Nintendo Switch Technical discussion [SOC = Tegra X1]

Backwards compatibility through emulation is fine. It's just that Nintendo has never done it. They've used emulation for things like virtual console, and collections like Super Mario All-Stars on Wii, but that isn't backwards compatibility. That's repackaging old games into new products and selling them again.

 

VC from wii u or 3ds can't be Brough forward to switch?

Ugh Nintendo.

Hardware-wise, there's nothing preventing it. Heck, actually with switch 2 joycons, it would be awesome for playing old VC games with friends on local multiplayer, anywhere.

Btw switch do have pretty awesome "hardware BC". Even obscure stuff like GC dance mat works on switch with usb adapter AFAIK

 

Yeah, I fully expect that to happen. So far, almost all of their portable consoles since at least the DS have had very similar battery life...and consumers still buy them up in mass quantities.

Nintendo have figured out how much is "good enough" for a portable gaming device. Until someone comes out with a portable gaming device that sells better with better battery life, look for Nintendo to continue to stick to ~2.5-3.5 hour battery life for their portable consoles.

I'd be extremely happy to be surprised, however. Would love to have more battery life on my Switch. But it's "good enough" and with portable battery packs, it isn't that much of an issue. It just means that it's more expensive than I'd like to be able to game on long plane flights on planes that don't have electrical outlets (fairly rare for me recently as I try to only book flights on planes that have electrical outlets).

Regards,
SB

 

Looks like Nintendo/Nvidia do not need to do anymore work on the processor in order to roll out a Switch Pro model. The new Meriko chip is far more energy efficient, and would in theory allow the Pro model to have a 1080P screen, and run current docked clock speeds portable. In docked mode, the new ceiling for the Meriko chip is 1.3 Ghz on the GPU. A pretty significant upgrade over the current 768 Mhz docked clock speed. Granted Nintendo would likely be unwilling to let the chip run full tilt for reliability reasons, but still, speeds over 1 Ghz would likely still fit into the original units power consumption envelope. Memory bandwidth is probably the biggest hurdle. The newer LPDDR4X chips are more energy efficient, but im not sure if they can offer any boost to the memory bandwidth.

 

Mariko, with an A.

Is there a teardown of the new model? The LPDDR4X part number should tell us the reference clocks. Samsung only lists LPDDR4X at 4266MT/s, but there could be other custom parts.

 

Murika

 

Well since they just introduced the lite version, Nintendo is probably not going to do anything for a year or two, unless sales really fall off.

So maybe they wait a couple more years, after PS5 and Xbox Two are released, to come out with the next gen successor to the Switch.

 

Murika is their premium model in the works.
It can do 4k native in portable mode, but it is the size of a shoebox and weights 12kg. To solve batery life, it will run on gasoline, and for portability it comes with it's own truck. God bless Murika baby!

 

They can provide 4k in docked mode, probably slightly less or slightly better performance than PS4 Pro depending on when they release it.

 

If you are not joking, I doupt that.

Switch has like 10-15% of PS4 pro gpu performance, so "switch" pro would have to be 10-15x faster than switch to archieve that.

And not possible with portable parts in the near future, unless they have something inside the dock to boost it, like another gpu

I would expect switch pro to be 50-70% of OG ps4 max.

 

Zelda with that kind of power would be amazing.

 

If I am not mistaken, the original LPDDR4 used had a speed of 3200 Mbps. I doubt the new LPDDR4X is anything other than an off the shelf part, so that would be a boost to memory bandwidth.

 

Yep on digital foundry article they says it have a wee bit of memory bandwidth boost (tested on Zelda korok forest that was bandwidth starved in vanilla switch)

 

Is there any performance improvement in Handheld mode? Higher GPU Clocks?

 

Nope. All clocks stays the same

 

A 1080p screen makes no sense at all, even in a Pro model. We are looking at 320p-540p for the most demanding games in the current form, so we can by happy if the Pro version will let them run in the native 720p of the current screen.

 

Those resolutions are typically seen in portable mode, not docked mode. Most games in docked mode, outside of the current gen ports, run north of 720p, with a ton of games that do render at 1080p, or at least 900p. A 1080p screen makes sense if they can run docked clock speeds in portable mode on the Pro model. The bezel around the screen is pretty big, and Nintendo could easily fit a 7" screen without having to change the size of the Switch itself. The potential from the new Mariko TX1 has the potential to make a much bigger impact to the portable experience than it does docked. A 7" 1080p screen running games like Zelda BoTW, Mario Odysey, and Xenoblade Chronicles 2 in their docked profile would be pretty nice.

 

According to other people on some forums that runs XC2 in portable mode with DOCKED flag, they say the different is crazy.

Although for the majority of games I don't think the difference Will be visible enough.

Sure, those a wee blurry games running in VCD resolution will look sharper. But the difference is too minimal, I think

 

Anyone have an ideas on why Nintendo seems to have moved to a double switch when pretty much all their games were triple buffer on Wii U? I just watched a framerate test for Zelda Links Awakening, and the drops all the way down to 30fps because of the double buffer vsync is kind of disappointing. I cant help but believe that the game would likely only be dropping minimal frames if they had gone with a triple buffer. Thoughts?

 

Would it have any appreciable effect on limiting power consumption?