Nintendo Switch Tech Speculation discussion

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I just think that's separate from the assumption that the Jaguar isn't a bottleneck that developers have to keep a very tight lid on. We saw what happened when Ubisoft got to ambitious with Assassins Creed Unity. They ran into a ceiling that they were never able to work out. In the scheme of things, all those NPC's running around did very little to excite the player and was subsequently toned down in future installments.

Sure Jaguar wasn't as much of an improvement over last gen's CPUs as the the GPU's were, yet that is not the sole reason NPCs vouldn't work in AC. Development time and budget were the bigger factors. Dead Rising on XBONE and that other zombie game demoed on ps4 (yet to come though) show both that it's possible to have thousands of NPCs on an open world game, and that it does excite the audience as those are the main selling points in those games.
 
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Looks a bit too good for what we know of the device.

But then again, how much do we really know? We know its a custom Nvidia Tegra chip and that's really about it. Everything else is speculation. Im not going to read to much into the video, yes it does look very nice, but is that in game footage, or simply real time rendered cut scene material? This could also be damn near point and click material, meaning there is very little interaction within the game other than exploration. Its hard to get a good idea of just how detailed all those trees and foliage actually are, made worse by the Youtube video compression. This could also be a 720p 30fps game, so its not hard to see how a custom Tegra chip could pull this off within that scope. Its promising none the less.
 
Dev says it's in-game footage:
https://twitter.com/AnyArtsProd/status/809033546157457410


Terrible compression artifacts seem to be hiding a lot, but all that moving grass is probably not achievable with a device on the same performance level as a Tegra X1.

Something doesn't seem to be right, here. I think even with 4 SMs at 1GHz would have a hard time reaching those visuals. Unless it's rendering at something like 1024*600, but even then..

Some people on reddit are claiming they simply did this on UE4 (perfectly feasible) and may not even have a Switch dev kit on them.
And an Indie dev with no publisher announced is showing in-game footage before anyone else besides Nintendo themselves?

Regardless, we'll hopefully know more in 5 days, when they show the actual trailer.
 
And the trailer will contain a single frame that flashes by "Trailer shown in-engine running at expected quality level for hardware"
 
Well it might just be me but I was impressed back in Tegra 3 time with the graphics it was capable of, while the hardware was nothing special.


nVIDIA obviously knows how to extract the the best quality and performance from their hardware. Couple that with a vertically integrated platform where they seem to control everything and I believe that sorcery might be real :D
 
venture beat confirming its maxwell, told you guys.

Citation?

EDIT: Found it here: http://venturebeat.com/2016/12/14/nintendo-switch-specs-less-powerful-than-playstation-4/

GamesBeat has confirmed from two sources (who don’t want to be identified) that the Switch’s graphics are based on Nvidia’s older Maxwell architecture, not the new Pascal graphics technology that the chipmaker introduced earlier this year. The semi-custom Nvidia Tegra processor in the machine is still powerful enough to play typical Nintendo cartoon-style games (like the Mario series), but don’t expect the highest-end games we’re seeing on the PS4 or Xbox One to run on the Switch.

Part of reason for the use of older parts is that it just takes a while to get a console off the ground. Nvidia’s Pascal-based chips came out first for desktops and laptops in the middle of the year. These chips were both powerful and more power-efficient than the previous Maxwell generation from 2014. But such chips are typically hot and big, making them too power-hungry and expensive to put into a home gaming console. They might be great for a desktop, with lot of room for fans and cooling systems. But the chip would overheat and melt down the portable portion of the system.

http://www.nintendo-insider.com/2016/12/rumour-nintendo-switch-uses-nvidia-maxwell-architecture/
Their sources indicate that Nintendo was in such a rush to replace Wii U that they weren’t prepared to wait to implement NVIDIA’s Pascal architecture and instead pressed on with their plans. If Nintendo had decided to wait, Nintendo Switch would not have been able to release in March 2017.
 
I am going to shake my fucking head if Nintendo makes the Switch... a portable device... 28nm... Maxwell or not... it better be FinFet...
 
i don't think a citation is needed. eurogamer has multiple sources saying maxwell will be in the final hardware, yet people choose to ignore that because it doesn't sound good to them, now we have this source and arcadegirl confirming the same.

It is preferred when you're claiming other sources said something and this way it's easier for us to know if it's the same news we've already discussed or something new.
 
i don't think a citation is needed. eurogamer has multiple sources saying maxwell will be in the final hardware, yet people choose to ignore that because it doesn't sound good to them, now we have this source and arcadegirl confirming the same.
Eurogamer only said that development kit using X1, and not about the final hardware.
 
Well that is disappointing but at least it might mean it's more affordable than expected.
 
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