Nintendo Switch Technical discussion [SOC = Tegra X1]

Yes you're right, nevermind.

I still think switch could get a decent version at 30fps.

 

What online are you talking about. Doom is a single player game. That's a platform-agnostic fact. Has always has been that way.

 

I'm not familiar with the processor that GPD unit is using, but from skimming through the video, the guy is running the game at 216x384 and getting a framerate that hovered around 20fps a lot. So its tough to draw a conclusion from that video.

I think the way many AAA games can approach the port to Switch is by targeting 720p both portable and docked, and portable can use temporal reconstruction similar to what Fast Racing Neo used on Wii. Image quality suffers a bit, but should be better than scaling a less than native resolution.

I finally ran into an area while playing Zelda portably that got a little framey. Its the grass. The amount of grass on screen was insane, and it was raining with a lot of weather effects in play. It mainly showed up when panning the camera around, but it was the first time I noticed any sustained dips in performance while playing portably. When I am up in the mountains with little to no grass, the game runs rock solid 30fps portably and docked.

Nintendo is doing maintenance tonight, and this is typically a precursor to updates being rolled out. We know they have some firmware gremlins to iron out, so it will be interesting to see just how much these firmware troubles are impacting games. Shin'en says Fast RMX should maintain 1080p 60fps once the firmware update rolls out, but will Zelda see much improvement? Zelda BoTW is a phenomenal game, but critically, I think the framerate should have docked this game a few tenths. To me, a 10/10 is basically perfection, and performance for this game puts a slight blemish on an otherwise damn near flawless experience.

 

Graphics of Intel Gen 8, and Tegra X1 are compared here:
https://www.fool.com/investing/gene...porations-tegra-x1-how-does-it-compare-w.aspx

 

Are developers making the switch to Vulkan, or is there still a ways to go on that? Right now I feel like even Nintendo's own first party games on Switch are still using old engines. Splatoon definitely is as it pretty much looks the same as the original. Mario Odyssey I'm not so sure on. Sometimes it seems like 3D World engine, but then you see the bigger worlds and you stop to wonder.

 

Game engines are independent from the API, so its quite possible that early Switch games from Nintendo are using the evolved engines from the Wii U. I remember an interview where someone at Nintendo spoke about them using Unreal 4, so apparently Nintendo is open to using these middleware options.

 

this link uses a Broadwell CPU with the 24 EUs IGP; the mini PC on that video uses Intel Atom Braswell with 16 EUs at a lower clock (at least max boost clock);

 

Intel iGPU performance is highly tied to the TDP of the chip. Chips with high TDP (high end laptops and desktops) are most of time time running the GPU at maximum boost clock. However this Atom has only 2W SDP (Intel specs don't describe the real TDP for Tablet processors). Core M in comparison is 4.5W TDP. The 24 EU Core M could offer 2x graphics performance over the Atom. Both have 25.6 GB/s memory bandwidth (dual channel LPDDR3-1600).

Switch is a lower clocked version of Tegra X1. I would expect to see performance closer to the Core M than the Atom. But it is impossible to draw conclusions without more test cases. Nvidia has significantly better delta color compression and tiled rasterizer, helping Tegra X1 with bandwidth limited cases. Nvidia also has better compute shader performance (faster groupshared memory).

 

I've been at so many conferences where Intel will try and tell us they care about GPU, usually by demoing how well they can run 3DMark 11 or a 6 year old racer at min settings. They don't care and never will because for them the issue is all about reducing TDP (and yes SDP is a nonsense) to ensure they can compete versus ARM in thin, shiny things

 

Intel seems pretty serious to me considering their eDRAM APUs are basically peerless. Expensive though. Targeted only at elite devices.

 

Is this not the result of the game's actual developers? It's not like some quick bare bones port, it's running natively on a platform it was at least in some regard optimized for. That's not to say they couldn't maybe get better performance out of a console port but you shouldn't compare the devs to comparing it to a guy who didn't do anything but run the game and shoot a video.

Ignoring the GPU for a bit, the 3x1GHz Cortex-A57 CPU cores you get access to on Switch are going to generally be significantly less powerful than the 1.6-2.4GHz quad Airmont cores on the GPD Win.. and the game appears to be CPU limited at a sub-par framerate. So that's a pretty big problem. A lower level graphics API may help but I'm sure there are limits...

It's just because they're the only ones who have a real solution for limited bandwidth in this space. They even face a deficit against Intel IGPs w/o crystalwell because those have access to at least 3MB of L3 cache.

Once AMD delivers APUs with HBM or the like I expect they'll be on a more competitive footing.

 

True, but the low level API's on consoles have shown to require significantly less CPU resources than on PC. It has gotten a lot better on PC with Vulcan, but I would still assume that it would be even better on Switch's to the metal API. The assumption is always that a developer can get down to the nuts and bolts of a given game and make modifications that get the performance up to par. Doom is a corridor shooter, so I fail to see how dialing down the physics and AI to a Doom BFG Edition level would butcher the game. I always think of COD on Wii, there were some obvious compromises, but the core game was intact.

 

If 5 years ago developers were complaining about the 3-core 1.24GHz PowerPC 750 in the Wii U being too underpowered, I don't see how they're not complaining about the 4-core 1GHz A57 right now.

The Switch will be able to play mobile games dedicated to the platform and very simple multiplatform games. That's it. If it's successful it'll be because it's a handheld console and it has no decent competition (decent as in actually capable of running multiplatform games without having to develop an intrinsically different game). Capcom is reportedly trying to port Resident Evil VII's engine to the Switch. The fact that they're still trying to port the engine and not the game (which will probably require simplified geometry) speaks for itself, IMO.

One tidbit from the news piece mentioned above:

Apparently, Nintendo wanted to have "considerably less" than 4GB of RAM.
I wonder if this means they proposed a true copy/paste of Shield TV and Pixel C's components, with TX1 + 3GB RAM (Ultimate Super Low Effort Mode Enabled).
Given how Nintendo is taking a fixed amount of 750MB for the Switch's OS, having 3GB RAM total would mean 2.25GB available for the games. Increasing from 2.25GB to 3.25GB of available RAM is indeed a considerable increase.

 

I don't disagree with this in theory, but we haven't heard a word from developers criticizing the CPU. The A57 cores are a significant step up from CPU's in last generation consoles. Games that are maxing out all 7 Jaguar cores on PS4/X1 might find the task pretty daunting to port the game to Switch, but this is not every game. It will be an interesting E3 this year. Early success bodes well for at least some testing of the waters.

 

There aren't glowing praises either, and that would be more likely be public sooner than negative comments. Keep in mind that the DF article there is also 2 years post-WiiU release, and the article also likely only saw the light of day because the WiiU was certainly on the path of irrelevancy.

That said, it'd be interesting to hear from folks who have worked on Shield TV. *cough*

 

Glowing praise for the CPU? No, but for overall ease of development on the platform there has been a ton of praise. Let face it, the PS4 and X1 weren't exactly praised for their CPU's either. Until a console rocks an I7 processor, the CPU's are not going to be praise worthy. Negativity regarding Wii U development came early, like immediately after launch. Talks about the "weak" CPU were certainly anonymously made very early on, and some rumblings about the CPU were surfacing even prior to the Wii U launch. The only praise the Wii U ever really got was the extra memory and more modern GPU. In todays land scape of game development, easy to develop for and modern engine support like Unreal 4 and Unity go a long way. The hardware limitations are bound to hold back a few titles, especially when the outlook for sales potential is rather modest compared to other platforms. EA could put Battlefield on the Switch, make it the best it can possibly be, and it would likely struggle to sell a million units. Its just a different audience with Nintendo platforms. Think more 3DS and less PS4. If developers approach it correctly, there is a lot of potential, but it probably wont come from the same games that sell big numbers on the other consoles.

 

It is only glowing praise when its compared to WiiU development. Where the docs where in Japanese? And not documented well? And questions went unanswered until weeks if not months later? And working firmware with networking wasn't available until a week before launch? Yeah, by that comparison level setting point, nearly anything other than being shat on again would be an improvement.

 

That's not true. Developers have gone on record stating that ease of development on Switch is on par with developing for PS4, with some saying Switch might even be easier to develop for.

 

I'm not saying Switch Development is horrible or bad or that it's not good, I'm just reminding people that when you hear developer praise for Switch development to take in context compared to where they came from..

I don't doubt that Switch development is good, but I do doubt it's as good as the PS4 experience.

 

Anyway to modify Nvidia Shield bios, and thus maybe someday some people will figure out how to modify Nintendo Switch's bios to increase the system speeds closer to Pixel C's speeds?