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[scalman]

if they will show real life over 2hrs battery life they will win against steam stuff... that thing is on wire console not much protable. 1 hr playing is not portable its stupid.

 

[gamer82]

What's the reason for the oled dock needing updates ? maybe they will just activate somthing in that instead of a new console ?

 

[Woopah]

What's the reason for the oled dock needing updates ? maybe they will just activate somthing in that instead of a new console ?

DLSS needs specific hardware to run. You can't just update a dock and have it do DLSS. This has to be new hardware.

 

[Aldric]

Why are people still treating this as "insiders" making shit up? This is proof that Nvidia is working on a new Switch hardware with a much more powerful SoC and DLSS support. That's a pretty big deal.

 

[Boy bawang]

I don't think people realize how powerful this supposed device would be. 12SMs and dlss would put it literally close to a series S from a GPU perspective; possibly even above depending on how much they push the clocks in docked mode. While the leak is undeniably true info, I'm very much doubtful that this is what we will end up getting, specifically because it sounds like way too much.

 

[Alexios]

Remember when folks thought 3DS, or rather the unknown next gen DS (or game boy!) successor at the time, would be using Nvidia Tegra? It made perfect sense for a cheap, new mobile hardware to be the one they go for! Just because it makes sense doesn't mean Nintendo can't go lower still.

 

[Woopah]

Remember when folks thought 3DS, or rather the unknown next gen DS (or game boy!) successor at the time, would be using Nvidia Tegra? It made perfect sense for a cheap, new mobile hardware to be the one they go for! Just because it makes sense doesn't mean Nintendo can't go lower still.

The difference here is that this is not speculation, it's a direct leak of the product.

 

[FStubbs]

Remember when folks thought 3DS, or rather the unknown next gen DS (or game boy!) successor at the time, would be using Nvidia Tegra? It made perfect sense for a cheap, new mobile hardware to be the one they go for! Just because it makes sense doesn't mean Nintendo can't go lower still.

IIRC Nintendo wanted to use Tegra 2 for the 3DS but nVIDIA didn't have it ready in time or something.

 

[SpongebobSquaredance]

Switch 2 won't come out until late 2023/2024.

 

[RAIDEN1]

I think the Switch 2 will be as powerful as a base PS4, or Xbox -one...that's how Nintendo rolls these days

 

[nani17]

Animal crossing 4k with Ray tracing and 120fps. Its what was missing the whole time

 

[nightmare-slain]

if they will show real life over 2hrs battery life they will win against steam stuff... that thing is on wire console not much protable. 1 hr playing is not portable its stupid.

Switch already has better battery life than the Deck. That can have as little as an ~1hr 20 minutes. Minimum on Switch is ~2 hours 30 minutes...and that's for the OG model. the Lite, Switch (2019), and OLED models have minimum of 3 hrs. Steam Deck also maxes out at about ~8 hours while Switch 2019/OLED can hit ~9 hrs.

the Switch doesn't play at the same graphics/performance as the Deck so the lower battery life isn't surprising. For what it is, the Deck is reasonable. Switch 2 is never going to have amazing graphics (such as a full PC game) so it can squeeze more battery life out. It's not quite fair to compare them both but yeah the Switch is the better portable/handheld device since you can actually use it for longer without having to plug in to a wall.

 

[It's all in the wrist]

I want 60 FPS, 1080p minimum. The games could look exactly the same. It is going to hurt my soul playing BotW2 at 30.

Make it happen!

 

[Woopah]

Probably the most likely scenario is that this is the 'GB Colour' of Switch. Big jump in graphical power, several games that run on it but not on previous models, but marketed as a revision and not a successor.

 

[IbizaPocholo]

 

[Amiga]

If the Switch2 matches the Steam Deck Nintendo could have full compatibility with competitors gen games for the 1st time since the Gamecube.

 

[01011001]

If the Switch2 matches the Steam Deck Nintendo could have full compatibility with competitors gen games for the 1st time since the Gamecube.

if this new chip is the Switch's chip it is a considerable amount more powerful than the Steam Deck, at least in docked mode

here's a small thought experiment I did in another thread

that's a big jump.
the X1 has 256 cuda cores right?

let's assume it's the same clock speed as the Switch which is 768mhz docked.
at that clock speed this chip would have ~2.36TF peak performance.
the Switch in docked mode reached 0.39TF as a comparison.

2.36TF is a good chunk above the PS4, and a big jump from the Steam Deck

let's say they clock it higher in docked this time, let's say Nintendo uses the max clock that the X1 can support, which is 1267mhz
in that case the docked performance could get to 3.9TF, quite literally on the doorstep of the Series S

tldr:
this chip, which has 1536 cuda cores, would reach 2.36TF if it will run at the og Switch's clock speeds in docked mode (768mhz)
it would reach 3.9TF if it runs at the same clock the Tegra X1 is rated for (1.267ghz)

the Steam Deck can reach 1.6TF max, but it can thermal throttle and power throttle to values below that.

let's go further and add all the 3 different Switch clock speed profiles to this new chip.
the Switch in Handheld mode can run at 307.2 MHz, 384 MHz, and 460 MHz
at those speeds the new chip would reach:

0.943TF at 307.2 Mhz
1.18TF at 384 Mhz
1.41TF at 460 Mhz
(the maths goes [Cuda Cores] * [clock speed] * 2 btw)

so if we assume this new Chip is indeed the Chip used inside the Switch 2, and we assume that clock speeds will not go up even by a single mhz,
we would have a Handheld that could reach 1.41TF in portable mode, basically trading blows with the Steam Deck,
and 2.36TF in docked mode, which is faster than the PS4 even ignoring architecture advancements.

add DLSS to the mix and you already have a really nice piece of hardware here.

if they actually clock it higher than these speeds then it could actually rival the Series S with 3.9TF if it uses the Tegra X1's max rated speed of 1.267ghz

 

[Amiga]

if this new chip is the Switch's chip it is a considerable amount more powerful than the Steam Deck, at least in docked mode

here's a small thought experiment I did in another thread


tldr:
this chip, which has 1536 cuda cores, would reach 2.36TF if it will run at the og Switch's clock speeds in docked mode (768mhz)
it would reach 3.9TF if it runs at the same clock the Tegra X1 is rated for (1.267ghz)

the Steam Deck can reach 1.6TF max, but it can thermal throttle and power throttle to values below that.

let's go further and add all the 3 different Switch clock speed profiles to this new chip.
the Switch in Handheld mode can run at 307.2 MHz, 384 MHz, and 460 MHz
at those speeds the new chip would reach:

0.943TF at 307.2 Mhz
1.18TF at 384 Mhz
1.41TF at 460 Mhz
(the maths goes [Cuda Cores] * [clock speed] * 2 btw)

so if we assume this new Chip is indeed the Chip used inside the Switch 2, and we assume that clock speeds will not go up even by a single mhz,
we would have a Handheld that could reach 1.41TF in portable mode, basically trading blows with the Steam Deck,
and 2.36TF in docked mode, which is faster than the PS4 even ignoring architecture advancements.

add DLSS to the mix and you already have a really nice piece of hardware here.

if they actually clock it higher than these speeds then it could actually rival the Series S with 3.9TF if it uses the Tegra X1's max rated speed of 1.267ghz

The bottleneck could be the likely small/slow RAM. image and texture resolution take up plenty of space. Nintendo could split it and force developers to micromanage it but it would still be challenging to achieve 1080p.

 

[MrA]

The bottleneck could be the likely small/slow RAM. image and texture resolution take up plenty of space. Nintendo could split it and force developers to micromanage it but it would still be challenging to achieve 1080p.

considering the switch has 8gb ram in most models, size shouldn't be an issue, bandwidth on the other hand orin peeks at like 200 gb/s , unfortunately, Nintendo will likely downclock it, if they retain the 256 bit bus it should still be okay though.

 

[01011001]

The bottleneck could be the likely small/slow RAM. image and texture resolution take up plenty of space. Nintendo could split it and force developers to micromanage it but it would still be challenging to achieve 1080p.

I mean that would be a huge fuckup if they have this pretty great mobile chip and then destroy its potential with shit memory

 

[jaysius]

No way Nintendo is paying R&D for a custom SoC, they don't do that, they just dredge the depths of old chips and then stick those into their machines.

 

[01011001]

No way Nintendo is paying R&D for a custom SoC, they don't do that, they just dredge the depths of old chips and then stick those into their machines.

there are not many old chips that would work in the Switch 2. this new Nvidia chip is not custom tho, this is one Nvidia will most likely use in their own hardware and/or cars as well

 

[jaysius]

there are not many old chips that would work in the Switch 2. this new Nvidia chip is not custom tho, this is one Nvidia will most likely use in their own hardware and/or cars as well

Says a reasonable sane person that thinks the next Switch should have current tech and a positive step forward. Switch wasn't full of current tech when it was released.

Nintendo will find something to dig up.

 

[01011001]

Says a reasonable sane person that thinks the next Switch should have current tech and a positive step forward. Switch wasn't full of current tech when it was released.

Nintendo will find something to dig up.

what is that weird narrative that the Switch wasn't high tech when it launched? it was literally more powerful than Qualcomm's flagship 8 series SoC at the time... it was basically among the most powerful portable hardware at the time of launch.

so Nintendo back then literally used the best chip on the market at the time of release. it would have been almost impossible to launch a more powerful console of that formfactor at the time, unless they would have used absolutely state of the art and unreleased Snapdragon chips that released later that year, and even then it wouldn't have been much of a difference.

honestly, the only issue I have with the Switch is that they chose to not use the X1's max clock speed in docked mode.

edit: but it has to be said that even with the reduced clock speed the Switch's X1 was still more powerful than the best Snapdragon at the time, and it had more modern API support as well. The X1 supports Vulkan 1.2 and the best snapdragon at the time only supported Vulkan 1.1 I think

 

[jaysius]

what is that weird narrative that the Switch wasn't high tech when it launched? it was literally more powerful than Qualcomm's flagship 8 series SoC at the time... it was basically among the most powerful portable hardware at the time of launch.

so Nintendo back then literally used the best chip on the market at the time of release. it would have been almost impossible to launch a more powerful console of that formfactor at the time, unless they would have used absolutely state of the art and unreleased Snapdragon chips that released later that year, and even then it wouldn't have been much of a difference.

honestly, the only issue I have with the Switch is that they chose to not use the X1's max clock speed in docked mode.

Used an older Tegra 1 when Tegra 2 would have been available to them.

The Nintendo Switch—the hybrid portable games console/tablet due for release in March 2017—will be powered by Nvidia's older Tegra X1 SoC and not its upcoming Tegra X2 "Parker" SoC as initially rumoured.


The use of Tegra X1, which also powers the Nvidia Shield Android TV, means the graphics hardware inside the Switch is based on Nvidia's older second-generation Maxwell architecture, rather than the latest Pascal architecture. While the two architectures share a very similar design, the Switch will miss out on some of the smaller performance improvements made in Pascal. It's not yet known whether the hardware in the Switch will be manufactured on the more power efficient 16nm process (as used by Pascal) or whether it will remain at 20nm.

When docked, the Switch's GPU runs at a 768MHz, already lower than the 1GHz of the Shield Android TV. When used as a portable, the Switch downclocks the GPU to 307.2MHz—just 40 percent of the clock speed when docked. Even more startling is that Nintendo is giving developers the option of ignoring the higher GPU clock speed entirely, running it at the lower clock speed even when docked. According the documents received by Digital Foundry, this is "the final specification for the combinations of performance configurations and performance modes that applications will be able to use at launch."

Whats this narrative of blindly defending Nintendo's cheapness? It didn't even bother to clock their Switch as fast as the Nvidia Shield Android TV WHILE DOCKED, so NO you can't say battery was a concern, and Nvidia isn't the most careful with clocks either.

 

[01011001]

Whats this narraritve of blindly defending Nintendo's cheapness?

the Tegra 2 was not made for mobile use. it is a chip designed and used in cars. it was never used by Nvidia or anyone else as a mobile chipset in any device. not even as a settop box or anything.

again, the Switch's version of the Tegra X1 was LITERALLY more powerful than any other brand's mobile SoCs at the time of launch. and supported Vulkan 1.2 when Snapdragons of the time only supported Vulkan 1.1... how is that not state of the art tech?

by that logic the PS4 had a super shit and outdated GPU, the PS5 has a shit and outdated GPU as well. you know that the best AMD PC GPU reaches 23,80TF right? in fact the PS5's GPU is less powerful than 7 out of the 11 GPUs AMD launched on PC
and let's not even start with CPUs, because the PS5 is a full gen behind and even then it's a mobile variant that's slower than the best Zen 2 CPUs.


the Switch could not have been more powerful unless they made it about 2x as pricey and most likely killed its battery life

 

[jaysius]

the Tegra 2 was not made for mobile use. it is a chip designed and used in cars. it was never used by Nvidia or anyone else as a mobile chipset in any device. not even as a settop box or anything.

again, the Switch's version of the Tegra X1 was LITERALLY more powerful than any other brand's mobile SoCs at the time of launch. and supported Vulkan 1.2 when Snapdragons of the time only supported Vulkan 1.1... how is that not state of the art tech?

by that logic the PS4 had a super shit and outdated GPU, the PS5 has a shit and outdated GPU as well. you know that the best AMD PC GPU reaches 23,80TF right? in fact the PS5's GPU is less powerful than 7 out of the 11 GPUs AMD launched on PC
and let's not even start with CPUs, because the PS5 is a full gen behind and even then it's a mobile variant that's slower than the best Zen 2 CPUs.


the Switch could not have been more powerful unless they made it about 2x as pricey and most likely killed its battery life

You know, other companies spend real money on R&D and come up with bespoke solutions instead of just scrounging for off the shelf. It was another cheap Nintendo move, that's the real reason they're being cheap, charging competitive pricing on off the shelf underwhelming tech, even for the time it was released. They should have spent the money on R&D and gave us a real machine.

 

[01011001]

You know, other companies spend real money on R&D and come up with bespoke solutions instead of just scrounging for off the shelf. It was another cheap Nintendo move.

why would Nintendo develop an expensive custom SoC when they can just use one of the best ones available and be done with it?
are you saying you are only allowed to be called state of the art of you waste money for no good reason?

also, I looked up the X2 real quick, and tbh... the difference wouldn't even be that big for a Switch with an X2.
the X2, at the clock speeds Nintendo would have needed to run it at to be able to not eat your battery within an hour would have most likely resulted in a performance benefit over the X1 of less than 20% if even that.

if you are actually splitting hairs here about 20% of performance, then how the hell do you even consider the PS5 and Series X current gen consoles, by that measure they would be last gen compared to what AMD has available technically as state of the art "stationary" consumer hardware performance is almost 2x as fast currently.
so thinking it's an argument against Nintendo to not use the absolute 100% best of the best, which isn't even proven to work well in a portable device, is laughable.
and thinking that Nintendo could have designed a better system at the time by developing a custom SoC is pure speculation.

there is no realistic scenario where the Switch could have been that more powerful to a degree where it actually would have made a big difference in game performance.
it was already more powerful than any mobile device of the time, what more can you ask?
no other console on the market was as state of the art in its sector as the Switch was in its sector at the time of release. and there are RTX3070 PCs out there that are smaller than either of the current gen consoles btw., so again by that logic the PS5 and Series X are severely underpowered. but expecting a console to use the most power hungry and expensive hardware possible is absolutely not a realistic expectation.

 

[onesvenus]

You know, other companies spend real money on R&D and come up with bespoke solutions instead of just scrounging for off the shelf. It was another cheap Nintendo move, that's the real reason they're being cheap, charging competitive pricing on off the shelf underwhelming tech, even for the time it was released. They should have spent the money on R&D and gave us a real machine.

That worked well for them last time they did (GC)

 

[THE DUCK]

Would be nice to see a series s level switch, that's for sure. And Nintendo actually releasing some current tech would open up some great possibilities for thier talented teams.

 

[Redneckerz]

Couldnt this just be the Jetson Orin NX:

Or the Orin Nano: 6x Cortex A78, 512/1024 Ampere CUDA cores.

 

[Tarin02543]

Does anyone know who prints the Tegra chips for Nintendo? TSMC?

 

[RoadHazard]

Does anyone know who prints the Tegra chips for Nintendo? TSMC?

The DS prints them.

 

[Raploz]

With 1024 CUDA cores (as the 8 core Orin NX 16GB), depending on clock speed, it could be as fast as a GTX 1050ti, which is around Steam Deck level, or faster, like a GTX 1650 with lower clocks. Not bad. The Orin chips also have more bandwidth than a Steam Deck (102GB/s vs 88GB/s).

 

[recma12]

In my head, I had a theory that Nintendo had orgially planned to release a Switch Pro in 2021.
But becase of the chip shortages they pivoted to a OLED + better speakers "mid gen refresh".

 

[ArtHands]

You know, other companies spend real money on R&D and come up with bespoke solutions instead of just scrounging for off the shelf. It was another cheap Nintendo move, that's the real reason they're being cheap, charging competitive pricing on off the shelf underwhelming tech, even for the time it was released. They should have spent the money on R&D and gave us a real machine.

Why the fuck will anyone want them to use exotic customized chip? We saw what happened the last time it happened. Even Xbox and PS5 are using modified version of PC parts and architecture now. It facilitate porting between platforms and hardware

Snapdragon is geared towards Android gaming, while Nvidia’s chip is geared towards gaming.

 

[tusharngf]

You know, other companies spend real money on R&D and come up with bespoke solutions instead of just scrounging for off the shelf. It was another cheap Nintendo move, that's the real reason they're being cheap, charging competitive pricing on off the shelf underwhelming tech, even for the time it was released. They should have spent the money on R&D and gave us a real machine.

Nvidia has a large RnD budget and Nintendo is smart in saving money. They will use that architecture and design with slightly lower clock speeds.

 

[Elysion]

if they actually clock it higher than these speeds then it could actually rival the Series S with 3.9TF if it uses the Tegra X1's max rated speed of 1.267ghz

Unfortunately, handheld mode will always be the baseline. If 1.4TF is the most we can expect there, then I’m not sure how long the Switch 2 will be able to receive 3rd party ports. I mean, would 1.4TF be enough for all those fancy Unreal Engine 5 features, for example? What’s the highest clocks in handheld mode we could realistically expect for the Switch 2?

The GPUs of the Steam Deck and the Aya Neo Air for example run at up to 1.6Ghz. I know that they‘re very different architectures from nvidia, but it’s still a possible point of comparison. There’s a pretty big gulf between the Switch’s 460Mhz in handheld mode and the 1.6Ghz of the Deck or the Aya Neo.

 

[Tarin02543]

I concur, the clock speeds will be the only custom aspects of the SoC.

 

[Soosa]

why would Nintendo develop an expensive custom SoC when they can just use one of the best ones available and be done with it?
are you saying you are only allowed to be called state of the art of you waste money for no good reason?

also, I looked up the X2 real quick, and tbh... the difference wouldn't even be that big for a Switch with an X2.
the X2, at the clock speeds Nintendo would have needed to run it at to be able to not eat your battery within an hour would have most likely resulted in a performance benefit over the X1 of less than 20% if even that.

if you are actually splitting hairs here about 20% of performance, then how the hell do you even consider the PS5 and Series X current gen consoles, by that measure they would be last gen compared to what AMD has available technically as state of the art "stationary" consumer hardware performance is almost 2x as fast currently.
so thinking it's an argument against Nintendo to not use the absolute 100% best of the best, which isn't even proven to work well in a portable device, is laughable.
and thinking that Nintendo could have designed a better system at the time by developing a custom SoC is pure speculation.

there is no realistic scenario where the Switch could have been that more powerful to a degree where it actually would have made a big difference in game performance.
it was already more powerful than any mobile device of the time, what more can you ask?
no other console on the market was as state of the art in its sector as the Switch was in its sector at the time of release. and there are RTX3070 PCs out there that are smaller than either of the current gen consoles btw., so again by that logic the PS5 and Series X are severely underpowered. but expecting a console to use the most power hungry and expensive hardware possible is absolutely not a realistic expectation.

They took tegra X1 and made it even worse. So that is not optimal choise either.

They could have made custom "x1" with fast cpu cores only (now they used slow cores), more memory bandwith and more gpu cores.

Even minor upgrades would have made it from "barely enough" to "decent".

But Nintendo likes to sell as weak hardware as possible, so their own games thrive on the systems, as their artistic style usually is more forgiving than games like witcher 3 etc.

Best android SoCs at the time didnt have active cooling like switch did, I remember doing some research back then and when adding active cooling, tegra x1 (the version switch have, not the full version) werent that impressive.

In my opinion the biggest issue were that while they had Switch sold at premium price, the parts and specs were low-mid end level.

it is like they saved for custom SoC research, but still sold it at price that would assume it had it.

Vita were full of custom stuff and tech, yet were almost half of the price of switch. Dock isnt that expensive either.

People should not defend weak hardware ever, only losers are us, gamers. PS4/xbone had shitty slow CPU, switch have slow SoC. Both are not good things from gamers perspective.

 

[THE DUCK]

In my head, I had a theory that Nintendo had orgially planned to release a Switch Pro in 2021.
But becase of the chip shortages they pivoted to a OLED + better speakers "mid gen refresh".

It will be interesting to find out eventually. And also if they then took that time to change to new hardware, and or switch 2 instead of pro. Guess we will see sometime in 2026 when it comes out, eh?

 

[Sosokrates]

mean, would 1.4TF be enough for all those fancy Unreal Engine 5 features, for example?

Nanite and lumen are scalable, so it might be possible, the switch 2s CPU is probably about 2-3 the power of the 8 core jags and ue5 is pretty CPU heavy so it might be possible.

 

[UnNamed]

I continue to read this thing about the Tegra X1 being old and underpowered when it was released.

True is that Switch have a shitty CPU, those A57 where underpowered at the release and even today Switch suffer for its CPU and memory.

But in terms of GPU, Tegra X1 was a wonderful GPU. In 2017, smartphones and tablets with Snapdragon, Exynos and even Apple chips had slightly better performance only on paper since they heavily suffer from throttling.

And after just 2 years, it's like saying a 3080 it's a shitty GPU after the release of the 4000 serie.

 

[recma12]

It will be interesting to find out eventually. And also if they then took that time to change to new hardware, and or switch 2 instead of pro. Guess we will see sometime in 2026 when it comes out, eh?

Also don't think Nintendo will release a new console in the next few years.
Think that ship has sailed.

A lot of Switch buyers are kids and their parents and they wouldn't like it if Nintendo was like:
"Remember the OLED Switch you got in 2021 to replace the Switch you bought in 2017? Yeah, that OLED thing is obsolete now as well, we have a yet another new Swithc out, have a nice day!"

I kinda think they will see the Switch generation out with the OLED. They are killing it with software anyways and still have a few aces up their sleeves (Gamecube on NSO?, some more remakes etc.) to get to 2025 without new hardware.

 

[Imtjnotu]

Switch 2 DLSS 3.5

 

[chromhound]

I hope they find a way to put more memory in those cartridges ...

 

[Calling 911 Melts Beams]

with all of this speed talk does that mean mario kart 9 will have 300cc mode?

 

[Polygonal_Sprite]

Remember when folks thought 3DS, or rather the unknown next gen DS (or game boy!) successor at the time, would be using Nvidia Tegra? It made perfect sense for a cheap, new mobile hardware to be the one they go for! Just because it makes sense doesn't mean Nintendo can't go lower still.

Nintendo are in a contract with Nvidia until 2037.

 

[Elysion]

I wonder if the next Switch will have an SSD, and whether it will be required to install (physical) games like on consoles. Because the reading speeds of Switch cartridges currently are pretty slow.

 

[Polygonal_Sprite]

I continue to read this thing about the Tegra X1 being old and underpowered when it was released.

True is that Switch have a shitty CPU, those A57 where underpowered at the release and even today Switch suffer for its CPU and memory.

But in terms of GPU, Tegra X1 was a wonderful GPU. In 2017, smartphones and tablets with Snapdragon, Exynos and even Apple chips had slightly better performance only on paper since they heavily suffer from throttling.

And after just 2 years, it's like saying a 3080 it's a shitty GPU after the release of the 4000 serie.

It was good in 2015 when Shield released by 2017 it was decent 2018+ and the explosion of mobile processors it became very, very poor.

This GPU will be 6x more powerful with DLSS 2.0 on top.