Digital Foundry: Nintendo Switch CPU and GPU clock speeds revealed

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ecosse_011172 said:
I have a crazy idea, let's wait until we have full information, e.g. customisation, no. of SMs etc. as well as some new game visuals before deciding that it's an underpowered pile of shit.
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I don't see the harm in drawing tentative conclusions from the information that we do have at this point.
 
Mokujin said:
There is no such thing as a memory bottleneck at these Switch clocks, this was a concern while people though Switch was going to have really high clocks, to illustrate here is a table featuring gtx 10 series memory bandwidth / gigaflops ratio along with Switch ones.

Code: 
|  gtx TitanX  |  10.974 Tf  |  480  G/sec  |   43.74  |
|  gtx 1080    |   8.873 Tf  |  320  G/sec  |   36.06  |
|  gtx 1070    |   6.463 Tf  |  256  G/sec  |   39.61  |
|  gtx 1060    |   4.372 Tf  |  192  G/sec  |   43.91  |
|  Switch Dock |   0.402 Tf  |  25.6 G/sec  |   63.68  |
|  Switch Port |   0.157 Tf  |  20.8 G/sec  |  132.65  |
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That's a good point. There was some speculation that it wouldn't have a 64 bit bus because Nintendo never bandwidth-starves their architectures. Well, apparently it has, but Nintendo still never bandwidth-starves their architectures :P
 
Panajev2001a said:
No, but they may say "this is the vision, this is what makes Nintendo great, this is the budget available and these are the constraints we have for the machine... in that framework how should we move? Can you make that sing?".
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I'm sure there's some truth there, but I think it likely the software people—at least the ones in upper management—have more input than that. As rigid as Japanese corporate cultures may be, you certainly wouldn't have a decade-and-a-half-long trend toward less expensive hardware, and software developers designing within those constraints, for this long if the developers felt handcuffed by it rather than merely challenged.

I certainly have seen no evidence to suggest that software is culturally subservient to hardware within Nintendo.
 
Panajev2001a said:
This is not a home console first and foremost...
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Yeah, it is the Nintendo machine, enabling you to play future Nintendo software what ever way you wish to. I am simply flabbergasted that people don't see the vast improvement of only having to buy one console for anything Nintendo.
Basing your hate on the really just miniscule detail 'they said home console, not console' is silly to me.
 
cyberheater said:
I'm still trying to figure out who is going to buy this apart from die hard Nintendo fans.
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The only people i know at my work who even know what the Wii U is are the die hard Nintendo fans. About 3/130 people.

The number of people who already know about the Switch and intend to get one is about 10-15/130.

Take that with a grain of salt as it is completely anecdotal, but the awareness is there and the intention to purchase is high.
 
You people are still talking about the GPU when we know only a part of the equation, but i'm still trying to understand why they went with A57 instead of A72 if that meant to clock the cores pathetically low. It doesn't make any sense, A72 are cheaper, smaller, more efficient and more powerful. They could've clocked them higher and have a considerably better CPU, every improvement counts in these situations.

Is it possible that malo was right about 28nm? Lol

Durante said:
That's a good point. There was some speculation that it wouldn't have a 64 bit bus because Nintendo never bandwidth-starves their architectures. Well, apparently it has, but Nintendo still never bandwidth-starves their architectures :P
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64bit is speculation or was somehow hinted at?
 
Why did people expect more though? This is nintendo, their priorities in design and development are always clear.
 
Toadthemushroom said:
The contrast ratio differences are apples to apples in that matter. Firstly the difference isn't huge, and the much, much brighter DS Lite screens give a better real-world perception of contrast between colours anyway. The DS Lite screens also display 74% of the sRGB colour gamut for consumer content, which is super impressive for 2006. That's already what makes the DS Lite look more saturated than the washed-out PSP-1000 (56% of sRGB) and original DS displays.

Higher resolution is debateable given 1) the DS Lite had two screens of 256 x 192 anyway 2) the screens were smaller, so pixel count wasn't a huge deal, 3) the DS Lite's dual screen setup was better for the 2D-pixel art-type games DS became known for anyway.

You're also forgetting the PSP-1000's absolutely horrendous refresh rate - DS Lite didn't suffer from horrible trailing/ghosting artifacts when games were in motion. And very few PSP games actually ran at full colour depth - games which exhibited obvious dithering were displaying less maximum colours than a DS Lite could anyway.

DisplayMate's conclusions weren't based off those factors, but realworld performance of the DS Lite's display is more impressive than the PSP-1000's, whose only real perceivable benefit at the time was size and resolution.
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I have and appreciate both, but no the DS Lite screen was in no way superior to the PSP one and I never found one wowed more by the latter than the former.

Higher resolution and DPI is not debatable because the DS had two cheaper small screens instead of a bigger more expensive one and also the constraint ratio difference even in the final review score was one of the non irrelevant points (and the final score did not put DS Lite above the PSP one... also how about judging the later revisions instead of OG PSP vs DS Lite? or OG of both?). I find it impressive that a 6 bit panel can represent the color gamut better than a 8 bit one, but there are cases in which the latter can display more colours and less banding but still be off the mark more in terms of sRGB gamut conformance.

PSP had trailing issues which some games used to their advantage actually... but boy did RR turn heads at the time :).
 
John Harker said:
Why did people expect more though? This is nintendo, their priorities in design and development are always clear.
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People who have been following switch threads and Nintendo largely didn't.

It's everyone else that chimes in during big threads like these that pop in, say we are all stupid, lol Nintendo, etc and leave that give people this impression that we all thought they stuffed a ps4 into a handheld.
 
John Harker said:
Why did people expect more though? This is nintendo, their priorities in design and development are always clear.
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Their priorities seem out of touch with the reality of what their customers want.

Not many people expected silly things like a ps4 on the go, but this is insanely low if they left the number of cuda cores the same as stock tx1, not to mention the incredibly downclocked cpu. I think even their own teams would like to work with something decent again after the gamecube.

Durante said:
I guess you could call it speculation -- it is based on the reports indicating that the entire thing is pretty close to a lower clocked TX1.
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Makes sense, but maybe they added some SRAM for caching. Maxwell or not, that seems quite low.
 
Sanpei said:
Will we have any secret sauce ?
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Might end up like the 3DS. Very modest hardware that can do (some) modern effects to produce better graphics than you'd expect. The thing supports UE4 so it should be able to do modern shaders and such. Question is how well though, but we'll see.
 
I think this famous Simpson Gif describes this thread very good...

raw
 
cyberheater said:
I'm still trying to figure out who is going to buy this apart from die hard Nintendo fans.
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The thing is, generally you can't really tell until the machine is out how people will react to it.

I'll keep saying this, but Power is only one element of a machine. The machine will not succeed or fail on that element alone. It is about the whole package.

We're only a small percentage of the overall gaming population, and even then a smaller percentage on Gaf, or various other message boards actually care about specs.

The Switch's reveal was largely met with positivity. As was the Fallon showing. It is a smart looking device with a great design. it looks desirable, and it messaging in the reveal trailer was clear and easy to understand. People got it. It has corrected all the mistakes of the Wii U, and Nintendo managed to show that in 3 minutes as well as showing us how the machine can fit into our day to day lives.

Pokemon Go and Mario Run have shown their is still a mass market appetite for Nintendo. They have had a good year in getting themselves into people mindshare. The general public are aware of them again, and i would say at least excited for Nintendo stuff again.

If they price this right (£199?) combined with good apple esq marketing (ala the reveal trailer) this as great potential reach.
 
Rodin said:
Their priorities seem out of touch with the reality of what their customers want.

Not many people expected silly things like a ps4 on the go, but this is insanely low if they left the number of cuda cores the same as stock tx1, not to mention the incredibly downclocked cpu. I think even their own teams would like to work with something decent again after the gamecube.


Makes sense, but maybe they added some SRAM for caching. Maxwell or not, that seems quite low.
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I'm not sure kids and families care that much about chip speeds though... that stuff never seems to matter to the consumers who are spending so much on mobile games.

The big market titles they target more "core" gamers with their award winning, uniquely Nintendo "game design" - not graphics, and their IP power. It's been that way for awhile.

I'm excited about what I know about Switch though.
The Promise is strong!
 
Rodin said:
Makes sense, but maybe they added some SRAM for caching. Maxwell or not, that seems quite low.
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If you look at Mokujin's post, it seems quite sufficient for the task at hand.

Of course it will have a significant amount of L2 cache like any other Tegra (TX1 had 2 MB IIRC).
 
Rodin said:
Their priorities seem out of touch with the reality of what their customers want.

Not many people expected silly things like a ps4 on the go, but this is insanely low if they left the number of cuda cores the same as stock tx1, not to mention the incredibly downclocked cpu. I think even their own teams would like to work with something decent again after the gamecube.
Click to expand...

What their customers want or what you want? Yeah, I'd love to see what Nintendo is able to do with a hardware of the level of PS4Pro/Scorpio, but I don't think they'd have much success going against MS and Sony in a market where they are well established. The Game Cube was exactly that and it didn't exactly set the market on fire. Also keep in mind that in Japan the home console market has shrunk quite a lot.

IMO, this is the right move for Nintendo, unifying their development teams in one platform. Having Pokemon together with the latest Mario Kart, Zelda and whatever else they can code is a good idea.
 
John Harker said:
I'm not sure kids and families care that much about chip speeds though... that stuff never seems to matter to the consumers who are spending so much on mobile games.

The big market titles they target more "core" gamers with their award winning, uniquely Nintendo "game design" - not graphics, and their IP power. It's been that way for awhile.

I'm excited about what I know about Switch though.
The Promise is strong!
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They might not care for the minutiae butter will care about what it means for software support.

The fact that Switch doesn't compare favourably to modern phones is going to damage its rep too. Nevermind phones coming in the next few years.
 
Rolf NB said:
It's exactly like the Wii U in that they doubled down on the "move your game off the TV" aspect.
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Wii U was never about "moving games off the TV". All it was about was mimicking the tactile second screen of the DS/3DS.

Switch is a device clearly aimed at closing the gap between handhelds, home consoles and the currently dominating gaming platform, i.e smartphones/tablets.
 
Oregano said:
They might not care for the minutiae butter will care about what it means for software support.

The fact that Switch doesn't compare favourably to modern phones is going to damage its rep too. Nevermind phones coming in the next few years.
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It compares just fine with phones.
 
Honestly, at this stage, I just want Nintendo to go third-party. People tend to want Nintendo's games much more than thier consoles.

There's almost no way for them to compete in the console space anymore - certainly not in the mainstream, AAA market - but if they were focus thier time and energy releasing thier games on PS4, X1 and PC they'd clean up - they'd destroy.

And all those fence sitters like me, who spent the last four years almost buying a WiiU but never quite being able to justify it to themselves, would buy three or four Ninty titles a year.
 
John Harker said:
I'm not sure kids and families care that much about chip speeds though... that stuff never seems to matter to the consumers who are spending so much on mobile games.

The big market titles they target more "core" gamers with their award winning, uniquely Nintendo "game design" - not graphics, and their IP power. It's been that way for awhile.

I'm excited about what I know about Switch though.
The Promise is strong!
Click to expand...
Oh of course they don't care, but i would think that Nitnendo cares about selling this to a core audience as well, and they'll lose a lot of those people the second the Skyrim (or whatever other intensive third party game) analysis goes up on digital foundry. It's one thing not wanting to compete, but i think they should use good hardware for the asking price, and if LKD tweets about pricing are correct, they aren't doing that. Not even this time, after all the mud they got for the Wii U.

... and it's not like Nintendo game design and art style wouldn't benefit from better hardware.

Durante said:
If you look at Mokujin's post, it seems quite sufficient for the task at hand.

Of course it will have a significant amount of L2 cache like any other Tegra (TX1 had 2 MB IIRC).
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Yes, it will be interesting to see how much of that they used. It has never been mentioned yet so maybe it's the stock 2MB.

marcbret87 said:
What their customers want or what you want? Yeah, I'd love to see what Nintendo is able to do with a hardware of the level of PS4Pro/Scorpio, but I don't think they'd have much success going against MS and Sony in a market where they are well established. The Game Cube was exactly that and it didn't exactly set the market on fire. Also keep in mind that in Japan the home console market has shrunk quite a lot.

IMO, this is the right move for Nintendo, unifying their development teams in one platform. Having Pokemon together with the latest Mario Kart, Zelda and whatever else they can code is a good idea.
Click to expand...
I never expected them to compete with Sony and Microsoft (and i didn't care, i have a good PC and a PS4 Pro), but i at leasted hoped that they would use the best (or near to that) mobile hardware they could use to have decent performances for the form factor. Something around 6-700gflops when docked and around 350 when used standalone. I don't think i was asking for the moon tbh, and many people were on the same page. Not to mention that they went with more power hungry cpu cores that they had to severely downclock, instead of using the newer, more efficient, smaller and more powerful A72... the design of this thing is a bit of a joke, there's no way around that.

Broken Hope said:
Will be amusing if the new Shield TV revealed in January is both cheaper and more powerful than the Switch.
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I don't see how it won't. CPU wise the old Shield already utterly destroys the NS.

ArtificialIntelligence said:
Probably somewhere between 100-200 GFLOPS. At the reveal video the games were running at 20ish FPS which is terrible IMO
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You can't be serious lol

were you expecting to see 60fps in a video encoded at 24?
 
PritheeBeCareful said:
Honestly, at this stage, I just want Nintendo to go third-party. People tend to want Nintendo's games much more than thier consoles.

There's almost no way for them to compete in the console space anymore - certainly not in the mainstream, AAA market - but if they were focus thier time and energy releasing thier games on PS4, X1 and PC they'd clean up - they'd destroy.

And all those fence sitters like me, who spent the last four years almost buying a WiiU but never quite being able to justify it to themselves, would buy three or four Ninty titles a year.
Click to expand...

See, arm chair analysts always come in and try to make this point, but no. There is no guarantee they would suddenly be able to destroy. They would still be competing with every other company in the market for people's time and money, while losing billions in the revenue and profit potential of selling hardware and software in their own eco system.

A third party Nintendo would be run completely differently and that's not a Nintendo I want to see.

You claim they can't compete in the AAA market or console market, and yet your solution is to jump in directly into that market.
 
kayzai said:
Sigh! This is Wii and Wii U all over again!

Does Nintendo ever listen to ANYONE???

I thought Mr Kimishima would change things and listen to his customers.
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His customers are the people that bought the Wii, bought the Wii U and bought the games. And bought the 3DS. People that only game on a Xbox One, PS4 or PC are not (yet) his customers.
 
Two questions:

- What are those 2/3/4 SM that everyone seems to be talking to?

- And, what about the RAM campared with PS4?, could it be a bottleneck too?
 
ArtificialIntelligence said:
Probably somewhere between 100-200 GFLOPS. At the reveal video the games were running at 20ish FPS which is terrible IMO
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That wasn't real hardware those actors where holding. It was spliced in footage of games still in development for an unreleased platform. Extrapolating ANY kind of performance issues based on that footage is legit crazy.

Let's wait for the official DF thread for gaf typical frame rate bitching happy hour.
 
pixelpatr0n said:
original.gif


We're really gonna be that upset to have a handheld with visuals better than what's above for less than 250?
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Certainly are....when what I wanted was a home console with some grunt. And you do realise we'll see those exact same graphics on the console just a bit sharper at 1080.


Hermii said:
It's beyond me how they spent 500 years on customizing this chip if it really is what we think it is.
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499 were spent crying when Nintendo told them the clocks they wanted to run at. 11 months to find some chimpanzee to do the job, then a month to stick it together.


cyberheater said:
I'm still trying to figure out who is going to buy this apart from die hard Nintendo fans.
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The unsophisticated masses, just like Wii. The reality is that those people who were in their reveal video have no idea about flops or clocks. If they like the idea of the switch they'll buy it regardless of whether they could get an infinitely better experience elsewhere for similar money.
 
Hydrargyrus said:
Two questions:

- What are those 2/3/4 SM that everyone seems to be talking to?

- And, what about the RAM campared with PS4?, could it be a bottleneck too?
Click to expand...

THE SMs are computational units on the chip of the Switch. The standard tegra x1 has 2 SMs, but Thraktor has theorised that, since the system wouldn't need an active fan in portable mode at this clock speed (which it seems to have), there must be more going on on the chip. His thought were that the system might have extra SMs, since they would give a more power efficient methode of increasing the graphical process (basically, more SMs at lower clock speed is mor efficient than few er SMs at higher clock speed). If the system has 3 SMs, the FLOP rate would increase by 50% (or be multiplied by 1.5), and if it has 4 SMs, the FLOP rate will double. This is speculation, though, so we will have to wait and see with regards to this.
 
ArtificialIntelligence said:
Probably somewhere between 100-200 GFLOPS. At the reveal video the games were running at 20ish FPS which is terrible IMO
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Do you really believe they are gonna release a Mario game that's not 60fps? I think the last time I played a 20fps Nintendo game was on the N64, meanwhile third parties have had no problems releasing games that can go as low as 20fps.

The hyperbole is real in this thread.
 
Oregano said:
They might not care for the minutiae butter will care about what it means for software support.

The fact that Switch doesn't compare favourably to modern phones is going to damage its rep too. Nevermind phones coming in the next few years.
Click to expand...

The actual Digital Foundry video where this information first came from said it kind of compares to an iPhone 6S.
 
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