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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - SuperChunky Discussion - Real NS Power

Slimebeast on 28 October 2016
superchunk said:
Slimebeast said:

Let it please be at least half an Xbox One. Please.

I'm betting on something closer to 70-80% of an Xbox One overall. Something that when docked (aka home console mode), you likely won't see much of a difference between an Xbox One or NS port of the same game.

That would be so awesome, 70-80%. Not only would it look perfect enough just based on my personal taste, but that kind of hardware power would almost guaranteed be enough to support most third party multiplatforms from a pure technical point of view, and make it possible that the Switch gets a nice multiplatform library.

superchunk said:
vivster said:

And I meant the CPU within a full blown APU.

Then you're argument makes no sense. CPU to CPU, these Tegra's are better than the Jaguar. Jaguar is not a desktop i5 / i7 CPU. Jaguar is a mobile CPU based on x86 architecture. But, you're nitpicking one small part of the OP and not really worth the discussion.

lol you are so freaking funny sometimes superchunk.



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fleischr on 28 October 2016
vivster said:
fleischr said:
My thought is that the Switch has a Tegra X2 + an additional GeForce GPU.

For games that support it - in mobile mode it'll run just with the Tegra chip. When docked, the extra GeForce GPU kicks in everytime for full HD console support - but if a a game like Skyrim remastered couldn't run on just the Tegra alone, it could still use that extra GPU, but at the expense of shorter battery life.

There is so far no indication that there will be an additional GPU. Tegra X2 should be just fine in playing old games like Skyrim and every single Nointendo game for that matter. All we can hope for is an overclocked mode when docked.

Frankly an additional GPU would make the whole system very clunky from an architectural standpoint. The all in one approach is absolutely fine and will make things very comfortable for Nintendo and the developers. Adding another GPU in the dock would make the console more expensive and basically ruin the whole concept.


But it wouldn't be a conventional GPU. It wouldn't be a GTX1050 or anything like that. Instead, I'd picture it as a very very small, lightweight GPU that would be easy to add to the Switch tablet.  Perhaps even a customized secondary Tegra chip?

The Tegra X2 comes in at roughy 0.75 teraflops (compared to XB1's 1.3 and PS4's 1.8). Even for all the power efficiency benefits ARM provides + optimization wonders Nintendo and Nvidia can do, I don't see how the Switch gets even close to the XB1's power level with just that. But at that level, only a small amount of extra GPU is really needed to be in the realm of X1 power levels.

None of the rumors about Switch have ever indicated that it would only be half the power or less of the XB1 or PS4 - but rather "just below" the XB1 in power level. Half is not "just below", it's signficantly below.

The architecture is actually there. NS's use case - especially for this kind of hardware setup - is very, very similar that nVidia's Optimus technology. http://www.geforce.com/hardware/technology/optimus/technology.



I predict NX launches in 2017 - not 2016

Soundwave on 28 October 2016

70-80% of an XBox One ain't happening.

Shield Console with the Tegra X1 in some cases has problems keeping up with even an XBox 360:

https://youtu.be/M2X9zBrUlDA?t=1m24s



SonytendoAmiibo on 28 October 2016

How powerful the Switch is really doesn't matter until we know what the price of the system is. If it's over $300 US and can't run western muti-plats than it will be an extremely tough sell. If it's $249 US and has a ton of 1st and 2nd party Nintendo goodness, who cares what the specs are. The Price is the big question.



   

Hey! They got SONY on my amiibo! Wait a minute. Two great gaming tastes that game great together!

Switch FC: SW-0398-8858-1969

Soundwave on 28 October 2016
SonytendoAmiibo said:
How powerful the Switch is really doesn't matter until we know what the price of the system is. If it's over $300 US and can't run western muti-plats than it will be an extremely tough sell. If it's $249 US and has a ton of 1st and 2nd party Nintendo goodness, who cares what the specs are. The Price is the big question.

lol, that's quite a leeway for only $50 difference. 



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Slimebeast on 28 October 2016
vivster said:
superchunk said:

Then you're argument makes no sense. CPU to CPU, these Tegra's are better than the Jaguar. Jaguar is not a desktop i5 / i7 CPU. Jaguar is a mobile CPU based on x86 architecture. But, you're nitpicking one small part of the OP and not really worth the discussion.

So taking out the one part of the OP I didn't agree with and questioning it is nitpicking now?

I understand. Next time I'm only going to post when all of the OP is questionable and not just one part.

Long live discussions!

Yes, such strange logic. Just wanted to post that yes, we see the logical flaw made by superchunk in this case.

It was an interesting question too, the case of whether the CPU component of the Switch is as powerful as the CPU of PS4/Xbox One or not.



SonytendoAmiibo on 28 October 2016
Soundwave said:
SonytendoAmiibo said:
How powerful the Switch is really doesn't matter until we know what the price of the system is. If it's over $300 US and can't run western muti-plats than it will be an extremely tough sell. If it's $249 US and has a ton of 1st and 2nd party Nintendo goodness, who cares what the specs are. The Price is the big question.

lol, that's quite a leeway for only $50 difference. 

 

I did say over $300 US so use your imagination. Anyone for Xenoblade Chronicles Switch? At home and on the go.

   

Hey! They got SONY on my amiibo! Wait a minute. Two great gaming tastes that game great together!

Switch FC: SW-0398-8858-1969

superchunk on 28 October 2016
SonytendoAmiibo said:
How powerful the Switch is really doesn't matter until we know what the price of the system is. If it's over $300 US and can't run western muti-plats than it will be an extremely tough sell. If it's $249 US and has a ton of 1st and 2nd party Nintendo goodness, who cares what the specs are. The Price is the big question.

Agreed. I buy Nintendo hardware first and foremost for 1st party. That will be there and it will be amazing as always. If the price is $250 (I do think it has to be), then that will surely sell a lot and 3rd parties will support similar to 3DS as eventually NS will be Nintendo's only console. (unless Nintnedo does a 2DS style option and puts out a markedly lower end portable for 1/2 the price)



Soundwave on 28 October 2016

I think it'll be $269.99 with a game included. 

$100 more than the standard 3DS model price for the bulk of its life cycle.



Slimebeast on 28 October 2016
Soundwave said:

I will say 1/3-1/2 of an XBox One in actual real world performance.

Memory bandwidth is going to be the big problem for the Switch since I don't think they can realistically use high bandwidth eDRAM or eSRAM in a portable.

And even going with a 128-bit bus for the RAM is a problem potentially because that would increase battery usage and cost. My guess is they're making due with 25GB/sec 64-bit bus but leaning heavily on Nvidia's tiling approach to reduce bandwidth as much as possible with some faster memory caches.

If this thing is really capable of running PS4/XB1 ports, why in the world would you show a five year old Skyrim primarily in the teaser trailer? That Mario game also looked nowhere near a full generation leap past Mario 3D World, it looked very marginally better. Also Eurogamer's sources, which got everything basically right about the NS say 2-3x better performance than a Playstation 3 (not 4). 

Which for a portable system is pretty damn good. If you were expecting more than that, I just don't think it's reasonably possible with today's technology. 

You can't have a 20 watt portable, your battery will be dead in an hour. 

Deja vu.

I swear I just read some of these sentences elsewhere just a moment ago lol

That they used Skyrim as a teaser might simply be because Bethesda has heavily been advertising the Skrim Remaster this fall. It's an important game in their lineup and makes more sense to use than Fallout 4.

But of course it's a little worrying that it just may be the case that modern games like Fallout 4 and Red Dead Redemption 2 simply can't run properly on the Switch. Scary thought.

The margin is very small and I do think it's up to those extra % and that it will make a huge difference whether it is 1/3 of Xbox One or 2/3.

If the Switch turns out to be only 1/3 of Xbox one I think it's game over when it comes to multiplatforms, while if the Switch is 2/3 of it, then there's a huge chance that most third party developers will think it's worth it to at least try to make a decent port. The margin is that small.

Many third party devs in this gen choose to make their multiplatform games run at 900p on the Xbox One (while 1080p on PS4) and it's easy to imagine they would aim for 720p on the Switch, which on paper would require 64% of the power of the Xbox One.

But if the Switch is only 1/3 of the XBox One, it just becomes very hard to optimize (downgrade) the game to make it run at 720p and the thought of even lower resolutions (576p lol) I think sounds very unattractive to developers at this point of a generation when 4K is the buzzword.

It's really an exciting time and it's just soooo frustrating that we don't know yet.