So the development kit spec rumour is now considered false?

Four ARM Cortex-A57 cores, max 2GHz
NVidia second-generation Maxwell architecture
256 CUDA cores, max 1 GHz, 1024 FLOPS/cycle
4GB RAM (25.6 GB/s, VRAM shared)
32 GB storage (Max transfer 400 MB/s)
USB 2.0 & 3.0
1280 x 720 6.2″ IPS LCD
1080p at 60 fps or 4k at 30 fps max video output
Capcitance method, 10-point multi-touch

Still seems much more likely to me as a realistic spec and probably if anything slightly above the final retail product which is normal for development kits. Remember wii u development kit 352 gflops but retail wii u 176 gflops.

I'm still going for somewhere around 400-600 gflops docked and maybe 250-350 gflops on the move for the final product with a few hardware optimisations and updates here and there to max out performance using slower, cheaper DDR3 memory, extra caches etc.

I just hope when we start seeing the games which aren't as impressive as expected people don't roll out the old excuses of developer laziness or developers not used to the hardware and a step learning curve.

Still think the Switch is cool looking and could be good but not going with a spec based on people's wishes rather the hard reality that Nintendo cost down their hardware to a very low price unless their is evidence to proof it in the software technical performance that shows otherwise.

Still happy enough with a product that allows 360/ps3 quality games on the move with a bit on top and capable of fantastic cartoon graphics at 1080p 60fps at home for Nintendo's brilliant software.

For a portable, battery runtime is critical and by Nintendo cheaping out on the hardware battery life is maximised so its not all bad news as long as they don't go too cheap for the battery itself.

Obviously cartridges are as fast as RAM, since it's both flash memory. Duh.

lol, obviously... how silly of us xD

I guess evidence speaks louder than anything else.

Exibit No.1:

Biwin NGFF 60GB SATA III M.2 drive is only $25 bucks. (Link)

Thats customer price and rewritable memory. According to their site this baby has a read speed of 563 MB/s.

Exhibit No.2:

M.2 drives are used in tablets, the interface can't be that expensive to implement. Plus the Switch is a tablet.

Exhibit No.3:

Nintendo 64 didn't adhere to a Standar for it's cartridges and they were very high end for their time. 50 MB/s in 1996 if I'm not mistaken.

My point, your honor, is that the tech is there for implementing great things at realistic prices and Nintendo has history of using very "exotic "designs in their parts. I'm not claiming that they will do it, but simply point out that It Is a realistic option and is up to Nintendo to taka advantage of it(and would be nice if they do).

The problem is that even if that thing costs 1/5th to Nintendo, that would still $5 which is $4 and something more than a BD disc and also much more than a semi-regular SD card.

In any case, this discussion is kind of useless because we've already seen from the reveal trailer how the Switch cartridges are, and they look more like regular SD cards (albeit a bit more thick) than an M.2 drive with a case.

That would be great for internal memory, although that would lead to having to install the games again for best performance. That drive is quite big, miniaturizing it to sd card size and getting the costs down close to $1 per cartridge is not gonna happen for the launch of the switch.

Fact is 64GB U3 UHS-2 cards are still about $1 per GB consumer level. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA31U4676481&cm_re=UHS-II-_-9SIA31U4676481-_-Product at 150 MB/s while a 30 MB/s card is less than 40 cents/GB. How much is Nintendo willing to spend per cartridge.

Agreed. Though I never said they would use the M.2 standar as-is,  just that they could trickle down a few things from it into their propietary design. But, maybe they are not really going propietary and the extra ticknes was simply caused by perspective.

In fact, it does.

Computer memory is hierarchically organized because fast memories are expensive but HDD, RAM, processor cache are just the "same" memory (some faster than others). If your HDD was as fast as processor cache you wouldn't need RAM at all (or any other memory). 

Cartridges won't be as fast as RAM but having a faster media to read on than optical discs  means that you don't need to have a big RAM (used as cache) to pre-load things. Some of the resources can be read on demand. That's why a 6MB cache for your processor is enough; because your RAM is fast. Now, change "cache processor" for "RAM" and "RAM" for "cartridges" and the last sentence stays true.

To summing up... If you had a game media (let it be cartridges) that is as fast as your RAM and big enough than you could run it on a RAM-less console.

wow what a nice hypothetical you have there mate...

if the cartridge memory would be as fast as RAM, it would be called RAM.

if my mom had balls she would be my dad

if my gramma had wheels she would be a skateboard

etc...

So again, to sum it up, no, the game being on CD, DVD, Bluray, Cartridge, digital download, HDD, SSD, cloud or whatever else you can come up with, it will have literally no impact on the RAM usage during the game itself.

The fact that you even try to muddle the waters with the reply you did is simply disingenuous and will keep leading some people to confusion.

English is not my first language but I'll try to explain one more time. I hope to be more clear this time.

The RAM is just a cache for a slower memory. As the primary memory gets faster (CD, DVD, HDD, etc.), you will need less RAM to be used as a cache.

For example, the main reason some games installs on PS4 and XONE is to use the console HDD as a "cache". They move some data to a faster memory. 

What I tried with my last sentence was to show that the importance of the size of the RAM is dependent of the speed of your main memory source. In this way, having a faster media to read on (cartridges) means less importance of the RAM as a cache.

I'm not saying that in NS the size of the RAM is not important but that it is less important than in an optical disc-ed console.

You said that the RAM has nothing to do with the media used. It has. That's my only point.