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

bigtakilla on 31 October 2016

Should be plenty enough power to give me Xenosaga HD.



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Miyamotoo on 31 October 2016
potato_hamster said:
Miyamotoo said:

Yes, but working with Nvidia and ARM is easy, so porting will not be complicated.

Yes, my point is that will be easier because Nvidia support and actually their whole experience with Shield because Switch is similar product with same architecture.

 

You talking about XB1 Cloud I talking about Nvidia/ARM tech that they are both proved that is easy to work it, basicly you already have that in Shield. Even blind man see that modern Nvidia+ARM tech will much more easier for development than Wii U for instance.


So now you're arguing that the Nintendo Switch is a nVidia Shield with a dock? I hope you're not giving Nintendo points on innovation and originality then. Then your argument boils down to "porting to a Nintendo Switch should be no more difficult than porting a game to a PC with much lower minimum specs that can be optimized for".  I suppose that's one way of looking at it, but still I have heard all of these arguments many times before.

The Wii was going was going to be easier to port to because it was just a beefed up Gamecube so the arcitecture was familiar to developers, and should be easier to work with, especially with all of these new developer tools!

The Wii U was going to be easier to port to because it was just a beefed up Wii so the arcitecture was familiar to developers, and should be easier to work with, especially with all of these new developer tools!

Now the Switch is going to be easy to port because it's just a beefed up nVidia shield so the archtecture is familiar to developers, and should be easier to work with, with all of these new developer tools.

I've heard it all before with Nintendo. Many times. I will believe it when I see it.


Also, blind people can't see thoughts any more than people without vision impairments :P

Now!?Are you aware of Shield and architecture and spec of Shield!? Switch concept, especially architecture and specs are very similar to Shield (stronger but again similar). Yes, probably want be difficile to port some PC game to Switch.

You really comparing Wii U tech and Switch based Tegra tech!? One is basicly GC tech that is 15 years old, onother is most likly Pascal based Tegra chip (year-two ago most powerful mobile chip in world). Basically you have 15 old tech and one of newest tech in industry.

Like I wrote several times, NvidiaTegra+ARM is very modern tech and architecture, that is very easy to work with it, and yes devlepment will be even easier because Nvidia support, new tools, APIs and actually their whole experience with Shield because Switch is similar product with same architecture.

 

You heard before!? When exactly last time Nintendo had very modern tech and architecture!? Last time was GC. You also didn't believe that Switch will be hybrid and that Nvidia will provide chip, now both those matters are confirmed.



Soundwave on 31 October 2016

I think it's kind of a wash. The Wii U was not difficult to work with either, neither will the NS be.

They are different from the standard though, PS4/XB1 are x86 which is basically the same as PC.

Nintendo has not made a difficult to program for system since the N64. That doesn't really mean anything for support though.

Every system is relatively easy to program for these days. 

The Wii U's problem was it simply wasn't powerful enough to continue to receive ports and combined with poor sales, developers bailed on it as they transitioned to the PS4/XB1. 



Miyamotoo on 31 October 2016
Soundwave said:
JEMC said:

Seeing some comments of people saying that the 4GB won't be a problem for third parties, just like the lower power isn't important either as it only has to power a 720p screen, is so sad that's almost funny.

Third parties won't "find a way around it" or around any other hindrance. Western third parties, and third parties in general when it comes to AAA games, haven't launched their games on a Nintendo console for the last two gens... and they have done great!

Third parties don't need Nintendo, and if they find problems porting their games to Nintendo's console, they will simply forget about it.

4GB is plenty for Tegra X1/X2 type performance which is going to be like a Wii U/PS3/360 on steroids. 

There is not much reason to worry about PS4/XB1 tier ports, the technology to put a PS4/XB1 level chip in a portable simply isn't here yet.

You can't really call Switch that will around 3x more stronger than Wii U, Wii U on steroid because that's actually big and noticibly difference in power.

And of course that will be done PS4/XB1 ports just in 720p for Switch.

 

JEMC said:
Soundwave said:

4GB is plenty for Tegra X1/X2 type performance which is going to be like a Wii U/PS3/360 on steroids. 

There is not much reason to worry about PS4/XB1 tier ports, the technology to put a PS4/XB1 level chip in a portable simply isn't here yet.

The custom Tegra inside NS can be better than last gen consoles, I don't doubt that.

And thanks for agreeing with me, no one should expect PS4/X1 games ports to the Switch.

Of Course that all multiplatform games that Switch will receive will most likely be ports of PS4/XB1 games just in 720p.



SvennoJ on 31 October 2016
Kristof81 said:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but PS4 has 4.5GB of RAM available for games. If NS allows its 4 gigs to be used fully by the devs, I don't see how is that an issue.

It's actually 5GB and it's a bottleneck as Sony is adding an extra GB for the Pro.
The barebones WiiU OS reserves 1GB and still loads awfully slow. I guess they can have games boot like the old n64/ps2 days and use the full 4GB, reset the device for a new game or to boot up to the OS. No background downloads, no online integration, no screenshots, no miiverse etc. Retro :)



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Miyamotoo on 31 October 2016
SvennoJ said:
Kristof81 said:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but PS4 has 4.5GB of RAM available for games. If NS allows its 4 gigs to be used fully by the devs, I don't see how is that an issue.

It's actually 5GB and it's a bottleneck as Sony is adding an extra GB for the Pro.
The barebones WiiU OS reserves 1GB and still loads awfully slow. I guess they can have games boot like the old n64/ps2 days and use the full 4GB, reset the device for a new game or to boot up to the OS. No background downloads, no online integration, no screenshots, no miiverse etc. Retro :)

It's bottleneck for Pro beacuse Pro has more than twice stronger GPU than regular PS4 and have support for 4k native games.



Soundwave on 31 October 2016
Miyamotoo said:
Soundwave said:

4GB is plenty for Tegra X1/X2 type performance which is going to be like a Wii U/PS3/360 on steroids. 

There is not much reason to worry about PS4/XB1 tier ports, the technology to put a PS4/XB1 level chip in a portable simply isn't here yet.

You can't really call Switch that will around 3x more stronger than Wii U, Wii U on steroid because that's actually big and noticibly difference in power.

And of course that will be done PS4/XB1 ports just in 720p for Switch.

 

JEMC said:

The custom Tegra inside NS can be better than last gen consoles, I don't doubt that.

And thanks for agreeing with me, no one should expect PS4/X1 games ports to the Switch.

Of Course that all multiplatform games that Switch will receive will most likely be ports of PS4/XB1 games just in 720p.

Is this the new "Wii will have PS3/360 ports, they'll just be in SD resolution instead of HD resolution, don't worry guys"? lol

No. NS version will have noticable downgrades in graphics on top of being only 720p max if they try to port PS4/XB1 games. 



SvennoJ on 31 October 2016
Miyamotoo said:
Soundwave said:

4GB is plenty for Tegra X1/X2 type performance which is going to be like a Wii U/PS3/360 on steroids. 

There is not much reason to worry about PS4/XB1 tier ports, the technology to put a PS4/XB1 level chip in a portable simply isn't here yet.

You can't really call Switch that will around 3x more stronger than Wii U, Wii U on steroid because that's actually big and noticibly difference in power.

Where is this 3x stronger argument coming from? Is there a link?

WiiU has 2GB at 12.8 GB/s, plus 32MB edram at 70 GB/s, 350 gflops
Tegra x1, 4GB at 25GB/s at 500 gflops
Tegra x2, 4GB at 50GB/s at 750 gflops
Now it's not that like for like to compare mobile to console performance, yet as I understand it, mobile usually underperforms compared to a powered console. So how will it be 3x stronger? It's twice if Tegra x2 comes through and is actually comparable to console performance.
Plus the handheld will have to run at 6 watts or less including the screen to have any chance at all to last anywhere near 3 hours (with a huge 5000 mah battery) Nvidia shield uses 20 watts in comparison.

Maybe I'm missing something.



Soundwave on 31 October 2016

I'm starting to get a little dubious of Nvidia's performance claims for the Tegra line in general.

A 500 GFLOP Tegra X1 should have no problem destroying a PS3/360 in performance, but you look at the Tegra X1 version of Talos Principal, the graphics are quite ... bland.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbLfZFmQqUU

It runs PS3/360 ports of Metal Gear Rising and Resident Evil 5 worse than the PS3/360:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qm16p4qYjF4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwz65Bvxrv8

And while it does run Doom 3 BFG better than PS3/360, at 1080p no less, the character models and are other graphical details seem to be downscaled.

I'm thinking while Tegra's have nice on paper GFLOP performance (for a mobile chip anyway), in actual theory they don't really hit that max. Not just because of inefficiencies with the Android OS, but because there's more to graphical performance than just floating point performance, and a desktop chip will have a myriad of advantages because it can consume a lot of electricity.



Miyamotoo on 31 October 2016
Soundwave said:
Miyamotoo said:

You can't really call Switch that will around 3x more stronger than Wii U, Wii U on steroid because that's actually big and noticibly difference in power.

And of course that will be done PS4/XB1 ports just in 720p for Switch.

 

Of Course that all multiplatform games that Switch will receive will most likely be ports of PS4/XB1 games just in 720p.

Is this the new "Wii will have PS3/360 ports, they'll just be in SD resolution instead of HD resolution, don't worry guys"? lol

No. NS version will have noticable downgrades in graphics on top of being only 720p max if they try to port PS4/XB1 games. 

But actually Wii had some PS3/Xbox 360 ports in SD (Call Of Duty, Fifa, NFS...), also have on mind that Wii was around 10x less powerful than PS3/Xbox 360 and had very outdated tech and architecture, while Switch will be around half of power of XB1 with modern tech and architecture, that's huge difference.

I dont agree with noticible downgrades, but 720p with some downgrades yes.

 

 

SvennoJ said:
Miyamotoo said:

You can't really call Switch that will around 3x more stronger than Wii U, Wii U on steroid because that's actually big and noticibly difference in power.

Where is this 3x stronger argument coming from? Is there a link?

WiiU has 2GB at 12.8 GB/s, plus 32MB edram at 70 GB/s, 350 gflops
Tegra x1, 4GB at 25GB/s at 500 gflops
Tegra x2, 4GB at 50GB/s at 750 gflops
Now it's not that like for like to compare mobile to console performance, yet as I understand it, mobile usually underperforms compared to a powered console. So how will it be 3x stronger? It's twice if Tegra x2 comes through and is actually comparable to console performance.
Plus the handheld will have to run at 6 watts or less including the screen to have any chance at all to last anywhere near 3 hours (with a huge 5000 mah battery) Nvidia shield uses 20 watts in comparison.

Maybe I'm missing something.

Wii U have power around 170/180 gflops, not 350, I recall that was info of people who turn apart Wii U hardware. And that would definitely make around 3x more power than Wii U. Dont forget much more capable ARM quad A57 than Wii U PPC and most likely 3GB RAM instead 1GB RAM of Wii U.

Switch will not be running only in handheld mode, it's most likely that in docke will run at higher or full clock while in handheld mode will work underclocked.