Topic: NX Based on AMD Quantum Design? Possible Leak

NX is based on the AMD Quantum design according to Channel 4
-liquid cooled
-testing 12GB of DDR3
-32MB of eDRAM
-alleged leaked mockup

No, it isn't.

NX is based on the AMD Quantum design
The AMD Quantum was a proof of concept for their new line of high end GPUs. The cheapest of which currently retails for about $1000AU. Actually the Quantum had TWO such GPUs in it. It's impressive stuff and the intent was to show off what can be done with the improvements in power consumption for the very high end. Effectively you can build very, very high end machines in tiny boxes. I highly doubt that Nintendo would go down this path. Especially not one that requires water cooling which in and of itself will add a good $100 to the price.

testing 12GB of DDR3
12GB? To be fair, probably not very far off. Though only if it's using a unified memory architecture. In which case I would say that DDR3 would be unlikely. So I'd wager only one of those two things could reasonably be true.

Fake or not, the liquid cooling tech and AMD's two level design are worth looking at. I bet Nintendo could get a liquid cooling system at this point for much less than your or I. It's no secret that Nintendo wants a quieter system. They allegedly underclocked WiiU because they didn't want the fans running so loudly. AMD's design doesn't require beast level hardware and HBM-- the design could be applied to something more mass market. The Quantum design features the heatsink in the top half (unless I'm mistaken) and carries the heat up and away from the chips in the bottom.

I would expect Nintendo to opt for DDR3 over DDR4 or GDDR5 because of pricing.

There is no chance in hell that it will be a water-cooled console. Water-cooling requires maintenance, which probably won't sit well with the console audience. Ffs, not many PC-enthusiasts use water-cooling, why would an ordinary family want to use that? The entire reason for the 2-level design is because of water-cooling. They need watercooling because they have 2 monster GPUs (roughly $500 each) in a tiny package. So that part is bull.

Now to the second part, the alleged memory... 12 Gb is at least in the realm of possible. But why DDR3? The biggest reason to use much memory is bigger textures, bigger textures means bigger reads, which means you want more memory bandwidth. So why not use DDR4 or DDR5?

And will they really need that much memory? And if they will not need that much, they will not include it. For even if they get better prices than us, if they can save $10 on each unit and they sale something like 10 million NX the first year, that is a saving of 100 Million dollars.

This is complete popolocrois, stop spreading unsupported rumours. It is like this every single time a new console is about to be release, they take a top-speced PC and claims this is the tech that is used. And every single time, it is wrong.

Nor will a $1000+ machine. Sure Nintendo will get the parts cheaper, but it will still cost us an arm and a leg to purchase the entire console

Liquid cooling(so not just water) without maintenance is now very possible, though that doesn't mean these rumours are true.

The thing about water cooling is that it works in the same way that an air-cooler does. It's all about the size of the radiator and the amount of air you can move across it. The only reason water cooling is a popular option for PCs is because you can move the radiator away from the other components. Which is less of a big deal if your someone like Nintendo and building the system from scratch.

It's also worth noting that water cooling does have more points of failure. And it is also by its very nature louder than an equivalently sized air-cooler. The reason why people say it's cooler and quieter? Well because you can fit much, much larger sized radiators with water cooling. If you have a big enough case you can put multiple quad 140mm radiators. It would be impossible to strap a radiator of that size onto a motherboard let alone a GPU.

Although if I am not mistaken the Dreamcast used heat pipes in some revisions, liquid cooling isn't that realistic. Furthermore, Nintendo has opted for a low power consumption hardware for the Wii U and I don't see that trend changing:

http://www.nrdc.org/energy/game-consoles/files/video-game-con...

Finally, if Nintendo wants to make a profit out of every console sold, they will choose again low cost hardware, so Project Quantum won't fit, especially if they want direct backward compatibility and include hardware of the Wii U in the NX like they did with the Wii U.

Every leak is fake until officially confirmed.

Heat Pipes and Liquid cooling work on a similar sort of idea. But they're vastly different in terms of cost and the potential points of failure. I believe both the PS4 and XBOne have heatpipes. The Wii U doesn't but purely because it doesn't have that big a heatsink at all.

No, no... no. Where to begin? You'll be lucky to see 4GB or RAM/VRAM in the NX. And liquid cooling? Baha.

Realistically, it will likely be just 8GB and on par. I don't see why people want to believe Nintendo will gimp the living crap out of NX with 4-6GB (three years after PS4/X1 launched with 8GB).

A friend of mine argued the other night that Nintendo was done. I told him they had $4-5 billion in the bank and upwards of $5 billion in assets they can sell before they are done. I'm reminded of the period before the Wii when the majority truly thought Nintendo should go third party-- and then boom, 100 million users.

It depends on what we're talking about here. If it's a unified memory architecture and they're going for 1080p gaming? Then for sure, 8GB is probably enough. I could see them maybe pushing for 12GB if that was the case purely because of the "why not" factor. Maybe they want some extra stuff running in the background, who knows. However I think we're far more likely to see faster memory rather than more. Which is why I think the "12GB DDR3" is a bit off....

For a non-unified memory architecture? Well they'd be doing it purely so they don't have to spend extra money making ALL of their memory high spec. Make the VRAM super fast and then use something like DDR3 for system memory. And in that case I can't see that much of an advantage over the 8GB/4GB split. Unless they're pushing beyond 1080p.... which I doubt....

It's not so much maintenance as it is the cost and the added points of failure. When you're building a $1500 PC spending a bit more on cooling isn't a huge deal. When you've built it yourself a failed component is a pain but isn't that big a deal either. For a game console? Every extra expense ups the price. Every extra complexity in design increases the chance people will get broken units. A simple air-cooler design is far less likely to fail purely because the only moving component is the fan. Hell, the Wii U doesn't even have heatpipes in its cooler design.

I think it's unlikely they'll use anything much above an R9 285 spec. More than likely they'll sit a fair amount under that and they'll bring with them all of the extra efficiencies of a custom made chip. It may well even be yet another APU. And again, the main reason water cooling makes sense in a PC is because of poor positioning or space restrictions. It's hard to fit a 3x 140mm radiator to your GPU or CPU. The front of your case? There's plenty of space there. With a console that has been designed from the ground up? If they are pushing it so hard that they "need" liquid cooling? They designed the thing, I'd call that bad design.