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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Digital Foundry: Nintendo Switch CPU and GPU clock speeds revealed

bigtakilla on 19 December 2016
Goodnightmoon said:
bigtakilla said:

Unfortunately if you are a home console gamer, it doesnt offer much.

Yes, at the very least it offers you a console that is like 2.5-3 times more powerfull than their previous homeconsole at a lower price with a unified library and great japanese support. It offers you way more than WiiU actually, and that's if you are only interested on the homeconsole side.

But what does it lose by not being a true successor to the home console, instead of snuggling up somewhere near last gen (two gens ago competitor wise)? Quite a bit.



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Frogger on 19 December 2016
Mowco said:
spemanig said:

All people really care about are the numbers. I think most people assume that it will be either 2/3 SMs, so there's little point in considering cases 3 or 4.

What are FP32 and FP16? I think that Case 1 or 2 with FP16, whatever the hell that means, would be more than ideal.

 

FP16 is half precision, PS4 PRO is 4.2TF in FP32 and 8.4TF in FP16 for example. So really you want to look at the FP32 figure as that's what everybody uses. People on neogaf seem pretty sure that it's Case 1, so 384 Gflops.

Oh, I see. So two ways of saying the same thing?

Thraktor seems more confident that it's Case 2, given his post.



Goodnightmoon on 19 December 2016
bigtakilla said:
Goodnightmoon said:

Yes, at the very least it offers you a console that is like 2.5-3 times more powerfull than their previous homeconsole at a lower price with a unified library and great japanese support. It offers you way more than WiiU actually, and that's if you are only interested on the homeconsole side.

But what does it lose by not being a true successor to the home console, instead of snuggling up somewhere near last gen (two gens ago competitor wise)? Quite a bit.

It loses some things and it gains other things, it all depends on what you value more. As for the general public I think they will value this thing way better than this internet meltdowns make it look.



Mowco on 19 December 2016
spemanig said:
Mowco said:

 

FP16 is half precision, PS4 PRO is 4.2TF in FP32 and 8.4TF in FP16 for example. So really you want to look at the FP32 figure as that's what everybody uses. People on neogaf seem pretty sure that it's Case 1, so 384 Gflops.

Oh, I see. So two ways of saying the same thing?

Thraktor seems more confident that it's Case 2, given his post.

 

Yeah basically. It's possible it will be 3 sm's, while that'd still put it at around half the XBO it's more in line with what I was expecting. I still have an issue with just how much it's underclocked in handheld mode though, I was expecting 600Gflops Docked, 400Gflops undocked before today. I didn't expect it to be less than half the power when used portable as opposed to docked.

bigtakilla on 19 December 2016
spemanig said:
bigtakilla said:

So, speculation. Just like hardware.

No, rumor.

Speculation is a guess you make up. A rumor is a potential fact that cannot be fully validated yet. Software is a rumor because someone told Emily that with the intention of distributing fact. Hardware is speculation because Eurogamer guessed that with the intention of spitballing fact.

Doesn't make it any more fact though.



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Ganoncrotch on 19 December 2016

This sort of performance would exactly line up with Nintendo promising to have a ton of software lined up for the system, basically everything it had been working on for the last 2 years of the Wii-U which was not released was no doubt ported over to the Switch and continued to be developed since at the base undocked level it is exactly on the same level as a Wii-U just with more modern gpu and cpu processing techniques.

It is a good and a bad thing, obviously 3rd parties are going to have a ton more work getting ps4/x1 ports scaled down to it. But the upside is there should be a lot of software coming to it from Nintendo at least, both straight up Wii-U titles coming directly to it and now they should have a good idea of how long it takes to design a game on that hardware so they won't be missing deadlines by a few years now hopefully.



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Miyamotoo on 19 December 2016
Soundwave said:
Miyamotoo said:

Of Course they will look like Wii U games when they are actually Wii U games (MK and Splatoon), lol. Actually only game that isnt Wii U game, 3D Mario, looked better, but Nintendo said people don't need to assume that games look or run exactly same.

Those aren't Wii U games though they had new content. Those are Switch games, that's what they'll look like on Switch. 

It makes senese looking at these specs too, 384 GFLOPS is basically double a Wii U which should give you Wii U fidelity at 1080P.

Wii U graphics are still a challenge for Nintendo, every one of their more ambitious Wii U titles has taken huge amounts of time (and likely more money than they're used to spending) to develop. 

Maybe they are even remasters running at 1080p or some other improvements, you can't really tell from Switch video because you cant see such a difference from small video. And again, Nintendo said people don't need to assume that games look or run exactly same.

Its not only about raw power on paper, very modern Nvidia tech and architecture will have higher real world performance compared to Wii U, also its not only about different GPU power, it's also about CPU and amount of RAM, ARM A57 is much stronger and much more capable than Wii U CPU, also most likly Switch will have 3x more RAM for games compared to Wii U. Also fact is that Switch is using custom Tegra, so there's definitely some under hood improvements.

Thats not true at all, fact is that Wii U was first Nintendo HD console and they had lotsa problems with HD development, and only game that took huge amount of time is Zelda BotW but that's not nothing new for 3D Zelda. Also its seems that will much easiere to work with Switch compared to Wii U, not to mention that Switch is unified console from Nintendo so we will have games from all handhelds and home console Nintendo teams that are now united.



Frogger on 19 December 2016
bigtakilla said:
spemanig said:

No, rumor.

Speculation is a guess you make up. A rumor is a potential fact that cannot be fully validated yet. Software is a rumor because someone told Emily that with the intention of distributing fact. Hardware is speculation because Eurogamer guessed that with the intention of spitballing fact.

Doesn't make it any more fact though.

It does make it more valid.



bigtakilla on 19 December 2016
spemanig said:
bigtakilla said:

Doesn't make it any more fact though.

It does make it more valid.

Guess it depends in how much stock you place in ER.



Soundwave on 19 December 2016
Miyamotoo said:
Soundwave said:

Those aren't Wii U games though they had new content. Those are Switch games, that's what they'll look like on Switch. 

It makes senese looking at these specs too, 384 GFLOPS is basically double a Wii U which should give you Wii U fidelity at 1080P.

Wii U graphics are still a challenge for Nintendo, every one of their more ambitious Wii U titles has taken huge amounts of time (and likely more money than they're used to spending) to develop. 

Maybe they are even remasters running at 1080p or some other improvements, you can't really tell from Switch video because you cant see such a difference from small video. And again, Nintendo said people don't need to assume that games look or run exactly same.

Its not only about raw power on paper, very modern Nvidia tech and architecture will have higher real world performance compared to Wii U, also its not only about different GPU power, it's also about CPU and amount of RAM, ARM A57 is much stronger and much more capable than Wii U CPU, also most likly Switch will have 3x more RAM for games compared to Wii U. Also fact is that Switch is using custom Tegra, so there's definitely some under hood improvements.

Thats not true at all, fact is that Wii U was first Nintendo HD console and they had lotsa problems with HD development, and only game that took huge amount of time is Zelda BotW but that's not nothing new for 3D Zelda. Also its seems that will much easiere to work with Switch compared to Wii U, not to mention that Switch is unified console from Nintendo so we will have games from all handhelds and home console Nintendo teams that are now united.

I'm just saying from Nintendo's POV I don't think they really care too much about higher hardware spec. 

It just makes game more expensive to produce at the end of the day, the idea that they were willing going to go running to a massively more powerful piece of kit just 4 years after starting the Wii U was probably misguided from the start.

2x the Wii U in docked mode sounds about right.