Topic: The Nintendo Switch Rumor and Speculation Thread

Those are theoretical numbers derived by multiplying the numbers of shaders, clock speeds and number of instructions per clock.

In practice, this never happens. Rather, there are other considerations such as cache sizes, memory bandwidth and instruction sets that affect performance and generally mean newer systems will perform much better than older ones for a given number of teraflops.

The long and the short of it is that there's no substitute for benchmarking the games you want to run as the truest test of a GPU.

Deadline for revised hardware reveal, if reveal rumors have been true.

First E3 presentation time
Ubisoft Forward - 12th June - 12pm Pacific / 3pm Eastern / 8pm UK / 9pm CEST

There is nothing stopping them announcing a Pro presentation during the Direct, right? I mean, they have to let us know when it is in advance surely hehe.

@Slowdive what if plans “change”.

Why the hell would they announce a Nintendo system at a Ubisoft event? It makes no sense..

@VoidofLight I think they meant before.

@HotGoomba I mean, there's not much time for them to announce it before, since today's over and they pretty much don't announce anything on the weekends. It's best to say it's not even happening at this point.

I'm just reminded of the Switch Lite. Everyone said that was going to drop at E3, but it came and went without so much of a hint. Then, boom! Middle of July for a September release.

They've done it once. They'll do it again.

@VoidofLight Well might as well mark my calendars for July, August, September, October, November, and December.

Tired of nintendo secrecy & rumor teasing, @WoomyNNYes lowers E3 expecations to presentation mostly about Mario Golf. (to avoid further let downs)

Well there you go. I mean it certainly makes sense to go for Ampere if they can, Nvidia effectively released a new architecture with a 10-20% performance bump when running at the same level of power consumption. Which is a huge deal when we're talking about a product that has very limited thermals and power (I'm talking wattage here, not TFLOPS).

Also I agree with your guestimate on where this would place it in terms of relative power to other consoles. Before this I thought they'd be going a touch under the OG XBOne docked, if this is true it's probably closer to somewhere between the OG XBOne and PS4 undocked. Which is a bit of a leap....

Switch pro huh? Power close to PS4 you say? Riiiiiiiiiight! Keep dreaming fellas. Maybe if you wish hard enough it'll happen. Meanwhile I'll just keep my expectations to the floor and hope for more realistic surprises. At least we know new games are a sure thing.

@Zeldafan79
If you're saying that in response to my post I don't think you really read my post. Firstly, you do realise the PS4 Pro launched 5 years ago right? And that I wasn't saying it would exceed the PS4 Pro but rather be somewhere between the PS4 and PS4 Pro docked and about in line or a bit under with the OG PS4 undocked. And in any case this is far from speculation, these SoCs literally exist.

Also for crying out loud, we're almost as far away from the launch of the PS4 as the Switch was from the PS3 launch. If you think a Switch Pro being close to the PS4 (which was anaemic at launch) docked is impossible you must also think that the OC Switch being close to the PS3 (which was a beast at launch) is impossible. Which it wasn't, because the Switch exists.....

And that's before you even consider the efficiency gains from DLSS

If they go Ampere, we're looking at around the PS4 spec. Simple as that.

@skywake

I highly doubt Nintendo had time or the resources to be developing an uber switch what with covid ravaging the planet. Sony Couldn't even produce enough PS5's to go around. If anything were coming hardware wise in the near future and we were in a different world i might believe it. I just don't understand why a new switch is even remotely needed just four years after the launch. We'll see soon but my BS ometer is off the scale and I can't wait for the flood of chaos that is about to hit this forum!

Look I just as ready for the pro as much as the next guy, but what happens when the pro Is nothing like the hype? It has Joycon drift, The graphics got a small upgrade, The Rez is the same as normal Handheld mode on the OG switch, Just so much could not be so they could end up ruining it with the hype.

@Zeldafan79
Regardless of your feelings on this it's not about time, resources or need. The Switch is a toy sold for profit by a corporation. A toy which happens to be tech which means it's subject to the same exponential growth in power all tech is. Nintendo will make decisions based on what tech is available and what will deliver them the best profit

Specific to the Switch, Nvidia are on their 9th generation of Tegra after the platform launched in 2009. The Switch is on the 6th generation Tegra SoC (launched in 2015). The discussion you're so quick to dismiss is about whether Nintendo in a revision go with the 8th (launched in 2019) or 9th (launch in 2021) Generation Tegra SoC. The former is ~2x as big as the current Switch, the latter is closer to 4x.

Now in the previous pages I doubted the latter, I would've thought they wouldn't go for Ampere because that's not very Nintendo. But @Slowdive rightly pointed me to a quote from a Nintendo IR Q&A where they're talking about using new technology. Whether that's a change in strategy or not? I'm not entirely convinced, I'm a bit 50:50 on whether they're going Ampere or Volta. But regardless there would likely be a leap in performance pushing a Switch Pro closer to PS4 specs. Because that's just what these newer SoCs can do.

Frankly, this is the one part of this discussion that hasn't been highly speculative. Because the reality is when a new SoC comes along that's cost-competitive, lower power and higher performance? The question isn't why would you revise the hardware, the question should be what reasons are there not to. It's the same reason why even budget laptops ship with 250GB SSDs today, do people need an SSD to browse Facebook? No. But these days it's cheaper than a HDD so why would you go with a HDD?

@skywake my biggest question is if the revision gives the same power as a PS4 and is 4k when docked, why not just buy a PS4?
You can get the PS4pro for around £250 now, instead of paying around £400+ for a switch upgrade (Nintendo still refuses to sell hardware at a loss which is why it's always behind the others in terms of specs)

Also, as the new consoles become readily available software will move away from that gen leaving the Switch "pro" with the same half baked ports we are getting now.
I'm convinced that there is going to be a lot of people very disappointed when Nintendo actually gets around to revealing the revision.

@skywake I would have thought the margins are there to go for a higher spec. The Switch is selling for $299 still. It's price is a reflection of demand, not specification. I dare say valued from purely a technical point of view, it's strictly speaking not worth that these days. Any new revision would have an inflated cost in association with the actual cost price of Switch, not it's retail. Gah, I know what I'm trying to asy lol (even if I'm wrong hahah.) But if it's going to replace the current Switch, then $399 would make sense until they are ready to make the wholesale swap, and maybe we see a price reduction as it wouldn't be so cutting edge. If they are swapping models, $299 is such a sweet spot for the concept, I can't imagine them wanting to mess that up in the long run.

@Mr-Fuggles777
Well the Switch as it is has already outsold the XBOne and 360 and will soon overtake the the PS3. In 2019 it overtook the PS4 to become the best selling platform for that year and last year it outsold all other platforms combined. So whatever your concern is the market doesn't agree.

I mean, the Switch is also a portable console, that's the reason you'd get it over a PS4 Pro. It's the console you can take with you on holidays (not that there are much of those lately) or to play on the couch or in bed. Then if you want to you can play it on the TV. I don't think a Switch Pro changes that core appeal much. All it means is that the experience you get on the Switch is better than it otherwise would have been.

@GrailUK
Speaking for myself, I'll buy one regardless assuming there's a tangible boost in performance. But I'm sure there are some people with tighter budgets than mine who are less keen. To be blunt, that's probably where some of the pushback against the mere idea of a Switch Pro is coming from.

@skywake I fully agree with that, but like you said the Switch has sold like hot cakes - how many of those customers are going to upgrade to a new switch, especially one that is still less powerful than current gen systems?

The Wii sold really well (and hit the same casual market the switch has) and the wii-U flopped because those same casuals were happy playing wii sports and Mario Kart on the existing hardware.
There is a high chance the same thing could happen with a switch Pro- especially when price wise its going to be in a similar field as a Seies X or PS5.

As for portable, what's the chances that the switch Pro will manage PS4 games handheld without significant downgrades and of I need to be docked to achieve that why would I want to tether myself to a TV for old hardware?