well thankfully the Wii U doesn't have much bandwidth or ROPs :)


Yea, WiiU isn't setting the bar high, lol.



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Soundwave on 14 July 2014

How about something like this:

ARM + AMD or Snapdragon (?) GPU SoC = 200-250 GFLOPS @ 3-4 watt power consumption

5.5-inch 1280x720 display (game resolution is scalable) multitouch w/rumble pen stylus

$199.99-$249.99 MSRP

Can handle ports of most Wii U games, new Nintendo engine makes it easy to port 3DS/DS/GBA/NES/SNES/N64/GameCube/Wii titles.

2-2.5GB of mobile RAM

Spring 2016 Launch (Japan First)

Launch window software ... Super Mario Galaxy 3, Diddy Kong Racing Returns, Dragon Quest XI HD (also on 3DS + Home Fusion variant), DKC: Tropical Freeze, Youkai Watch 3 HD, Super Smash Bros. Fusion w/Amiibo support (port of Wii U game w/new features), Pikmin 3, FIFA 2016. 

Home Console Version is the same chip as the portable just with 3 overclocked SoC cores (so 3x+ the power) and more RAM. That would give you approximately 750-800 GFLOPS of power in a very small (Apple TV sized), practically noise free box and games would be fairly easy to scale up and down. Home TV versions could run at 1080P resolution (Wii U quality graphics) w/AA, portable versions could run the same game at 480-540p w/o AA (Wii U quality). 



jonathanalis on 14 July 2014

if they want to sell it for a cheap price, it wont go anywhere near to wii U.
unless they wait more 5 years.



fatslob-:O on 14 July 2014
Soundwave said:

If they can get 200-250 GFLOPS of performance in a 3-5 watt package, IMO that's a go for a mini-tablet sized product that can approximate/port the 10-15 "important" Wii U titles that anyone would really care about at 540p or 480p resolution, no?

The XBox 360 is 250 GFLOPS total and that runs most/many games at 720p, so running most/all games at 480-540p (at this level of visual fidelity.

I don't see the handheld really being a 'portable Wii U' as no one really wants that. If it was powerful enough to handle ports, I think the appeal for Nintendo there is that they could port games like DKC: Tropical Freeze that didn't sell perhaps as much as they would have liked on Wii U and get a second chance at selling those games again (hopefully to a larger userbase this time around).

@Bold That's actually impossible for a GPU currently even with the soon to be latest Intel's 14nm process node ... 

Performance is MORE than just about GFLOPs. Fermi GPUs are known for having less theoretical performance to Evergreen or Cayman GPUs but despite these facts a top end Fermi GPU will outperform the AMD counterparts. There are more things that you should consider about theoretical performance rather than raw shading performance such as primitive rates, fill rates, and bandwidth. 



amak11 on 14 July 2014
Soundwave said:

How about something like this:

ARM + AMD or Snapdragon (?) GPU SoC = 200-250 GFLOPS @ 3-4 watt power consumption

5.5-inch 1280x720 display (game resolution is scalable) multitouch w/rumble pen stylus

$199.99-$249.99 MSRP

Can handle ports of most Wii U games, new Nintendo engine makes it easy to port 3DS/DS/GBA/NES/SNES/N64/GameCube/Wii titles.

2-2.5GB of mobile RAM

Spring 2016 Launch (Japan First)

Launch window software ... Super Mario Galaxy 3, Dragon Quest XI HD (also on 3DS + Home Fusion variant), DKC: Tropical Freeze, Youkai Watch 3 HD, Super Smash Bros. Fusion w/Amiibo support (port of Wii U game w/new features).

Home Console Version is the same chip as the portable just with 3 overclocked SoC cores (so 3x+ the power) and more RAM. That would give you approximately 750-800 GFLOPS of power in a very small (Apple TV sized), practically noise free box and games would be fairly easy to scale up and down. Home TV versions could run at 1080P resolution (Wii U quality graphics) w/AA, portable versions could run the same game at 480-540p w/o AA (Wii U quality). 


Personally I would rather a portable console that will interface with next home console and the Wii U. There is no reason now a handheld can't be made more powerful than the Vita and at the same price. I expect rumours of a new handheld soon enough. Besides, the Wii U theoretical GFLOPs has changed in the past year because we still do not know the console's true specs. 



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Soundwave on 14 July 2014
jonathanalis said:
if they want to sell it for a cheap price, it wont go anywhere near to wii U.
unless they wait more 5 years.


I think they can get Wii U/Xbox 360 style graphics at a lower resolution for $200-$250 ... they just can't expect to make a huge profit (or any profit) off the hardware initially, but it would be smart if they designed it so that the whole package becomes profitable the moment the player buys one game. 

And then after 6-8 months, hopefully the manufacturing cost comes down to the point where you're making money off the hardware + software. 



Captain_Tom on 14 July 2014
fatslob-:O said:
Captain_Tom said:

My god I am glad you aren't making the decisions.  The Atom CPU's are utter garbage, and a screen of that resolution would be laughably bad.

@Bold What exactly are your credentials ?

The Atom CPUs may not be great but Intel processors can get a lower power consumption which is more important for mobile devices and the resolution isn't all that bad seeing as how the screen is small. 


You do realize that AMD's low-power line destroy's Intel's Atom line right?  Like it NUKES it.  5x the performance at least.



Soundwave on 14 July 2014
fatslob-:O said:
Soundwave said:

If they can get 200-250 GFLOPS of performance in a 3-5 watt package, IMO that's a go for a mini-tablet sized product that can approximate/port the 10-15 "important" Wii U titles that anyone would really care about at 540p or 480p resolution, no?

The XBox 360 is 250 GFLOPS total and that runs most/many games at 720p, so running most/all games at 480-540p (at this level of visual fidelity.

I don't see the handheld really being a 'portable Wii U' as no one really wants that. If it was powerful enough to handle ports, I think the appeal for Nintendo there is that they could port games like DKC: Tropical Freeze that didn't sell perhaps as much as they would have liked on Wii U and get a second chance at selling those games again (hopefully to a larger userbase this time around).

@Bold That's actually impossible for a GPU currently even with the soon to be latest Intel's 14nm process node ... 

Performance is MORE than just about GFLOPs. Fermi GPUs are known for having less theoretical performance to Evergreen or Cayman GPUs but despite these facts a top end Fermi GPU will outperform the AMD counterparts. There are more things that you should consider about theoretical performance rather than raw shading performance such as primitive rates, fill rates, and bandwidth. 

Mind you we are talking about a product launch that is about 2 years away still probably. We are probably talking about iPhone 7s or iPhone 8 by this time.



fatslob-:O on 14 July 2014
Soundwave said:

How about something like this:

ARM + AMD or Snapdragon (?) GPU SoC = 200-250 GFLOPS @ 3-4 watt power consumption

@Bold Not possible and I would imagine Intel being the better choice ...
5.5-inch 1280x720 display (game resolution is scalable) multitouch w/rumble pen stylus

I would go with a lower resolution ... Something on the lines of 960x540 to lower power consumption. 

$199.99-$249.99 MSRP

Too expensive ...

Can handle ports of most Wii U games, new Nintendo engine makes it easy to port 3DS/DS/GBA/NES/SNES/N64/GameCube/Wii titles.

2-2.5GB of mobile RAM

Spring 2016 Launch (Japan First)

Launch window software ... Super Mario Galaxy 3, Diddy Kong Racing Returns, Dragon Quest XI HD (also on 3DS + Home Fusion variant), DKC: Tropical Freeze, Youkai Watch 3 HD, Super Smash Bros. Fusion w/Amiibo support (port of Wii U game w/new features), Pikmin 3, FIFA 2016. 

Home Console Version is the same chip as the portable just with 3 overclocked SoC cores (so 3x+ the power) and more RAM. That would give you approximately 750-800 GFLOPS of power in a very small (Apple TV sized), practically noise free box and games would be fairly easy to scale up and down. Home TV versions could run at 1080P resolution (Wii U quality graphics) w/AA, portable versions could run the same game at 480-540p w/o AA (Wii U quality). 

@Bold It's a whole lot more complicated than that and don't take my words for a grain of salt seeing as how I'm studying electrical engineering.


Dr.Henry_Killinger on 14 July 2014

600$ Nintendo Fusion confirmed.



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