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[Durante]

A57, Maxwell and that. Does it look real to you?

For a Nintendo system? Very real.

At least, nothing in the specs in the OP screams fake to me like so many other "leaks" do.

It even has the whole "let's give a FLOP number but use FP16 rather than the customary FP32 to make it look better" thing going on.

 

[Grampa Simpson]

https://twitter.com/NWPlayer123/status/789116886109655041

Four ARM Cortex-A57 cores, max 2GHz
NVidia second-generation Maxwell architecture
256 CUDA cores, max 1 GHz, 1024 FLOPS/cycle
4GB RAM (25.6 GB/s, VRAM shared)
32 GB storage (Max transfer 400 MB/s)
USB 2.0 & 3.0
1280 x 720 6.2" IPS LCD
1080p at 60 fps or 4k at 30 fps max video output
Capcitance method, 10-point multi-touch

This sound a hell of a lot like the Nvidia Shield TV. Like really a lot like it.

Shield TV Specs:
SoC: Tegra X1
CPU: 2.0 GHz[3] 4 ARM Cortex-A57 and 4 ARM Cortex-A53 64-bit cores
GPU: 1000 MHz Maxwell (core configuration: 256:16:16)
RAM: 3 GB RAM
Internal Storage: 16 GB SSD, or 500 GB HDD(pro version)[4]
External Storage: micro SDXC slot
Gigabit Ethernet
HDMI 2.0 port
micro USB 2.0 port
USB 3.0 ports x2: for mouse, keyboard and external hard drives
IR Receiver: for TV remote
802.11ac 2x2 MIMO 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz Wi-Fi, compatible with 802.11g/n WiFi
Bluetooth 4.1/BLE: for headsets, other game controllers, etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHIELD_Android_TV

 

[Schnozberry]

This sound a hell of a lot like the Nvidia Shield TV. Like really a lot like it.

That's because it's the exact same chip.

 

[NeOak]

For a Nintendo system? Very real.

At least, nothing in the specs in the OP screams fake to me like so many other "leaks" do.

It even has the whole "let's give a FLOP number but use FP16 rather than the customary FP32 to make it look better" thing going on.

They are the exact specs of the Tegra X1.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/jetson-tx1-module.html

nVidia already said they are using a custom version with a Pascal based GPU. TX1 uses Maxwell cores.

Some believe they are using a version of the Tegra X2.

 

[Grampa Simpson]

That's because it's the exact same chip.

I remember a long drive home from vacation last year where I thought this might be what we got. I'm good with this.

 

[AngryMoth]

32 GB would be a total joke unless the dock has more storage and you can manage which games are stored locally or something

 

[Durante]

They are the exact specs of the Tegra X1.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/jetson-tx1-module.html

nVidia already said they are using a custom version with a Pascal based GPU. TX1 uses Maxwell cores.

Right. But just because you use a more modern and more power-efficient architecture doesn't mean that you'll necessarily have to increase the number of execution units. You could just go for the energy (and cost) savings, and that's absolutely something I can see Nintendo doing.

 

[NeOak]

Right. But just because you use a more modern and more power-efficient architecture doesn't mean that you'll necessarily have to increase the number of execution units. You could just go for the energy (and cost) savings, and that's absolutely something I can see Nintendo doing.

Most likely, but taking the specs of an early Dev kit as final would be the same as taking the specs of the G5 Mac Pros with their Radeon X1900 GPUs as the specs of the Xbox 360.

TX2 is supposed to still use 256 cores, but have a more beefy CPU with Denver cores.

 

[Lord Panda]

Ninvidia Shield. I'm okay with that as long as the price matches the specs.

 

[Schnozberry]

I remember a long drive home from vacation last year where I thought this might be what we got. I'm good with this.

We'll have to see if Nintendo gives us some answers. Nvidia says it's custom, which could mean anything. Pascal would be a nice upgrade, if the timing worked out.

 

[thefro]

We'll have to see if Nintendo gives us some answers. Nvidia says it's custom, which could mean anything. Pascal would be a nice upgrade, if the timing worked out.

NateDrake's been pretty adamant that it's Pascal.

 

[Schnozberry]

NateDrake's been pretty adamant that it's Pascal.

I really, truly hope he's right. Just so I don't have to lug around a car battery with me everywhere.

 

[Lebon14]

People are really are clueless about this 32GB on-board space.

First of all, most games on Nintendo consoles are below 10GB. Very few are over (Smash Bros, Xenoblade X comes to mind).

Second thing, do you know how much money this 32GB cost? I'd bet that 512GB of it would be incredibly expensive and would add quite a hefty bit to the initial price. Then people would just go "599$ for a Nintendo console/hybrid! Too expensive!"

Third thing, the rebuttal of the second point would be to use a spinner (good ol'HDD). I don't know about you but... a spinner is kind of fragile to shocks and magnets. Somebody drops it on the ground and then they call Nintendo because their system won't boot or give errors and they get told that the hard drive is dead coz they drop it. This kind of memory in a portable is a big fat no.

Fourth point: Nintendo always had expendable memory. I don't see why this one wouldn't. AFAIK, the 3DS can use up to 64GB cards officially. And if Nintendo supports SDXC cards, then, it will be an issue coz I think the limit for these cards are like... *checks Wikipedia* 2TB, exFAT and 300MB/s transfer rates. So a non-issue. Of course, 2TB doesn't exists and 256GB and up cards are expensive but still, they will get less expensive over time and new formats will come.

Fifth points: there are still unknown points about the dock itself. Will it have USB ports? Ethernet? Etc. If there are USB ports, it'll probably support external HDDs and Nintendo will find a way to send games one way or another easily so you can have a selection on the go and the rest of your collection at home.

...and this if it's real that is...
For me, wait and see.

 

[Da-Kid]

32 Gig's of memory? Is it possible the cartridges can hold their own patch and save data?

 

[spons]

32 Gig's of memory? Is it possible the cartridges can hold their own patch and save data?

That sounds like a great way to make the console cost next to nothing and games a good buck if they're adding writeable storage for patches.

 

[Grampa Simpson]

We'll have to see if Nintendo gives us some answers. Nvidia says it's custom, which could mean anything. Pascal would be a nice upgrade, if the timing worked out.

Nintendo won't speak, but someone will xray the chip and compare it against other tegra chips and we'll know - within the year.

As far as pascal goes, there's two newer Tegra chips on the public roadmap. Maybe that "Pro" non-portable console will have one of them.

 

[TheGreyHulk]

Im assuming it's Pascal. It would make sense for it to be. It's already made on a smaller node vs maxwell and would be way more power efficient.

I wouldnt even bother comparing dev kit vs final hardware that's half a year away.

 

[Zil33184]

Most likely, but taking the specs of an early Dev kit as final would be the same as taking the specs of the G5 Mac Pros with their Radeon X1900 GPUs as the specs of the Xbox 360.

TX2 is supposed to still use 256 cores, but have a more beefy CPU with Denver cores.

I think it's more likely that the final hardware is TX1 or something near identical.

According to a eurogamer piece on the development of the WiiU, dev kit hardware was similar to final hardware throughout the development process. I think Nintendo fans should brace themselves for the likely scenario of a portable TX1, which given historical precedent is actually a laudable accomplishment for Nintendo.

 

[Trogdor1123]

I just wNt confirmation of an Ethernet port in the base

 

[icecold1983]

256 cude cores at 1 ghz? lol if true

you guys arguing about maxwell v pascal realize that from a performance standpoint its mostly irrelevant right

 

[Chaplain]

I think Nintendo fans should brace themselves for the likely scenario of a portable TX1, which given historical precedent is actually a laudable accomplishment for Nintendo.

I hope not.

If this is the route they go, using a Tegra 1, my assumption is that the refreshed version of Switch (2019 or 2020) will use Tegra 2. Since everything is backwards compatible, Nintendo could do hardware updates/upgrades with full backwards compatibility (i.e., mirroring Microsoft's Xbox strategy).

 

[antonz]

256 cude cores at 1 ghz? lol if true

you guys arguing about maxwell v pascal realize that from a performance standpoint its mostly irrelevant right

I wouldn't say its irrelevant. Pascal Tegra can achieve 50% more performance at the same power consumption as X1.

 

[Aztechnology]

Any word on if we'll be able to use standard Android features on it? Like apps and such. Knowing Nintendo the answer is almost 100% no. But I'd love if it had full tablet capabilities. I own a Nvidia Shield tablet so it could be something I'd pick up if it could potentially replace it.

 

[icecold1983]

I wouldn't say its irrelevant. Pascal Tegra can achieve 50% more performance at the same power consumption as X1.

the clock is already listed tho.. 256 cores at 1 ghz will perform near identically whether maxwell or pascal

 

[Saoshyant]

A thought just occurred to me, considering how much Nvidia is saying they are behind the APIs and whatnot of the device: what if the Switch can game stream from PC, you know like the Shield did? That would be a game changer, wouldn't it? I know a bunch of people who love streaming PS4 games onto the Vita, except in this case, it would be future-proof sort of.

 

[Metal Khaos]

32 GB Storage?

So it can store one patch?

Or since they're moving back to cartridge based games, you could just save the patch on the cartridge itself, no?

 

[Scrub Mcgrubb]

Being able to write game info (ie patches) to carts sure seems like opening to doors wide open to piracy to me....

 

[Schnozberry]

the clock is already listed tho.. 256 cores at 1 ghz will perform near identically whether maxwell or pascal

The clock is for a standard Tegra X1. A move to Pascal may offer them the ability to clock higher when docked, especially with an active cooling solution.

 

[Hasney]

I was ignorant that Maxwell had a second iteration. I was really hoping they'd go for Pascal for the efficiency gains. This is really disappointing if true. Battery life will suffer and it will run hot as blazes.

My Pixel C runs for 7 hours of SoT minimum and doesn't get hot. We were even emulating the PSP Fortune Street on a train a few weeks back.

Being able to write game info (ie patches) to carts sure seems like opening to doors wide open to piracy to me....

How so? 3DS Carts have writeable portions and that isn't what opened the piracy door.

 

[spons]

Being able to write game info (ie patches) to carts sure seems like opening to doors wide open to piracy to me....

Not really, if everything is cryptographically signed you can't just run random software by writing it to a card.

 

[antonz]

the clock is already listed tho.. 256 cores at 1 ghz will perform near identically whether maxwell or pascal

What's listed here is a Generic devkit that you can buy from NVidia right now. Nintendo very likely did use them in the early days of Development but this kit is not what Nintendo is using for final hardware.

 

[Durante]

What's listed here is a Generic devkit that you can buy from NVidia right now. Nintendo very likely did use them in the early days of Development but this kit is not what Nintendo is using for final hardware.

Probably not.

But going from "not the same" to "significantly faster" is not a leap I'd be willing to take.

 

[Scrub Mcgrubb]

How so? 3DS Carts have writeable portions and that isn't what opened the piracy door.

Except there's like at least 9 3DS flashcarts on the market...

 

[kami_sama]

Probably not.

But going from "not the same" to "significantly faster" is not a leap I'd be willing to take.

I wouldn't say faster, but more efficient for sure. And I hope the cpu improves.

 

[maxcriden]

Has this been confirmed or debunked as of yet?

And Emily said touchscreen, right? Is she saying that's still in, now?

 

[DSN2K]

bit disappointing if its Maxwell considering the launch period and likely price.

 

[KingSnake]

bit disappointing if its Maxwell considering the launch period and likely price.

That's a devkit, not the final product. Rumoured. By someone not trust worthy with NX/switch info.

 

[NeOak]

Probably not.

But going from "not the same" to "significantly faster" is not a leap I'd be willing to take.

Yeah, early Dev Kits usually try to target a similar performance ballpark.

I wouldn't expect twice the TX1 performance at least GPU wise. CPU wise, maybe something better IF they use Denver cores.

I got a feeling Nintendo will be real dumb and not say anything else about this console until after next year. We will be in limbo as to what this thing can actually do. Save us Nvidia!

We never got anything about the Wii U until marcan got the clockrate and Chipworks did the die shot

 

[RoyalFool]

Dev kits also have more ram than the retail version to help run debuggers...

 

[NeOak]

Dev kits also have more ram than the retail version to help run debuggers...

PS4/XBO/Wii U Dev Kits didn't ship with more memory.

They used the reserved memory for the OS to do that.

And again, specs are an off-the-shelf Jetson TX1 board.

 

[Schnozberry]

My Pixel C runs for 7 hours of SoT minimum and doesn't get hot. We were even emulating the PSP Fortune Street on a train a few weeks back.

The Tegra X1 in the Pixel C is clock limited. It starts 300mhz lower than the standard X1 spec and often thermally limits itself down from there because it lacks active cooling.

 

[MegalonJJ]

Is the unit likely to have 6GB of ram?

 

[NeOak]

Is the unit likely to have 6GB of ram?

Tegra X1 can do up to 8GBs

Tegra X2 can do up to 16GBs.

Again, 4GBs is what the Jetson TX1 board comes with.

 

[Gamer79]

At the screen size you would not tell a different from 720p and 1080p.

 

[Shiggy]

At the screen size you would not tell a different from 720p and 1080p.

What's this bullshit?

I don't think 1080p would be good because of battery life, but you can definitely tell the difference.

 

[Moosichu]

At the screen size you would not tell a different from 720p and 1080p.

Get your eyes checked m8.

 

[robotrock]

Honest question for a bit: Why do people think that you need to sit further away from a television to notice a higher resolution?

In my experience it seemed like the farther I sat away from a television, the less able I was to discern the resolution. But the closer I sat, it was super easy to tell the difference between 4k and 1080.

 

[FyreWulff]

And the Gamecube even had an official SD adapter so you could used them in the memory card port. (only in Japan?)

Yep. And it actually had no active electronics - it just rerouted the SD card's pins to the correct pins on the GC's memcard port, because GC mem cards were just SD cards in a different form factor

 

[Nessus]

I don't get how the touch screen could possibly work. It would be unusable any time you were playing at home on your TV.

Then again, Nintendo didn't show motion controls in the promo video either, and it's very hard to imagine them not including some form of motion controls given that their last 3 systems have all had them and Breath Of The Wild (at least on Wii U) includes the option of using gyro for aiming.

So maybe they were just focused on showing Switch as a traditional games console in this video so they don't scare away hardcore gamers?

 

[Radius4]

I have never read such non-sense.
It's 2016, people are buying 4k phones (with little advantage over 1080p phones in definition and huge disadvantages in battery life)

At 5" 720p is perfectly acceptable and pretty close to what we're normally able to discern at ~1.5-2 feet. At 7" at the same distance 720p is still acceptable to be honest but if you hold the device closer to your eyes it starts becoming clear that it's a low res screen.

I think it will be fine to be honest.

One advantage of a higher resolution displays is that as resolution gets higher and higher you could get more resolutions to display on the ... display at integer scale, reducing scaling artifacts but it's way to early to talk about emulating on the Switch tablet display anyhow