Interesting, although the the first article has since been updated at the bottom to say otherwise. If true it doesn't sound like a huge difference based on the account of Vigil Games"“When we got the new kits there were some things in the old build that wouldn’t work with the new hardware and we had to wait for updates. "

I'm not going to bother cross checking this one.

It's a nice Nintendo fan pipe dream to think that they'll be buying a console with a $300+ CPU (i7 quad core, 8 thread Skylake) and presumably a $300+ (more like $500+ if "near top of the line") GPU for under $400 (closer to $300 because this is Nintendo), but big fans are obligated to dream big.

The moment I saw Skylake i7 I knew it was total BS, no way in hell is Nintendo going to splash on brand spanking new hardware let alone an i7 that they most likely wouldn't make use of hyperthreading of the i7's, Nintendo just doesn't wake up one morning and decide it knows how to utilize a CPU to the absolute max.

I just don't believe it, it's been a long time since Nintendo decided to brute force with hardware and even then the last time it didn't work out so well for them and since then they've always stayed behind the trend of up to date hardware, I don't see why they'd try pulling that move now.

One problem though, the source disclosed the relative power of the GPU as "nearly top-of-the-line" ...

Well they're basing it specifically off benchmark comparisons which is a fully reliable way to gauge a platforms strength versus going by looks of demo. The wording however gives me zero faith "we're assuming a Corei7" 

Also they say its impossible to run at 60fps on the said intel hardware, but don't specify what it runs at on NX dev kits. I think we're assuming 60fps but it could be 30fps like most tech demos.

"one software demo included with the kit"

Skylake is a multi-purpose, jack-of-all-trades CPU that is built for multipurpose capabilities, its going to get bottlenecked hard on heavy gaming applications like polygon crunching vs. a specified (and not 300$) specialized design. Top of the line for gaming does not mean top of the line for general CPU designs, that's simply nonsense. (And same with the GPU, really, since its no longer constrained to seperate silicon and forced to have to deal with mobo bus bottlenecks.)

If anything, it just means that they have a very, very efficient and capable SoC under the hood for gaming/rendering and potent API solutions to make use of it in their demo (which is closed environment and rather unindicative over-all as it can be extremely optimized by being so closed off).

I also don't expect the NX to get an 11th hour supplex on its capabilities because of fabrication bugs and *Japan home* considerations.

They only described the demo as "impossible to run at 60fps" however they descibed the dev kit itself of having "nearly top-of-the-line graphics card" ...

So they're not inferring from the demo that the GPU is top of the line but they are straight up claiming that it is ...

No reason it shouldn't be. The money that was used on the GamePad could add some great power to any console.