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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Laura Kate Dale: Nintendo Switch Dock Increases Performance, Not Via Extra Hardware

Soundwave said:
teigaga said:
LMAO some of you guys be skeptical about all the things you shouldn't be and then take for truth the most outlandish rumours.

This was to be expected. We know the Switch has a big ass fan vent, its there in plain sight for anyone to see. The only portable device I know to have visible fan vents are laptops which have highly scalable performance modes which determine whether battery dies in 2hours or 10. Of course if you try gaming on your laptop with these different modes toggled, you'll get very difference performance.

And no reputable source has made any statements which contradict this. Nintendo saying the "main" function of the dock is to connect to TV doesn't mean the dock isn't also a power/charging station (it obviously is, this also what will allow higher performance- lack of battery constraint+better cooling),and a usb station (kind of inevitable). Nintendo made in very clear they don't want to discuss specifics or confuse people. They want us understand the core function of system(hybrid portable/home console) and thats the end of story til January.

Regarding 1080p, anytime some talks about X console and X resolution, it shouldn't be taken as a literal rule. Laura is likely referring to some Nintendo games she is aware of running at 1080p, that doesn't mean all Switch games will run at 1080p when docked. Just as always its down to how developers utilise the platform. She also doesn't specify a performance jump from 720p to 1080p. Just Because Mario Kart Switch is running at 720p when undocked doesn't mean there isn't juice for it to run at higher resolutions. This can evidently be seen in 1080p PS4 games which suddenly make the jump to Native 4k on PS4 Pro (skyrim/TLOU. Nintendo will obviously want to limit power consumption when portable, I think this was likely the reason for the 720p screen as oppose to just cost cutting a few dollars.

But can the gulf in performance allow a 720p-1080p jump? Hmm, I presume it may come close, again using the laptop comparison some of my 3D software runs like shit during battery saving mode but significantly better in "power" mode. Portable Switch is probs notably under clocked for battery and heat reasons. But again realistically developers aiming for 1080p home experience will likely low ball the hardware when portable and max it out when docked. Pulling a number from my arse I could imagine the docked system running anywhere from 30-50% faster.


I think Nintendo's games could run at 1080p, while third party stuff varies. 

I don't think Nintendo is all that interested in visual fidelity far beyond Wii U games anyway. They just got started with the Wii U, making another huge leap forward in visual detail is probably not what they really want to do at this stage. 

Something a little better than the Wii U and than putting extra horsepower towards a 1080p (cleaner image quality) was probably good enough for Nintendo. 1080p vs 720p likely doesn't add a whole lot in terms of development cost of a game. 

For devs that want to do things like PS4/XB1 ports, I think 540p/720p split is probably better advised, less pixels to render should result in smoother frame rates. 

Yeah, I've watched Breath of the Wild videos on my Vita and it looks good, so I'm sure 540p will hold up on the Switches screen. I've personally never been too fussy with resolution so I hope Nintendo finds what works for each franchise instead of a internal 1080p mandate. Something like Pikmin could definitely benefit from better ground textures, shaders, lighting, more complex and abundant plant geotry etc, same with Zelda. I'll take that over 1080p. But then something like Mario will be more suited to crisp, clean, simplistic visuals.



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What we already expected.

About the 720p-1080p discussion she didn't said games will run at 1080p. She said that the perfomance increase will help show the game at 1080p on the TV, so less upscale needed.



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http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=8808363

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Miyamotoo said:
JEMC said:

That doesn't make sense at all.

Running at 1080p is more demanding than doing it at 720p, and uses more power. For a portable device it makes a lot more sense to run at the native resolution of the display to improve battery life.

Barkley already corrected me, Switch will render games at 720p even has more power than just for 720p games. Basically, fact that Switch will run games at 720p in tablet mode doesn't mean it has power just for 720p games, and that with boost of higher clocks can run same games at 1080p in docked mode (for record I talking about Nintendo games).

Wii U was capable of running Nintendo games at 1080p@60fps like Smash Bros proved, and if Mario Kart and 3DWorld didn't do that was more because Nintendo didn't cared for it rather than the console not being capable.

So Switch being capable of running Nintendo games at 1080p is the minimum one should ask for. It's ports of PS4/X1 that will be interesting to see.



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I guess we shouldn't be expecting more than that, and I'm quite content with that performance boost. A second processor in the docking station was always a pipe dream



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JEMC said:
Miyamotoo said:

Barkley already corrected me, Switch will render games at 720p even has more power than just for 720p games. Basically, fact that Switch will run games at 720p in tablet mode doesn't mean it has power just for 720p games, and that with boost of higher clocks can run same games at 1080p in docked mode (for record I talking about Nintendo games).

Wii U was capable of running Nintendo games at 1080p@60fps like Smash Bros proved, and if Mario Kart and 3DWorld didn't do that was more because Nintendo didn't cared for it rather than the console not being capable.

So Switch being capable of running Nintendo games at 1080p is the minimum one should ask for. It's ports of PS4/X1 that will be interesting to see.

Smash Bros was not technically demanding. Mario kart was 720p at 60fps with no anti-aliasing and looked awful on a projector. I'm sure Nintendo would have gone with better graphics if it was capable of it but it wasn't. Some games on wii u are lower resolution than 360 and ps3 like sonic racing and many 2D games like rayman legends can run at 1080p 60fps on wii u, ps3 and 360 because of lower performance demands. The wii u has a 176 gflops gpu and poor cpu performance, low memory bandwidth and no hard drive and its often a struggle to get games working well on the console unless a 2D game or something with low cpu demands.



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JEMC said:
Miyamotoo said:

Barkley already corrected me, Switch will render games at 720p even has more power than just for 720p games. Basically, fact that Switch will run games at 720p in tablet mode doesn't mean it has power just for 720p games, and that with boost of higher clocks can run same games at 1080p in docked mode (for record I talking about Nintendo games).

Wii U was capable of running Nintendo games at 1080p@60fps like Smash Bros proved, and if Mario Kart and 3DWorld didn't do that was more because Nintendo didn't cared for it rather than the console not being capable.

So Switch being capable of running Nintendo games at 1080p is the minimum one should ask for. It's ports of PS4/X1 that will be interesting to see.

Wii U definitely didn't had power for MK8 or SM3DW running at 1080p/60fps. So on Switch I expeting 1080p/30-60fps for Nintendo games, hardly that will be same situation for majority of PS4/XB1 ports, but we could have 1080/900p for some less demanding games Just Dance, Lego games, Indies...but for more complex and graphically demanding games best guess is 720p while 540p in portable mode.



Miyamotoo said:

Wii U definitely didn't had power for MK8 or SM3DW running at 1080p/60fps. So on Switch I expeting 1080p/30-60fps for Nintendo games.

For Nintendo games that have the same performance requirements as MK8/3DW. You'll be seeing 720p games by Nintendo soon enough as there titles utilize more power.



Barkley said:
Miyamotoo said:

Wii U definitely didn't had power for MK8 or SM3DW running at 1080p/60fps. So on Switch I expeting 1080p/30-60fps for Nintendo games.

For Nintendo games that have the same performance requirements as MK8/3DW. You'll be seeing 720p games by Nintendo soon enough as there titles utilize more power.

I dont think so, I think new Switch 3D Mario is 1080p/60fps for instance. I think Nintendo wants to have standard resolution for all their games, not that majority of their games runs at 1080p and that only few runs at 720p.



Miyamotoo said:
Barkley said:

For Nintendo games that have the same performance requirements as MK8/3DW. You'll be seeing 720p games by Nintendo soon enough as there titles utilize more power.

I dont think so, I think new Switch 3D Mario is 1080p/60fps for instance. I think Nintendo wants to have standard resolution for all their games, not that majority of their games runs at 1080p and that only few runs at 720p.

I think it really depends. Games like Mario Kart couldn't hit 1080p because the graphical choices Nintendo made. Smash Bros at 1080p definitely had an impact on visual shortcomings in the game, so in both instances I think the  target resolution was a design choice. The most sensible thing to do is to approach each game individually and see what will help the experience. 



teigaga said:
Miyamotoo said:

I dont think so, I think new Switch 3D Mario is 1080p/60fps for instance. I think Nintendo wants to have standard resolution for all their games, not that majority of their games runs at 1080p and that only few runs at 720p.

I think it really depends. Games like Mario Kart couldn't hit 1080p because the graphical choices Nintendo made. Smash Bros at 1080p definitely had an impact on visual shortcomings in the game, so in both instances I think the  target resolution was a design choice. The most sensible thing to do is to approach each game individually and see what will help the experience. 

Yup, it doesn't make sense to have a standard resolution for all Nintendo games, that would require them to purposefully hold themselves back in other areas.