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Forums - Nintendo - Nintendo Switch Teardowns: ChipWorks et al... X1 it is!

I noticed another site did a teardown, so I updated the OP with more detailed info. Enjoy!

http://www.techinsights.com/about-techinsights/overview/blog/nintendo-switch-teardown/



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Last update I think... don't think there are more outlets that want to open up yet another Switch. There is less information in this one from Ben Heck, it is just presented in a nerdy livelier way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpSPyW5v8r0



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Last post (?) since I am mostly talking to myself here... another two teardowns, but in article/blog form this time around:

Fictiv - https://www.fictiv.com/blog/posts/nintendo-switch-teardown
Stand is made of glass-nylon. Highlights the lovely light pipies, modularity design, low-profile joysticks and overall design for assembly.

Mindtribe - http://mindtribe.com/2017/03/nintendos-hardware-dna-a-switch-teardown/
Interesting things might be their historical teardown and insights in manufacturing dates (his unit's casing was made in Nov 2016) and also comments on the light pipes.



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Tag for later reading and viewing



 

ChipWorks (TechInsights) updated their article with the SoC X-ray.

After subsequent processing of the GPU from the Nintendo Switch, we have determined that the processor is the Nvidia Tegra T210. The T210 CPU features 4 Cortex A57 and 4 Cortex A53 processor cores and the GPU is a GM20B Maxell core.


There is already a VGC thread discussing this @ http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=226859

---

Comparison with the Tegra X1



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Well it seems the conjecture that the Nintendo Switch is a rebranded nVidia Shield seems to be true all along.

However I am surprised that no Nintendo fans have yet called this analysis fake.



Flash Sentry's #1 Fan (unofficially).

So X1 it is.

I guess that's good for late buyers since a decent pricecut could be in the cards. And soon if sales will be lagging.



In the wilderness we go alone with our new knowledge and strength.

Noticed today a little update on the iFixit teardown, they opened up the linear resonant actuator.

Teardown Update: Just to make sure we were getting our fill of secret sauce, we popped the top off the haptic feedback motor, a linear resonant actuator (LRA) that powers Switch's HD Rumble.

On the inside, this vibration motor seems fairly standard. It's essentially a voicecoil installed in a moving mass assembly, flanked by a pair of powerful magnets. However, it's interesting that this LRA seems to vibrate along its short axis, while many haptic feedback motors that we've seen vibrate along their long axis.

Note that these LRAs look very similar to the ones we pulled out of the Oculus Touch controllers, HTC Vive, and the Steam Controller.
We took a second to pop open a Oculus Touch haptic motor and it seems to be internally identical to this one.



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The teardowns have been mainly about the console and joy-cons and the main sites have left out the Pro controller.
While looking if the console and Pro had a digital compass I came across some Pro controller teardowns, so here they are!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRX-C7kjy4Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdplDFK4Pac

Remember that the board has a nice THX2 ALLGAMEFANS! message

https://www.reddit.com/r/NintendoSwitch/comments/5xw17j/hidden_message_on_nintendo_switch_procontroller/



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To be fair, the X2 / P1 or whatever they're calling it now offers 750 GFLOPs at 1.5 GHz which is the absolute maximum and nVidia strongly advises against clocking it that high. The performance gains in terms of GFLOPs would be there, but nowhere near as big to make a noticeable difference or justify the extra costs into putting Pascal into the Switch. At least not on clock speeds that would prevent any potential thermal throttling.

The battery life would have been better by around half an hour (?) but again, it's not worth the price difference and outside of Zelda, the battery is actually quite good in standby and less demanding titles like Fast RMX and Super Bomberman R.

The only real noticeable gain would have been the memory bandwith, which would be doubled from Maxwell and the Wii U. This will probably prove an issue for developers of larger games, and might explain the framerate dips in BotW, though again not worth the potential delay and price bump due to rushing in Pascal.

All in all after the Eurogamer leak with documents from December I started loosing hope for Pascal so I wasn't really surprised, however nVidia calling it custom is a tad misleading, at least from a hardware perspective. It's the best Nintendo could have used and since nVidia's not doing great with devices that use the X1, Ninty must have scored a pretty darn good deal on the SoC.