@iChadman The Switch's specs don't all increase to the same degree when docked. Even with a 2-2.5x increase in shader performance, it's memory speed only goes up 20% which doesn't insure that a game that runs in 720p in handheld mode can climb to 1080p in TV mode. Even TV mode, the Switch doesn't have much more bandwidth than the PS3 or 360 had available to them and they were 720p consoles.
@Menchi187 I would have personally gone with Imagination to make an SoC. I'm a believer that the scalability of memory is the Switch's biggest hurdle in getting games to scale to 1080p well and TBDR would not only move most of the G-buffers reads and writes to on-chip memory but it would also reduce texture bandwidth and, in some games, cut down on shader work.
Also, partnering with Imagination would not only get them an excellent GPU that they can scale to their needs, but it would also allow them to use MIPS CPUs for secondary processors like DSPs and likely save on licensing costs of ARM cores. Though I would still have ARM cores for the main CPU due to there being superior development tools for them.
@QuickSilver88 how do you figure that the X2 would have driven the price up to $500? The X2 and X1 are likely similar in cost. I don't understand the people putting the X2 in a whole other league from the X1.
@Menchi187 if it translates into a better SoC that runs things better and can be iterated on by Nintendo more easily in the future then it would have been worth it.
@AVahne Just checked it out. It actually looks like a decent port but it runs at 720p on a TX1 that's clocked higher than the Switch in clocked mode. The Switch OS will get a decent bit more performance than Android but it would likely have to run at standard definition resolution in handheld mode if it were ported to the Switch.
@Jeronan I'm not suggesting they get chips from Apple. Apple licenses their GPU designs from Imagination Technologies and Nintendo could have easily licensed that some A57 cores from ARM and made their own SoC.
Also, the price of the iPhone may be higher than the Switch but that's because they have 10-bit screens with "3D touch" and cellular SoCs and have build in large profits for retailers since retailers can't make money off of app sales.
When it comes to the actual bill of materials for the iPhone 7, it's $220. $33 of that being the cost of the cellular SoC which the Switch wouldn't need which would make it $187. $20 of that is the two cameras it has that the Switch doesn't have. Now that's $167.
I realize they would need to recoup some R&D costs, but that already can be sold at $133 of profit and they can still shave off a few dollars getting rid of the microphones, barometric pressure sensor, fingerprint scanner, and electronic compass.
Oh, and since the SoC, which only costs Apple $27 to manufacture btw, doesn't need things like an ISP or MIP-CSI interfaces for the cameras, and since 4 A57s would take up less room than Apple's CPU design, the actual cost of the SoC would be lower too.
As for the claims of overheating and throttling, GFXBench's long term performance benchmark shows it not throttling at all in one test and only throttling to 80% of it's performance and that's in an enclosure that's far smaller than the Switch with far less ventilation, zero active cooling, and has to deal with heat coming from the cellular SoC. This is all with the performance being closer to the Switch when docked yet it still gets battery life comparable to the Switch despite having a battery that's only 45% as large as the Switch's. To perform as well as the Switch in handheld mode, it wouldn't have be clocked nearly as high and would then get significantly better battery life.
@Jeronan You misunderstood. I'm not saying they should have waited till Xavier. I'm saying Nvidia was a bad choice because, in the future, Nvidia Tegra chips are going to be less focused on being low-power and they would need to get something custom made for their future systems anyway.
I don't expect desktop class parts in a portable and I don't even like the concept of the Switch. In fact, I think it's a horrible idea, but for what it is, Nvidia wasn't the right choice.
@Menchi187 They didn't have to use Apple chips, they could have made their own by licensing IP blocks from ARM and/or Imagination Technologies and since both use tile-based renderers, they might have been able to get away with slower external memory or at least do more with what they have. Since the bandwidth of there on-chip tile caches would go up with clock speed, BotW might have even been able to run at 1080p.
@Jeronan the P2 is supposed to operate at the same wattage as the TX1 at least. So if Nintendo wants it, they can have it. The problem comes with the successor to that: Xavier. Xavier is designed to run at a much higher TDP so they would need to have custom chips by that point. Honestly, it was a stupid idea to partner with a company that had no plans to continue in the mobile market and has never really held any of it's performance advantages for long.
Wait, so just because some guy did a commercial where he put footage from old Nintendo games on smart phone, it counts as a concept? Nothing about this even tries to solve the problem with that, and that's input. In fact, they forgot to put any sort of controls on the screen at all.
What benefit does this video even have on selling people on this "concept"?
Comments 12
Re: Psyonix Targeting 60fps, 720p With Rocket League On Switch, Docked And Undocked
@FX102A Do you have a 1080p TV?
Re: Psyonix Targeting 60fps, 720p With Rocket League On Switch, Docked And Undocked
@iChadman The Switch's specs don't all increase to the same degree when docked. Even with a 2-2.5x increase in shader performance, it's memory speed only goes up 20% which doesn't insure that a game that runs in 720p in handheld mode can climb to 1080p in TV mode. Even TV mode, the Switch doesn't have much more bandwidth than the PS3 or 360 had available to them and they were 720p consoles.
Re: Nintendo Switch Chip X-Ray Suggests The Console Is Running A Stock Nvidia Tegra X1
@Menchi187 I would have personally gone with Imagination to make an SoC. I'm a believer that the scalability of memory is the Switch's biggest hurdle in getting games to scale to 1080p well and TBDR would not only move most of the G-buffers reads and writes to on-chip memory but it would also reduce texture bandwidth and, in some games, cut down on shader work.
Also, partnering with Imagination would not only get them an excellent GPU that they can scale to their needs, but it would also allow them to use MIPS CPUs for secondary processors like DSPs and likely save on licensing costs of ARM cores. Though I would still have ARM cores for the main CPU due to there being superior development tools for them.
Re: Nintendo Switch Chip X-Ray Suggests The Console Is Running A Stock Nvidia Tegra X1
@QuickSilver88 how do you figure that the X2 would have driven the price up to $500? The X2 and X1 are likely similar in cost. I don't understand the people putting the X2 in a whole other league from the X1.
Re: Nintendo Switch Chip X-Ray Suggests The Console Is Running A Stock Nvidia Tegra X1
@Menchi187 if it translates into a better SoC that runs things better and can be iterated on by Nintendo more easily in the future then it would have been worth it.
Re: Nintendo Switch Chip X-Ray Suggests The Console Is Running A Stock Nvidia Tegra X1
@AVahne Just checked it out. It actually looks like a decent port but it runs at 720p on a TX1 that's clocked higher than the Switch in clocked mode. The Switch OS will get a decent bit more performance than Android but it would likely have to run at standard definition resolution in handheld mode if it were ported to the Switch.
Re: Nintendo Switch Chip X-Ray Suggests The Console Is Running A Stock Nvidia Tegra X1
@Jeronan I'm not suggesting they get chips from Apple. Apple licenses their GPU designs from Imagination Technologies and Nintendo could have easily licensed that some A57 cores from ARM and made their own SoC.
Also, the price of the iPhone may be higher than the Switch but that's because they have 10-bit screens with "3D touch" and cellular SoCs and have build in large profits for retailers since retailers can't make money off of app sales.
When it comes to the actual bill of materials for the iPhone 7, it's $220. $33 of that being the cost of the cellular SoC which the Switch wouldn't need which would make it $187. $20 of that is the two cameras it has that the Switch doesn't have. Now that's $167.
I realize they would need to recoup some R&D costs, but that already can be sold at $133 of profit and they can still shave off a few dollars getting rid of the microphones, barometric pressure sensor, fingerprint scanner, and electronic compass.
Oh, and since the SoC, which only costs Apple $27 to manufacture btw, doesn't need things like an ISP or MIP-CSI interfaces for the cameras, and since 4 A57s would take up less room than Apple's CPU design, the actual cost of the SoC would be lower too.
As for the claims of overheating and throttling, GFXBench's long term performance benchmark shows it not throttling at all in one test and only throttling to 80% of it's performance and that's in an enclosure that's far smaller than the Switch with far less ventilation, zero active cooling, and has to deal with heat coming from the cellular SoC. This is all with the performance being closer to the Switch when docked yet it still gets battery life comparable to the Switch despite having a battery that's only 45% as large as the Switch's. To perform as well as the Switch in handheld mode, it wouldn't have be clocked nearly as high and would then get significantly better battery life.
Re: Nintendo Switch Chip X-Ray Suggests The Console Is Running A Stock Nvidia Tegra X1
@Jeronan You misunderstood. I'm not saying they should have waited till Xavier. I'm saying Nvidia was a bad choice because, in the future, Nvidia Tegra chips are going to be less focused on being low-power and they would need to get something custom made for their future systems anyway.
I don't expect desktop class parts in a portable and I don't even like the concept of the Switch. In fact, I think it's a horrible idea, but for what it is, Nvidia wasn't the right choice.
Re: Nintendo Switch Chip X-Ray Suggests The Console Is Running A Stock Nvidia Tegra X1
@Menchi187 They didn't have to use Apple chips, they could have made their own by licensing IP blocks from ARM and/or Imagination Technologies and since both use tile-based renderers, they might have been able to get away with slower external memory or at least do more with what they have. Since the bandwidth of there on-chip tile caches would go up with clock speed, BotW might have even been able to run at 1080p.
Re: Nintendo Switch Chip X-Ray Suggests The Console Is Running A Stock Nvidia Tegra X1
@Jeronan the P2 is supposed to operate at the same wattage as the TX1 at least. So if Nintendo wants it, they can have it. The problem comes with the successor to that: Xavier. Xavier is designed to run at a much higher TDP so they would need to have custom chips by that point. Honestly, it was a stupid idea to partner with a company that had no plans to continue in the mobile market and has never really held any of it's performance advantages for long.
Re: Nintendo Switch Chip X-Ray Suggests The Console Is Running A Stock Nvidia Tegra X1
@Menchi187 That's not really true. There are a few mobile chips that are better than the Tegra X1.
Here's a comparison between a tablet that uses a TX1 versus Apple's latest devices.
https://gfxbench.com/compare.jsp?benchmark=gfx40&did1=28156617&os1=Android&api1=gl&hwtype1=GPU&hwname1=NVIDIA%28R%29+Tegra%28R%29+X1&did2=27138730&os2=iOS&api2=gl&hwtype2=GPU&hwname2=Apple+A9X+GPU&did3=31566130&os3=iOS&api3=gl&hwtype3=GPU&hwname3=Apple+A9X+GPU&did4=28447322&os4=iOS&api4=gl&hwtype4=GPU&hwname4=Apple+A10+GPU&D5=Apple+iPhone+6S
Re: Fake Commercial for 'The Nintendo App' Stirs Debate
Wait, so just because some guy did a commercial where he put footage from old Nintendo games on smart phone, it counts as a concept? Nothing about this even tries to solve the problem with that, and that's input. In fact, they forgot to put any sort of controls on the screen at all.
What benefit does this video even have on selling people on this "concept"?