Nintendo Switch Dev Kit Stats Leaked? Cortex A57, 4GB RAM, 32GB Storage, Multi-Touch.

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I disagree with this. First, micro SD cards needed for gaming need to be fast at reading speeds, writing speed does not matter at all for gaming.

When buying 64GB or bigger micro SD cards through traditional retailers, it's actually difficult to find a horrible performing one; search on Amazon, all of them are class 10 or U1 or better; all of them will have constant read speed around 45MB/s, which is fine for gaming, many double that in real life tests, this for less than $20.

People are not stupid (unless it's election day), they look at Amazon reviews, they have been buying cards for years for their goPros, cameras, etc.

The benefits of using standard memory far outweigh the benefits of using UFS, which is not a standard right now.

According to Iwata comments, the NX is going to be an iterative console, with yearly or biyearly upgrades, so maybe in two years we will see an upgraded NX machine with a better card slot, but right now, it would be suicide to use a non standard memory card.
Only reason I could see them going for UFS is because it's possible to support both MicroSD and UFS in the same slot. But the tech is so new that I can't imagine Nintendo supporting it unless Samsung reached out to them to make it happen.
 
What are the possibilties for cloud storage? I mean nintendo already talked about this many times for their new console...
 
What are the possibilties for cloud storage? I mean nintendo already talked about this many times for their new console...

I'm expecting them to either focus on that or offer a proprietary "local cloud" storage device. I'm speculating about the latter only because data caps will be a big problem for people choosing to use cloud storage, going all digital. And Nintendo clearly understands the importance of encouraging digital purchases.


Edit:

You already have cloud storage on all their consoles for digital titles, it's called the Nintendo eShop.

Like I said, I expect them to focus on that, meaning tout it as a feature for digital buyers. Since the amount of physical storage available appears to be fairly small, they will need some sort of messaging to give to people who buy all digital.
 
I'm expecting them to either focus on that or offer a proprietary "local cloud" storage device. I'm speculating about the latter only because data caps will be a big problem for people choosing to use cloud storage, going all digital. And Nintendo clearly understands the importance of encouraging digital purchases.

You already have cloud storage on all their consoles for digital titles, it's called the Nintendo eShop.
 
Only reason I could see them going for UFS is because it's possible to support both MicroSD and UFS in the same slot. But the tech is so new that I can't imagine Nintendo supporting it unless Samsung reached out to them to make it happen.

Are there any products (or cards) with UFS shipping? I couldn't find any on Amazon.
 
Are there any products (or cards) with UFS shipping? I couldn't find any on Amazon.
Couldn't find any on the web and my Google skills are on-point. I don't think that there's a single device in the market that supports removable UFS cards. This makes the idea of the NS supporting the new standard even more unrealistic than it already was.
 
Couldn't find any on the web and my Google skills are on-point. I don't think that there's a single device in the market that supports removable UFS cards. This makes the idea of the NS supporting the new standard even more unrealistic than it already was.

Indeed , come on guys let's be realistic for once, it's gonna support micro SD but not UFS cards for sure, and i'm fine with that, jist bought a 128GB micro SD U3 with 90/30 read/wright speed
 
I'm wondering if you could buy an extra dock @ launch.
This would make things a lot easier if you have multiple tv's and etc... like being often at different places.
 
I'm wondering if you could buy an extra dock @ launch.
This would make things a lot easier if you have multiple tv's and etc... like being often at different places.
I don't know the answer to this, but I imagine extra/replacement docks will be available at Nintendo's website.
 
I'm wondering if you could buy an extra dock @ launch.
This would make things a lot easier if you have multiple tv's and etc... like being often at different places.
If the console is cheap enough, I'm seriously considering buying two, one for the kids (half controller looks PERFECT for them, and if they have motion, better, for Just Dance) and one for me. And it's weird, because I had skipped this generation consoles in favor of a PC.
 
I'm wondering if you could buy an extra dock @ launch.
This would make things a lot easier if you have multiple tv's and etc... like being often at different places.

I don't know the answer to this, but I imagine extra/replacement docks will be available at Nintendo's website.

If the dock is as passive as it seems to be, then absolutely. You could always buy 3DS docks on the Nintendo website.
 
What do you guys think if this rumor? Seems too good to be true.

https://www.reddit.com/r/NintendoSw...r_someone_who_producing_switch_at_foxconn_is/

Sooo, I'm going play devil's advocate, while my stance is that we should not expect something very different from a Tegra X1, at the same time I find that Reddit post kind of interesting if there is some truth behind.

Some of the things in the post might be just translation mistakes and some bits seems like they are just speculation, plus the leaker might not be much into tech, so I'm going to give an "interpretation" of what I think makes sense or not from my point of view.

✓ Cheap stand, usb2x2 ubs3x1 hdmi, no fan - Expected, Nintendo pursuing a low price point makes this a sure bet.
✗ 1080p multitouch - Not happening, key is that this is something the leaker seems to believe not a hard fact, but 720p on a 6 inch screen is a very high dpi that can be mistaken as a higher res.
✓ Heat sink / heat pipe - This is totally possible.
✓ "Millions of fish" test software - Some people in the Reddit thread are relating this to a Unity demo as seen here - Sound possible.
✓ Screen not very bright - Possible
✓ 10x10 core - I was puzzled at what was this, but after thinking about it and a latter comment, this might indicate a 100mm² SoC, X1 was 121mm² @20nm, so 100mm @16nm should be a similar transistor budget.
✓ CPU 1785mhz, GPU 921mhz, EMC 1600mhz - CPU speed sounds about right, GPU seems too high for a portable, but 16nm and the beefy battery could maybe sustain it? EMC 1600 mhz I'm guessing it's related to ram idk.
? Speculated CPU is A73 Pascal - Key here is that it already points it's speculation and that it only shows as ARM_v8, all likely candidates as CPU are ARM_v8 (A57, A72, A73) so this does not tell us anything really.
✓ Confirmed USB-C charging port - Very likely
✓ Speculated TSMC, but no logo - Not really telling anything
✓ Power adapter external - Might be
✗ There's 4G console version, confirmed - This is one of the hard to believe bits, does not make much sense
✓ 4310 mA / 3.7 battery - Seems appropriate for the device?
✓ 2xRAM= 4 GB - Very likely
✓ Joycon - Seems ok
✓ Beefier / heaver version / Dev Kit with a 200mm² SoC & 8GB - I know someone pointed that Foxconn doesn't usually produce Dev Kits, but since we don't have real info they could totally do them from my point of view, some Reddit users speculate that this could be the leaked DevKit img hours before the reveal (that some users called fake but I believe it's legit) This one.
! The bit mentioning PS4pro - This has been pointed out as a reason to call the post fake, but reading the text carefully "Speculated provided the core is only include GPU, it would be even more powerful than PS4 pro" that reads to me -> if the DevKit Soc (12x18 = 216mm²) was only a GPU die, it would be more powerful than the PS4 pro, and if kind of makes sense, but it's not really telling that the SoC itself it's more powerful than PS4 pro just speculating about die sizes, and the one that really matters it's the one at the start in the main unit that's about 100 mm²

I wanted to comment that reddit post, for two reasons, one for fun, and two because we are so close to release that at this point this kind of leaks seems likely and at the same time barring some controversial points (1080p, 4G) everything fits very close to what we know already, it may be fabricated but if the 1080p is just a misjudgement from the leaker and 4G has been mistaken for something else this could very well be a real leak.

Again, not saying I'm endorsing this, but I'm giving it some reasonable doubt status in my eyes.
 
N64 version had increased resolution for models and textures, with more content and Dolby Surround sound.

It wasn't just "fit the FMVs" in there. It was an improved port besides the compressed FMVs. And the fact they fit so many FMVs in there says a lot. All in 64MB.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131556/postmortem_angel_studios_.php

http://vr-zone.com/articles/one-gamings-forgotten-technical-achievements/77665.html

Yup. Also, how do we know game's aren't 60GB today simply because devs not bothering to compress everything? I mean, they have a ton of space, and they rather spend the time to work on the game rather than worrying about compression. Some games are very wasteful of their memory simply because they can.
 
Yup. Also, how do we know game's aren't 60GB today simply because devs not bothering to compress everything? I mean, they have a ton of space, and they rather spend the time to work on the game rather than worrying about compression. Some games are very wasteful of their memory simply because they can.

It's pretty easy to let things bloat. Adding tons of textures (whether we use them or not), not removing things that we don't need anymore (art assets, music, etc.), not compressing sound files or textures, etc. A couple of months ago I realized that my game was fairly bloated, so I started compressing things and removing things that weren't used in the game anymore. Went from about 5 GB to 1.7 GB. I was pretty happy about that. I imagine for larger projects with more people working on them this kind of thing happens a lot. It's soooo easy to have excess waste when there's so much space to work with. It's pretty easy to "trim the fat", but a lot of the time there's no need to worry about it when there's so much space available to use.
 
It's pretty easy to let things bloat. Adding tons of textures (whether we use them or not), not removing things that we don't need anymore (art assets, music, etc.), not compressing sound files or textures, etc. A couple of months ago I realized that my game was fairly bloated, so I started compressing things and removing things that weren't used in the game anymore. Went from about 5 GB to 1.7 GB. I was pretty happy about that. I imagine for larger projects with more people working on them this kind of thing happens a lot. It's soooo easy to have excess waste when there's so much space to work with. It's pretty easy to "trim the fat", but a lot of the time there's no need to worry about it when there's so much space available to use.

Hell, we have SNES games that still has tons of unused data hidden in the game for hackers to find.
 
I no longer have the link with games through 2016, but this link shows XB1 game sizes through 2015.

As you can see a lot of the games on that list can fit in just 16GB, a larger portion of that list could fit on a 32GB cartridge, and all of it could fit on a 64GB cartridge. So the game card isn't going to be an issue on size (cost is TBD).

I'm more curious about MicroSD card options since patches aren't included in the sizes at that link.
 
Really can't wait along with you guys for nintendo to show what this system is capable of. It could surprise a lot of us. But me personally I am already stoked that we have had multiple sources confirming ports from Xbox one and ps4 are not an issue. That hasn't been the case for a Nintendo console in how many generations now?
The GameCube unless you count the mini DVD issue. Otherwise, the SNES. O_o
 
Those specs sound too good to be true...but it would be very embarrassing for MS if the Switch ended up being more powerful than XB1. 🙃
 
Serious question, where can you buy these as a quick google pulls up nothing? If they're not available or really new won't they be so damned expensive to put them out of the picture?

You can't. There aren't any devices which use them yet (although Samsung have been ready to go for a few months on the card manufacturing front, and I'd imagine companies like Toshiba and Micron shouldn't be too far behind, as they already make embedded UFS). The Galaxy S8 should use them, and will likely be released around the same time as Switch, and there will probably be a few more flagship phones released through 2017 with UFS card support.

They'll be more expensive than MicroSD at first, although it's impossible to say by how much. Prices should come down over the course of 2017 as they become more ubiquitous, though. The fact that UFS is a royalty-free standard (unlike SD) should also help somewhat on this front.

I disagree with this. First, micro SD cards needed for gaming need to be fast at reading speeds, writing speed does not matter at all for gaming.

When buying 64GB or bigger micro SD cards through traditional retailers, it's actually difficult to find a horrible performing one; search on Amazon, all of them are class 10 or U1 or better; all of them will have constant read speed around 45MB/s, which is fine for gaming, many double that in real life tests, this for less than $20.

People are not stupid (unless it's election day), they look at Amazon reviews, they have been buying cards for years for their goPros, cameras, etc.

The benefits of using standard memory far outweigh the benefits of using UFS, which is not a standard right now.

According to Iwata comments, the NX is going to be an iterative console, with yearly or biyearly upgrades, so maybe in two years we will see an upgraded NX machine with a better card slot, but right now, it would be suicide to use a non standard memory card.

A few points:

- The UFS card is a standard (JEDEC ESD220-2 to be precise, you can download it here).

- I didn't mention writing speeds in my post, all speeds quoted were read speeds.

- Class 10 MicroSD cards only guarantee 10MB/s write speeds, there's no guarantee when you buy a Class 10 (or a UHS-1, or a V10, or an A1) card that you'll get any particular read speeds. Some of these will advertise 45MB/s reads, or some other number, but real-world performance is likely lower than this, and both read and write performance will decrease with age (which can be pretty fast with low quality cards).

- Even if a customer does buy a MicroSD with 45MB/s reads, and (optimistically) gets 40MB/s real-world read performance out of it, this is still substantially lower than the eMMC or eUFS internal storage in the Switch or the system's game cards. It's also notably lower than the performance of PS4 and XBO's HDDs (although random reads would probably be somewhat better on MicroSD). It could have big difficulties running games built around being able to stream data at 100MB/s+, a category which includes almost every modern open-world game.

- While most customers may put in a bit of effort to make sure they buy a sufficiently fast card, that doesn't mean all of them will. Amazon may have plentiful reviews showing customers which cards to avoid, but someone buying a card in Gamestop or Walmart or some small phone accessories stall in a shopping centre doesn't have that luxury, and the sheer complexity of the SD standard isn't going to help them figure this out. (For example, did you know that UHS-1 and UHS-I are different things?) Even if only 1% of owners buys a ~20MB/s card to use with Switch, and only 10 million buy the hardware, that's still 100,000 pissed off customers who have to endure extremely long load times or open-world performance problems.

Your last point, about Switch being the start of an iterative family of Nintendo hardware is actually precisely the reason I'd like to see them adopt UFS cards right from the start. It's all about setting a baseline. If developers have to target 40MB/s reads as a baseline for Switch, they'll have to adopt the same baseline for Switch+ and Switch Pocket and so forth, as games designed for them will have to run on the regular first-gen Switch too. Even if they have storage that's 10x as fast (not an exaggeration, btw), developers wouldn't be able to make use of it in any meaningful way. This would last until support for the first-gen Switch is completely phased out, which could be 5+ years away.

Alternatively, Nintendo could use eUFS internally, UFS cards for expansion, and a fast serial interface for the game cards (they seem to be doing the latter, at least), and allow developers to work with guaranteed read speeds of over 200MB/s and 10K IOPS (or potentially higher) regardless of whether the game's running off a card, off internal storage or off an external card. This gives developers far more latitude when it comes to the way they design their games, particularly when it comes to asset streaming and open-world games.
 
Those specs sound too good to be true...but it would be very embarrassing for MS if the Switch ended up being more powerful than XB1. 🙃
Why would it be embarrassing for the Switch to be more powerful than 3 year old hardware?

It would be embarrassing if the Switch couldn't port current Gen consoles and ended up 500 GFLOPs or less. But it is part handheld...
 
Why would it be embarrassing for the Switch to be more powerful than 3 year old hardware?

It would be embarrassing if the Switch couldn't port current Gen consoles and ended up 500 GFLOPs or less. But it is part handheld...
As you said, it is a hybrid. It has restraints that a pure console doesn't have to deal with.

In any case, the system should still be able to handle current gen games at lower resolution and graphical settings even if it is a little south of 500 GFLOPS. Efficient tools will go a long way for Nintendo.
 
You can't. There aren't any devices which use them yet (although Samsung have been ready to go for a few months on the card manufacturing front, and I'd imagine companies like Toshiba and Micron shouldn't be too far behind, as they already make embedded UFS). The Galaxy S8 should use them, and will likely be released around the same time as Switch, and there will probably be a few more flagship phones released through 2017 with UFS card support.

They'll be more expensive than MicroSD at first, although it's impossible to say by how much. Prices should come down over the course of 2017 as they become more ubiquitous, though. The fact that UFS is a royalty-free standard (unlike SD) should also help somewhat on this front.



A few points:

- The UFS card is a standard (JEDEC ESD220-2 to be precise, you can download it here).

- I didn't mention writing speeds in my post, all speeds quoted were read speeds.

- Class 10 MicroSD cards only guarantee 10MB/s write speeds, there's no guarantee when you buy a Class 10 (or a UHS-1, or a V10, or an A1) card that you'll get any particular read speeds. Some of these will advertise 45MB/s reads, or some other number, but real-world performance is likely lower than this, and both read and write performance will decrease with age (which can be pretty fast with low quality cards).

- Even if a customer does buy a MicroSD with 45MB/s reads, and (optimistically) gets 40MB/s real-world read performance out of it, this is still substantially lower than the eMMC or eUFS internal storage in the Switch or the system's game cards. It's also notably lower than the performance of PS4 and XBO's HDDs (although random reads would probably be somewhat better on MicroSD). It could have big difficulties running games built around being able to stream data at 100MB/s+, a category which includes almost every modern open-world game.

- While most customers may put in a bit of effort to make sure they buy a sufficiently fast card, that doesn't mean all of them will. Amazon may have plentiful reviews showing customers which cards to avoid, but someone buying a card in Gamestop or Walmart or some small phone accessories stall in a shopping centre doesn't have that luxury, and the sheer complexity of the SD standard isn't going to help them figure this out. (For example, did you know that UHS-1 and UHS-I are different things?) Even if only 1% of owners buys a ~20MB/s card to use with Switch, and only 10 million buy the hardware, that's still 100,000 pissed off customers who have to endure extremely long load times or open-world performance problems.

Your last point, about Switch being the start of an iterative family of Nintendo hardware is actually precisely the reason I'd like to see them adopt UFS cards right from the start. It's all about setting a baseline. If developers have to target 40MB/s reads as a baseline for Switch, they'll have to adopt the same baseline for Switch+ and Switch Pocket and so forth, as games designed for them will have to run on the regular first-gen Switch too. Even if they have storage that's 10x as fast (not an exaggeration, btw), developers wouldn't be able to make use of it in any meaningful way. This would last until support for the first-gen Switch is completely phased out, which could be 5+ years away.

Alternatively, Nintendo could use eUFS internally, UFS cards for expansion, and a fast serial interface for the game cards (they seem to be doing the latter, at least), and allow developers to work with guaranteed read speeds of over 200MB/s and 10K IOPS (or potentially higher) regardless of whether the game's running off a card, off internal storage or off an external card. This gives developers far more latitude when it comes to the way they design their games, particularly when it comes to asset streaming and open-world games.
What about UHS-II micro SDXC cards? The card readers should be backwards compatible with microSD.
sandisk_extreme_pro_microsdxc-670x266.jpg

best-microsd-cards-speed-standards.jpg

It also seems possible for card readers to be designed to work with both
UHS-I microSDXC and UFS cards:
ufs_card.jpg
 
What about UHS-II micro SDXC cards? The card readers should be backwards compatible with microSD.
sandisk_extreme_pro_microsdxc-670x266.jpg

best-microsd-cards-speed-standards.jpg

It also seems possible for card readers to be designed to work with both
UHS-I microSDXC and UFS cards:
ufs_card.jpg

Yes, UFS card readers can be designed to work with both MicroSD and UFS cards (I'd imagine that most of the initial smartphone support will be in the form of these combo-readers). It doesn't address my issue with supporting MicroSD, though, which is that if you support MicroSD at all then that becomes the baseline games have to be developed around. A game developed on the basis of 40MB/s data streaming is unlikely to get much of a benefit when run from a 500MB/s UFS card (just as people dropping SATA III SSDs in their PS4 Pros are getting fairly meagre benefit from doing so). The benefit of using a UFS-only memory slot is that it's literally impossible for a user to buy and insert a UFS card that's less than 200MB/s or so. Developers could then work in the knowledge that they have a given guaranteed level of storage performance and design their games to take advantage of that.
 
Even if a customer does buy a MicroSD with 45MB/s reads, and (optimistically) gets 40MB/s real-world read performance out of it, this is still substantially lower than the eMMC or eUFS internal storage in the Switch or the system's game cards. It's also notably lower than the performance of PS4 and XBO's HDDs (although random reads would probably be somewhat better on MicroSD). It could have big difficulties running games built around being able to stream data at 100MB/s+, a category which includes almost every modern open-world game.
Just an aside but the cheap 5400 rpm drives in PS4/XB1 are very rarely hitting 100+ mbps in the real world either. As with sd cards, not all hdds are created equal and hdd speeds can be incredibly inconsisent even depending on where data's being written/read. It's not unusual for the outer edge of a 5400 to drop to 20/30 mbps for example. Modern games aren't really designed around consistent 100+ mbps streaming at all.

I really don't see microSD being an issue for Switch in this regard. You can get affordable 90 mbps cards in higher capacities from a variety of reliable manufacturers now and really the majority of mainstream consumers will probably just stick with whatever Nintendo throws in anyway.
 
Going from my 2TB external hard drive that I have connected to my Wii U to something smaller (and everything I can think of that would be possible with Switch on the go is going to be smaller) will be painful and I'm interested to see how Nintendo is going to deal with that. Sure, the storage they come up with may be much faster, but I've been living in my digital-only bubble for far too long now (even on 3DS) to consider buying physical games or to be willing to choose which games I'm going to take with me for gaming away from the dock.

Hopefully at least for the home console mode they'll have something better than USB 2.0 available. The USB 3.0 rumours are promising, even if there's supposed to be only one 3.0 port, which would make fast copying between two discs impossible - but that's not something I'll be doing very often anyway.
 
I think it would be really cool if Nintendo had come up with some OS-level sync between a docked HDD and the portable storage for favorite and frequent games. Nintendo should realize that folks got used to having large amounts of storage attached to their Wii U and they can't fully replicate that via cards.
 
Just an aside but the cheap 5400 rpm drives in PS4/XB1 are very rarely hitting 100+ mbps in the real world either. As with sd cards, not all hdds are created equal and hdd speeds can be incredibly inconsisent even depending on where data's being written/read. It's not unusual for the outer edge of a 5400 to drop to 20/30 mbps for example. Modern games aren't really designed around consistent 100+ mbps streaming at all.

I really don't see microSD being an issue for Switch in this regard. You can get affordable 90 mbps cards in higher capacities from a variety of reliable manufacturers now and really the majority of mainstream consumers will probably just stick with whatever Nintendo throws in anyway.

Yes, that's fair, and the substantially improved random read performance of flash (even MicroSD) over HDDs would mean the real-world workloads would favour flash. I should clarify that I don't think Nintendo MicroSD would be a particular bottleneck for Switch, so long as Nintendo operates some kind of speed test/certification to ensure that only the faster cards are used (easier said that done, but they're better off doing a quick test and saying "nope, this card is too slow" when you put the card in rather than the player having to endure slow loads or streaming jankiness).

My original point was rather that Nintendo should use UFS cards, not that they have to or that I expect them to. My reasoning is that, when combined with eUFS internal storage and a fast serial game card interface, it's a relatively cheap way to give a very substantial performance improvement in an area which could be beneficial to a large group of games. You're looking at perhaps a couple of dollars to go with eUFS over eMMC, and even less than that to swap the MicroSD port out for a UFS one (it could actually be cheaper with the lack of royalties). For a far smaller cost than, say, increasing the RAM capacity, Nintendo could go from developers having a 40MB/s 1K IOPS baseline to perhaps a 200MB/s 10K IOPS baseline.
 
According to SMD, Nico is reporting a rumor that the Nintendo Switch is powerful or more than the PS4 when docked, but not as powerful as the switch.

So the small tablet is stronger than a (even in the slim form) pretty large arse console? Who comes up with these rumours?

Also weaker than the Switch, lol
 
Are there any prices for UFS cards yet? Can't find anything. I'm sure Samsung would appreciate another party using UFS-requiring hardware but it might be simpler just to have some kind of speed tested microSd.
 
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