Switch 2 Speculation

That's interesting to know.

Yeah they don't have to get rid of docked mode.

But I think the reason it's not used as standalone more is the poor battery life.

Younger generations do everything with their phones, including watching a lot of video content that you'd think they'd watch on a big screen TV. So they seem resistant to sitting down on a couch and turning on the TV. But maybe multiplayer games like Mario Kart commands a lot of docked mode game play.

 

I can vouch for both of these points, watching my daughters and their friends. They generally prefer to be in control of a portable device, at a comfortable distance from their sibling and curled up somewhere cozy. But collaborative, local multiplayer, sports games or dance(-ish) games are all better with a big screen that you don't have to hold. The Switch can fill both these roles.

 

It was like 10% of Turing's SM area, so less than 5% of the GPU, you could double or even quadruple the amount before it becomes cumbersome, considering the superior output vs alternatives (i.e external scalers).

Assuming modern custom design, as you did in the previous post, i.e Ampere, that's not truth anymore, since it can be done concurrently with the rest of the pipeline, which also means huge amount of TCs would not be required. Just enough for either 16ms or 33ms runtime. And for reference, remember that the 2060 runs 4K DLSS in 2-3ms.

 

I agree. I would like them to offer a non portable version though. They've done the opposite with the Lite, so why not? I don't think three variations is too much to bare. TV only. Hybrid. Portable.

A TV only console could be really quite cheap without cheapening the Switch brand at this point.

 

Absolutely. To be honest, before buying my switch [in 2017] I just wanted Nintendo to release a 'shield TV' with a pro controller (and a cheaper price). At the time, I was just tired of playing in portables (had gba, ds and 3ds). Some type of games were terrible to enjoy with a tiny screen. Besides that, I couldn't handle the pain anymore (my hands were suffering from the grip).

But then I started playing games on portable mode [on my switch] and I was blown away with how crazy the experience was, being able to play games like mk8, botw and odyssey with such a quality was a bit shocking for me. And I also could handle playing more time on the switch than on my 3ds (before my hands start cracking). But the best part was that I could choose when to play on portable or docked. Odyssey, for example, I always started a new world on my TV, but I would eventually use the portable mode to catch its last moons. Some games (like botw) I played almost exclusively on the TV, while others were 100% on portable mode (Celeste, Cadence of Hyrule, Paper Mario). I tried Celeste on my PC before and I just dropped it (and it turned out to be one of my favorite games)... I don't think I would've bought Cadence of Hyrule if I was locked on TV mode only. I wasn't really ready for such versatility.

Anyway, the practical experience changed my mind completely. I can't say I could buy a switch 2 tv only (like I was ready before playing on the switch). Maybe it's just too late for me now.

But, with that said, I still think that a very small box bundled with a pro controller - and with the same MSRP of the Lite model - could have its public. Sometimes I just wanted to have one, so I could bring it to my friends' houses more easily.

The only thing I would miss A LOT would be the battery. Yesterday I was playing Bayonetta 2 and I was in the middle of a boss battle (actually, I was just about to win it) when I had a power outage. I immediately pressed the Home button and waited for power to be back on. If I was playing on a traditional home console, I would be f*. The battery has already saved me many times lol

 

Ampere sounds more next gen than a mid gen refresh

 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...w-nvidia-graphics-chip-in-2021-switch-upgrade

 

It's a bit sad with the obsession over DLSS in these articles, like Nvidia is leaking it purposefully and waving around the term like it's some magic wand. Then again "4k" whatever that really means, is also a magic fairy PR wand waved in peoples faces and some buy into it. But it's just... so un Nintendo. Nintendo has always been "Buy our things because they're fun" rather than playing the "specs" game, and I've always appreciated that about their PR.

 

They pushed the specs like any other when their hardware were compétitives imo.

 

Well, we haven't had any official PR from Nintendo yet. However if they're pitching it as a 4K machine, they need to prove that they can deliver competitive image quality on 4K displays.

 

nVidia is making the dev environnement for the Switch, yes ? If so, I guess they can ease the dlss implantation even more, or it's strictly linked to game engines ?

 

It's probably not that hard to render Switch-level graphics (which is realistically a Gen7.5) at 1440p in docked mode on a less-ancient SoC and then upscale them to a 4K presentation.
They could probably do it on e.g. a TX2/Parker with the original 1465MHz GPU clocks in its 15W mode (750GFLOPs vs. current 393GFLOPs in docked mode, plus twice the memory bandwidth), though that chip would still have the 2x Denver cores the Switch has no use for.

In the off-chance Nintendo is willing to pay for a more powerful and actually custom SoC this time around, I guess Nvidia could make a "Xavier Lite" where they:

1 - strip away all the PVA and ISP units, basically remove all accelerator units but the tensor cores (8 per SM in the GPU, though maybe they can reduce that number if it's just for DLSS);

2 - strip away all the expensive I/Os like the 16 camera connections, 8x PCIe 4.0, etc;

3 - Reduce the 8 LPDDR4X 4233MT/s memory channels down to 4 (8GB 68GB/s) or 3 (6GB 46GB/s);

4 - Replace the 8 Carmel cores for 4x/6x/8x Cortex A57 or a newer Cortex A7x, clocked at 1.2-1.5GHz.


Even if using the same TSMC 12FFN I 'd say this could get the SoC down to ~150mm^2 which isn't ridiculous for a tablet form factor. GPU clocked at the same 307MHz mobile / 768MHz docked for 2x GPU performance, and it's a go.

 

It could be that the DLSS isnt intended for boosting resolution substantially, but more for allowing a switch with a noticeable, but not crazy, bump in graphics fidelity, while also having 60fps as the default frame rate. Having the graphics between the 'super switch' and the current switch largely unchanged but just run at a higher frame rate with some extra graphical bells and whistles would make it easier for developers to support both versions of the switch simultaneously

 

I wonder if it will have RT cores. RT could actually be possible thanks to DLSS and it will sure be beneficial if Nintendo wants to keep third party support well into next gen.

 

I wonder if it's worth it. Implementations that are making some noticeable impact is scarce on current consoles.
Games are already being made with the option to switch off RT on PC. So that wont be a problem.
DLSS is probably having more positive impact on visuals+performance than RT on visuals.

 

Yes, having RT acceleration is worth it. RT can scale and with DLSS, it scales even better!
For now, you can turn it off but once true next gen games appear that are built around this generation, chances are you might not be able to turn it off anymore and then lacking RT acceleration would be a huge pain in the butt for the Switch Pro and another reason for developers to not port their games over.

Actually, there's a game coming requiring RT acceleration, Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition so my scenario is not that far off into the future.

 

RT isn't only taxing RT cores, it taxes the compute shaders too.
As the Van Gogh SoC specs would indicate, there's no RT coming to 5-12W SoCs anytime soon, much less for a mid-gen upgrade of a portable Gen8 console like the Nintendo Switch.

This deification of DLSS seems to be going too far.

 

Eh, modern-day Nintendo, yeah. But NES/SNES Nintendo? They definitely used to play up on the power narrative compared to their rivals of the time such as Sega and NEC. It even continued through the N64 and even Gamecube, that's basically like half their time as a platform holder.

Also this isn't necessarily Nintendo themselves talking about the new Switch, it's just the first (likely) substantial details on it from folks in the trades picking up word on these things, and given Nintendo's modern history of not focusing on specs, in a way it's refreshing to see mention of the tech/power in an upcoming Nintendo device tbh. They can have it both ways: you don't have to sacrifice power to have fun games, and Nintendo consoles used to embody that a long time ago.

 

DLSS is their hot new term. That with raytracing is helping them against amd. Of course now AMD has raytracing even if its performance is not as good so DLSS will get a bigger push.

I also think its very important to a future switch. Lets be real , if they keep the docking feature there is no way a portable is going to do a decent job at 4k resolution. But with DLSS it doesn't matter. For the majority of people buying a switch like device using DLSS from 720p or 900p to 4k on the tv is going to make them extremely happy.

 

RT is something to be thought about for a a potential next gen machine. The recent rumors have been hinting more at a switch pro type of revison ala-DSi...