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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Emily Rogers: Switch has 4GB of ram in RETAIL units, leaked specs might not be farfetched

oniyide on 31 October 2016
curl-6 said:
Soundwave said:

Well I guess it depends what your expectations are for visuals. 

With Nvidia's tiling and other bandwidth compression techniques, 25GB/sec would be fine for Wii U/PS3/XB360 tier graphics, and then with chipset architecture advances, maybe you get something a decent amount better looking than what 360/PS3/Wii U could do. 

For a portable machine that's pretty good. 

If you are expecting PS4/XB1 ports that look "almost" as good as those two consoles ... it's gonna be bad news. That ain't happening. 

I'm well aware that PS4/X1 tier graphics are off the table, and I've spent the last few weeks reminding others of this, as I can see a lot of Nintendo fans building themselves up for disappointment by expecting this thing to somehow pack Xbox One hardware into a portable case.

My primary concern is, to what extent can it surpass Wii U? A generational leap may not be possible, but if the gap isn't even really noticeable, that would be pretty bad, as Wii U was seen as underpowered even back in 2012.

but is it underpowered for a PORTABLE?



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curl-6 on 31 October 2016
Soundwave said:
curl-6 said:

I'm well aware that PS4/X1 tier graphics are off the table, and I've spent the last few weeks reminding others of this, as I can see a lot of Nintendo fans building themselves up for disappointment by expecting this thing to somehow pack Xbox One hardware into a portable case.

My primary concern is, to what extent can it surpass Wii U? A generational leap may not be possible, but if the gap isn't even really noticeable, that would be pretty bad, as Wii U was seen as underpowered even back in 2012.

That Mario Switch footage is probably a good barometer, even though it's brief. 

That does look better than 3D World, but not like a ton better. 

It's difficult to ascertain much from off-screen footage that probably isn't even running on Switch hardware though. 



Mr.GameCrazy on 31 October 2016
oniyide said:
curl-6 said:

I'm well aware that PS4/X1 tier graphics are off the table, and I've spent the last few weeks reminding others of this, as I can see a lot of Nintendo fans building themselves up for disappointment by expecting this thing to somehow pack Xbox One hardware into a portable case.

My primary concern is, to what extent can it surpass Wii U? A generational leap may not be possible, but if the gap isn't even really noticeable, that would be pretty bad, as Wii U was seen as underpowered even back in 2012.

but is it underpowered for a PORTABLE?

Judging from the NVidia blog, the Nintendo Switch sounds like it's powerful for a portable system. Probably more powerful than the PS Vita.



curl-6 on 31 October 2016
oniyide said:
curl-6 said:

I'm well aware that PS4/X1 tier graphics are off the table, and I've spent the last few weeks reminding others of this, as I can see a lot of Nintendo fans building themselves up for disappointment by expecting this thing to somehow pack Xbox One hardware into a portable case.

My primary concern is, to what extent can it surpass Wii U? A generational leap may not be possible, but if the gap isn't even really noticeable, that would be pretty bad, as Wii U was seen as underpowered even back in 2012.

but is it underpowered for a PORTABLE?

No, but Nintendo aren't pushing it as a portable. 



Soundwave on 31 October 2016
curl-6 said:
Soundwave said:

That Mario Switch footage is probably a good barometer, even though it's brief. 

That does look better than 3D World, but not like a ton better. 

It's difficult to ascertain much from off-screen footage that probably isn't even running on Switch hardware though. 

I'm quite sure that's running off Switch hardware, even if it's just a modified Tegra X1, that's an already produced chip. 



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AZWification on 31 October 2016
curl-6 said:
Soundwave said:

That Mario Switch footage is probably a good barometer, even though it's brief. 

That does look better than 3D World, but not like a ton better. 

It's difficult to ascertain much from off-screen footage that probably isn't even running on Switch hardware though. 

Graphics might also be a bit better in the final version since this is probably coming in late 2017.



                
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curl-6 on 31 October 2016
Soundwave said:
curl-6 said:

It's difficult to ascertain much from off-screen footage that probably isn't even running on Switch hardware though. 

I'm quite sure that's running off Switch hardware, even if it's just a modified Tegra X1, that's an already produced chip. 

Still, we will probably need to wait until January to get a better idea of what Switch can pull of visually, once we get direct feed footage of its games.



Miyamotoo on 31 October 2016
potato_hamster said:
Miyamotoo said:

I clearly remember reveal of PS4/XB1 when developers were very pleased with amount of RAM with PS4/XB1 and they actually were saying they can be very relaxed with development with that amount for RAM. But some developer were saying that CPU is actually huge bottleneck, because amount of RAM is huge and GPU is powerful but CPU is weak. 8GB RAM in PS4/XB1 is definatly not bottleneck, actualy you are first person that I heard saying something like that.

I really dont see point of comparing PS3 512MB RAM with 8GB PS4 RAM, of course that in 2010. 256MB of RAM for games was little for those games.

Okay, so you ackowledge that the 256 MB of ram the PS3 had at release was adequate, but in 2010, four years later, the extra 70MB released to developers was a good move, because memory was starting to become an issue. However, with the PS4, you believe the 8GB of RAM the console had at release was adequate, but there's no reason to think this is starting to limit what they can do on a console? Why do you think this?

Furthermore, Mark Cerny appears to disagree with you. If RAM was a non issue on the PS4, why did they add an additional 1 GB of slow RAM to free up more of the GDDR RAM for development purposes?
 
http://www.polygon.com/2016/10/21/13358416/ps4-pro-extra-ram-memory

You mentioned PS3, I will mention that Wii U have 3-4x more RAM than PS3/Xbox360 and yet multiplatform games on Wii U in some cases worked worse, furthermore Xbox had twice RAM of PS2 memory and they played same game. Offcourse Its always better to have more RAM, power, etc, but point is that RAM in PS4/XB1 is definatly not bottleneck and you can always make games using less RAM.

PS4 Pro got more than twice stronger GPU than regular PS4, they cloced CPU and they add just 1GB RAM for machine that will have even native support for 4k games, that's actually very small upgrade RAM compared for huge boost in power of GPU. Why!? Beacuse 8GB is already more than enuf for regualr PS4 and for PS4 Pro they add just 1GB of RAM.

 

Fight-the-Streets said:
My point is that people at Nintendo do know that the RAM is a crucial thing. They made the mistake there already with the Wii U, they will not repeat it, so if they go with 4 GB, they must be sufficient, they have check it (also with 3rd parties).

RAM want Wii U problem at all, Wii U bottleneck was CPU not amount of RAM, Wii U RAM was enuf for purpose of console 720p/60fps console. Saying that, 4GB is enuf for purpose of Switch and actualy Switch hardware will very balanced with 4GB of RAM.

 

Soundwave said:


While more RAM than Wii U is better, it from what I understand cannot have eDRAM, which might give the Wii U some advantages. 

If Nintendo is using 25GB/sec that's a really weak memory bandwidth for a console. For a portable it's OK, but for a console that's terrible. They must have some larger sized caches on the processor.

You will not see that advantage at all, Wii U Ram was DDR3 .

It seems that Switch is using Pascal, and Pascal is capable for 50-70GB/sec.



SvennoJ on 31 October 2016
Ganoncrotch said:

I more meant that I hope they focus on the positive aspects of cartridge based games, and don't let people fall into the thought that Nintendo are taking a step back in terms of the technology they are using to the point where FF7 would have cost €1000 to buy on the N64, that sort of mindset could hurt the system if people view Cartridge based games as old and out of date.

While they are costly too... keep in mind that the carts from old school systems also allowed you to insert additional power into a system since they effectively worked as daughterboards for the console... I can't imagine them managing to fit a new version of the tegra chip into a game card, but the potential is there for extra hardware in a cart which you cannot insert on a CD based system.

Super FX chip in 2017 would be pretty awesome to see again!

It might have helped in the old days yet I doubt the interface of sd card reader is suitable for additional processing power. The new UHS-II bus speed is upto 312 MB/s, while the cpu/gpu talk to memory at 25 GB/s, over 80 times faster. And that's slow memory, ps4 is at 176 GB/s. It's still amazing to push 312 MB/s through a 4 bit bus, compared to a 256 bit bus between cpu/gpu and memory.

It would make more sense to plug extra hardware into a USB 3.0 port, although that's still slow at max 640 MB/s. Better than cloud rendering though, so perhaps for very specific tasks like the ones we're still waiting to see in practice :)



Soundwave on 31 October 2016
Miyamotoo said:
potato_hamster said:

Okay, so you ackowledge that the 256 MB of ram the PS3 had at release was adequate, but in 2010, four years later, the extra 70MB released to developers was a good move, because memory was starting to become an issue. However, with the PS4, you believe the 8GB of RAM the console had at release was adequate, but there's no reason to think this is starting to limit what they can do on a console? Why do you think this?

Furthermore, Mark Cerny appears to disagree with you. If RAM was a non issue on the PS4, why did they add an additional 1 GB of slow RAM to free up more of the GDDR RAM for development purposes?
 
http://www.polygon.com/2016/10/21/13358416/ps4-pro-extra-ram-memory

You mentioned PS3, I will mention that Wii U have 3-4x more RAM than PS3/Xbox360 and yet multiplatform games on Wii U in some cases worked worse, furthermore Xbox had twice RAM of PS2 memory and they played same game. Offcourse Its always better to have more RAM, power, etc, but point is that RAM in PS4/XB1 is definatly not bottleneck and you can always make games using less RAM.

PS4 Pro got more than twice stronger GPU than regular PS4, they cloced CPU and they add just 1GB RAM for machine that will have even native support for 4k games, that's actually very small upgrade RAM compared for huge boost in power of GPU. Why!? Beacuse 8GB is already more than enuf for regualr PS4 and for PS4 Pro they add just 1GB of RAM.

 

Fight-the-Streets said:
My point is that people at Nintendo do know that the RAM is a crucial thing. They made the mistake there already with the Wii U, they will not repeat it, so if they go with 4 GB, they must be sufficient, they have check it (also with 3rd parties).

RAM want Wii U problem at all, Wii U bottleneck was CPU not amount of RAM, Wii U RAM was enuf for purpose of console 720p/60fps console. Saying that, 4GB is enuf for purpose of Switch and actualy Switch hardware will very balanced with 4GB of RAM.

 

Soundwave said:


While more RAM than Wii U is better, it from what I understand cannot have eDRAM, which might give the Wii U some advantages. 

If Nintendo is using 25GB/sec that's a really weak memory bandwidth for a console. For a portable it's OK, but for a console that's terrible. They must have some larger sized caches on the processor.

You will not see that advantage at all, Wii U Ram was DDR3 .

It seems that Switch is using Pascal, and Pascal is capable for 50-70GB/sec.

Wii U was using DDR3 as it's slow pool of main RAM, but it had a blazing fast eDRAM (32MB of it), which is actually probably the most technically impressive part of the Wii U. 

Also you can use 50GB/sec for example but it doesn't happen magically for "free" on Pascal. Using a 128-bit bus with 50GB/sec will consume more electricity, lowering your battery life. It also makes the chip more expensive. I'm guessing Nintendo stuck with 25GB/sec.