Switch 2 Speculation

[Frenetic Pony]

That bandwidth is even less than the PS4 (176GBs). So in situations when bandwidth starved, what would be some things they would do to compensate? Drop the native resolution and/or resolution of effects? Just curious how they could overcome such a big gap.

They'd do nothing! It's all up to the developer, bandwidth caps are fun that way.

But this should be faster than a PS4. The desktop GPU equivalent of the PS4 had 16kb per CU L1, Ampere has 128kb. The L2 was 512kb versus probably around 2mb for Switch 2. That's a good amount of traffic to main memory that won't be happening, and even less need for latency hiding.

 

[LiveGamer]

Of course it's up to the developers that's what I'm curious about.

Anyway just spitballing but due to battery concerns I'm expecting the undocked mode to be around 750 Gflops and the docked mode 1.8TF. Both modes will use DLSS to help from there.

Also I expect the docked mode to be hampered by the memory bandwidth and to not quite reach PS4 levels.

The Steam Deck right now doesn't match the PS4 either.

 

[Lurkmass]

That bandwidth is even less than the PS4 (176GBs). So in situations when bandwidth starved, what would be some things they would do to compensate? Drop the native resolution and/or resolution of effects? Just curious how they could overcome such a big gap.

They could always just stick to designing their games to be compatible with forward rendering or a thin G-buffer/visibility buffer format ...

The console/desktop approach to deferred rendering with a 6x G-buffer layout and doing dozens of render passes against them as seen in many AAA games or graphically high-end UE games are still going to be some years out of viability on mobile devices ... (Immortals of Aveum at 720p w/ FSR balanced preset on a Steam Deck takes 16ms to do the G-buffer pass alone)

Overcoming the 'gap' will be a matter of designing your content for these restrictions or deploying specialized builds of the said game for the specific platform in question ...

 

[Seanspeed]

That bandwidth is even less than the PS4 (176GBs). So in situations when bandwidth starved, what would be some things they would do to compensate? Drop the native resolution and/or resolution of effects? Just curious how they could overcome such a big gap.

DLSS + dynamic res will do a lot, yea.

Also another boost for XSX/PS5 ports is that most of these games are still being built with 60fps options, meaning doing a version of them with reduced settings at 30fps should be easier and less bandwidth intensive.

Overall, it's in a much better spot than Switch 1 vs PS4/XSX.

I'm also fully expecting mandatory installs now, so no more playing from the cart. And I'd bet almost everybody will want at least a 512GB SD card, and thankfully those are pretty affordable nowadays.

 

[Subtlesnake]

Of course it's up to the developers that's what I'm curious about.

Anyway just spitballing but due to battery concerns I'm expecting the undocked mode to be around 750 Gflops and the docked mode 1.8TF. Both modes will use DLSS to help from there.

Also I expect the docked mode to be hampered by the memory bandwidth and to not quite reach PS4 levels.

The Steam Deck right now doesn't match the PS4 either.

750 Gigaflops would mean a clock speed of 244 MHz, when the original Switch clocks at 384 MHz.

 

[troyan]

That bandwidth is even less than the PS4 (176GBs). So in situations when bandwidth starved, what would be some things they would do to compensate? Drop the native resolution and/or resolution of effects? Just curious how they could overcome such a big gap.

You can not compare GCN 1.1 to Maxwell or Ampere. GCN 1.1 was really inefficient with everything. nVidia improved bandwidth efficiency by 4x or so with Maxwell. This was one of the big key points of the architecture.

 

[cheapchips]

I'm also fully expecting mandatory installs now, so no more playing from the cart.

Why mandate an inconvenient install? They should be able cook up a new cartridge format that's quick enough.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Why mandate an inconvenient install? They should be able cook up a new cartridge format that's quick enough.

What's the minimum speed that's going to be needed and what's the cost of that cart versus a cheap medium and fast SSD storage? If this thing is supposed to run contemporary games, I'd have thought you'd need XBSS level SSD performance at a minimum, which would make for expensive carts if played directly from them. Mandated installs also allows for a download-only console with better margins on game sales.

 

[cheapchips]

What's the minimum speed that's going to be needed and what's the cost of that cart versus a cheap medium and fast SSD storage? If this thing is supposed to run contemporary games, I'd have thought you'd need XBSS level SSD performance at a minimum, which would make for expensive carts if played directly from them. Mandated installs also allows for a download-only console with better margins on game sales.

They could get away with SD speeds really. The Deck does quite so merrily. They could certainly do better than that for carts without breaking the unit cost.

Are there games that are really leveraging higher read speed storage of current gen consoles? Rhetorical question really, as the answer is essentially no. Fast seek times seem to be the more important contribution from the shift to SSDs. Low speeds aren't going to stop ports of COD, GTA6, Fortnite updates, UE5 titles (other factors might).

Nintendo are committed to package games. They said this at their recent QandA (via DF john/Nintendo Deal)

"Yes, digital sales and digital sales ratio increased. Our basic policy is not to simply increase the ratio of digital sales, but to maximize game software sales, including packaged software sales, and this policy will remain unchanged. In doing so, we need to improve convenience for both customers who play packaged software and customers who play downloadable versions, and we would like to continue making improvements and innovations in the future." (this was machine translated)

Original (Japanese)

https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/pdf/2024/240508.pdf

 

[LiveGamer]

750 Gigaflops would mean a clock speed of 244 MHz, when the original Switch clocks at 384 MHz.

Ok Ill raise that to 1TF undocked. 2.5 docked. With DLSS on top for both.

Steam Deck is 1.6. I dont expect Nintendo to go much larger than the current Switch form factor and weight.

 

[Globalisateur]

You can not compare GCN 1.1 to Maxwell or Ampere. GCN 1.1 was really inefficient with everything. nVidia improved bandwidth efficiency by 4x or so with Maxwell. This was one of the big key points of the architecture.

Sure caches are a lot better (higher) than GCN 1.1. But that benchmark Digital foundry did (by approximating Switch 2 specs the best that was possible) showed it having about the same performance than PS4 at native 1080p in Death Stranding. So there is that.

 

[Seanspeed]

Why mandate an inconvenient install? They should be able cook up a new cartridge format that's quick enough.

Well Nintendo doesn't make their own cartridge technology from the ground up, so have to rely on what else is out there. And I'm not sure there's much in the way of affordable SD technology that can get near what UFS3.1 does(2GB/s+). And I doubt Nintendo chose UFS3.1 for just OS purposes, which is bound to be super thin and light anyways.

They could get away with SD speeds really. The Deck does quite so merrily. They could certainly do better than that for carts without breaking the unit cost.

I'm not sure how well Deck is built to play 'next gen' titles for the whole generation.

But you might be right.

Nintendo are committed to package games. They said this at their recent QandA (via DF john/Nintendo Deal)

I dont think they were suggesting Nintendo are going outright digital-only, just that going with mandatory installs could allow them to offer a digital-only option.

 

[cheapchips]

Well Nintendo doesn't make their own cartridge technology from the ground up, so have to rely on what else is out there. And I'm not sure there's much in the way of affordable SD technology that can get near what UFS3.1 does(2GB/s+). And I doubt Nintendo chose UFS3.1 for just OS purposes, which is bound to be super thin and light anyways.

They're probably going with UFS3.1 as that's cheapest option that will stay cheap and available for lifespan of the console. Accidental performance!

I keep coming back to them probably having to support some form of expandable storage. SD is the only thing that really cuts it for a portable device, even if they mandate the fastest 800Mb/s SD Express.

 

[troyan]

Sure caches are a lot better (higher) than GCN 1.1. But that benchmark Digital foundry did (by approximating Switch 2 specs the best that was possible) showed it having about the same performance than PS4 at native 1080p in Death Stranding. So there is that.

It doesnt make sense to compare a PC card to a console with a console game.

Switch exclusives will be optimized for the hardware and will provide much better performance.

 

[babybumb]

Im not convinced DLSS will be much of a use in portable mode if they want to run complex title at 60fps...

 

[Samwell]

Im not convinced DLSS will be much of a use in portable mode if they want to run complex title at 60fps...

It's still Nintendo. You won't see complex titles with 60fps. 540p upscaled to 1080p with 30fps would be my expectation for complex titles in portable mode. Middle complex ones with 720p upscaled and only really low complexicity games with 60fps.

 

[Seanspeed]

I keep coming back to them probably having to support some form of expandable storage. SD is the only thing that really cuts it for a portable device, even if they mandate the fastest 800Mb/s SD Express.

Right, of course. Dont know why I wasn't thinking of that, unless it'll be like how Xbox/PS allow external storage for data, but for actual XSX/PS5 titles, you need to transfer that data to the internal storage to play them. At which point that UFS3.1 might actually come in quite handy?

Definitely curious how they're gonna handle this.

 

[Seanspeed]

It's still Nintendo. You won't see complex titles with 60fps. 540p upscaled to 1080p with 30fps would be my expectation for complex titles in portable mode. Middle complex ones with 720p upscaled and only really low complexicity games with 60fps.

Yep, and DLSS works reasonably well at such low resolutions. Nobody will confuse it for DLSS Quality at 4k, but again, this is still gonna be a lower priced mobile Nintendo system, not a baby PS5/XSX.

I'm pretty excited for DLSS to grant developers a lot more overhead than they'd otherwise have on this thing, since you can go pretty low while still getting results that are acceptable. Seeing the difference between image quality in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 -> 3, and then imagining being able to use DLSS instead on top of all the new horsepower? Definitely a ton of potential.

 

[RDGoodla]

It doesnt make sense to compare a PC card to a console with a console game.

Switch exclusives will be optimized for the hardware and will provide much better performance.

Is sub 100 GB/s LPDDR5X enough for 4TF Nvidia GPU?

Highly doubt it..

 

[LiveGamer]

Is sub 100 GB/s LPDDR5X enough for 4TF Nvidia GPU?

Highly doubt it..

The Switch performed at Xbox 360 levels with more RAM and less Bandwidth. The Switch 2 will perform at PS4 levels with more RAM and less bandwidth. Anyone expecting more is setting themselves up for disappointment IMO.