Topic: How powerful can the NX possibly be, while having a reasonable cost (

If the NX is a home console, one of the most important factors will be its processing power.

But Moore's Law hasn't held for years, and until they manage to make graphene transistors, they probably aren't going to go back to exponential growth.

So that begs the question, can Nintendo even make a system significantly more powerful than the PS4, provided it sells for a reasonable price and isn't the size of a tower PC?

In particular, this question is for you computer-saavy people who can really dig into specs. I know some of the concept, but that's about it.

PC doesn't have an advantage over consoles right now because they are both running on GCN. We are allegedly going to see a new advancement in graphics thanks to 14nm chips and HBM, but I havn't seen a single graphics demo yet.

If Nintendo returns to solid state games, they can invest in stronger chips and faster RAM. If buying a $200 GPU only results in games being ported in 4k, then it's all pointless. Higher resolution textures will not result in any better visuals.

Is that really important? Power is important to a point, but in all honesty, all this talk about specs is part of why the console business is so awful nowadays. All this talk about superior/inferior power is completely derailing what the console business was supposed to be about: a common ground for developers and consumers alike. Technical discussions aren't a bad thing per se, but it always boils down to pointless comparison wars that hold no merit in the face of actual game quality.

probably adopting ARM as the architecture, since that technology is advancing quickly.

@Kaze_Memaryu:
I think it's pretty important as far as considering the competitive market. Nintendo is about to release a system at least a year before (probably more) Sony and Microsoft release anything. The processing power of the device Nintendo creates is critical to how well they are able to compete. If they can only make a system equally as powerful as the PS4, then they will have to rely solely on alternative unique features to compete, and they don't incentivize Sony or Microsoft to push out new systems sooner. Then they will effectively be a mid generation competitor, and 3rd party support may become an issue again once Sony and Microsoft release 9th gen systems.

Software only drives hardware to an extent. It is critical that new hardware continues to improve upon previous hardware in order to convince consumers that they are being offered something new and better.

@Kaze_Memaryu: As far as NX specs would go, HD would be just it with better CPU like the new 3DS.

Yea, I mean, just venture onto a "general" site like IGN (gulp) and look at the comments. I can't tell you how many times I read something along the lines of, "If Nintendo doesn't come out with something more powerful that Xbox One/PS4, then I won't even bother looking at their next console."

So, yea, that kinda tells you the general "gamer" populace cares about power to a certain degree. Most of us around here don't really give a dang because we're Nintendo fans and we know what Nintendo can do without "power," but for most people...yea, the specs matter. It would at least turn heads if Nintendo could come out with something a bit more powerful than PS4.

@rallydefault: It can't just be a "bit" more powerful. It needs to be 3-4X as powerful AT LEAST. Remember, the Wii was 2X as powerful as the Gamecube, and the Wii U is 1.5X as powerful as the 360. To court those people, Nintendo needs to make the upgrade to their next system more than that.

Nintendo's other option is to focus ONLY on a new idea like the Wii Remote was, but if you ask me, it would be better to have both.

Moore's Law hasn't stopped, it was never about the amount of horsepower you can get out of a CPU. It was always about how many transistors you can fit into a die. Something which either translates to better performance AND lower power consumption. Which they then tune to whatever the market wants. Which lately, with the popularity of mobile devices, has generally been lower powered devices. That's where all the engineering has gone.

As for the question itself, it someone was to do precisely what the PS4 did. Launch sometime around November 2016 with the same US price and the same approach in general? I'd say that the question could be re-asked how much would you have to have spent in mid 2012 to get a "PS4" GPU and how much would that same amount of money get you now..... and from what I can tell you'd probably be around about an R9 285 or R9 380. And in real world tests that translates to something around:

GTAV at 1080p:
"PS4": 23fps
R9 285/380: 34fps

Battlefield 4 at 1080p:
"PS4": 33fps
R9 285/380: 53fps

Bioshock Infinite at 1080p:
"PS4": 40fps
R9 285/380: 78fps

GTAV at 4K:
"PS4": 6fps
R9 285/380: 14fps

I'm going with a repackaged, new 3ds level upgraded Wii U with some new gimmick for $250. I don't think Nintendo considers itself in the same category as Sony or MS anymore. They're their own market, their own niche. I think they like being the inexpensive, kid-friendly option for the families.

So basically a slightly better but similar sized Wii U in a new box for $250.

Liam Robertson says that NX won't be able to compete with the power level of Sony's PS4
http://www.nintendo-magazin.de/geruecht-nintendo-nx-wird-nich...

Yea, we all want the NX to be more powerful or at least as powerful than the PS4/X1. But if previous nintendo consoles are any indication, it'll most likely be slightly more powerful than the WiiU with some kind of gimmicky controller attached to it. (Making the same mistake as they did with the WiiU, being hard to develop games for)

So nowhere near the capacities of the PS4/X1, with a price range of 300 dollars.

@skywake: Moore's law is slowing down due to the physical limitation of how small a gap you can create between two silicon crystals. At this point, scientists are encountering a limitation, in that the gap is getting so small that electrons start following quantum behaviors.

But thanks for the info. So it seems that, if Nintendo releases a new system next year, it would only be 1.5 to 2X as powerful as the PS4. That creates a very interesting limitation for Nintendo to have to work around.

From the info recently it seems like NX being kind of a "New Wii U" but having any standard tablet as an alternative to the Gamepad is most likely.

@Grumblevolcano: yeah basically. And/or some new gimmick, can't think of what. This thing really sounds like it's coming out next holiday.

Yeah, people and their dreams of a powerful hardware at low cost. We never get bored listening to them...

@Azooooz: yeah anyone who thinks this is gonna be a $400 ps4 clone is gonna be preeeeetty disappointed.

Over clocked Wii U. That's as far as my mind believes Nintendo will go. But so far all speculation on NX has felt pretty unsatisfactory, including my own. Guessing Nintendo hardware development has some safe bets, like the rest of the industry, but the "innovation" bits are impossible to nail and those are what matter most. Not power, but the gimmicks as everyone likes to say for good or bad. We only talk about power, but when they finally reveal it the gimmicks/innovative features will make the biggest impressions in the end. Just how Nintendo plans it.

I agree. An R9 based GPU would be reasonable if aiming for a $400 price point in 2016, but it wouldn't result in any major shift in graphical effects. Considering the latest rumor that the system won't even be on par with PS4-- I don't know what to think of where NX even fits in the industry. If people want a low end console, they have 360, PS3, and WiiU to choose from. The demand in the market is clearly for higher end hardware. People bought nearly 20 million PS4s in the first 12 months. Lower cost no longer equals higher sales.

Would you know if there would be issues with having both a partition of HBM (2GB) and also have 8GB of DDR3/4 shared memory in the system? Why are the HBM chips from AMD not combining the use of HBM with additional memory external to the chip?

@iKhan: Well sure, but there are ways to cheat it. For example the more recent Intel CPUs have a habit of under-clocking themselves when you're not using them. Which means that they run cooler in general thus combating some of the issues of having everything crammed in together. They're also making the die physically bigger and cramming more cores onto it. Even more than that, they've been using the tighter process to cram more and more components into the CPU itself which is another way of improving performance. And I don't know when that video was actually made but Intel is now on a 14nm process. They're still chugging along.

@BlueSkies: I'd suspect that HBM is too immature a tech to be pushing into consoles yet. I mean AMD is only using it in one line of GPUs and they're $1000 monstrosities with a kinda average amount of RAM for the price which is a whole other story in itself. Early adopter premiums. I'd say that given these machines are primarily built for games a unified memory architecture is a good idea. And Sony hit it right on the money going with 8GB. If they were to spend more on memory I'd argue that pushing it to 12GB would be more valuable than experimenting with HBM.

@SasukeTheRipper: Even if we are to take this third-hand rumour from an anon-source completely at face value. Trust it entirely. And then take it with that other rumour about the cost being lower than usual for a home-console. It doesn't really tell us much. For all we know this cheaper-than-usual and not competing with a PS4 machine? Could be a portable. Could even more easily be someone jumping the gun or having miss-heard something entirely. Or someone just making stuff up for their five seconds of internet fame.

Whatever it is it doesn't impact on this thread topic at all. Which is infact an entirely different question about how fast a machine they could reasonably make if they were to release the 2016/17 version of the PS4. And that's an answerable question. By my guestimate such a machine wouldn't be 4K ready at all. However it would be able to run games at 60fps that the PS4 can only run at a stable 30fps. And that's about it. That's what a couple of years has given us.