Nintendo Switch Dev Kit Stats Leaked? Cortex A57, 4GB RAM, 32GB Storage, Multi-Touch.
- Thread starter Robert at Zeboyd Games
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I don't think architecture is necessarily tied to process though. Is it?
Yeah it did seem like Laura Kate Dale was claiming a fan inside the handheld and one inside the dock. If that were true I don't think anyone could argue there's something more to this. I suppose thats something we'll find out in a couple of weeks.
A chip can certainly be put on a different process. But Maxwell has never been on 28nm, and its now a dead process anyway. If they were going to change process from 20nm then 16nm would make more sense.
Also even ignoring the node used (28nm/20nm/16nm ect) Maxwell is just more power efficient than Kepler full stop.
Any recent info regarding SD vs microSD? Really hoping for the former.
Yeah that's more what I was wondering about.
Yeah that's more what I was wondering about.
Switch definitely wouldn't use the kind of embedded memory pool used in WiiU or XBox One (which is the say not for the same purpose), those aren't needed for this kind of GPU architecture. Also the kind of embedded memory pool they may use would usually be invisible to developers (not always but very easily could be in this case). Not hidden, but just not something they need to worry about and so not something that would be put in every spec sheet. Basically it wouldn't be a framebuffer developers need to worry about manipulating, but instead a cache used to increase GPU and/or CPU data transfer efficiency .
He's probably talking about Tegra Maxwell
Is it weird that I can't really wrap my head around this outside of a higher-SM setup? I mean, I am sure there are other optimizations and customizations that could account for the cooling vs apparent performance disparity, but I am not tech-savvy enough to imagine them, and that one keeps standing out to me.
The realist in me tells me to expect nothing of the sort, but on paper it appeals to the sensible optimist in me.
lwilliams3
Member
I wonder if that is a change included in the final dev kit. According to Laura, the dev kit is stated to be overall stronger.
Do you believe that the memory speed was solid bottleneck form the TX1 in the NVIDIA Shield?
ShadowFox08
Member
Anyone read this piece of news today? Hmmm
Straight Ports To Nintendo Switch May Not Be Possible, Former Ubisoft Developer Speculates
However, he is speaking on the basis of leaked specs, as opposed to official documentation.
While it is now abundantly clear that the Nintendo Switch will categorically not be as powerful as the PS4 or the Xbox One, people have still been banking on the system getting third party games- after all, Nintendo showed off a truly impressive lineup of third parties supporting the system, and Nvidia, who have supplied the chipset for the system, have hinted that straight ports to Switch from PS4 and Xbox One may in fact be relatively easy.
However, speaking on the Beyond 3D forums, former Ubisoft senior rendering lead and co-founder of Second Order LTD Sebastian Aaltonen shared his thoughts on whether or not the Switch would be able to run direct ports from PS4 and Xbox One. In his view? The prognosis is not so rosy.
“Around 50% of modern game engine frame time goes to running compute shaders (lighting, post processing, AA, AO, reflections, etc). Maxwell’s tiled rasterizer has zero impact on compute shaders. 25.6 GB/s is pretty low as everybody knows that 68 GB/s of Xbox One isn’t that great either,” he said. “ESRAM is needed to reach good performance. But I am talking about the POV of down porting current gen games to Switch. Switch certainly fares well against last gen consoles, and Maxwell’s tiled rasterizer would certainly help older pixel + vertex shader based renderers. Too bad last gen consoles already got their last big AAA releases year ago. Easy ports between Xbox 360 and Switch are not available anymore. Xbox One is a significantly faster hardware. Straightforward code port is not possible. Content also needs to be simplified.”
Of course, it is important to note that he is not speaking from any true knowledge of what the device is capable of- but rather, by speculating on leaked specs. Those specs, we have since been told by insiders, may already be outdated. And certainly, the idea that the Switch won’t be able to run direct PS4 ports doesn’t seem to hold when one considers that Ubisoft themselves are apparently porting their upcoming Assassin’s Creed game to the system. So, take this all with massive pinches of salt- we’ll know what’s what for sure come January 12 and 13, when Nintendo take the wraps off of their upcoming system in full at last.
http://gamingbolt.com/straight-port...soft-developer-speculates#7HbXYMFAybX2fqST.99
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So the above article says that that the downclocked x1 specs from eurogamer wouldn't make porting easy(obviously we don't know how many cores there are for cpu and gpu, and other customizations)... But Nvidia DID say a month and a half ago(Nov 17,2016) that straight ports should be easy though.
http://gamingbolt.com/porting-ps4-xbox-one-and-pc-games-to-switch-should-be-easy-says-nvidia
Does it give more hope that switch is using pascal? Who knows.
Straight Ports To Nintendo Switch May Not Be Possible, Former Ubisoft Developer Speculates
However, he is speaking on the basis of leaked specs, as opposed to official documentation.
While it is now abundantly clear that the Nintendo Switch will categorically not be as powerful as the PS4 or the Xbox One, people have still been banking on the system getting third party games- after all, Nintendo showed off a truly impressive lineup of third parties supporting the system, and Nvidia, who have supplied the chipset for the system, have hinted that straight ports to Switch from PS4 and Xbox One may in fact be relatively easy.
However, speaking on the Beyond 3D forums, former Ubisoft senior rendering lead and co-founder of Second Order LTD Sebastian Aaltonen shared his thoughts on whether or not the Switch would be able to run direct ports from PS4 and Xbox One. In his view? The prognosis is not so rosy.
“Around 50% of modern game engine frame time goes to running compute shaders (lighting, post processing, AA, AO, reflections, etc). Maxwell’s tiled rasterizer has zero impact on compute shaders. 25.6 GB/s is pretty low as everybody knows that 68 GB/s of Xbox One isn’t that great either,” he said. “ESRAM is needed to reach good performance. But I am talking about the POV of down porting current gen games to Switch. Switch certainly fares well against last gen consoles, and Maxwell’s tiled rasterizer would certainly help older pixel + vertex shader based renderers. Too bad last gen consoles already got their last big AAA releases year ago. Easy ports between Xbox 360 and Switch are not available anymore. Xbox One is a significantly faster hardware. Straightforward code port is not possible. Content also needs to be simplified.”
Of course, it is important to note that he is not speaking from any true knowledge of what the device is capable of- but rather, by speculating on leaked specs. Those specs, we have since been told by insiders, may already be outdated. And certainly, the idea that the Switch won’t be able to run direct PS4 ports doesn’t seem to hold when one considers that Ubisoft themselves are apparently porting their upcoming Assassin’s Creed game to the system. So, take this all with massive pinches of salt- we’ll know what’s what for sure come January 12 and 13, when Nintendo take the wraps off of their upcoming system in full at last.
http://gamingbolt.com/straight-port...soft-developer-speculates#7HbXYMFAybX2fqST.99
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So the above article says that that the downclocked x1 specs from eurogamer wouldn't make porting easy(obviously we don't know how many cores there are for cpu and gpu, and other customizations)... But Nvidia DID say a month and a half ago(Nov 17,2016) that straight ports should be easy though.
http://gamingbolt.com/porting-ps4-xbox-one-and-pc-games-to-switch-should-be-easy-says-nvidia
Does it give more hope that switch is using pascal? Who knows.
I highly doubt it'll be SD. 3DS went to micro SD years ago and it seems unlikely Nintendo would revert that evolution.
TLZ
Banned
That article is all about the clicks. They are jumping to all sorts of conclusions based on a tech discussion about bandwidth, fast ram pools etc.
I mean he also talks about how "theoretically" they could have 8 cores running at the same time etc. Its just random tech talk based on random feelings because he doesn't really have any idea what the hardware entails
I mean he also talks about how "theoretically" they could have 8 cores running at the same time etc. Its just random tech talk based on random feelings because he doesn't really have any idea what the hardware entails
lwilliams3
Member
We were talking about his post in the beyond3D forums the other day. He doesn't seem to be in the loop about the Switch.. otherwise he wouldn't be talking about this. Having said that, his concerns about the memory bandwidth being an issue for modern compute shaders does raise questions about the TX1's bottlenecks and what Nintendo can customize to clear it.
Schnozberry
Member
Comparing the Switch directly to the Xbox One is a bit odd. The GCN GPU's found in the Xbone and PS4 have much higher bandwidth needs than Nvidia's recent designs, and the Switch will have more bandwidth per compute cluster than what exists in the Xbox One. We also don't know Nintendo's customizations, which may or may not be targeted at the memory subsystem.
We'll have to wait until someone actually working with the most recent dev kits is able to talk about it more openly. I have a hard time believing that the memory bandwidth will be the primary cause of strain when porting to the Switch.
Going by the exploded views from the patents, micro SD cards are pretty much confirmed for Switch.
The internals of the switch will be as much of a mystery in January 13 as it is now.
Almost certainly true, but we will ostensibly at least have gameplay footage of launch games.
th3sicknness
Member
Isnt memory bandwidth directly linked to battery life?
Cow Mengde
Banned
This.
Why do people think Switch specs would be out? We know based on what it's trying to do, it can't compete. People that don't understand specs or how technology works would just laugh at it.
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
To be fair this is addressed directly in his quote: tiled rasterisation having no effect on pure compute shaders, so that bandwidth saving technique would have effect on other areas, but not bandwidth required to pure compute.
Smiles and Cries
Member
at the very least we will know what most of the best looking games could look like using whatever the specs are
right now the Eurogamer leak specs speak of dire weak hardware, I will feel better after I see what kind of game visuals I can expect from them before I say doomed
CrustyBritches
Gold Member
I wouldn't hold my breath for current gen ports to the switch. Nintendo has a history of gimping/selecting hardware that makes 3rd party ports extremely difficult.
DOOM runs at around 30fps 720p low settings on Maxwell hardware more powerful than ShieldTV. That should tell you all you need to know.
DOOM runs at around 30fps 720p low settings on Maxwell hardware more powerful than ShieldTV. That should tell you all you need to know.
It would be extremely disingenuous for someone to ignore the absence of third party and dismiss it as unindicative of anything. At that point, we should imo accept the sad truth that would indicate.
I am confident we will see several, though.
blu
Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
It's not just pure compute. Something as 'vanilla' as a g-buffer contains various things that don't actually resemble the entropy characteristics of a color, so those things would not benefit much from the color compressions. Nor the tiling, for that matter, since g-buffers don't exhibit read-modify-write access patterns.
I found this video by Nvidia on the Shield TV aimed at developers, mentions it's between 2 to 5 times more powerful then the Xbox 360. Interesting to see Crysis 3 running on it.
Play from 4:30 to skip the marketing talk and dive into the tech details. Bandwidth details too.
Crysis 3 demo at 7 minute mark.
https://youtu.be/QpJ3r9FWfow
Hopefully this gives us an idea of what to expect with the Switch, with it being in the same ballpark range of power.
Play from 4:30 to skip the marketing talk and dive into the tech details. Bandwidth details too.
Crysis 3 demo at 7 minute mark.
https://youtu.be/QpJ3r9FWfow
Hopefully this gives us an idea of what to expect with the Switch, with it being in the same ballpark range of power.
blu
Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
The marketing talk never ends in that video : )
manueldelalas
Time Traveler
If it was about tech, all third party games would be PC exclusive. It's never about tech, biggest example is Dead Rising coming out on Wii and not on PS3.
Define major third party game.
DQXI is major and is coming.
Just Dance is major and is coming.
Skyrim is major and is coming.
NBA is coming.
Minecraft, Rocket League, FIFA, Madden, etc are all major third party games.
If you expect Final Fantasy, Tomb Raider, Batman, Call of Duty, Overwatch, etc, then you'll probably be disappointed.
BG&E 2 is not a major third party game, as much as we expect it.
By major third party I meant a major multiplatform game that would allow us to compare it with other versions of the same game and get a decent metric of the hardware capabilities. Battlefield 1, titanfall 2, Doom, Cod etc.
TLZ
Banned
I know. So far these are the rumored specs we have from DF.
I'm still hoping for surprises.
One thing I always feel like people are forgetting about these posts by "famous" developers on the technical side of things (which are generally extremely rarely wrong about technology of course) is that they speak from a very specific position. E.g. when someone like that says "modern game engine frame time", what he implicitly assumes is "modern high-end headliner AAA game". And I think it's very clear that many of those won't port over directly to something like Switch -- it was clear even before the most recent leak.
What remains unsaid is that the vast majority of all games being released these days (and played too really) are not that kind of game. They don't have technical experts poring over the code to eke out the last bit of performance on specific platforms, they are mostly just getting things to run acceptably within the time, budget and manpower constraints they have.
What remains unsaid is that the vast majority of all games being released these days (and played too really) are not that kind of game. They don't have technical experts poring over the code to eke out the last bit of performance on specific platforms, they are mostly just getting things to run acceptably within the time, budget and manpower constraints they have.
I think quite a few things you do on a G-buffer might benefit from tiling for improving cache utilization. E.g. evaluation screen space effects that sample a neighborhood.
blu
Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
Well, under tiling RTTs have to be resolved to main RAM before usage anyway.
TwilightPrincess
Member
The next Assassins Creed?
I don't think there is one in a couple of years.
manueldelalas
Time Traveler
It's not going to happen. Buy a ps4 and play those games there.
Well, I play Borderlands 2 & TPS on my Shield Tv from time to time and I don't think they perform in an impressive way, and they have been ported by Nvidia's team.
I think it's safe to expect CoD. Any EA game is probably a "No". EA and Nintendo haven't been buddies for a long time now. Maybe new management will be able to reconcile. There's a good chance that Activision games will make it. Not sure about Blizzard. They seem to like Nintendo, but haven't really made stuff for it since Starcraft: Ghost on the Cube.
Will be interesting to see where third party support lands in a couple of weeks. I think it's still too early to throw in the towel without getting more info about who's doing what.
Skittzo0413
Member
Rumors say that the next mainline Assassins Creed will launch on it on the same day as the PS4/XB1. Plenty of insiders have said we should be expecting PS4/XB1 ports. To what extent, no one knows, but saying that none will be there is pretty silly.
And why buy a PS4 for them anyway if I have a PC which does the same thing? Switch offers portability, what does the PS4 offer over PC?
Edit: God, I certainly don't expect it to happen but the reactions here would be incredible if there was an exclusive RDR2 trailer at the Switch event.
TwilightPrincess
Member
So how is Ubisoft supposed to earn money in 2017? Assassins Creed Empire is rumored to be a 2017 title. Laura backed the terrible obe guy with his AC Switch leak.
manueldelalas
Time Traveler
It's not throwing the towel, it's understanding the market they are going for. Those games are not for Switch's market.
The guy said he wanted those games released to watch a DF dick contest and compare performances. It's not going to happen.
This is Nintendo going for a new market, this is a new Wii (and the Wii was amazing, I still play mine).
Not surprising, it's a bit much to expect a handheld that is also in the same ballpark as the current generation of consoles. Form factor, power efficiency and cooling are all huge factors to co aider with hardware like this. Personally, it's not third party ports that have me concerned, it's third party support in general. If Nintendo has learned anything they will be trying to get third parties to support the Switch, even if it's a CoD Wii scenario. I'm sure a lot of handheld devs will be happy with it though, which for me is the main thing as I'm primarily buying it as a handheld.
blu
Wants the largest console games publisher to avoid Nintendo's platforms.
Re fabnodes, SoC vendors come up with clever ways to combat the fabnode deficiency: Marvell MoChi: Virtual SoCs (1:22 mark)
Gotdatmoney
Member
Eh, if they can port the games over without too much trouble I don't see why they wouldn't. The issue being it looks like it will be difficult to port over more of the high end titles. But like, I see no reason why you wouldn't expect CoD for instance or Star Wars if they can get it technically competent. I think the appeal is enough that they would if they could. But don't expect GTA or anything of that nature even if it was possible.
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