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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Switch "Pro" screen 1080p or 720p?

 

Switch "Pro" screen 720p (performance focus) or 1080p (resolution focus)?

1080p 9 16.67%
 
720p 45 83.33%
 
Total:54
TheBraveGallade on 09 March 2021
NextGen_Gamer said:
Kai_Mao said:

How efficient is that? And how much would that cost compared to what MVG is saying?

I mean, it wouldn't cost anything? What post did MVG say all this in? I would like to read it.

Again, all of my speculation is based on Nintendo contracting NVIDIA to make a new, much better SoC for it. People don't realize just how awful the current Switch SoC is - and I say that as a huge fan of my Switch. But from a hardware-only perspective, Nintendo took an already out-of-date mobile chip, not known for being very efficient or fast (hence why no mobile phones really used it and NVIDIA started using their stockpile for the Shield system), and made it worse for the Switch. The Tegra X1 that is in it has 4 x ARM Cortex A57 cores, another 4 x ARM Cortex A53 cores, and a GeForce "Maxwell" era GPU with 256 CUDA cores. But for the Switch, Nintendo disabled the four Cortex A53 cores, and downclocked the GPU and remaining CPU cores severely in order to get decent battery life out of it.

If Nintendo asked NVIDIA to do a modern "re-do" of it, I could imagine it being 4 x ARM Cortex A78 cores, and a "Ampere" based GPU with 512 CUDA cores, built on Samsung's 8-nm process. Those specs could then run at VERY low clockspeeds, like 1 GHz for the CPU and 1GHz for the GPU, while still WAY outperforming the current Switch in its docked mode, and only consume probably like 2 or 3-watts of power. For reference, again because the Tegra X1 was never very good to being with, the Switch uses 9-watts in portable mode and about 16-watts while docked. That would mean my theoretical SoC above would be giving better battery life while running Switch games in their higher graphics modes. Now, some of that battery life increase would go back into the 1080p display, but even still, it would probably be a +30% more longevity over the current model.

Nintendo doesn't typically spend a lot in the R&D department, but one would hope that with the runaway success of the Switch, Nintendo would be smart to invest at least some of those profits into a big SoC upgrade.

while I think ninty would invest SOME money into R&D, I think 1080p might be overkill anyway for portable unless they are going full 8" screen size (which has its own issues. 720p at 7" is enough, and with DLSS, a 720p60 would pretty easily upscale to 4K60 with proper implementation, and would probably run 1080p30 nativly at minimum or at least 720p60 upscaled to 1080p60 at minimum.

and also remember, cost is an issue. going up by that much in performance, on a VERY congested node is going to be expensive... it might be better to go 10nm just for that.



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Kai_Mao on 09 March 2021
TheBraveGallade said:
NextGen_Gamer said:

I mean, it wouldn't cost anything? What post did MVG say all this in? I would like to read it.

Again, all of my speculation is based on Nintendo contracting NVIDIA to make a new, much better SoC for it. People don't realize just how awful the current Switch SoC is - and I say that as a huge fan of my Switch. But from a hardware-only perspective, Nintendo took an already out-of-date mobile chip, not known for being very efficient or fast (hence why no mobile phones really used it and NVIDIA started using their stockpile for the Shield system), and made it worse for the Switch. The Tegra X1 that is in it has 4 x ARM Cortex A57 cores, another 4 x ARM Cortex A53 cores, and a GeForce "Maxwell" era GPU with 256 CUDA cores. But for the Switch, Nintendo disabled the four Cortex A53 cores, and downclocked the GPU and remaining CPU cores severely in order to get decent battery life out of it.

If Nintendo asked NVIDIA to do a modern "re-do" of it, I could imagine it being 4 x ARM Cortex A78 cores, and a "Ampere" based GPU with 512 CUDA cores, built on Samsung's 8-nm process. Those specs could then run at VERY low clockspeeds, like 1 GHz for the CPU and 1GHz for the GPU, while still WAY outperforming the current Switch in its docked mode, and only consume probably like 2 or 3-watts of power. For reference, again because the Tegra X1 was never very good to being with, the Switch uses 9-watts in portable mode and about 16-watts while docked. That would mean my theoretical SoC above would be giving better battery life while running Switch games in their higher graphics modes. Now, some of that battery life increase would go back into the 1080p display, but even still, it would probably be a +30% more longevity over the current model.

Nintendo doesn't typically spend a lot in the R&D department, but one would hope that with the runaway success of the Switch, Nintendo would be smart to invest at least some of those profits into a big SoC upgrade.

while I think ninty would invest SOME money into R&D, I think 1080p might be overkill anyway for portable unless they are going full 8" screen size (which has its own issues. 720p at 7" is enough, and with DLSS, a 720p60 would pretty easily upscale to 4K60 with proper implementation, and would probably run 1080p30 nativly at minimum or at least 720p60 upscaled to 1080p60 at minimum.

and also remember, cost is an issue. going up by that much in performance, on a VERY congested node is going to be expensive... it might be better to go 10nm just for that.

Then you have to consider battery life and cooling system. They probably want to have you play something as intensive as BOTW for about 4 hours in a single play through. Does DLSS build up heat in the console? If so, how would the cooling system work?



Shiken on 09 March 2021
Kai_Mao said:
TheBraveGallade said:

while I think ninty would invest SOME money into R&D, I think 1080p might be overkill anyway for portable unless they are going full 8" screen size (which has its own issues. 720p at 7" is enough, and with DLSS, a 720p60 would pretty easily upscale to 4K60 with proper implementation, and would probably run 1080p30 nativly at minimum or at least 720p60 upscaled to 1080p60 at minimum.

and also remember, cost is an issue. going up by that much in performance, on a VERY congested node is going to be expensive... it might be better to go 10nm just for that.

Then you have to consider battery life and cooling system. They probably want to have you play something as intensive as BOTW for about 4 hours in a single play through. Does DLSS build up heat in the console? If so, how would the cooling system work?

I have heard talk of vapor chamber cooling, similar to what the Series X or many phones are using.



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Wman1996 on 09 March 2021

1080p would be nice, but doubtful. Nintendo doesn't historically up the resolution in handheld refreshes/revisions at all.

I think a 900p screen resolution would be a good compromise, but I don't think Nintendo would bother with that. 720p is very likely. Switch's successor will probably have a 1080p screen.



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siebensus4 on 10 March 2021

In case of doubt Nintendo won't change that much within a generation, so 720p. If we will see another switch model or a replacement for the current, it will be more like the New 3DS to the 3DS or Slim PS3 to the fat PS3. Just some small hardware updates due to changes of components which are now cheaper 4 years after the initial release. I don't expect a "pro" model with much more power.

A 1080p screen and significant more power will come with the successor (probably 2024).



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NextGen_Gamer on 12 March 2021
siebensus4 said:

In case of doubt Nintendo won't change that much within a generation, so 720p. If we will see another switch model or a replacement for the current, it will be more like the New 3DS to the 3DS or Slim PS3 to the fat PS3. Just some small hardware updates due to changes of components which are now cheaper 4 years after the initial release. I don't expect a "pro" model with much more power.

A 1080p screen and significant more power will come with the successor (probably 2024).

You could very well be right if this new rumor is correct: https://mynintendonews.com/2021/03/12/rumour-nvidia-is-apparently-halting-production-of-the-tegra-x1-chipset-thats-in-nintendo-switch-consoles/ 

According to that, NVIDIA is halting production of the current Tegra X1 SoC that is inside the Switch. The rumor specifically states that it is the Tegra X1 "Mariko" SoC that is going to be halted, which is the die-shrink 16-nm version of it (that one is in the current Switch & Switch Lite models). The original, 20-nm produced version, codenamed "Erista" that was in the launch Switch models, should already be discontinued as TSMC has winded down their 20-nm process node quite a bit.

Now, obviously Nintendo is not going to just stop making Switch systems later this year lol. So, that makes me think that perhaps you are right @siebensus4 : there is no Switch Pro, but instead Nintendo will release just slightly updated/enhanced models, like New Switch Lite and New Switch later this year.

NVIDIA could do a true, Nintendo-only version of the Tegra X1 on a newer TSMC process for them. Like I said above, the Tegra X1 is actually a 8-core design, but Nintendo this whole time has been disabling the four little ARM cores on it. That is just wasted die-space. A 7-nm version built just for Nintendo could just have the ARM Cortex A57 cores. And they could easily be clocked higher while providing better battery life to boot; ditto for the "Maxwell" GPU clockspeeds. Just like with New Nintendo 3DS, this would provide a very modest boost to performance.

And the 4K thing could very well be tied to the dock then; a tensor core co-processor that does the DLSS on it could be inside a new dock that comes with it.