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Forums - Gaming - How do the visuals on the Nintendo Switch compare to those of the Xbox 360 & PS3?

 

The Nintendo Switch hardware is...

A big leap over 7th gen 71 40.11%
 
A minor leap over 7th gen 72 40.68%
 
About the same as 7th gen 24 13.56%
 
Actually WORSE than last gen 10 5.65%
 
Total:177
curl-6 on 16 February 2018
Azuren said:
curl-6 said:

Okay, all I'm saying is, your personal opinion doesn't change the facts of the matter; Switch is objectively more graphically capable than PS3/360, regardless of whether you acknowledge it.

And I'm saying that I'm not going to use a sports game to benchmark how a system will play real games. In fact, bringing FIFA into it feels more like you were reaching than your were making a point.

The specs prove Switch is more graphically capable than PS3/360, and games like Skyrim and FIFA 18 perform pretty much exactly in line with those specs. You can choose to ignore the evidence if you wish, but you have no factual basis for your position.



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Pemalite on 16 February 2018
bonzobanana said:

Memory bandwidth is a bit limited and there is pressure to keep storage resources low. In that situation there will be games that outperform Switch on PS3 and 360 in certain situations.

The Switch has Delta Colour Compression.
Maxwell's implementation of Delta Colour Compression allowed it to achieve a 20-30% bandwidth saving over Kepler.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/8526/nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-review/3

That's 3rd gen. So there was another 15-20% on top of that.

Thus bandwidth isn't a direct comparison between 7th gen consoles and the Switch based purely on the memory bus.

And thanks to Maxwells tiled-based rasterization it's able to be more efficient at culling, meaning it does less work and can use the limited bandwidth it has to a greater effect.


bonzobanana said:

I still see people today write the wii u is superior to 360 and PS3 and yet I know from experience this is untrue overall. The wii u's is a weaker console that benefits from fantastic Nintendo games.

To be fair... The Switch's GPU like the WiiU's is more efficient. It's not as efficient as Maxwell, but it's certainly better than the R580 hybrid chip in the Xbox 360.
The Achilles heel is of course that paltry 12.8GB/s of bandwidth which the eDRAM is supposed to try and mitigate, which will vary between developers on how effectively it is leveraged.

bonzobanana said:

I'm not a Switch owner but looking to buy one at some point and curious about its performance level. It does feel many are ignoring the Switch lack of CPU resources but the games are showing this to be an issue.

The Switch's CPU can hold it's own against the last generation consoles. It's amazing how far CPU performance has come in the last decade.
The Switch's CPU would have easily beaten the Xbox 360 and Wii U's CPU no contest if it actually ran with it's original clocks.

Better low-level API's and more efficient drivers have lightened the CPU burden somewhat though, which will play in the Switch's favor.

bonzobanana said:

It's at a lower level in pure gflops. Something like 157 gflops in portable mode or 188 gflops with a performance boost at the expense of battery life. From what I've read 157 gflops is the norm in most games not 188 gflops. That's 19 gflops less than wii u and something like 50-90 less than 360 and PS3 in portable mode.

Gflops are irrelevant. Unless all other things are equal.
A GPU with less flops can beat a GPU with more flops.

bonzobanana said:

In the pc world we aren't seeing claims that the slightly newer architecture and features radically changes game performance. An old high end gpu of 200 gflops compared to a new low end budget one of 200 gflops doesn't magically outperform the older model even if one is DX10 and the other DX12. Sometimes the older model might actually perform better as it may have higher end spec elsewhere, more memory, higher bandwidth memory etc. It was designed with less compromises and cost reductions. On screen you might get one or two improved effects if you are lucky mostly nothing though. 

Radeon 5870:
* 2.72 Teraflops.
* 153.6GB/s of bandwidth.

Radeon 7850.
* 1.76 Teraflops.
* 153.6GB/s of bandwidth.

No contest that the Radeon 5870 would win right? I mean, flops is all that matters? And if you have the same bandwidth there isn't a radical difference in performance right? Those are YOUR claims.

And you are wrong.
https://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1062?vs=1076

The Radeon 7850 wins hands down.

Fact of the matter is... Architectural efficiency is important and people need to stop ignoring it in favor of using something simple like flops or bandwidth as their only comparison points, it's stupid, it's inaccurate and it's wrong. Stop doing it.

bonzobanana said:

Like the wii u though I'm sure the Switch will have many comparisons with newer and older hardware over its lifetime and the evidence accumulating now clearly show its strength and weaknesses already.

And so it should.

quickrick said:

It's still far to early to give judgment that switch CPU is weaker then 360/ps3 CPU, it's just came out, and runs most games better. aside from al noir which is probably the most demanding port, but that game especially targeted ps3 CPU, and 360 ran a bit so not exactly a fair comparison, we need more games to come tot his conclusion. 

Some tasks the Switch's CPU will beat the Xbox 360/Playstation 3's CPU. In other tasks it will loose.
I.E It should win with integers every day of the week as it's a more balanced architecture, but loose in iterative refinement floating point which the Cell will dominate.

It's a very different ISA anyway.
The main issue with the Switch CPU is that it is being held back by it's clock rate, if it was running 80% faster it would have won, no contest.

For now though... Ports are our best gauges to the CPU capabilities of the device.




www.youtube.com/@Pemalite

Azuren on 16 February 2018
curl-6 said:
Azuren said:

And I'm saying that I'm not going to use a sports game to benchmark how a system will play real games. In fact, bringing FIFA into it feels more like you were reaching than your were making a point.

The specs prove Switch is more graphically capable than PS3/360, and games like Skyrim and FIFA 18 perform pretty much exactly in line with those specs. You can choose to ignore the evidence if you wish, but you have no factual basis for your position.

One is a cookie cutter sports game from a cookie cutter company, and the other is from the best game company populated by awful programmers. You're not going to convince anyone of anything with those examples, so I repeat: I'll wait for a real comparison.



Watch me stream games and hunt trophies on my Twitch channel!

Check out my Twitch Channel!:

www.twitch.tv/AzurenGames

curl-6 on 16 February 2018
Azuren said:
curl-6 said:

The specs prove Switch is more graphically capable than PS3/360, and games like Skyrim and FIFA 18 perform pretty much exactly in line with those specs. You can choose to ignore the evidence if you wish, but you have no factual basis for your position.

One is a cookie cutter sports game from a cookie cutter company, and the other is from the best game company populated by awful programmers. You're not going to convince anyone of anything with those examples, so I repeat: I'll wait for a real comparison.

Again, we have the specs, they clearly show Switch has significantly more graphical muscle than PS3/360, and real world performance reflects this disparity. There's no need to wait, the evidence is conclusive.



Azuren on 16 February 2018
curl-6 said:
Azuren said:

One is a cookie cutter sports game from a cookie cutter company, and the other is from the best game company populated by awful programmers. You're not going to convince anyone of anything with those examples, so I repeat: I'll wait for a real comparison.

Again, we have the specs, they clearly show Switch has significantly more graphical muscle than PS3/360, and real world performance reflects this disparity. There's no need to wait, the evidence is conclusive.

You keep saying that, but no.



Watch me stream games and hunt trophies on my Twitch channel!

Check out my Twitch Channel!:

www.twitch.tv/AzurenGames

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curl-6 on 16 February 2018
Azuren said:
curl-6 said:

Again, we have the specs, they clearly show Switch has significantly more graphical muscle than PS3/360, and real world performance reflects this disparity. There's no need to wait, the evidence is conclusive.

You keep saying that, but no.

Closing your eyes to the facts doesn't change them. You don't have any evidence to support your position.



quickrick on 16 February 2018
Azuren said:
curl-6 said:

Again, we have the specs, they clearly show Switch has significantly more graphical muscle than PS3/360, and real world performance reflects this disparity. There's no need to wait, the evidence is conclusive.

You keep saying that, but no.

Lol he's right, 720p to 1080p is a huge leap,. you might not see it that way but the GPU, need to be a good step up to be able to that, if you look at ps3 vs 360 not even one mulipltaforn game the whole generation had a leap that big.



Azuren on 16 February 2018
curl-6 said:
Azuren said:

You keep saying that, but no.

Closing your eyes to the facts doesn't change them. You don't have any evidence to support your position.

And ignore all surrounding circumstances in favor of the hard line is an equally awful decision.

 

Like, for example, the massive time gap between the PS360 and Switch releases. You mean to tell me no one at Bethesda got any better at optimization in that time? That seems like a bit of a stretch.

 

And FIFA? Why would an equivalent team be put on the last-gen version of the game as the Switch team?

 

You're assuming a lot of things just to say the Switch is better because of two titles (which, by the way, doesn't represent a trend because you need more than two for that), whereas I'm deciding to wait to see for myself.



Watch me stream games and hunt trophies on my Twitch channel!

Check out my Twitch Channel!:

www.twitch.tv/AzurenGames

Azuren on 16 February 2018
quickrick said:
Azuren said:

You keep saying that, but no.

Lol he's right, 720p to 1080p is a huge leap,. you might not see it that way but the GPU, need to be a good step up to be able to that, if you look at ps3 vs 360 not even one mulipltaforn game the whole generation had a leap that big.

Except the thing is I'm just explicitly not giving an opinion on this because I'd rather wait and see myself. We don't know the circumstances surrounding the release of those two titles compared to their PS360 versions.



Watch me stream games and hunt trophies on my Twitch channel!

Check out my Twitch Channel!:

www.twitch.tv/AzurenGames

curl-6 on 16 February 2018
Azuren said:
curl-6 said:

Closing your eyes to the facts doesn't change them. You don't have any evidence to support your position.

And ignore all surrounding circumstances in favor of the hard line is an equally awful decision.

Like, for example, the massive time gap between the PS360 and Switch releases. You mean to tell me no one at Bethesda got any better at optimization in that time? That seems like a bit of a stretch.

And FIFA? Why would an equivalent team be put on the last-gen version of the game as the Switch team?

You're assuming a lot of things just to say the Switch is better because of two titles (which, by the way, doesn't represent a trend because you need more than two for that), whereas I'm deciding to wait to see for myself.

Yet again; We. Have. The. Specs.