Nintendo Switch Technical discussion [SOC = Tegra X1]

[Eteric]

Don't see why it can't be seen as both (a hybrid) as Nintendo's last two systems were very underpowered. I just think that this time the trade off of specs for portability was fairer proposition for people. Anyway, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of stuff CAN be ported, but it would require a lot of effort. So in the end it'll depend on how well the system sells. I do hope Nintendo clocks it up a little bit more in the future or offer options (like they seem to have done in portable mode).

Just wish battery life was better. But that's not so much their fault as it is batteries just not evolving.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Because Nintendo sell it as a home console too.

Are they really?

Yes, they are.
http://www.nintendo.com/switch/

Nintendo Switch is designed to go wherever you do, transforming from home console to portable system in a snap. So you get more time to play the games you love, however you like.

Nintendo is just calling home console to a handheld with TV-out. It's a bit deceptive IMO.
What will happen when the general public finds out their $300 Nintendo home console (with no game) simply can't run the games that are available for the $250 home consoles (with bundled game)?

Here are the US' top-selling games of 2016:

1. Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare
2. Battlefield 1
3. The Division
4. NBA 2K17
5. Madden NFL 17
6. Grand Theft Auto V
7. Overwatch (no Battle.net sales)
8. Call of Duty: Black Ops III
9. FIFA 17
10. Final Fantasy XV

How many of these can the Switch run? Aside from the sports games (where EA simply refurbishes old-gen engines with an updated roster), probably only the PS360 version of Black Ops III? Just like it will probably be running the PS360 version of Skyrim.
And I guess Rockstar could port the PS360 version of GTA V, but they haven't bothered with a Nintendo console since Chinatown Wars, over 8 years ago.

 

[AlNom]

The 6700K+HD530 is already running the game at only 720p medium settings and it's barely hitting 60 FPS. This is a competitive game so Blizzard probably wouldn't launch a console version running at a 30 FPS target.

Maybe in docked mode Blizzard could rework the game to play at say 600p 60FPS, but don't forget all Switch games must run with the 154 GFLOPs GPU + 20GB/s bandwidth mode. There's no going over that.

It might not be that far-fetched to see a 30fps mode seeing as how blizzard included a 30fps limit option on PC.

As for settings, I'd have to look more into it. They do list one of the minimum requirements as being an intel HD 4400 and 1024x768. IIRC, it's roughly in range of docked flops. Not too sure about fillrates ( which might be more important with reduced shader complexity anyway?).

Will have to look around for minimum settings comparisons.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

The 6700K+HD530 is already running the game at only 720p medium settings and it's barely hitting 60 FPS.

The render scale is set at 75%, so it's actually running only 720p X 0.75. Ironically in the video while they keep increasing the resolution, the render scale keeps going down. At the end it's running 1080p X 0.5 (a bit over 720p) and dropping under 40fps when there are couple characters and some effects on the screen.

 

[HMBR]

GT 640 (384SPs 928MHz Kepler, 28.5GB/s memory) running overwatch

should be a close enough reference? comparing to Intel IGPs I think it's harder

 

[Deleted member 13524]

GT 640 (384SPs 928MHz Kepler, 28.5GB/s memory) running overwatch
should be a close enough reference?

Nope. 2 Kepler SMX at 930MHz isn't comparable to 2 Maxwell SM at 300MHz.
Even assuming Maxwell 2.5 SM ~= Kepler SMX (when GM107 first released, nvidia claimed 1 SM = 0.9 SMX in real-world performance but I guess Maxwell 2 may have evened things a bit more), it's still a >3x increase in clock speeds over handheld Switch.

 

[Eteric]

Handheld mode may be what holds a lot of things back. Unless people are willing to go way below 720p for handheld.

 

[Picao84]

Handheld mode may be what holds a lot of things back. Unless people are willing to go way below 720p for handheld.

That is probably going to happen, whether Nintendo likes it or not. I'm sure there were some PS3 / 360 running below 720p and upscaling. It has a 6 inch screen, so maybe it will not be that much noticeable? Then again, it would not help much against the worse thing about the Switch: only around 150 GFlops of processing power on mobile mode.

 

[Pressure]

They really should have increased the clock speed for handheld mode. With a normal power connector (a first for Nintendo?!) a power bank could easily have rectified the issue with low battery life.

 

[sebbbi]

I'm sure there were some PS3 / 360 running below 720p and upscaling.

Most games were slightly sub-HD last gen, but not much. On Xbox 360 you could fit 2xRGBA8+D32 at either 1152x720 or at 1280x672 to the ESRAM. These were really popular resolutions. 10% less pixels than 1280x720. COD was the lowest I remember. It was running at 1024x600 (that's 33% fewer pixels than 720p).

 

[BRiT]

Handheld mode may be what holds a lot of things back. Unless people are willing to go way below 720p for handheld.

They're already below 720p in Splatoon 2 when in handheld mode. They're using dynamic resolution and at least one scene it drops to 530p or so.

https://forum.beyond3d.com/posts/1973059/

 

[Goodtwin]

According to NXgamer, the portable resolution is 720p native. I am looking forward to hearing what DF has to say. The game ran buttery smooth, and Nintendo may have prioritized that and chose to use a dynamic resolution. Keep in mind that this game doesn't come out for 4+ months, and we could very well see higher resolutions chosen in the final build. Seeing as how Mario Kart 8 runs 1080p native 60fps locked, I wouldn't be surprised to see a 900p Splatoon 2 at release, and portable sticking to its 720p target 99% of the time. Lots of months to optimize this game. We also know there is a firmware gremlin putting a slight drain on the GPU, and we haven't seen a firmware update yet so that should further improve things on its own. A lot of people are saying that Splatoon 2 looks exactly like Splatoon on Wii U, but I think they need to go back and play Splatoon on Wii U. The lighting and shadows on Splatoon 2 are much improved, and the character models look to be higher poly. Nothing earth shattering, but I noticed the lighting and shadows even before playing the test fire. In classic Nintendo fashion, the game looks great. It might not be a technical marvel, but it makes great use of color, and the fast paced action at 60fps with not drops is a blast.

 

[Eteric]

I get the feeling that Splatoon 2 is another Wii U game that changed platforms at some point last year. We're probably going to see a few of those.

It seems the Nintendo teams need to have a talk with the Mario Kart guys. Then again they're doing ARMS right now, and we've yet to see if that runs at 60 FPS or 1080p.

 

[ProspectorPete]

They are essentially porting Wii U games to a mobile phone (iPhone 6s and up power levels), that they run as good as they are at this moment is impressive in itself.
Proper Switch titles though will look nothing like Wii U games, written to the strengths of the custom Tegra X1 architecture they will greatly surpass them. It might take a while, and it might take third parties to accomplish that, as Nintendo is rather slow to adapt technical features and they mostly focus on great graphics through presentation

 

[OlegSH]

Then again, it would not help much against the worse thing about the Switch: only around 150 GFlops of processing power on mobile mode

197 FP32 GFlops at 384 MHz to be precise and 394 FP16 GFlops in handheld mode, recent frostbyte presentation mentions 30% perf gains with FP16 on hand tuned checkerboard resolve shader, so at least some non memory bound shaders might benefit a lot of 2x FP16 math rate. Nobody stops devs from using much lower res than 720p in handheld mode, with such small screen, checkerboard rendering should be perfectly doable and even MSAA coarse shading should work fine. With 540p@30Hz + checkerboard for 720p there are approximately 12 600 FP32 ops per pixel and 25 200 FP16 ops per pixel, xbox one's GPU theoretical perf at 1080p@30Hz is 21 000 FP32 ops per pixel, and Maxwells run circles around GCN with the same number of flops, especially if there are no async shders in use, that's why many devs have announced multiplatform UE4 games ports to Switch, even though UE4 has quite heavy gbuffer, something like forward+ or deferred texturing + MSAA compression trick should work much better for TX1

 

[bunnybug]

They are essentially porting Wii U games to a mobile phone (iPhone 6s and up power levels), that they run as good as they are at this moment is impressive in itself.
Proper Switch titles though will look nothing like Wii U games, written to the strengths of the custom Tegra X1 architecture they will greatly surpass them. It might take a while, and it might take third parties to accomplish that, as Nintendo is rather slow to adapt technical features and they mostly focus on great graphics through presentation

it's not custom, and i would agree with you about tegra x1 outclassing wiiu games if developers didn't have to target handheld mode which is only like 190 gflops , i think at best it will be on par with wiiu, but have better AA, and textures, in docked mode they will be 1080p or 900p.

 

[sebbbi]

They are essentially porting Wii U games to a mobile phone (iPhone 6s and up power levels), that they run as good as they are at this moment is impressive in itself.

iPhone 6s is slightly above WiiU in both raw CPU and GPU performance and has a modern CPU and GPU architecture (easier to get good utilization).

 

[ProspectorPete]

Nvidia said the Tegra X1 is custom, so please don't shoot the messenger.

People should not judge a system by its early ports: look at the PlayStation3.

Switch graphics can and will only go up from here

 

[Rikimaru]

People should not judge a system by its early ports: look at the PlayStation3.

That's a bad example.
In PS3 era people were figuring out not only CELL architecture, effective multithreading, but also HD development as well.

Switch is a very common hardware nowadays. API is known too. A lot of standard middleware.
Switch graphics will go up but not nearly as much as in 7 gen.

 

[Rootax]

Is API really known ? It's a nVidia API developed for the Switch right ? I guess it's pretty close to Vulkan but tweaked to exploit nVidia hardware the best way possible.

BTW, where is CUDA right now ? Can it help doing some nice stuff in a very efficient way for a gaming platform ?