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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Now, About A Switch Pro...

 

What would a Switch Pro be?

Brand new system 5 8.47%
 
Upgraded Nintendo Switch 54 91.53%
 
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Pemalite said:
curl-6 said:

Isn't Tegra Xavier designed for cars though, not for mobile devices?

From what I've read the thing sucks 30 watts, far too much for a portable system.

Yeah it is. But the same held true to the Tegra X1 (Tegra Drive CX/PX) and X2 (Tegra Drive PX2).
Tegra can scale upwards and downwards fairly well in power consumption... Tegra X1 and Tegra X2 were 20w parts in the "drive' configuration, where-as Xavier is 30w... And Tegra X1 was still forced to scale downwards for the Switch anyway.

But... In saying that, it is a massive chip, so it would likely benefit from being fabbed at 7nm which will solve the bulk of issues anyway... But the real benefit would be the big uptick in bandwidth plus a more modern and efficient GPU architecture.

I see, thanks. So when is 7nm fab expected to be up and running?

And if Xavier is a 50% increase over the X2 in power and X2 is 50% stronger than the X1, would we be talking about 2.25 times the performance of the X1 in a mobile configuration? And would the claimed 127GB/s of bandwidth be viable in a mobile version, or would that have to be dialled back?

Last edited by curl-6 - on 23 March 2019

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curl-6 said:
Darwinianevolution said:

They can always make the Switch 2 completely backwards compatible to sweeten the deal. Being able to play the previous lineup right off the bat is always a big plus, and I'm pretty sure the technology for it is not that complicated, especially if they still use the same cartridge format.

The thing is though, if they make Switch 2 backwards compatible, they lose their chance to rip off consumers by making every second Switch 2 release just a rehashed full-price Switch 1 game at a higher res. I can see them axing back compat for this reason alone.

Not true, Wii had backwards compatibility with Gamecube and it still had Metroid Prime 1 &  2, Pikmin 1 & 2, Donkey Kong Jungle Beat and Mario Power Tennis ported to it.



When the herd loses its way, the shepard must kill the bull that leads them astray.

zorg1000 said:
curl-6 said:

The thing is though, if they make Switch 2 backwards compatible, they lose their chance to rip off consumers by making every second Switch 2 release just a rehashed full-price Switch 1 game at a higher res. I can see them axing back compat for this reason alone.

Not true, Wii had backwards compatibility with Gamecube and it still had Metroid Prime 1 &  2, Pikmin 1 & 2, Donkey Kong Jungle Beat and Mario Power Tennis ported to it.

Guess there really is no way to check greed and laziness.



curl-6 said:
zorg1000 said:

Not true, Wii had backwards compatibility with Gamecube and it still had Metroid Prime 1 &  2, Pikmin 1 & 2, Donkey Kong Jungle Beat and Mario Power Tennis ported to it.

Guess there really is no way to check greed and laziness.

As long as consumers show they are willing to buy them than there is nothing greedy or lazy about it, they are literally giving the people what they want.



When the herd loses its way, the shepard must kill the bull that leads them astray.

zorg1000 said:
curl-6 said:

Guess there really is no way to check greed and laziness.

As long as consumers show they are willing to buy them than there is nothing greedy or lazy about it, they are literally giving the people what they want.

It's still lazy to just re-release last gen's games instead of making new content and it's still greedy to charge full price for them. Most consumers are just too stupid to know when they're being ripped off.



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curl-6 said:
Pemalite said:

Yeah it is. But the same held true to the Tegra X1 (Tegra Drive CX/PX) and X2 (Tegra Drive PX2).
Tegra can scale upwards and downwards fairly well in power consumption... Tegra X1 and Tegra X2 were 20w parts in the "drive' configuration, where-as Xavier is 30w... And Tegra X1 was still forced to scale downwards for the Switch anyway.

But... In saying that, it is a massive chip, so it would likely benefit from being fabbed at 7nm which will solve the bulk of issues anyway... But the real benefit would be the big uptick in bandwidth plus a more modern and efficient GPU architecture.

I see, thanks. So when is 7nm fab expected to be up and running?

And if Xavier is a 50% increase over the X2 in power and X2 is 50% stronger than the X1, would we be talking about 2.25 times the performance of the X1 in a mobile configuration? And would the claimed 127GB/s of bandwidth be viable in a mobile version, or would that have to be dialled back?

7nm fabs are up and running now, nVidia just needs to work with TSMC and bring the design over. (Not as simple as it sounds sadly.)

Yeah. Easy doubling in performance with lowered clocks+voltages+binning over the X1 at the same TDP.

On the bandwidth front, I would assume Nintendo would make a few cut backs there, Half of 137GB/s is still a respectable 68.5GB/s of bandwidth, which is still a substantial increase over the current Switch.



--::{PC Gaming Master Race}::--

Pemalite said:
curl-6 said:

I see, thanks. So when is 7nm fab expected to be up and running?

And if Xavier is a 50% increase over the X2 in power and X2 is 50% stronger than the X1, would we be talking about 2.25 times the performance of the X1 in a mobile configuration? And would the claimed 127GB/s of bandwidth be viable in a mobile version, or would that have to be dialled back?

7nm fabs are up and running now, nVidia just needs to work with TSMC and bring the design over. (Not as simple as it sounds sadly.)

Yeah. Easy doubling in performance with lowered clocks+voltages+binning over the X1 at the same TDP.

On the bandwidth front, I would assume Nintendo would make a few cut backs there, Half of 137GB/s is still a respectable 68.5GB/s of bandwidth, which is still a substantial increase over the current Switch.

A slight-more-than-doubling of horsepower and bandwidth sounds like a pretty good deal for a mid-gen Switch Pro; higher res in games with adaptive resolution, less slowdown in GPU/bandwidth bound games.

Would there be compatibility issues though, I mean Tegra Xavier is Volta right, would base Switch games have any Maxwell-specific stuff that wouldn't translate directly?

Also would a 2020 release for such a revision be viable or is that too early?



curl-6 said:
zorg1000 said:

As long as consumers show they are willing to buy them than there is nothing greedy or lazy about it, they are literally giving the people what they want.

It's still lazy to just re-release last gen's games instead of making new content and it's still greedy to charge full price for them. Most consumers are just too stupid to know when they're being ripped off.

Is it lazy to rerelease old movies onto Blu-Ray for full price with no new content instead of making brand new movies?

Also, it's not instead of, it's in addition to. Nintendo porting Mario Kart 8 to Switch allowed that team to make a new IP in ARMS, porting NSMBU allowed that team to make Mario Maker 2

Same goes for other publishers. Porting old entries in Mega Man, Resident Evil, Street Fighter, etc did not prevent Capcom from releasing games like Monster Hunter World, Resident Evil 7, Devil May Cry, etc.

Releasing previous gen games on a current platform let's people replay games they enjoy or play games that they are interested in but never had the chance to play.



When the herd loses its way, the shepard must kill the bull that leads them astray.

zorg1000 said:
curl-6 said:

It's still lazy to just re-release last gen's games instead of making new content and it's still greedy to charge full price for them. Most consumers are just too stupid to know when they're being ripped off.

Is it lazy to rerelease old movies onto Blu-Ray for full price with no new content instead of making brand new movies?

Also, it's not instead of, it's in addition to. Nintendo porting Mario Kart 8 to Switch allowed that team to make a new IP in ARMS, porting NSMBU allowed that team to make Mario Maker 2

Same goes for other publishers. Porting old entries in Mega Man, Resident Evil, Street Fighter, etc did not prevent Capcom from releasing games like Monster Hunter World, Resident Evil 7, Devil May Cry, etc.

Releasing previous gen games on a current platform let's people replay games they enjoy or play games that they are interested in but never had the chance to play.

It's still diverting manpower away from the creation of fresh new content though. A company ultimately only has so many employees and studios.



Pemalite said:
curl-6 said:

Isn't Tegra Xavier designed for cars though, not for mobile devices?

From what I've read the thing sucks 30 watts, far too much for a portable system.

Yeah it is. But the same held true to the Tegra X1 (Tegra Drive CX/PX) and X2 (Tegra Drive PX2).
Tegra can scale upwards and downwards fairly well in power consumption... Tegra X1 and Tegra X2 were 20w parts in the "drive' configuration, where-as Xavier is 30w... And Tegra X1 was still forced to scale downwards for the Switch anyway.

But... In saying that, it is a massive chip, so it would likely benefit from being fabbed at 7nm which will solve the bulk of issues anyway... But the real benefit would be the big uptick in bandwidth plus a more modern and efficient GPU architecture.

Well those had a maximum TDP of 7.5-15W. And Nintendo had to drastically lower the clock speed to not suck the battery dry in an instant on the 15W X1 already, and not even docked does it run at full speed.

The X2 possibly could run at full speed (or near full speed at least) as it's less consuming that the X1. In fact, if it can run at full speed docked (Denver cores deactivated), then the Switch would be at more than half performance of the XBO.

But Xavier would need to be clocked down so much I don't know if that's even worth it anymore. Unless most of those 30W would come from the Tensor cores (can be deactivated) or NVidia wants to Die-shrink Xavier (which I both seriously doubt), I fear Xavier doesn't make too much sense.