Nintendo announce: Nintendo NX

[function]

Function here argued that it should be 160 ALUs based on conjecture from the die shot, but I don't know if it was ever corroborated.

In the end it was.

SDK leak confirmed 32 ALUs (160 shaders), process was confirmed to be 45 nm NEC for the GPU / edram. Die area and number of register banks turned out to be good indicators.

None of this undoes the fact that Zelda U looks absolutely beautiful. At some point in 2016 I'm going to be plopping down money on console with a GPU I wouldn't have wanted in my PC ten years earlier. A feat only Nintendo could pull off.

 

[RDGoodla]

Not that I give the unsourced (joke?) rumor much credit but on the topic of the WiiU was it ever settled how many SIMD arrays the design includes?
160 or 320, if it is the former it needs a lot more than bandwidth to compete. If is the later, a fully functional Redwood HD5570 (650 MHz, 400 ALUs, 8 ROPs, a 128 bit bus linked to GDDR5) lands right in between a Shield Tablet and a shield TV in GFX Bench. There will be better than the Tegra X1 in 2017, quite possibly cheap Android TV device selling for 99€ should provide the level of performance Nvidia delivers now. That would be underwhelming for a dedicated gaming device.

If they really want to sell a very cheap home console, the best way is to use the same SOC of their next handheld console.

In other words, NX may be a set of consoles, one is a handheld console and the other is a home console.
Maybe this home console has a SOC with higher clock to produce higher resolution.
Mobile SOCs are relatively cheap, and it even doesn't need an optical drive, so it is very easy to sell this home console at 149.

Of course this home console may lose the backwards compatibility of WiiU, but I doubt this will make a lot of difference. As long as they can port some AAA games (like new WiiU ZELDA ) to the new console, and it can run every game of nintendo's new handheld console.

Yes, it is an enhanced version of vita TV.

 

[fehu]

It's the right time to restart talking about solid state media?

 

[Rikimaru]

It's the right time to restart talking about solid state media?

When it is less than a dollar for 50Gb.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Download only is the only option for iOS and Android, and they aren't hampered in appeal. Progressive installs a la PS4 mean 50 GB downloads aren't an epic limitation either. And Nintendo would be quite happy to target fewer assets (lower cost) to support a smaller download footprint, I'm sure. So I wouldn't be surprised if NX in handheld or console form is download only.

 

[function]

The cost of including both an optical drive and a laptop mechanical HDD is going to push costs upwards, while still providing poor streaming performance.

From a perf pov, ditching both, going download only and using a decent eMMC would be far better giving 3~20 times the performance.

Might have to watch file sizes though. Backup /swap to USB drive gets around that problem though.

 

[BRiT]

Download only is the only option for iOS and Android, and they aren't hampered in appeal. Progressive installs a la PS4 mean 50 GB downloads aren't an epic limitation either. And Nintendo would be quite happy to target fewer assets (lower cost) to support a smaller download footprint, I'm sure. So I wouldn't be surprised if NX in handheld or console form is download only.

I would be surprised with the first console being download only coming from Nintendo considering how far behind they are with their online architecture and infrastructure.

 

[Rangers]

Nintendo NeXus needs to hit out out of the park. Come on Ninty give us the goods, ante up.

H/W has to be at least as powerful as PS4.

The sad thing is we act like PS4 is some high bar to clear. These consoles have us tricked. A 2.6 teraflop GPU is definitely low end on PC. 4 teraflops barely gets you midrange status anymore. R9 290 is supposed to MSRP for $250 (although street price seems a bit higher) and is 5 teraflops (40 CU's @~1ghz) .

 

[Shifty Geezer]

How many TF do you get for a $200 PC?

 

[liolio]

If they really want to sell a very cheap home console, the best way is to use the same SOC of their next handheld console.

I do not completely disagree as I think at some point I posted something in that vein in one NIntendo thread. If Nintendo invests in custom silicon they better make the most out of it. As it is there still is a pretty massive gap between the operating frequency in the mobile and desktop/console world. Bandwidth requirements differ too but one may play with bus width memory type and speed to even things out.
To me Nintendo priority should be to be cheap (it applies to both the home console and the Handheld), good for the price, and straight forward for the developers.
I do not think that Nintendo should try to compete with PC or the PS4 and XB1, or even try to provide the lowest end of what one could call lowest end of PC gaming experience (newer console are glorified PC). They have their IPs, they need to be attractive to the big mobile/indies developers. If the systems sells it will get support from the traditional PC/Consoles publishers. What they need though is a sane amount of RAM and a decent CPU performances and good tools and documentations.

 

[function]

How many TF do you get for a $200 PC?

And 150W. And that's not chip TDP, that's the entire system, at the wall.

 

[Goodtwin]

So if we are to assume that the price Nintendo decides to shoot for is sub $249, and potentially as low as $149, what type hardware components would we be looking at? We pretty much know Nintendo will be going with an APU from AMD, but does AMD have anything that is low cost in this category?

 

[Deleted member 86764]

I can't see how Nintendo can compete by simply offering the cheapest console, it's not like people just look at the lowest quality / cheapest items when making purchasing decisions. If someone buys an engagement ring they don't look for the cheapest diamond they can buy, they might instead look for a diamond with minimal imperfections, large in size, etc. I don't think consoles are too dissimilar otherwise the Amazon TV or the Nvidia Shield would be roaring successes.

Nintendo can't continue to survive as a hardware manufacturer using their IP alone.

 

[Rikimaru]

I can't see how Nintendo can compete by simply offering the cheapest console, it's not like people just look at the lowest quality / cheapest items when making purchasing decisions.

Parents. If it has good games it will sell moderately well at least.

 

[fehu]

I can't see how Nintendo can compete by simply offering the cheapest console

I would buy a 149€ console with diddy kong racing, but can't justify more than 250€ for a console just to play an handfull of games over the years

 

[Grall]

If it has good games

This is Nintendo's bottleneck right now, and it has been since Wuu launched. The machine's terrible performance and bad dev software makes porting games unfeasible, leading to software dearth. A console needs games/month software flow to survive; Nintendo themselves can only manage months/game.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

How many TF do you get for a $200 PC?

- $85 for a 1.83GHz quad-core BayTrail "Compute Stick" with 2GB DDR3L RAM, 32GB eMMC storage, integrated WiFi/BT, HDMI-output, 2*USB ports and a MicroSD card reader
- $110 for a 1.6 TFLOP Bonaire with 2GB GDDR5, cooling system and voltage regulation circuitry that would probably absorb the Atom, DDR3 and peripherals with a small downclock/downvolt (even less with a disabled iGPU on the Atom).
- Save about $30 for integration, spending half in distribution costs, etc. (yes, this is totally an ass-taken number).
- Spend $15 in a simple wireless gamepad.
- Spend another $20 in a 100W power supply.

Total: $200.

 

[Kiloran]

Regarding the rumor that the NX might be a stripped-down Wii U: is PPC even an option (or cost effective) now that IBM has sold its Fishkill plant?

 

[AlNom]

Regarding the rumor that the NX might be a stripped-down Wii U: is PPC even an option (or cost effective) now that IBM has sold its Fishkill plant?

Why not? They'd just get GF to continue making (if they even need to, considering sales and how small the chip is).

 

[Kiloran]

Why not? They'd just get GF to continue making (if they even need to, considering sales and how small the chip is).

I'd read on another forum that GF was dropping PPC and that Nintendo might have to find manufacturer if they want to update the current design (add more cores, etc). Wasn't sure how true this is.