Nintendo Switch

[Lorfarius]

53 minutes ago, JPL said:

Maybe I'm misreading it, but according to that specs diagram, it seems that they can only run the GPU at 307.2MHz whilst in portable mode, but they can choose to either keep it locked to that or up it to 768MHz when docked. I don't understand why they'd keep the GPU crippled when docked though.

 

Because if you don't have the two versions running the same it won't look right? People walking around saying "it's much slower when I carry it" would be a bit of a disaster in marketing terms.

[pulsemyne]

55 minutes ago, JPL said:

Maybe I'm misreading it, but according to that specs diagram, it seems that they can only run the GPU at 307.2MHz whilst in portable mode, but they can choose to either keep it locked to that or up it to 768MHz when docked. I don't understand why they'd keep the GPU crippled when docked though.

It does seem and odd idea but maybe they are worried about parity between docked and undocked or maybe they just want power efficiency with indie games (lets face it some indie games will run perfectly fine in portable mode so they may as well just run that mode while docked.) Could also come into play with virtual console games. No point eating extra power when not needed. 

[JPL]

I agree with both of you, and I'm presuming that the GPU decrease in portable mode will be offset by it only needing to output to a 720p screen, whereas it might need the extra power for a 1080p display while it's docked.

 

What I was questioning though was that some people seem to think that developers are free to use the GPU at full power while in portable mode, but, unless I'm mistaken, that article seems to suggest it'll be locked to 307.2MHz.

[mushashi]

28 minutes ago, JPL said:

I agree with both of you, and I'm presuming that the GPU decrease in portable mode will be offset by it only needing to output to a 720p screen, whereas it might need the extra power for a 1080p display while it's docked.

 

What I was questioning though was that some people seem to think that developers are free to use the GPU at full power while in portable mode, but, unless I'm mistaken, that article seems to suggest it'll be locked to 307.2MHz.

 

You are correct, from the article:

 

Available CPU Speeds 	Available GPU Speeds 	Available Memory Controller Speeds
Undocked 	1020MHz 	307.2MHz 	1331/1600MHz
Docked 	1020MHz 	307.2/768MHz 	1331/1600MHz

The only option devs have is whether to make one base mode game, or do more work and have 2 versions, a base portable version and a PRO-docked version.

 

For those who like their comparative numbers, in terms of GFLOPs, the Switch in base mode is a 153.6 GFLOP machine (moving to 384 GFLOPs when docked, the Nvidia SHIELD TV does 500 GFLOPs for comparison with the same SoC), the Wii U is 176 GFLOPs, and the other 2 consoles have 1310 and 1840 GFLOPs available.

[Nespresso]

 

[mushashi]

It's basically a re-run of the Apple Ipad 3 versus the PlayStation Vita, same basic hardware, one chose to gimp the performance for battery life. The ARM cores in the Switch might be clock-for-clock better than the x86 Jaguar cores, but it's been gimped to half-speed so ain't going to be better for CPU intensive tasks when the x86 cores have a 60%+ clock advantage and there are also more of them available for devs to use.

 

A decent handheld upgrade over the last Nintendo portable, marginal improvement on the home console side, more like the jump from PS4 to PS4 Pro.

[Nespresso]

As long as it's slightly 'better' than the Wii U when docked I'll be happy. Those first party titles still give some of the current gen games a run for their money. 

[Alex W.]

Quote

 

 The Switch handheld screen has a 720p resolution - so the gulf in GPU clocks means that in theory at least, there's overhead there to run a 720p mobile title at 1080p when docked. One developer source likens this to creating two different versions of the same game - almost like producing a PS4 game and a PS4 Pro variant

 

That's what they mean by "two versions". Not like, say, developing 3DS and WiiU versions of games.

 

If the Switch really is an X1 on a 20nm process, Nintendo can upgrade the system a few years down the line when 14nm finfet becomes more practical to improve battery life.

[Captain Kelsten]

10 minutes ago, Alex W. said:

 

That's what they mean by "two versions". Not like, say, developing 3DS and WiiU versions of games.

 

If the Switch really is an X1 on a 20nm process, Nintendo can upgrade the system a few years down the line when 14nm finfet becomes more practical to improve battery life.

 

[gizmo1990]

I don't know the figures, but I'm pretty sure the decrease to 720p should offset the lower clock in handheld mode. Going down to that res should drastically reduce the workload.

[fasteasyfree]

48 minutes ago, Alex W. said:

 

If the Switch really is an X1 on a 20nm process, Nintendo can upgrade the system a few years down the line when 14nm finfet becomes more practical to improve battery life.

 

Or if the hardware is faster, have parity between mobile and docked experiences.

 

[sid]

Finfet

[Alex W.]

It's been kind of interesting seein how Nintendo handle graphics options in Super Mario Run - just a button for Graphics, and one for Rendering. Resolution, framerate.

[Barnard]

1 hour ago, Alex W. said:

It's been kind of interesting seein how Nintendo handle graphics options in Super Mario Run - just a button for Graphics, and one for Rendering. Resolution, framerate.

 

Rendering high and Graphics low seems more responsive on my iPhone SE. Maybe it'll make collecting those dark green coins easier. 

 

HA!

[sid]

Well that's dark souls 3 written off then

[RubberJohnny]

Yes, now we know why it was Skyrim and not some more modern game, makes you wonder what third party support it can even get.

 

For a rough rule of thumb from GAF:

 

Quote

PS3: 230 gflops
360: 240 gflops
WiiU: 352 gflops (had to drive tablet screen too)
Xbone: 1.2 tflops
Ps4: 1.8 tflops 
Pro: 4.2 flops
Scorpio: 6 tflops

Switch: 
153 gflops (mobile)
340 gflops (docked)

[JPickford]

The Wii U is much less than that.  176 I think.

 

We don't have all the info yet.   There's a great post on NeoGaf discussing the possibilities

 

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=226861686&postcount=2358

I haven't had time to read through every response here, so I'm probably repeating what others have already said, but here are my thoughts on the matter, anyway:

CPU Clock

This isn't really surprising, given (as predicted) CPU clocks stay the same between portable and docked mode to make sure games don't suddenly become CPU limited when running in portable mode.

The overall performance really depends on the core configuration. An octo-core A72 setup at 1GHz would be pretty damn close to PS4's 1.6GHZ 8-core Jaguar CPU. I don't necessarily expect that, but a 4x A72 + 4x A53 @ 1GHz should certainly be able to provide "good enough" performance for ports, and wouldn't be at all unreasonable to expect.

Memory Clock

This is also pretty much as expected as 1.6GHz is pretty much the standard LPDDR4 clock speed (which I guess confirms LPDDR4, not that there was a huge amount of doubt). Clocking down in portable mode is sensible, as lower resolution means smaller framebuffers means less bandwidth needed, so they can squeeze out a bit of extra battery life by cutting it down.

Again, though, the clock speed is only one factor. There are two other things that can come into play here. The second factor, obviously enough, is the bus width of the memory. Basically, you're either looking at a 64 bit bus, for 25.6GB/s, or a 128 bit bus, for 51.2GB/s of bandwidth. The third is any embedded memory pools or cache that are on-die with the CPU and GPU. Nintendo hasn't shied away from large embedded memory pools or cache before (just look at the Wii U's CPU, its GPU, the 3DS SoC, the n3DS SoC, etc., etc.), so it would be quite out of character for them to avoid such customisations this time around. Nvidia's GPU architectures from Maxwell onwards use tile-based rendering, which allows them to use on-die caches to reduce main memory bandwidth consumption, which ties in quite well with Nintendo's habits in this regard. Something like a 4MB L3 victim cache (similar to what Apple uses on their A-series SoCs) could potentially reduce bandwidth requirements by quite a lot, although it's extremely difficult to quantify the precise benefit.

GPU Clock

This is where things get a lot more interesting. To start off, the relationship between the two clock speeds is pretty much as expected. With a target of 1080p in docked mode and 720p in undocked mode, there's a 2.25x difference in pixels to be rendered, so a 2.5x difference in clock speeds would give developers a roughly equivalent amount of GPU performance per pixel in both modes.

Once more, though, and perhaps most importantly in this case, any interpretation of the clock speeds themselves is entirely dependent on the configuration of the GPU, namely the number of SMs (also ROPs, front-end blocks, etc, but we'll assume that they're kept in sensible ratios).

Case 1: 2 SMs - Docked: 384 GF FP32 / 768 GF FP16 - Portable: 153.6 GF FP32 / 307.2 GF FP16

I had generally been assuming that 2 SMs was the most likely configuration (as, I believe, had most people), simply on the basis of allowing for the smallest possible SoC which could meet Nintendo's performance goals. I'm not quite so sure now, for a number of reasons.

Firstly, if Nintendo were to use these clocks with a 2 SM configuration (assuming 20nm), then why bother with active cooling? The Pixel C runs a passively cooled TX1, and although people will be quick to point out that Pixel C throttles its GPU clocks while running for a prolonged time due to heat output, there are a few things to be aware of with Pixel C. Firstly, there's a quad-core A57 CPU cluster at 1.9GHz running alongside it, which on 20nm will consume a whopping 7.39W when fully clocked. Switch's CPU might be expected to only consume around 1.5W, by comparison. Secondly, although I haven't been able to find any decent analysis of Pixel C's GPU throttling, the mentions of it I have found indicate that, although it does throttle, the drop in performance is relatively small, and as it's clocked about 100MHz above Switch to begin with it may only be throttling down to a 750MHz clock or so even under prolonged workloads. There is of course the fact that Pixel C has an aluminium body to allow for easier thermal dissipation, but it likely would have been cheaper (and mechanically much simpler) for Nintendo to adopt the same approach, rather than active cooling.

Alternatively, we can think of it a different way. If Switch has active cooling, then why clock so low? Again assuming 20nm, we know that a full 1GHz clock shouldn't be a problem for active cooling, even with a very small quiet fan, given the Shield TV (which, again, uses a much more power-hungry CPU than Switch). Furthermore, if they wanted a 2.5x ratio between the two clock speeds, that would give a 400MHz clock in portable mode. We know that the TX1, with 2 SMs on 20nm, consumes 1.51W (GPU only) when clocked at about 500MHz. Even assuming that that's a favourable demo for the TX1, at 20% lower clock speed I would be surprised if a 400MHz 2 SM GPU would consume any more than 1.5W. That's obviously well within the bounds for passive cooling, but even being very conservative with battery consumption it shouldn't be an issue. The savings from going from 400MHz to 300MHz would perhaps only increase battery life by about 5-10% tops, which makes it puzzling why they'd turn down the extra performance.

Finally, the recently published Switch patent application actually explicitly talks about running the fan at a lower RPM while in portable mode, and doesn't even mention the possibility of turning it off while running in portable mode. A 2 SM 20nm Maxwell GPU at ~300MHz shouldn't require a fan at all, and although it's possible that they've changed their mind since filing the patent in June, it begs the question of why they would even consider running the fan in portable mode if their target performance was anywhere near this.

Case 2: 3 SMs - Docked: 576 GF FP32 / 1,152 GF FP16 - Portable: 230.4 GF FP32 / 460.8 GF FP16

This is a bit closer to the performance level we've been led to expect, and it does make a little bit of sense from the perspective of giving a little bit over TX1 performance at lower power consumption. (It also matches reports of overclocked TX1s in early dev kits, as you'd need to clock a bit over the standard 1GHz to reach docked performance here.) Active cooling while docked makes sense for a 3 SM GPU at 768MHz, although wouldn't be needed in portable mode. It still leaves the question of why not use 1GHz/400MHz clocks, as even with 3 SMs they should be able to get by with passive cooling at 400MHz, and battery consumption shouldn't be that much of an issue.

Case 3: 4 SMs - Docked: 768 GF FP32 / 1,536 GF FP16 - Portable: 307.2 GF FP32 / 614.4 GF FP16

This would be on the upper limit of what's been expected, performance wise, and the clock speeds start to make more sense at this point, as portable power consumption for the GPU would be around the 2W mark, so further clock increases may start to effect battery life a bit too much (not that 400-500MHz would be impossible from that point of view, though). Active cooling would be necessary in docked mode, but still shouldn't be needed in portable mode (except perhaps if they go with a beefier CPU config than expected).

Case 4: More than 4 SMs

I'd consider this pretty unlikely, but just from the point of view of "what would you have to do to actually need active cooling in portable mode at these clocks", something like 6 SMs would probably do it (1.15 TF FP32/2.3 TF FP16 docked, 460 GF FP32/920 GF FP16 portable), but I wouldn't count on that. For one, it's well beyond the performance levels that reliable-so-far journalists have told us to expect, but it would also require a much larger die than would be typical for a portable device like this (still much smaller than PS4/XBO SoCs, but that's a very different situation).

TL:DR

Each of these numbers are only a single variable in the equation, and we need to know things like CPU configuration, memory bus width, embedded memory pools, number of GPU SMs, etc. to actually fill out the rest of those equations to get the relevant info. Even on the worst end of the spectrum, we're still getting by far the most ambitious portable that Nintendo's ever released, which also doubles as a home console that's noticeably higher performing than Wii U, which is fine by me.

[MikeBeaver]

That NeoGaf post breaks it down and until someone has one to actually tinker with, I am wondering where that rumour klaxon has dissapeared to?

 

[Alex W.]

I think a lot of the stuff that NeoGAF post is treating as speculative is settled by the (very likely) choice of a Tegra X1 derivative, no?

[TheSlugFormerlyKnownAsNap]

So again much weaker than current gen AND two different modes to cater for.

 

That's third party support out of the window then.

[sid]

My god this really is going to be a kick ass machine, wiiu power in the palm of your hand!

 

Mario , zelda, waverace, metroid are all going stunning and I can't wait.

 

they should ideally launch with a game that demonstrates the portable multiplayer aspect. Probably smash bros?

 

can you imagine a Luigis mansion on it? 

 

Viewtiful joe emulated?

 

Pikmin hd compilation?

 

 

[RubberJohnny]

I think people were being too unrealistic with some of their hopes, you weren't going to get power, battery life and a low price, it's not even a "choose two" situation.

[MojoChin]

All I want is enough power, enough battery life and a low enough price. Every one of which I expect to be realised.

[Jackson]

How could you not be happy with Wii U level graphics? Mario Kart 8 and 3D world are among the best looking games ever made.

This console was never going to get proper third party dev support anyway, even if it matched PS4 for power.

[Nespresso]

2 hours ago, sid said:

My god this really is going to be a kick ass machine, wiiu power in the palm of your hand!

 

Mario , zelda, waverace, metroid are all going stunning and I can't wait.

Better get used to waiting...

[Opinionated Ham Scarecrow]

Why on earth do Nintendo continue to spec themselves out of any possibility of current third party support? It's all well and good showcasing Skyrim, but the next COD's, Battlefields, Assassin's Creed's and well, anything. They have no chance with these specs.

[Clipper]

When was the last time Nintendo had traditional market 3rd party support of any size? That is the CODs and battlefields and assassins creeds etc etc etc.

 

I can't even think that far back, maybe at the start of the GC? I know the Wii sort of had it but didn't it didn't get the vast majority of 3rd party games, or they were cut down.

It isn't going to happen and this console isn't for those games anyway really, it is a Nintendo machine for playing Nintendo games, that's it. It's been that way for about 20 yrs. I am not sure why anyone would expect it to be different, Nintendo certainly don't as they are ploughing their own furrow

[The Mighty Ash]

23 minutes ago, Gizamaluke said:

Why on earth do Nintendo continue to spec themselves out of any possibility of current third party support? It's all well and good showcasing Skyrim, but the next COD's, Battlefields, Assassin's Creed's and well, anything. They have no chance with these specs.

 

No chance of what? Competing with PS or Xbox? That's not what they are aiming to do.

[Majora]

I really didn't expect it to be closer to a 360 than Xbox One in terms of power. I thought it would be in between but closer to Xbox One. I mean, an Xbox One is three year old tech right now anyway.

 

Some games on the Wii U do look great but many of them are running at 720p with no anti aliasing. I don't necessarily want or expect a graphics powerhouse from Nintendo but it's a shame to see such lovely artstyles hampered by poor aliasing and lower resolutions. I'm not sure the Switch is going to address that looking at the specs.

[Clipper]

1 minute ago, Majora said:

I really didn't expect it to be closer to a 360 than Xbox One in terms of power. I thought it would be in between but closer to Xbox One. I mean, an Xbox One is three year old tech right now anyway.

 

Some games on the Wii U do look great but many of them are running at 720p with no anti aliasing. I don't necessarily want or expect a graphics powerhouse from Nintendo but it's a shame to see such lovely artstyles hampered by poor aliasing and lower resolutions. I'm not sure the Switch is going to address that looking at the specs.

which WiiU games by Nintendo had lovely artstyles ruined by poor aliasing and lower resolutions?

 

I am all for POWEERRRRRRR usually but with Nintendo games I think look perfect the way they are... Mario Kart 8 and the SMBU stuff etc all look fantastic to me.