NVIDIA Tegra Architecture

[ams]

Give me more battery life please.

Speaking of battery life, here is what NVIDIA said about Shield tablet:

"We've implemented a game and application optimization feature, enabling SHIELD tablet to maximize battery efficiency and performance on an app-by-app basis. For example, if you're playing a single-player, offline puzzle game, SHIELD tablet's "NVIDIA Optimized" mode can reduce the number of used CPU cores, lower the CPU clock speed, limit the frame rate to 30, and disable power-sapping Wi-Fi and 4G LTE features until you stop playing. Likewise, usage and screen brightness can be reduced in apps. When playing a high-fidelity game, the full power of Tegra K1 and the A15 CPU is unleashed, the frame rate unlocked, and all of SHIELD's functions utilized. Additional functionality enables automatic battery mode switching, ensuring you have enough juice remaining to watch your favorite show on the train home that evening."

http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/articles/shield-tablet-the-ultimate-tablet-for-gamers

 

[ams]

Guru3d GFXBench data for Shield tablet:

 

[ams]

Hands on with Shield tablet:

Mobilegeeks: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJSWe6Ane5A

Cnet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJU7NQBYrMw

TechnoBuffalo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsNjH08Sil8

Tested: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACli2jGvMJo

PC Games Hardware: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0URGIwobbwE

Hardware Canucks: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_0uZYumVlE

 

[swaaye]

What are the hot games that we are supposed to be dying to play on Android these days? All I've gotten into on there is Max Payne 1 and Carmageddon.

 

[ams]

What are the hot games that we are supposed to be dying to play on Android these days? All I've gotten into on there is Max Payne 1 and Carmageddon.

I'm not sure about must-have games, but there are quite a lot of Android games that make use of a game controller:

http://shield.nvidia.com/android-game-list/

http://shield.nvidia.com/play-android-games/

And some of the best games for Shield tablet are showcased here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxXEs1yPxYM

 

[OlegSH]

What are the hot games that we are supposed to be dying to play on Android these days?

Dragon Quest VIII
Chaos Rings series
Final Fantasy 1-6
Chrono Trigger
GTA 3, VC, SA
Mount and Blade
AC Pirates
XCOM
Shadowrun
Baldur's Gate
World of Goo
Sine Mora
Waking Mars
Monument Valley
Osmos
Half Life 2
Portal
Conduit
Rochard
The Bard's Tale
King's Bounty
Sword and Sworcery
Jet Set Radio
+ emulators (PS one, PSP, NDS - ironically better then original with stylus, gamepad and big tablet screen)
That's a short list of my Android games. Waiting for Civilization Revolution 2

 

[zed]

What are the hot games that we are supposed to be dying to play on Android these days? All I've gotten into on there is Max Payne 1 and Carmageddon.

Im uploading one today, if you like difficult fast paced games it may be something for you.
I finished another game (has the most potential to be a hit of the over 100 games I've written) yesterday, though I wrote that in js/webgl. But because it has such sale potentual I've decided to not stick it on my website, but instead make an app of it. I'll do that next week (In the process of moving islands/house at the moment)

 

[ams]

Real-time mildly interactive UE4 Rivalry demo on Shield tablet (see second half of clip): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQghTvQWxgM

Trine 2 launch trailer (very beautiful hand drawn artwork used in this game! this is an old trailer, but still good): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQwMzX9EXz8

 

[OlegSH]

Real-time interactive UE4 Rivalry demo on Shield tablet (see second half of clip): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQghTvQWxgM

Trine 2 launch trailer (very beautiful hand drawn artwork used in this game!): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQwMzX9EXz8

I'm quite impressed K1 GPU is able to process so many heavy shaders and semi transperent surfaces at once with so limited bandwidth. Screen Space reflections, physical based shading(at least 3 render targets for geometry attributes), HDR, object based motion blur, tesselation for smoke, postprocessing, temporal reprojection AA, high res textures and looks like even anisotropic filtering is enabled, it's even beyond XBOX360 and PS3 in many aspects, GFX bench Manhattan test is really inferior to this

 

[zed]

Im uploading one today, if you like difficult fast paced games it may be something for you.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.auware.peuploaded this morning, actually wrote some code this morning at 5am cause the version I uploaded yeaterday was bogus, rode 800+km today & Im back home now(*)moving house islands over the next 2 days (so still a lot of travelling), but hey just tested this game & it works. Its a shit game I admit guilty but its difficult,
its 100% free no restrictions

 

[fivefeet8]

Trine 2 launch trailer (very beautiful hand drawn artwork used in this game! this is an old trailer, but still good): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQwMzX9EXz8

Here is the Trine2: Directors Cut launch trailer for the WII U. It's the exact same scenes until the end so it's quite remarkable how close the Shield Tablet version is, but there are still slight differences.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-wzG14VZd0

 

[tangey]

I never heard of that game,but looking at that video trailer, it looks like it is mostly about finding the correct way of jumping over various holes in the platform.

 

[Alexko]

I never heard of that game,but looking at that video trailer, it looks like it is mostly about finding the correct way of jumping over various holes in the platform.

It's a platform game, so yes, it's mostly about going from point A to point B while killing bad guys. But that's actually true of a lot of games.

I haven't played Trine 2 (yet) but Trine 1 was pretty great. You have three different characters with different abilities but you can only ever control one of them at once. You can switch at any time, and the goal is to figure out whom and what to use at what time. A good bit of the world obeys the laws of physics and let's you pull off clever (and sometimes quite creative) tricks.

Trine 2 seems different in that apparently you can control several characters at once, but the basic formula remains, and it's a good one. You can play with a keyboard and mouse (I think) but it's a better fit for a gamepad in my opinion. At least that's how I played it (on PC).

 

[ams]

Look which tablet has finally showed up in GFXBench 3.0: http://gfxbench.com/result.jsp

 

[ams]

Trailer for the 3D Simulator "Pure Chess" for Android, enhanced for Tegra K1-powered devices: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHY3enqjY8I

 

[Ailuros]

Anand's Shield review:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8296/the-nvidia-shield-tablet-review

 

[Nebuchadnezzar]

Perf/W is not at all what many have been trying to praise, this thing sucks a lot of power. Full load TDP is like 10W.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Perf/W is not at all what many have been trying to praise, this thing sucks a lot of power. Full load TDP is like 10W.

You're mixing Perf/W with full load consumption.

Perf/W seems to be unmatched, really. In light loads (WiFi web browsing), it has the same battery life as other 7-9" tablets.
In games, it offers well over twice the performance of a Snapdragon 801 while providing around 66% the battery life of a similar sized tablet. This means there's at least a 33% increase in Perf/W.

If you're worried about battery life, you can always use the "My Power Mode" to limit framerate, how many CPU cores are used and at what speed. Limit the tablet to 2 Cortex A15 cores at ~1.8GHz and framerate to 45Hz and I bet it'll run any game for a lot more time than any other tablet.

 

[Alexko]

Perf/W is not at all what many have been trying to praise, this thing sucks a lot of power. Full load TDP is like 10W.

It's hard to say because there's no good point of comparison. We'd need a tablet of similar screen size and definition, battery capacity, and either performance or battery life.

I think the MiPad would be a better candidate to assess Tegra K1 because it's very similar to the iPad Mini. Has anyone benchmarked it (including battery life tests)?

You're mixing Perf/W with full load consumption.

Perf/W seems to be unmatched, really. In light loads (WiFi web browsing), it has the same battery life as other 7-9" tablets.
In games, it offers well over twice the performance of a Snapdragon 801 while providing around 66% the battery life of a similar sized tablet. This means there's at least a 33% increase in Perf/W.

It's not that simple, because power draw isn't purely linked to the SoC, much of it comes from the display (among other components) and the power draw of these components is not really a function of performance.

This tablet draws about 50% more than an S801 one, but the SoC itself probably draws relatively more than that compared to an S801 chip.

If you're worried about battery life, you can always use the "My Power Mode" to limit framerate, how many CPU cores are used and at what speed. Limit the tablet to 2 Cortex A15 cores at ~1.8GHz and framerate to 45Hz and I bet it'll run any game for a lot more time than any other tablet.

Maybe, but that remains to be established. Internet browsing battery life doesn't have a whole lot to do with performance, and yet:

However, it’s a bit strange how the device performs worse than the Nexus 7 (2013). The reason why I say this is that the Tegra K1 is on a far more power efficient process (28HPm), has broadly equivalent battery capacity to screen area scaling, and should have a more power efficient display due to the reduced gamut. However, it could be that Cortex A15 just isn’t as power efficient as Krait and the silicon backplane of the display isn’t as efficient as the one in the Nexus 7.

(page 7)

My guess is that the much bigger SoC simply leaks more.

 

[Ailuros]

I realize Shield isn't really a pure gaming device but the Vita which is doesn't last longer than it either.

The first question would be how many mobile games there really are with which it would last 2.5 hours and in how many more than 5 hours. The easiest thing for NV would be to give further flexibility to the user via sw for less aggressive frequencies.