Nintendo Switch Technical discussion [SOC = Tegra X1]

betternatethanlever said:
I think those are gross oversimplifications and don't really answer my question, quite frankly. You could argue that any game could run at any system ever released. Developers could change entire rendering pipelines and/or use completely different engines (or move to 2D, if need be), and this has been done before. We've seen multiplatform games get ported to PS2/PSP/Wii/mobile etc. that barely resembled the original game, they only shared the name and not much else.

I was curious if it was technically possible for Switch to run the same game, on the same engine in a playable, presentable state. Not if it was financially feasible or if developers would do it. It's interesting because the 60fps games that had to have their framerates halved still saw a significant reduction in image quality. Assuming Switch is only slightly worse than XB1/PS4 on the CPU side, and the major bottleneck seems to be on the GPU front, just how much visual fidelity they would have to compromise to get them running. For example, could Doom on the Switch at 60fps would've been possible?
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Can't really answer that.

Can't even go with same engine. Fifa on Switch uses a completely different engine from Fifa on PS4/XBO and yet the gameplay is exactly the same.

Regards,
SB
 
Shifty Geezer said:
Assuming 3 ARM cores at 1 GHz is only slightly worse than 6.5 Jaguar cores at 1.6 GHz? That's quite the assumption!
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According to digital foundry though the A57 cores are at least somewhat better per clock. Ps4 Jaguar can't be much over 2x better but that's still a significant advantage
 
phoenix_chipset said:
According to digital foundry though the A57 cores are at least somewhat better per clock. Ps4 Jaguar can't be much over 2x better but that's still a significant advantage
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If the A57 cores are 60% better per clock, Switch's three cores would be <50% of PS4's Jags. The difference is well over twice as powerful, not to mention CPU bandwidth concerns - the more the Switch's graphics match the consoles, the less BW is available for the CPU.
 
betternatethanlever said:
Are you sure about that?
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According to DF, the gameplay is a bit quicker on Switch making it feel a bit more arcadey than the PS4/X1 build. The animations aren't as fluid, but the overall consent was the game played well. It sounds like Fifa on Switch is fairly comparable to Fifa on PS4/X1 pre Frostbite engine. Playing 2014 era Fifa quality on a portable console in 2017 isnt a bad deal if playing on the go is important for you.
 
phoenix_chipset said:
According to digital foundry though the A57 cores are at least somewhat better per clock. Ps4 Jaguar can't be much over 2x better but that's still a significant advantage
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That's not quite correct.
ARM-CPUs are really very specific. They are really really good when it comes to power consumption, but not for general purpose code. And still the Switch only has 3 cores. It might be better than the cores in the WiiU, but not much. There is a reason why we don't see any cpu-heavy games on ARM-platforms. The cores give us enough compute performance for most things (like giving the GPU something to do), but outside of that ARM cores are still far away from anything we are seeing in the desktop segment (even jaguar cores). Just don't take geekbench or any browser results. ARM has strength, and those benches most times just uses the strength of ARM but a weak spot on x86 cpus.
 
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I have always heard that A57's performed better per clock compare to Jaguar cores, but isn't it a pointless debate? Switch has half the number of cores and they are clocked nearly half as fast. The Switch most certainly comes away with a 2-3x deficit in CPU throughput compared to the Jaguar setup on PS4/X1. A lot of games are mostly GPU bound, but for those games that really stress those Jaguar cores, it might be a difficult task to move that game to Switch without compromising the gameplay.
 
OlegSH said:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/7724...arm-based-server-soc-64bit8core-opteron-a1100
Would AMD's own SPECint rate 2006 scores work for you?
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you know what most of these servers do, don't you? Most of the time they are idle. And When they do something they don't need an oversized x86er core that can do much more than simple tasks.
And the int-rate is not everything a cpu-core is good for. There is a lot of other stuff that makes a e.g. a jaguar core much more attractive to "universal" tasks.
yes, arm is fast enough for most things, but not fast enough to replace a 8 core jaguar cpu in a PS4/xb1 console. Those are still two very different architectures and have their own weaknesses. therefore arm has really the edge if it comes to performance per watt or just a lower transistor-count (cheaper).

Goodtwin said:
A lot of games are mostly GPU bound, but for those games that really stress those Jaguar cores, it might be a difficult task to move that game to Switch without compromising the gameplay.
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And that's why so many games (like doom) can be done on the switch. They are totally gpu-bound. E.g. Doom has nothing to speak of that is cpu-limited. Even a 2-core pc can run doom if the GPU is strong enough. And games like Skyrim are orignal ported from xb360 and PS3 and the PS3 has only one core and some "almost" unusable SPes (for normal CPU work). You can do many things without much CPU-power. Even GTA5 is mostly GPU-bound (also runs on PS3). As long as you don't do to many things, and restrict the framerate the Switch CPU is good enough.
 
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It looks blurry as hell, but I guess on the switch screen it can look very nice. On a big TV, maybe not, but you can't have everything :eek:
 
i would not have thought only dropping res and framerate would have been enough, so i'm pleasantly surprised, i think i looks really good, of course playing in portable mode.
 
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