Nintendo Switch Technical discussion [SOC = Tegra X1]

[Entropy]

This has been the best comparison I have seen thus far:

Definitely has lower texture details/lighting compared to PS4. Almost looks what a Xbox 360/PS3 version would look like or slightly better.

Would probably be rough to play for anyone if they have already played the other versions. Really curious to know if it's 30 or 60fps.

Dangerous to draw conclusions, while the comparison is good the source for the Switch images is not. We'll know better when it gets released and Richard sinks his teeth in it for an apples to apples comparison. Which is quite soon!
Would have liked to see some Wolfenstein footage.

 

[Eteric]

Still pretty amazing that we have mobile technology that can run this stuff (albeit a bit modified). Hopefully future engines are as flexible as ID has gotten theirs. Really impressive.

 

[BRiT]

For as rarely as they're used and for the price increase that additional technology brought they should have been entirely optional and the system would have been far better for it at a cheaper consumer price. Bundle them with the "123Switch" game for $75 and then it would have been win win win.

 

[swaaye]

I'm very curious about this Doom port. I tried playing the game on a previous notebook of mine with Geforce 860M (GM107) and it was not able to hold the all important 60fps at even 1360x768 at low quality. This game just does not play well below 60fps. Maybe it will be 720x480 on Switch .

And the new Wolfenstein too. Crazy. Interesting stuff Bethesda is trying to pull off / cash in on.

 

[Goodtwin]

Crazy. Interesting stuff Bethesda is trying to pull off / cash in on.

I have a feeling there is a good chance Nintendo struck a deal with Bethesda to get this support. Bethesda doesn't exactly have a history of supporting Nintendo, and on top of it the hardware presents a challenge that seems like something Bethesda would have declined to tackle in the past. For Bethesda, these are pieces of software that are being ported late, and doesn't bring the same challenges a simultaneous multi platform release would. Finalized and optimized code has been there for both Skyrim and Doom, and there wont be to many bugs and resource sucking gremlins left in the pipeline. This work has already been done, and now its about tweaking settings, scaling down assets, and testing to see what resolution and framerate is sustainable.

ModEdit *snipcopied to spin-off*

 

[Deleted member 13524]

ModEdit *snipcopied to spin-off*

I have a feeling there is a good chance Nintendo struck a deal with Bethesda to get this support. Bethesda doesn't exactly have a history of supporting Nintendo, and on top of it the hardware presents a challenge that seems like something Bethesda would have declined to tackle in the past.

On the contrary, id Software has made notable titles for smartphone hardware that presented great technical achievements for their time.

There's idTech 4 Doom Resurrection that ran on the iphone 3gs with a Samsung SoC that had a PowerVR SGX535 (rated at 1.6GFLOPs):

And one year later they made Rage HD that ran on the same hardware and used idTech 5.

idTech has shown to be able scale downwards really well.

 

[AlNom]

I have a feeling there is a good chance Nintendo struck a deal with Bethesda to get this support. Bethesda doesn't exactly have a history of supporting Nintendo, and on top of it the hardware presents a challenge that seems like something Bethesda would have declined to tackle in the past.

ModEdit *snipcopied to spin-off*

Aside from speculative industry deals, the simple case is that idtech6 already has a stable Vulkan path that the porting studio can utilize (whomever it is).

edit9000:

Perhaps there's not much stretching involved with nV supposedly helping out with Nintendo's SDK anyway. It'd almost be in nVidia's interest to help too (Maxwell-Vulkan)*, but that's probably too out there to speculate with zero info.

*Not that they seem to particularly need performance boosts on PC HW as it is. The engine already runs very well on Max-Pascal

 

[Recop]

Ok, i have to say that Odyssey looks very good now. It's the best looking game on Switch in my opinion. The IQ is quite decent now.

It's the first time i'm impressed by the Switch. In the right hands, this hardware can produce some good results

 

[mpg1]

Yeah it looks good. I was actually looking for a Super Mario Odyssey thread on the Console Gaming sub forum the other day and was surprised there wasn't even one made...sort of a big game this year.

Apparently the DOOM embargo is up tomorrow. So I guess we'll know if it's 30 or 60fps...how downgraded it is...

 

[swaaye]

The cute Mario stuff looked good on Wii and Wii U hardware too. That simplistic artistic style is easier to make look great.

 

[Johnglen]

Doom , 30fps , dynamic resolution as low as 540p.

 

[Picao84]

Doom , 30fps , dynamic resolution as low as 540p.

Source?

 

[Recop]

Source?

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1436088 : but you need to read the thread to get more informations.

Unstable framerate, 30fps, somes downgrades, can go as low as 540p. The game wasn't tested docked though.

 

[Picao84]

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1436088 : but you need to read the thread to get more informations.

Unstable framerate, 30fps, somes downgrades, can go as low as 540p. The game wasn't tested docked though.

Well, it seems DF were impressed despite all those negative observations.

There was also another website called Pixelpar that said that it was running at 60 FPS. Maybe they tested it docked. 30FPS undocked and 60FPS docked would not be that bad.

EDIT - Pixelpar also tested undocked after all. Well between DF and another I have no idea about, I trust more DF.

 

[Recop]

30FPS undocked and 60FPS docked would not be that bad.

I really doubt that it is possible... it's either 30fps or 60fps on both.

 

[Allandor]

Well, it seems DF were impressed despite all those negative observations.

There was also another website called Pixelpar that said that it was running at 60 FPS. Maybe they tested it docked. 30FPS undocked and 60FPS docked would not be that bad.

EDIT - Pixelpar also tested undocked after all. Well between DF and another I have no idea about, I trust more DF.

doesn't really make sense, as the CPU clocks the same in docked and undocked mode. If you go from 30 to 60fps the cpu get's much more pressure.
But it would be possible to downgrade the undocked mode so much, the cpu is just idling around, but that wouldn't make much sense.

@doom-topic
xbox 360 games look amazing on small screens. The switch has a bit more raw power than the xbox 360 and much more memory, so it should be possible to get amazing games in handheld mode like doom. It's a very scaleable engine for sure.

 

[Picao84]

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1436088 : but you need to read the thread to get more informations.

Unstable framerate, 30fps, somes downgrades, can go as low as 540p. The game wasn't tested docked though.

The neogaf thread is a mess mixing up observations from the Switch version with the PC version they tried to downgrade to Switch level specs. I see other people commenting that the unstable framerate was referring to the PC and not the Switch. That was why they say Switch is impressive because it performs better than a comparable PC spec.

EDIT - There is also a guy saying all the video is based around the simulated Switch on PC spec, with no actual Switch performance details known.

EDIT 2 - Apparently the video was also removed because the information on it is dead wrong. The final build of the game plays at 60 FPS.

EDIT 3 - It seems no one has really analysed the DOOM switch port with any kind of technical tools (there is no Switch footage at all in the video!). All they did was play the game on a press event. DF then went and built a PC with specs close to Switch and took conclusions from it. Quite the way to jump up the gun and confuse everyone!

EDIT 4 - The video is basically pointless and just good for neogaf console wars. I'm sure Nintendo and Bethesda must be raging at DF now. I know I would, very irresponsible from them to do it. If they wanted to really compare PC vs Switch they should have waited to have concrete and rigorous information about the Switch version!

 

[bunnybug]

The neogaf thread is a mess mixing up observations from the Switch version with the PC version they tried to downgrade to Switch level specs. I see other people commenting that the unstable framerate was referring to the PC and not the Switch. That was why they say Switch is impressive because it performs better than a comparable PC spec.

EDIT - There is also a guy saying all the video is based around the simulated Switch on PC spec, with no actual Switch performance details known.

EDIT 2 - Apparently the video was also removed because the information on it is dead wrong. The final build of the game plays at 60 FPS.

EDIT 3 - It seems no one has really analysed the DOOM switch port with any kind of technical tools (there is no Switch footage at all in the video!). All they did was play the game on a press event. DF then went and built a PC with specs close to Switch and took conclusions from it. Quite the way to jump up the gun and confuse everyone!

EDIT 4 - The video is basically pointless and just good for neogaf console wars. I'm sure Nintendo and Bethesda must be raging at DF now. I know I would, very irresponsible from them to do it. If they wanted to really compare PC vs Switch they should have waited to have concrete and rigorous information about the Switch version!

Stop spreading misinformation. Rich has played the game, and confirms it's 30fps with drops, and is just showing what to expect from the switch version that he's played, with out breaking the embargo.

 

[Sh1nn]

The neogaf thread is a mess mixing up observations from the Switch version with the PC version they tried to downgrade to Switch level specs. I see other people commenting that the unstable framerate was referring to the PC and not the Switch. That was why they say Switch is impressive because it performs better than a comparable PC spec.

EDIT - There is also a guy saying all the video is based around the simulated Switch on PC spec, with no actual Switch performance details known.

EDIT 2 - Apparently the video was also removed because the information on it is dead wrong. The final build of the game plays at 60 FPS.

EDIT 3 - It seems no one has really analysed the DOOM switch port with any kind of technical tools (there is no Switch footage at all in the video!). All they did was play the game on a press event. DF then went and built a PC with specs close to Switch and took conclusions from it. Quite the way to jump up the gun and confuse everyone!

EDIT 4 - The video is basically pointless and just good for neogaf console wars. I'm sure Nintendo and Bethesda must be raging at DF now. I know I would, very irresponsible from them to do it. If they wanted to really compare PC vs Switch they should have waited to have concrete and rigorous information about the Switch version!

They removed video because they broke embargo.

DF played Doom in press event so they know what they are talking about. Because they played it in portable mode they couldn't take any direct feed footage to analyse, but im sure they would notice if it was running at 60fps. lol

The footage from trailer is probably from docked mode so it make sense to use it for comparison.

 

[Picao84]

It is empirical evidence at best. There is nothing rigorous about it. Irrespective of the FPS being 30 or 60 or even something in between, he cannot say for sure it is 30. Lower than 60? Sure probably easy to spot, frame it down to 30 so vehemently? No, unless he has bionic eyes with an FPS counter

The footage from trailer is probably from docked mode so it make sense to use it for comparison."

Since when is edited video footage a good point for a rigorous comparison with anything? The video from Nintendo Direct was heavily edited including footage from other games, so you cannot measure anything concerning FPS from it. Even image quality is not a faithful comparison given video artifacts.