Nintendo Switch Tech Speculation discussion

[swaaye]

Damn. You guys love to speculate. G80 in PS3. Oh boy. I would have loved to see the cooling and price on that. 360 would have been a sad joke in comparison though. But a whole lot cheaper.

 

[pharma]

Unreal Engine 4.15 released, adds Nintendo Switch support

Unreal Engine allows developers to build 3D games for PCs, consoles and mobile platforms. The addition of the Nintendo Switch to its support roster could be important for the cross-platform development of games on PCs and consoles, including the Switch, from now on.

Despite the freshly announced support there are already games in the pipeline for Nintendo Switch that have been forged in UE4. An example is Sumo Digital's 3D action puzzle game Snake Pass. This puzzler is also being lined up for PS4, Xbox One and PC release in "early 2017".

http://hexus.net/tech/news/software/102535-unreal-engine-415-released-adds-nintendo-switch-support/

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I just stated facts. Your hyperbole is just yours
We can also simply assert that the last 4 consoles from Sony and Microsoft were AMD design wins.
Also, nvidia has never achieved more than one design win with any console maker, ever. AMD has achieved that with Sony (2 in a row), Microsoft (3 in a row) and Nintendo (3 in a row if we count ArtX then ATi).

Circumstantial evidence. The conclusion that the choice of AMD is only ever because nVidia has soured relationships is unsubstantiated hypothesising. It could (and most likely is IMO) due to many other reasons that made AMD the more competitive option.

 

[swaaye]

NV's prior inability to produce a complete SOC (with competitive CPUs) seemed to be why AMD won with PS4 and XBO. The AMD route must have been the cheapest way to go.

 

[bunnybug]

The clock speeds from FoxCon could be legit if Nintendo did opt to go with dye shrink to 16nm, and even though the power consumption would go down significantly, the size of the chip would stay about the same (lining up with the Foxcon chip size leak). The shrink could be the entirety of the "custom" Tegra. The Switch has a pretty stout battery, and we know it can be sucked dry in 2.5 hours. I believe this puts the power draw somewhere around 6.4 watts to drain the battery in that amount of time. Four A57 cores clock at 1780mhz at 20nm pull about 6 watts. If 16nm Finfet delivers a 40% reduction in power consumption, this brings them down to 3.6 watts. Eurogamer is the only source referencing the specific clock speeds, and even they admit that the sourced info is from many months ago. Rumors suggested that in October dev kits went out with improved performance. Not saying the FoxCon leaks are more believable than the Eurogamer leaked, but there was enough specifics listed that it shouldn't be outright dismissed.

Im looking forward to the hackers figuring out exactly what the clocks are next month so that we may put that part of the discussion to rest.

there is no chance the foxcon leak is legit, and it actually should be dismissed, switch is coming out in less then a month, we have reliable sources, actual developers that have docs working on games on the switch telling us what the specs and clocks are. why should we believe a leak from a tester, when no other source or other leak has backed him yet.

 

[Goodtwin]

there is no chance the foxcon leak is legit, and it actually should be dismissed, switch is coming out in less then a month, we have reliable source, actual developers that have docs working on games in the switch telling us the specs and clocks are. why should we believe a leak from a tester, when no other source or other leak has backed him yet.

Please link these concrete sources. So far I have only seen Eurogamer. I have not seen clock speeds referenced anywhere else.

Sent from my SM-G360V using Tapatalk

 

[bunnybug]

Please link these concrete sources. So far I have only seen Eurogamer. I have not seen clock speeds referenced anywhere else.

Sent from my SM-G360V using Tapatalk

eurogamer said that they have talked to few a developers, that's pretty damn concrete to me, but i guess a tester has more creditability. not to mention there inside sources have been saying x1 will in final hardware since July, yet nobody wanted to believe them then cause it doesn't make sense, lol. not lets forget the leaker speculation was way off as well., saying it's based on pascel with better cpu's and 1080p screen.

 

[Boxercide]

Switch is in the wild, so hardware breakdowns are less than a month away.

One more NV note: What was the deal with the bugged scaler? Was there anything concrete ever figured out?

 

[Lalaland]

So NeoGAF user hiphoptherobot apparently got his Switch shipped early and did a video showing off setup and system menus. Nothing party or chat related on the Home screen so it really is all via your phone it seems, it may yet hand off the actual VOIP processing to the Switch after setting up the party on your phone but that seems unlikely to me at this point.

 

[function]

I have to wonder if the tablet prototype that AMD came up with a couple years back (I guess they didn't Mull over it too long ) was actually a prototype choice offered to Nintendo.

Had completely forgotten about that! Damn, that's distinctly Switch like ....

Have to wonder how competitive a 16 nm Puma/GCN 1.3 would be. Although I'm not sure if AMD have a LPDDR4 controller yet, which might be a dealbreaker.

 

[Tkumpathenurpahl]

Nintendo: never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

 

[function]

One more NV note: What was the deal with the bugged scaler? Was there anything concrete ever figured out?

PS3 can't scale vertically, only horizontally. IIRC even the horizontal scaling is only bilinear.

 

[Boxercide]

PS3 can't scale vertically, only horizontally. IIRC even the horizontal scaling is only bilinear.

Yes, that is known. How did it end up so badly broken & why was it never fixed?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Yes, that is known. How did it end up so badly broken

A bug. they happen.

& why was it never fixed?

You can't because the earliest PS3's wouldn't have had it, so you couldn't enable it for all PS3's. Software would then need two render paths while your earliest, most loyal customers ended up with a crappier version of the console. Upscaling just had to be done as a post effect, which conveniently led to improved techniques (necessity having a close familial relationship to invention).

 

[Boxercide]

A bug. they happen.You can't because the earliest PS3's wouldn't have had it, so you couldn't enable it for all PS3's. Software would then need two render paths while your earliest, most loyal customers ended up with a crappier version of the console. Upscaling just had to be done as a post effect, which conveniently led to improved techniques (necessity having a close familial relationship to invention).

I understand what you're saying but as we're seeing, they update consoles all the time and the early adopters are left out in the cold.

It just seems odd to me over an 85 million unit production run, they never fixed it. My personal opinion.

Moving forward, I'm interested in seeing what a Switch revision would look like if it ends up being successful. A 'slim' console, as it were. I would assume they'd shrink internals and have a better battery? Improve the joycons because those are brutally small. I have small hands and the Game Boy and GBC color used to hurt my hands pretty badly.

 

[Rikimaru]

I doubt Nintendo will change JoyCon size. Incompatible accessories are too confusing and a very bad practice. They could trim screen bezel though.
And make a smaller Vita-like handheld without detachable controllers.

 

[Goodtwin]

eurogamer said that they have talked to few a developers, that's pretty damn concrete to me, but i guess a tester has more creditability. not to mention there inside sources have been saying x1 will in final hardware since July, yet nobody wanted to believe them then cause it doesn't make sense, lol. not lets forget the leaker speculation was way off as well., saying it's based on pascel with better cpu's and 1080p screen.

It's still one source with info from summer time. I'm not saying Eurogamers info is incorrect, I am simply implying that the Fox Conn leak deserves to be placed in the plausible column, and not in the trash. Go look at Snake Pass running on Switch. The in game performance has been impressive so far.

Sent from my SM-G360V using Tapatalk

 

[cheapchips]

I doubt Nintendo will change JoyCon size. Incompatible accessories are too confusing and a very bad practice. They could trim screen bezel though.
And make a smaller Vita-like handheld without detachable controllers.

Or increase the screen to 7" ish bezel-less in the same form factor.

 

[mpg1]

They will have to maintain the size of the tablet because of the ergonomics of the joycons. (ie. they can't shrink the joycons because it would be to small to hold and use comfortably)

 

[ProspectorPete]

There could at one point be a Switch XL*
The size of the joy cons would not matter: you'd get 2 bigger ones with the device anyway, and the small ones you already have could still be used with the Switch XL

*Also comes with Tegra X2 which will be revealed a few weeks after Switch releases, Nvidia style