Nintendo Switch Technical discussion [SOC = Tegra X1]

I just hope they go down the path of releasing a new and better version every two years, rather than making a whole new system again. I think the Switch could find itself a very interesting place in the market, getting third party games late (on more powerful iterations of the system) but with the benefit of being portable.

The console market seems kind of out of wack right now, though. PS4 did it's Pro thing, and MS is apparently doing the Scorpio thing. Is this how things will proceed instead of generations, or what?...

 

There's an entirely different thread to talk about that topic.

 

Yeah, I saw, but they seem kind of distracted with the other consoles right now. Don't really want to butt in on them. If Nvidia went full on car route, wouldn't that put Nintendo in a weird position?

 

It depends. Nintendo got Tegra X1 stock, likely due to discounted prices from NVidia. There's a lot of factors involved

• Is Nintendo happy with Tegra X1 and the any support Nvidia have given.
• Does the Switch end up being a very successful product or just a mildly successful product
• If yes to the above, Nintendo may be willing to pay a bit extra for semi-custom work. It may not contain the latest and greatest, and that's fine if it fits what they have in mind.

On NVidia's end.

• Do they see a profit potential in providing Nintendo chips at lower margins as is common in the console business?
• Do they still need or want a high-profile non-automotive consumer partner?
• If yes to either of those, then they may want to continue a partnership with Nintendo.

If both parties are amenable, then NVidia should be able to make an updated design to Nintendo's needs. Just because the Nintendo Switch used a stock part doesn't mean any future collaboration between the two will use a stock part.

The biggest obstacle for NVidia remaining a partner with Nintendo for their next console is that NVidia as a company wants higher margins across the board. Currently Tegra is a low margin division. NVidia would like that to change. However if the choice is low margin Nintendo business or only automotive, research, and neural network learning applications would NVidia be willing to sign on for a long term deal that will be low margin.

Regards,
SB

 

There is room to stick with the stock Tegra X1 design and still improve the performance down the road. They could move to the 16nm FinFet process, or possibly even 10nm by the time Nintendo would consider a new Switch model (minimum 3 years, most likely 4), and that would bring down the energy consumption and heat to the point where they can significantly boost clock speeds. I would think even with the 64 bit memory bus, in a few years there will be much faster LPDDR4(5) that can improve bandwidth even on the same bus. In doing this your going to create yet another performance profile for developers, and that may not be a good thing. I would probably prefer Nintendo to give the Switch as is a 4-5 year life, and then move on to Tegra Parker once the newer processes make it viable for a product like Switch. I would rather see a hard reset on the hardware spec rather than a new spec introduced every couple of years. If the successor to Switch offers complete backwards compatibility, then I think a shortening the life cycle to 4 years instead of the typical 5-6 is perfectly acceptable.

 

nVidia might also want their tech in a console in the hopes of having developers be more accustomed towards their architectures, especially when APIs are headed towards lower level practices. It would coincide with the goals of GameWorks, after a fashion (and perhaps further justify the expense on PC).

 

Shield Tablet and Shield TV support Vulkan and have had several updates with improvements to it. Granted, nobody making Android games seems to care whatsoever and indeed those NV Shield exclusive games don't even have touchscreen support so were probably rush jobs.

 

Pretty decent idea of what to expect as far as compromises needed to scale AAA games to Switch. Nvidia themselves did this port of Tomb Raider to the Shield TV. Digital Foundry showed a solid 30fps, but with the typical poor frame pacing that comes with 30fps games on Android. Digital Foundry was actually critical of the results for Tomb Raider referencing FAST RMX is handedly outclassing this Tomb Raider game on Shield, but I disagree with that notion, because FAST RMX is a straight forward racer. Anything behind your vehicle in FAST RMX can be culled because its pretty much impossible to turn yourself around, at least not quickly.

As for Shield having Vulcan support, yes it does, but I am not sure if it is being implemented. If it was, I find it odd that it still has the frame pacing issues that is so common with Android. Perhaps Vulcan on Android doesn't get as close to the metal as it does on PC?

 

According to this sad little list, there are a few Vulkan Android games.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_with_Vulkan_support

With more of the middleware engines supporting Vulkan, it should become more popular I guess?

It's interesting that Nintendo Switch isn't primarily using Vulkan. I guess that means it's less than ideal.

 

I wish the new Doom devs would take a wack at a Switch port. That game actually uses Vulkan, so it would be interesting to see how a port would turn out.

 

Doom just barely runs acceptably on a GTX 750 Ti at 720p on lowest settings. I tried it.... And that is alot more powerful than Tegra X1.

Though maybe the game could be downgraded in various ways to work.

 

Maybe they could port Doom (DOS edition) to Nintendo Switch.

 

If some guy can get it to run on that, I'm sure the actual devs could get it to run in some form if they wanted to.

 

Right... It's all about Lazy Devs...

 

Isn't that's more about business decisions? They don't want to prolong development time and don't want the additional cost for making it work in even lower spec that's probably won't buy their games

 

I think it would have to run a solid 60 fps or you'd have places like this forum announcing how it's a disgrace and the hardware a complete failure. That game is especially needing of frame rate with its speedy arena gameplay.

Otherwise it would be the new Quake 2 N64. Shudder. OK maybe that's excessive.

Switch doesn't need ports anyway. It needs awesome exclusives.

 

Nintendo can only pump out so many exclusives. They can only money hat so many as well. Also, I think some games from last gen should be brought over in compilations (Bioshock, Mass Effect, etc). Skyrim is a pretty big deal, I'll be grabbing that one.

As for DOOM at 30 FPS. I think it'd be "ok" for the campaign and a fair compromise for being able to take it with you. We just pretend the online doesn't exist. I'm also interested in seeing how Snake Pass fairs, especially since they had it running almost immediately.

I'm really interested in seeing if the rumor of From Soft getting Dark Souls 3 working on the system is true as well.

 

So, what happens if we transfer the switch OS over to a normal shield tablet?
Yeah, I guess there are some security things that check e.g. for the module interface, for a chip that is not in the tablet or whatever. But at least the CPU/GPU ... well APU should be 100% compatible.

 

Yeah. 750ti is kepler, and it's known Nvidia dropped support for that like a hammer when maxwell came out.

I could see Switch getting a nice version of Doom.

 

750Ti is not Kepler. Its Maxwell generation 1.