nillapuddin
Member
I'm sure it was posted way earlier, but this got me so good
Regardless if it is true or meaningful, quality shit post
Regardless if it is true or meaningful, quality shit post
Digital Foundry: Nintendo Switch CPU and GPU clock speeds revealed
- Thread starter Vashetti
- Start date
- Status
TheGreatMightyPoo
Banned
Chad Warden knows it is.
Kirye
Member
Because people expect this console to have full third party support, be stronger than a PS4 while portable, have an incredible 12 hour battery life and cost 199.99. And even if this was the case the same people would still find a way to complain.
I'm happy with this as is. A portable Wii U sounds amazing to me, especially since i'm treating this as a 3DS successor.
Anyway if I wanted power I have a PC that puts the PS4 Pro to shame.
Are we actually expecting specs at the event or is "I can't wait for the January conference" codeword for "I can't wait for the game reveal hype to drown out all the specs discussion. there's too much negativity surrounding the switch in these threads and it's really annoying."
ecosse_011172
Junior Member
Muchomalo remains the only GAFer I've ever blocked, insufferable.
Movalpolos
Banned
ultrazilla
Gold Member
Wow. You took all that away from a Digital Foundry video and other unsubstantiated rumors? Everything, everything is rumor until Nintendo says otherwise.
Robert at Zeboyd Games
Banned
Actually, it's even better than that. It has the same power level in both portable & home mode; it's just that the GPU is underclocked in portable mode because the resolution is capped at 720p (the resolution of the Switch's monitor). The GPU is 2.5x faster in docked mode and what do you know? 1080p is 2.25x as many pixels as 720p is.
Skittzo0413
Member
With 16nm you still get the increased performance per watt though, which Nintendo would certainly be interested in regardless of clock speed. I really don't see the downside to 16nm either. From everything I've heard it will likely cost them more in the long run to go 20nm, and it might even be cheaper in the short run too to go 16nm as you're using less material. I guess it depends on the exact contract and whatever incentives Nvidia has provided.
That's a good point about the device weight. I remember hearing reports that it's surprisingly light, so perhaps Nintendo is more concerned about battery weight than they are battery price.
However, that this thing is a good amount bigger than the Vita while drawing about the same amount of power in portable mode AND has vents and likely a fan is pretty confusing. I'd be pretty surprised if they remained with 2SMs and 4 CPU cores and a fan is still present in the portable, even if it's not used in portable mode. Stranger things have happened though I suppose.
I doubt Nintendo's gonna talk about specs.
krizalidzero
Member
That. Exactly that. Even if the rumors turn out to be true, you can't rely on them.
Baroquemantic
Member
Alright for a handheld, Turrible for a home console. I hope it's priced accordingly.
TheGreatMightyPoo
Banned
One guy had a negative impression of Mario Run and this dude said that's what what he wanted to know and that he would pass on the game and he thanked him for the impressions.
Either that one guy is in complete tune with his complete array of tastes or...post history.
D
Deleted member 465307
Unconfirmed Member
We can't know without knowing more details. Clock speeds are only one aspect of hardware capability (see Thraktor's lengthy post).
But I think the conservative estimate would say that what you wrote is what you can expect. I think portable mode would still be a Wii U+, though, and not just equivalent to Wii U.
lwilliams3
Member
That depends on other factors outside of specs. You guys are putting too much emphasis on that. The devs who are working on it already knows the powerlevel. If the Wii U didn't came out the door stumbling, third parties probably would have continued some support and dealt with its relatively port-unfriendly nature.
Not bad. As someone who travels a lot, I am quite happy having a portable Wii U. Hopefully game support will be ubiquitous.
Thunder Monkey
Banned
I made a similar argument for WiiU. That it would cost more to go for less at a large die size. They still did, WiiU had trouble dropping in price because of limited production, and the rest be the pricey history.
The Nintendo factor.
Still... I'm in.
That's one insanely powerful handheld there.
this needs repeating
Because people think this is a new console from Nintendo rather than the next flagship handheld (that can be docked). I'm just happy we can finally leave the 3DS behind.
I don't expect specs, but hopefully they will have playable demos of third party games which will give us a decent idea.
This is the absolute worst case scenario but yes this is a possibility. With one minor edit
TheGreatMightyPoo
Banned
Yep.
Games speak louder than numbers.
That's not true. EA dropped it pre-launch because Frostbite straight up wouldn't function on it.
My reasoning il there
With these specs and the consequences in terms of western third parties it makes no sense marketing as a home console
TheGreatMightyPoo
Banned
They're marketing it as a hybrid system...which it is.
Orochinagis
Member
So, huh still pixeled metroid games and chibi rpgs?
ultrazilla
Gold Member
Brilliant, brilliant post! Can't be quoted enough! Same with me. I loved my Wii U and 3DS so having them replaced with the Switch will be awesome! I just can't wrap my ahead around all the doom and gloom posts regarding tech specs. It's all about the games and fun! The Wii proved that. Hell, the Atari 2600 proved that!
People calling for Nintendo to produce a Skynet powered home/portable console that does 4K 60fps for $199 just amazes me. Doesn't surprise me, it amazes me.
Nintendo drop it in January! Reggie-I'm ready!!!
Aiiiiight
pawelranger
Banned
The funny think is they know that portable switch is more powerfull than wii u only biased in the Jimmy Fallon show lol, if it wasnt for that demo, they would suggest that is even weaker than Wii U, they even admit they dont have any fucking idea how this works if the numbers are true there is a lot of inconsistencies.
nogoodnamesleft
Banned
I was always going to buy this console the only thing was "when".
If it is 250AUD, ill buy on launch. If its higher, ill wait.
Now, if the machine was higher specced (Realistically. Never expected portable xbox one) i would have been more lenient on price. But these specs are, no bones about it, garbage. I expected more than Wii U+. Yes, i did. I did not expect the pie in the sky specs that some were dreaming about, but yes i expected more than this. So now price is the last remaining factor of when i buy it.
If it is 250AUD, ill buy on launch. If its higher, ill wait.
Now, if the machine was higher specced (Realistically. Never expected portable xbox one) i would have been more lenient on price. But these specs are, no bones about it, garbage. I expected more than Wii U+. Yes, i did. I did not expect the pie in the sky specs that some were dreaming about, but yes i expected more than this. So now price is the last remaining factor of when i buy it.
Because it's both. There will not be a Wii U replacement coming down the line anytime soon. Because the NS is the replacement for both the 3DS and Wii U.
Insane Metal
Member
I'm sure it was posted way earlier, but this got me so good
Regardless if it is true or meaningful, quality shit post
Hahahahah
krizalidzero
Member
People be like "Specs or bomb" and they forget how the underdog (powerwise) has traditionally been king.
It's mostly about featues - not specs.
Like the PS2 beating the GameCube just cause it had a DVD drive. Or the Gameboy vs everything else and then the 3DS and the Vita, and of course every gen where the underdog was the winner. (Wii says hi)
It's mostly about featues - not specs.
Like the PS2 beating the GameCube just cause it had a DVD drive. Or the Gameboy vs everything else and then the 3DS and the Vita, and of course every gen where the underdog was the winner. (Wii says hi)
CrazyArcadia
Member
I think the crowd they're going for won't care much about this. It's mostly (old and new via Pokemon Go/Mario Run) Nintendo fans, gaming enthusiasts who want a secondary device and mainstream/blue ocean/former mobile fans/young people who maybe even missed out on the WiiU because of the badly communicated marketing message. People who mainly play yearly blockbusters will not be interested in the system because of the Nintendo brand anyway.
... I don't care much, actually, since I kinda fall in at least two out of three of those groups. Seeing as most engines nowadays are supporting scaling (especially when it comes to Japanese devs who continually still develop for both PS Vita and PS4 which is... a lot of power difference. And PC/Indie etc.) there will technically be the possibility to finetune your game for a specific hardware setup. Just don't expect Last of Us 2 graphical quality on it. And expect it to mainly fly because of Nintendo 1st/2nd party support and 3rd party exclusives.
Still, even though I don't care much, I am - a bit - dissapointed because I expected this to go near OG PS4 rather than somewhere in the middle between WiiU and X1. Mostly because of enthusiast discussion and maybe even having Nintendo let some of their Western teams tackle a more storybased experience married with Nintendo quality gameplay polish. I love Nintendo games, but I can't help wondering how the gaming enthusiast crown would change their idea/view of Nintendo if they had some games more like Last Guardian or Last of Us (not from genre/topics, but approach) to compliment their portfolio of gameplay-centric games.
... I don't care much, actually, since I kinda fall in at least two out of three of those groups. Seeing as most engines nowadays are supporting scaling (especially when it comes to Japanese devs who continually still develop for both PS Vita and PS4 which is... a lot of power difference. And PC/Indie etc.) there will technically be the possibility to finetune your game for a specific hardware setup. Just don't expect Last of Us 2 graphical quality on it. And expect it to mainly fly because of Nintendo 1st/2nd party support and 3rd party exclusives.
Still, even though I don't care much, I am - a bit - dissapointed because I expected this to go near OG PS4 rather than somewhere in the middle between WiiU and X1. Mostly because of enthusiast discussion and maybe even having Nintendo let some of their Western teams tackle a more storybased experience married with Nintendo quality gameplay polish. I love Nintendo games, but I can't help wondering how the gaming enthusiast crown would change their idea/view of Nintendo if they had some games more like Last Guardian or Last of Us (not from genre/topics, but approach) to compliment their portfolio of gameplay-centric games.
nogoodnamesleft
Banned
I never once saw people expect this exaggeration in any switch speculation thread. Not once. Feel free to prove me and others who are also stating the same, wrong.
Wii U: Goku in the Alternate Timeline (dead before the androids even arrive)
Nintendo Switch: Piccolo (after fusing with Kami)
PS4: Vegeta
Xbox One: Imperfect Cell
PS4 Pro: Vegeta after training in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber
Xbox Scorpio: Perfect Cell
Vita: Trunks (mostly useless but still a fan favorite)
And WiiU? What does the WiiU say?
Remember that time the Xbox One had more features, but was underspecced and overpriced....
Pancakes R Us
Member
Have we had any good quality meltdowns yet?
It only seems to be the people who want to hate on Nintendo claiming that Nintendo fans expected that. I could have missed a few people saying as much, but it really doesn't seem that way.
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).
TLR
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.
Thank for this post, it's very interesting much more Eurogamer article
Those posts (like the one quoted below) are as dumb as those saying that the Switch is weaker than a PS3
I know, but it's unrealistic and unfair imo to compare and device that's meant to function on the go with a dedicated console.
krizalidzero
Member
The Wii U didn't have any compelling featues, that's why it failed. Not to mention the stupid name.
- Status