Nintendo Switch Tech Speculation discussion

[Shifty Geezer]

In itself, it's a great idea (I kept suggesting Sony go this route with their PS3 successor! ). The idea of a portable device to play your games coupled with a console has merit, trading best performance with versatility. It's just the execution from Nintendo is severely lacking.

 

[Pixel]

Lol not even close to a fact here.

I guess I should have put a /sarcasm, but I thought its obvious... these aren't exactly gamespot forums...

The dock is $89.99 so it obviously does not have a 1060. The 89.99 alone ensures it does not. Case closed.
-Well ontop of the fact it'd be a programming nightmare even worse than the sega saturn's dual gpu
- further evidence of no 1060 from every bit of gameplay footage we've seen, and from 3rd party ports being last gen titles.
-having the cpu communicate to the gpu through a usb-c which gives only 1.5GB/s bandwidth. Thats enough for productivity apps, webbrowsing etc, but not enough for modern visuals seen in X1/PS4 multiplats, particularly not enough not to severely bottleneck a 1060
-Overall 299 system price is further evidence,
-Thermal issues having something like that in the dock
-its a complete 180 compared to Nintendo's traditional business practices
-None of the reliable sources suggest this
-Common sense...

 

[Pixel]

Maybe Misterxmedia has a brother who is a Nintendo fan.

 

[Blazkowicz]

Let me sum up what I gather from the thread and other sources

- It's too slow.
- It's too fast (battery life only 2.5 hours)
- The tech is too old, SoC didn't even come out in 2016 but earlier
- It does not have enough launch games
- It's too high end
- They cheaped out too much

So, a lacking execution no matter what

 

[Pixel]

Let me sum up what I gather from the thread and other sources

- It's too slow.
- It's too fast (battery life only 2.5 hours)
- The tech is too old, SoC didn't even come out in 2016 but earlier
- It does not have enough launch games
- It's too high end
- They cheaped out too much

So, a lacking execution no matter what

In a way I see the rational for all of these.
If they had gone the more power route with a traditional console and something along the lines of x86 7790 or higher, at least they'd get 3rd party support in the form of more current gen titles.
Or if they had gone the less power cheaper portable route, at least its a nice little gadget you can buy for your kid without putting too much of a hole in the pocketbook.

 

[Lalaland]

Maybe Misterxmedia has a brother who is a Nintendo fan.

Nah the 'insider' just got a new job at NoA......

 

[Goodtwin]

It'll be enabled in a later firmware update. Remember how MS played it with XBOne? They cunningly put in extra GPU power, let games use the basic specs, and then unleashed the full force a year after release to...um...er....can't remember, but I know on Good Authority that MS used this technique to great advantage and I'm sure Nintendo have carefully watched the rest of the industry and learnt how to pull this off. So docked LOZ next year after the patch is gonna look amaze-balls.

Wrong, Zelda already looks amazing!

 

[Deleted member 13524]

The dock is $89.99 so it obviously does not have a 1060. The 89.99 alone ensures it does not. Case closed.

The one person who suggested that in this thread was you.
You opened the case and you closed it. Applause.

-Well ontop of the fact it'd be a programming nightmare even worse than the sega saturn's dual gpu

It's a nightmare to develop for an APU and a discrete GPU?
I guess console developers were in a programming nightmare up until 2013, and PC developers still do.
Poor men and women.
/s

- further evidence of no 1060 from every bit of gameplay footage we've seen, and from 3rd party ports being last gen titles.
(...)
-Overall 299 system price is further evidence,
-Thermal issues having something like that in the dock

There's no GTX 1060 in the Switch or the bundled dock.
Again, you're the single the single user who keeps going back to that.

having the cpu communicate to the gpu through a usb-c which gives only 1.5GB/s bandwidth. Thats enough for productivity apps, webbrowsing etc, but not enough for modern visuals seen in X1/PS4 multiplats, particularly not enough not to severely bottleneck a 1060

You're the only person who suggested the GPU would communicate through USB's standard protocol.
What was hypothesized was using USB-C's alternate mode to drive 4x PCIe 3.0 lanes (4GB/s duplex), which is a method that already exists in other forms, also using USB-C (e.g. Thunderbolt).

-None of the reliable sources suggest this

The most reliable source by far suggests the existence of an "advanced devkit" with the same SoC as the Switch paired with a chip with the same dimensions as the GP106.
We're just theorizing how the discrete GPU in said devkit could fit within the Switch's current ecosystem, along with Nintendo's Supplemental Compute Device patents that were cleared in mid-2016.

A gaming system, comprising: a game console comprising one or more processors configured to locally execute a game and provide video output of the game to a display and audio output of the game to a speaker, the game console including a physical network interface and a wireless communication interface; and a supplemental computing device configured to detachably couple to the game console via the physical communication interface, the supplemental computing device comprising: one or more processors configured to provide, over the physical communication interface, processing resources to the game console to assist the game console in locally executing the game; and memory for receiving data associated with the game from the game console and storing the data for later access
(...) Relatively close supplemental computing devices may be able to provide services at a nearly real-time speed (e.g. processing real-time graphics and sound effects) (...)

And that would be achieved through a new, bigger, more expensive dock available to purchase later this year or the next (or (whe)never), and not the dock that's coming in the $300 bundle.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The one person who suggested that in this thread was you.
You opened the case and you closed it. Applause.

He was joking. He was sarcastic in his original post (which I thought pretty obvious) but for those who missed it, Pixel acknowledged as much...

I guess I should have put a /sarcasm, but I thought its obvious... these aren't exactly gamespot forums...

You then go on to argue against Pixel's points where every one of Pixel's points is against the idea of a 1060 being the dock. It's a little bit bonkers, truth be told...

- further evidence of no 1060 from every bit of gameplay footage we've seen, and from 3rd party ports being last gen titles.
(...)

There's no GTX 1060 in the Switch or the bundled dock.
Again, you're the single the single user who keeps going back to that.

So in a post by Pixel arguing against the existence of a 1060 in the dock, you point by point argue against him saying there isn't a 1060 in the dock. You do seem to just pick some fights sometimes, Totz.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

So in a post by Pixel arguing against the existence of a 1060 in the dock, you point by point argue against him saying there isn't a 1060 in the dock. You do seem to just pick some fights sometimes, Totz.

It sure seemed like a post with 8 reasons countering an argument (GTX1060 in standard dock) that absolutely no one proposed, while suggesting it had been so.
Apologies if it wasn't the case.

 

[Blazkowicz]

The most reliable source by far suggests the existence of an "advanced devkit" with the same SoC as the Switch paired with a chip with the same dimensions as the GP106.
We're just theorizing how the discrete GPU in said devkit could fit within the Switch's current ecosystem, along with Nintendo's Supplemental Compute Device patents that were cleared in mid-2016.

And that would be achieved through a new, bigger, more expensive dock available to purchase later this year or the next (or (whe)never), and not the dock that's coming in the $300 bundle.

tl;dr : "We patent the Sega CD, except without the CD drive"

There is also some 1982 prior art, if you call it that
https://chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/Videopac+C+7010
although, the patent does get into some specifics about cloud, might be mostly about that.

 

[Exophase]

The whole line of reasoning behind suggesting that a ~12x18mm chip in a devkit is a 1060 seems like a stretch to me. There are all sorts of things a chip like that can be, for instance there are eMMCs around that package size. If it said nVidia on it that'd mean something but just by itself it doesn't really mean anything, and I agree with function in saying that there needed to be at least a heatsink on this during operation for it to be a 1060.

 

[Eteric]

I wonder how the Switch compares to the GPD Win? The GPD win can run quite a few AAA games (if you tinker with them). If the Switch can match or outdo it, it should be able to run modern games in theory. Of course they won't look as nice, but that's the compromise of a hybrid.

If so it's going to come down to user base. Nintendo's last system was a failure, so companies are right to be skittish. But if the Switch is a success, I could see more coming on board in time. Especially considering outside of the behemoth companies, most smaller devs aren't pushing the graphical bleeding edge anymore. The Switch is a modern system for all intents and purposes, but it's not a powerhouse. But considering the things freaking phones can do these days, it may not have to be.

Those are phone games FFS. It's pretty nuts.

 

[Exophase]

I wonder how the Switch compares to the GPD Win? The GPD win can run quite a few AAA games (if you tinker with them). If the Switch can match or outdo it, it should be able to run modern games in theory. Of course they won't look as nice, but that's the compromise of a hybrid.

I'm having a hard time finding GPD Win benchmarks, probably because there are so few of them actually out in the wild right now. The best comparison I can make is to another device like Surface 3 that uses the same SoC, but I don't know if the different thermal solutions between the two allow for comparable performance. GPD Win has a smaller surface area in which to dissipate heat, but has active cooling, which can make a big difference.

With that in mind, comparing the Surface 3 (http://www.anandtech.com/show/9219/the-surface-3-review/6) to the Shield TV (http://www.anandtech.com/show/9289/the-nvidia-shield-android-tv-review/4) in 3DMark 1.2 GPU and GFXBench shows a ratio of about 2.4x to 3.7x in favor of the Shield TV. If we assume linear scaling vs clock speed (big assumption, it might do better than that at lower clocks due to memory bandwidth limitations) that'd mean at ~307MHz clocks (if correct, and right uarch) would mean ~0.74x to 1.14x. So, very, very tentatively I'd say GPD Win may have somewhat similar GPU performance in comparison to the Switch when not docked. Of course this would change substantially when docked.

I also expect, based on experience, that the quad 1.6-2.4GHz Airmont CPU cores will have no problem outperforming quad 1.02GHz Cortex-A57s most or all of the time.

EDIT: Did find 3DMark results for GPD Win here:

GPU score is about 3.7% lower, physics (CPU) score about 6.2% higher.. so close-ish I guess?

 

[Eteric]

I'm having a hard time finding GPD Win benchmarks, probably because there are so few of them actually out in the wild right now. The best comparison I can make is to another device like Surface 3 that uses the same SoC, but I don't know if the different thermal solutions between the two allow for comparable performance. GPD Win has a smaller surface area in which to dissipate heat, but has active cooling, which can make a big difference.

With that in mind, comparing the Surface 3 (http://www.anandtech.com/show/9219/the-surface-3-review/6) to the Shield TV (http://www.anandtech.com/show/9289/the-nvidia-shield-android-tv-review/4) in 3DMark 1.2 GPU and GFXBench shows a ratio of about 2.4x to 3.7x in favor of the Shield TV. If we assume linear scaling vs clock speed (big assumption, it might do better than that at lower clocks due to memory bandwidth limitations) that'd mean at ~307MHz clocks (if correct, and right uarch) would mean ~0.74x to 1.14x. So, very, very tentatively I'd say GPD Win may have somewhat similar GPU performance in comparison to the Switch when not docked. Of course this would change substantially when docked.

I also expect, based on experience, that the quad 1.6-2.4GHz Airmont CPU cores will have no problem outperforming quad 1.02GHz Cortex-A57s most or all of the time.

EDIT: Did find 3DMark results for GPD Win here:

GPU score is about 3.7% lower, physics (CPU) score about 6.2% higher.. so close-ish I guess?

We also have to consider that the Switch won't be running a hefty OS like the GDP Win (Full Windows 10, it's an impressive little device).

Its hard to say. I wish they'd actually have given out some specs we could run with. I suppose we'll get them launch week. Nintendo's games seem to suffer from aliasing. I don't know if its because they're just using old engines or what.

Certainly hope we haven't seen Switch's best yet.

 

[Exophase]

We also have to consider that the Switch won't be running a hefty OS like the GDP Win (Full Windows 10, it's an impressive little device).

Its hard to say. I wish they'd actually have given out some specs we could run with. I suppose we'll get them launch week. Nintendo's games seem to suffer from aliasing. I don't know if its because they're just using old engines or what.

Certainly hope we haven't seen Switch's best yet.

This is kind of an over-simplified opinion but I think Windows gets too much flak for weighing down performance. I don't think it really sucks up a lot of CPU time just by being there. Memory footprint may be more of an issue.

You might get burned on the API, all things considered - this is assuming Switch is providing something low level to begin with. On the other hand, DX12 can be used on GPD Win, so there's that.

I imagine Switch games would benefit more though, just by being tuned/optimized for a more fixed platform. No one's going to design and optimize games with the GPD Win or similar in mind.

 

[Eteric]

This is kind of an over-simplified opinion but I think Windows gets too much flak for weighing down performance. I don't think it really sucks up a lot of CPU time just by being there. Memory footprint may be more of an issue.

You might get burned on the API, all things considered - this is assuming Switch is providing something low level to begin with. On the other hand, DX12 can be used on GPD Win, so there's that.

I imagine Switch games would benefit more though, just by being tuned/optimized for a more fixed platform. No one's going to design and optimize games with the GPD Win or similar in mind.

I think the Switch is built to use Vulkan. I bet that would help a lot.

 

[BRiT]

I think the Switch is built to use Vulkan. I bet that would help a lot.

Nope. Impossible. Everyone knows Vulkan is an AMD only low level construct.

 

[Shoujoboy]

While we're back on the subject of Switch and how it could potentially stack
up to Ps4/Xbone once ports start rolling in, I figured I'd go ahead and ask
these questions :

We know it's using an X1 chip but what sorts of modifications could Nintendo
do to bring Switch performance closer to Xbone/PS4 ?
Also wouldn't mandatory support of the mobile mode hamstring the visuals we'd
potentially see the Switch pump out?
And would that limit put Switch in ''No Man's Land'' for ports of certain titles?

 

[Blazkowicz]

The common opinion afaik is they did no modifications at all except slowing it down. The one good thing about it is the CPU and GPU will never throttle down under load, so e.g. a guaranteed 1GHz CPU speed is nothing special but better than what might happen on some random mobile device.

So in likelyhood, it is harmstrung yes. Perhaps some games would just be too slow. But I guess a port of e.g. GTA V is doable.
Personnally : even though it's that weak, I'd be interested, as an alternative to desktop PC gaming (I won't elaborate why. Similar costs either way). It's mostly the price of games I worry about.