Nintendo Switch Tech Speculation discussion

[Goodtwin]

I could see Nintendo waiting for Zelda BoTW to be complete in order to really get out of the gate fast. One of the reputable leakers made it sound like the new 3D Mario game had completed development for quite some time. Even the time of year that Nintendo chose I think is deliberate. They know they are going to sell to their hardcore fans in the first couple months regardless of the time of year. By launching in March with their biggest game they have ever created is certainly going to sell upwards of 5 million units in a hurry. By doing this, it builds a userbase so that titles released during the Christmas 2017 aren't crippled in sales. It really creates potential for third party games that typically release late in the year to have a little less competition from Nintendo's big hitters. Mario and Zelda do not need Christmas to sell well, but a game like Beyond Good and Evil being showcased by Nintendo as their big holiday hit could really help it succeed.

I am so anxious for next reveal next week. Even if Nintendo doesn't release complete specs, I think the software will speak volumes for what its capable of. Its not really so much that I care, I just want to know. My most optimistic expectations were always below Xbox One, so that was never a big deal to me. However, I am interested to know if its reasonable to expect much in the way of Western AAA games on the Switch. Ubisoft will most likely make an honest effort, but EA and Activision will likely test the waters with sales of their biggest games, likely Fifa from EA and COD from Activision.

 

[Lalaland]

Man years are the best kind of metric, who gets counted and how? Who cares? Feel those digits!

In all honesty even if the level of customisation is modest a team of 100ish people across multiple disciplines for 3 years seems like a reasonably sized team possibly even small for a complex project like this. It really is all about the software so the announcement should answer that stuff but I'd be skeptical if we get much meaningful hardware info until we get a tear down post launch. Nintendo are by far the most cagey about tech specs and if they're not playing a power game why muddy the message with what in all likelihood will be modest numbers vs the PS4/XB1(that will become 'wurst evar' in forum noise).

 

[Goodtwin]

Man years are the best kind of metric, who gets counted and how? Who cares? Feel those digits!

In all honesty even if the level of customisation is modest a team of 100ish people across multiple disciplines for 3 years seems like a reasonably sized team possibly even small for a complex project like this. It really is all about the software so the announcement should answer that stuff but I'd be skeptical if we get much meaningful hardware info until we get a tear down post launch. Nintendo are by far the most cagey about tech specs and if they're not playing a power game why muddy the message with what in all likelihood will be modest numbers vs the PS4/XB1(that will become 'wurst evar' in forum noise).

I agree, but hands on impressions of a game like Skyrim could be a good indication of what the hardware can do. Its a game on the 360/PS3 but also more recently remastered for PS4/X1. If the game looks like a match for the 360/PS3 build, that tells us something. If its a notable step towards the remaster in terms of visual quality, then perhaps the hardware is more capable than the low specs suggest.

 

[Lalaland]

Have journalists been promised a hands on? I thought it was a stage event/stream, I could see them leading with the most mature software and just highlight reeling any titles that might not be quite ready. Still I'm pretty excited too cannot wait to wring details out of this thing (and see more BotW)

 

[Goodtwin]

Yes, they are having hands on events following the big reveal.

 

[pc999]

A interesting thing about a few tests on the Shield TV

In my journey to figure out how to down clock my Shield's GPU, it turns out that it down clocks from its stock 1GHz speed anyway because of GPU scaling? Guessing its something to do with thermal throttling, but yeah! One of Dolphin's developers said that here. Shield TV could be running the GPU at that same 768MHz frequency as the Switch in its docked mode.

I just need to figure out how to set the frequencies.

In other news, the benchmarking I decided to go for was the Unity Standard Assets project, which features a couple of scenes. All scenes run at 1080p 60fps locked on the "Fantastic" quality settings, which includes 8x MSAA! Vulkan working very nice. Then again, these scenes aren't demanding but its nice to see. I can't figure out how to force vsync off so I can see how high the FPS can go, must be an Android thing? I need to push this harder ...

EDIT: Shield TV thermal throttles the GPU to 614MHz, very interesting indeed. I have an app that logs the frequencies, and it doesn't appear to go higher then that. Ran a 3DMark benchmark before and after to make sure, and yep it stays at 614MHz. Weaker then the Switch's docked mode, hah!

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=227859282#post227859282


Given that can the Switch be even 20nm in a smaller space than the Shield

 

[Goodtwin]

A interesting thing about a few tests on the Shield TV



http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=227859282#post227859282


Given that can the Switch be even 20nm in a smaller space than the Shield

I have been questioning the clock speeds of the Shield TV in this thread for a while. Nvidia doesn't list the clock speeds anywhere for the Shield TV, odd to say the least. The cooling in the Shield TV is pretty much what I expect Switch to use, nothing like the large heat sink and fan on the Jetson TX dev kit. Surprising that so many tech websites simply assumed the Tegra X1 was running at full clocks. The Shield TV isn't much roomier than the Switch.

Sent from my SM-G360V using Tapatalk

 

[pc999]

Update, is seems that it actually clocks it self to 768Mhz.

Alright back with some more results on the Shield.

The app I was using turned out to be giving me incorrect readings, so I figured out how to get readings right off the kernel itself.

I shall let you come to your own conclusions.

First run from fresh start these are GPU readings:

http://puu.sh/tfsJG/2df39dff3c.png

3 ~ 4 minutes into the GPU benchmark:

http://puu.sh/tfsYF/af2223ec4d.png

What does this mean? It does actually run at 1GHz initially, but then it lowers gradually to the lowest point we see here at 768Mhz - probably why Nintendo choose this speed as it allows for at least a consistent clock speed without it thermal throttling. And this also matches what the Dolphin developers see with the GPU on the Shield.

I'm going to try to push the CPU and GPU as hard as I can and see if the CPU does indeed throttle, but it looks like it doesn't so far as to keep the console game ports on the Shield to run at consistent speeds.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=227883703&postcount=8800

 

[Goodtwin]

Looks like Dave over at Gaf has done quite a few more test on the Shield TV, and its pretty odd results. It seems the GPU will throttle down for various reasons, but it seems they will cut the GPU clocks in order to maintain the CPU speeds. So if its strictly heavy lifting on the GPU, it will maintain max clocks, but if the CPU cores are also being worked hard, it throttles down the GPU. Hopefully he will do a test while running one of the more demanding games. It probably should have been obvious that the Shield TV can throttle, the tear down shows that while it does have a fan, it shows no heat sink. Even the Wii had a pretty beefy heat sink, and only pulled around 20 watts. Its just interesting that GPU clocks are sacrificed to salvage CPU performance. He does note that when he down clocked the CPU to 1 Ghz, the GPU would throttle, but not for thermal reasons. He theorizes that the CPU is starving the GPU for work at this speed.

 

[Lalaland]

His numbers are fascinating, I think I can understand the bias in favour of CPU versus GPU when throttling given that an Android device will overwhelmingly be running code with little to no GPU component. Or it may just be that Android gaming is in such a weird place the games available for it just don't run very well and that the custom Switch O/S just won't have that issue. I presume that kind of thing can be altered in microcode rather than requiring a redesign?

 

[AlNom]

Would be interesting to compare which clock (CPU v GPU) has a greater impact to power consumption.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Would be interesting to compare which clock (CPU v GPU) has a greater impact to power consumption.

Clock-for-clock (as in MHz increments) it should definitely be the GPU, at the very least because it's a much larger portion of the SoC.
But between a Cortex A57 at 2GHz and the TX1 GPU at ~850MHz it could be close to a draw.

Looks like Dave over at Gaf has done quite a few more test on the Shield TV, and its pretty odd results. It seems the GPU will throttle down for various reasons, but it seems they will cut the GPU clocks in order to maintain the CPU speeds. So if its strictly heavy lifting on the GPU, it will maintain max clocks, but if the CPU cores are also being worked hard, it throttles down the GPU. Hopefully he will do a test while running one of the more demanding games. It probably should have been obvious that the Shield TV can throttle, the tear down shows that while it does have a fan, it shows no heat sink. Even the Wii had a pretty beefy heat sink, and only pulled around 20 watts. Its just interesting that GPU clocks are sacrificed to salvage CPU performance. He does note that when he down clocked the CPU to 1 Ghz, the GPU would throttle, but not for thermal reasons. He theorizes that the CPU is starving the GPU for work at this speed.

This makes sense because GFXBench results show practically no throttling at least until the ~1hour mark.

The A57 cores were probably not thought for being pushed for long periods of time. The main reason for reaching 2GHz was probably for running Javascript very fast for less than a second when opening a webpage, webapp or Android app.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Rumored lineup for January 12's presentation:

Assassin's Creed Egypt..

 

[AlNom]

Wouldn't be a leak without something shitting up the photo quality.

 

[Lalaland]

I was skeptical too until I saw the "Internal Use Only".....

 

[Deleted member 13524]

I was initially triggered by Ubisoft making the Mario RPG, but it turns out it's been rumored before.

What intrigues me the most is the new Assassin's Creed. It should be a AAA title for the 2013 generation as a base and mid-gens as ideal, so to fit the rumored Switch specs they'd have to do a major overhaul.
The Wii U got AC 4 Blackflag, but that was also released for the PS360 with much better results for the later.

 

[AlNom]

Maybe they got Ubisoft Sofia (AC: Rogue) to handle it? March release sounds weird though. Could just be spin-off title. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassin's_Creed#Other_games

Salt.

 

[Goodtwin]

Ubisoft has been a strong partner for Nintendo, so wouldn't be surprised to see them take on the challenge of porting to weaker hardware when other publishers like EA simply choose to pass. Some engines are designed to scale down way more so than others. Unreal 4 was designed with mobile in mind, where as other EA's Frostbite engine not so much. Like @AlNets said, perhaps this is a spin off designed specifically for Switch.

 

[orangpelupa]

Rumored lineup for January 12's presentation:

Assassin's Creed Egypt..

Doesn't they usually putt publisher there instead of developer?

 

[BRiT]

Rumored lineup for January 12's presentation:


Assassin's Creed Egypt..

I'm still thinking this will be a 2.5D game from the Assassins Creed Chronicles lineup to go along with ACC: China, India, and Russia. The release timeline lines up better for Winter release time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassin's_Creed_Chronicles

The first entry is China released on April 21, 2015, on Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The second entry, India, was released on January 12, 2016 on the same platforms. The last game, Russia, was released on February 9, 2016