Reddit [verified] User shares NX info: x86 Architecture, Second screen support etc.

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Reading the last couple of pages and kind of excited for that old patent. I completely forgot about that VR tech through a normal display. So far Nintendo has patents for both AR and VR tech and they were all patented within the last few years or so.
 
Hoping they avoid 32mb edram then. The xbone had 32mb esram and that wasn't enough to saturate full 1080p for most games iirc. It was years ago but we had a discussion that if it was 64mb it would've been more than enough for 1080p. Regarding RAM I would rather they go with 6gb for example (Might be problematic with multiplats if the os takes 2-3gb worst case scenario) and use that bom for faster ram 180gb/s+ 4.5-5gb for ram is more than enough for Nintendo games, it's not like Mario or Metroid need to be open world. More bandwidth (if the gpu is capable of high bandwidth) would be my dream scenario for the new Nintendo system.

6GB of ram would actually cost more in the long run since you'll be using a weird bus configuration. It'll make the mobo messier than necessary.

I don't think a pessimist version of NX would use faster ram than DDR4 or more than 32mb of EDRAM.
 
If I had to guess, they probably mean 'same games, just performing better.' Or 'same games, just more particle effects or higher resolution.'

If true that is a non-factor and im not sure why people are so obsessed with it. More particle effects? Really? Any X1 , PS4 games you guys see have more particle effects due to hardware?
 
You can do both though. Nintendo only does one: changing their video gaming life. You can do that and be technologically competent. See: Apple.

Exactly. Why not both gif fits here.

Nintendo lost it's path I'd argue since optimal media came out, but that was a separate issue from power/features as it's storage. Yet be it power or storage the subject highlights how they aren't always the most savvy or worse their profit motives get in the way.

They are capable and Iwata is gone so I doubt they are interested in repeating his mistakes or naiveness. I love iwata but really didn't like how he had insane arguments that flew in the face of reality and history eventually. Company has the means and the money to make it happen, but resolve is a component they have never been good at.

Agree 100%.
 
Can yall please explain what is slightly better graphics than the PS4 exactly? What does that even mean?
Ok my theory imagine this:
Super-Mario-3D-World-6.jpg

10461051684_0a3325b6b1_o.jpg

720p60fps no aa.

Imagine the game using a PBR for a more Pixar like visual.
1080p60fps with at least fxaa
Levels are a little bit more open than the wii u version
Rework character models but this time render them in NURBS (harder to animate) but these games never ever had really good animations in comparison to a lot of games out now. Basically they would have this fidelity
latest

latest


We can get character models like that if Nintendo plays their cards right, they devote their resources elsewhere with these game (no dramatic cutscene closeups that needs to have realistic facial captures) It would sell a lot just based off pure Pixar like image aesthetics.
 
50W TDP peak. 35W for the SOC.

2 x 4 core module PUMA 1.8-2.0GHZ
512:40:16 GCN 1.2 gpu at 800 mhz. 800 gigaflops. Might be 10CUs 1 teraflop if they clock the cpu lower.
32mb Edram 256-512gb/s
8GB of DDR4 on a 128bit bus. 50 gb/s

This is the ABSOLUTE minimum that I think you can except from NX, if Nintendo decides to cheap out again.

Something like this was speculated a while back iirc. It wouldn't surprise me.
 
I truly believe GameCube was the "perfect" hardware solution for Nintendo. They didn't brute force anything, but the real world performance was so incredible. I think one key component that made that all possible was the Mosys 1T-SRAM(the CPU & GPU were no slouch either). I remember Factor 5 was praising how amazingly fast it was, saying that they were caught by surprise, because they were already feeding the system huge amounts of data, yet, the more they fed it, it just kept blazing through it all. The access speed was just incredibly fast, like cache, some said.

I'd like to see Nintendo pursue a similar solution again. Embedded memory on the GPU for Frame buffer and other stuff, and a sizeable super-fast system memory for graphical/low-latency tasks, with an additional large pool of slower memory to handle slower/higher latency stuff(streaming, sound, etc). This strategy allowed them to create affordable, yet, very high performance hardware. I know they were worried about the cost of such exotic memory going forward, but I'm sure it could be cheaper now, and they could probably get by with less total memory than current consoles(eg: 64MB embedded, 1GB fast mem1?, 4GB slow mem2).

It's not like those 8GB of current gen significantly boosted their performance, but - in theory - is a bottleneck since the disc would take a long time filling just a fraction of that. Apple's iPhone gets by with a seemingly meager amount of system memory compared to Android devices, because what they have is tuned for performance, rather than brute force. Not sure why Nintendo abandoned GameCube's exotic memory solution when it produced such great result for decent cost, and a lot less silicon. I'm as curious as you about whether such a design is feasible this time around.
I thought the wii us memory solution was actually very efficient and one of the reasons you get so good looking and performing games out of 176 glops.
 
50W TDP peak. 35W for the SOC.

2 x 4 core module PUMA 1.8-2.0GHZ
512:40:16 GCN 1.2 gpu at 800 mhz. 800 gigaflops. Might be 10CUs 1 teraflop if they clock the cpu lower.
32mb Edram 256-512gb/s
8GB of DDR4 on a 128bit bus. 50 gb/s

This is the ABSOLUTE minimum that I think you can except from NX, if Nintendo decides to cheap out again.

If I could have one thing from Nintendo besides x86, I'd beg for 8GB GDDR5 with no EDRAM/ESRAM.
 
If I could have one thing from Nintendo besides x86, I'd beg for 8GB GDDR5 with no EDRAM/ESRAM.

8GB of GDDR5X on a 128bit bus. SOC would be the same. Nintendo won't be using a bit fat SOC like Sony and MS.

The edram would help with emulating Wii-U titles tho.
 
Ok my theory imagine this:
Super-Mario-3D-World-6.jpg

720p60fps no aa.

Imagine the game using a PBR for a more Pixar like visual.
1080p60fps with at least fxaa
Levels are a little bit more open than the wii u version
Rework character models but this time render them in NURBS (harder to animate) but these games never ever had really good animations in comparison to a lot of games out now. Basically they would have this fidelity
latest

latest


We can get character models like that if Nintendo plays their cards right, they devote their resources elsewhere with these game (no dramatic cutscene closeups that needs to have realistic facial captures) It would sell a lot just based off pure Pixar like image aesthetics.
If Nintendo wants to get the graphical fidelity to that level they will have to switch up the artstyle a little bit. Even 3D World in 1080, AA wont look like that.
 
I'll probably get it for the sweet exclusives, but at this point I want a competitive system (comparable to whataver upgrade Sony has in mind) and 3rd party support to be an early adopter.
 
I see Mario games finally hitting a superb image quality largely because 3D Mario games are simple in look and rely much more heavily on its art style than bloating it with lots of stuff. With much more powerful hardware, they could easily have better AA and a lot of nice things that really cleans up the image quality.
 
CPU is 20-30% stronger than that of Xbox One.
GPU is 62-77% of Xbox one in raw specs. But due to newer architecture most likely 80-90%.
Ram amount is the same. So porting should be quick.
Total system bandwidth should be similar to Xbox one.


This is the absolute minimum that I would expect from Nintendo.

Why would they pair a relatively capable CPU with such a weak GPU?
 
Reading the last couple of pages and kind of excited for that old patent. I completely forgot about that VR tech through a normal display. So far Nintendo has patents for both AR and VR tech and they were all patented within the last few years or so.

Wait I missed this. What do you mean?
 
I wonder if there aren't any dev kits because it's mostly just SDKs like developing for android and iOS.
Pretty sure there aren't any android dev kits and that's kind of what Nintendo said they were going for.
Or at least maybe they're aren't any dev kits out yet until the reveal.
I think that would explain a lot of issues we've heard. Why different sources say different things and why we have no idea what the controller is.
 
Why would they pair a relatively capable CPU with such a weak GPU?

The answer is that PS4 and Xbox One paired a relatively capable GPUs with a weak CPU.

PS3 and 360 the cpus used more than half of the TDP.

Xb1 and PS4 the cpus used like 1/6 of the TDP.

The configuration that I gave would have the NX CPU use 1/3 of the TDP.
 
If Nintendo wants to get the graphical fidelity to that level they will have to switch up the artstyle a little bit. Even 3D World in 1080, AA wont look like that.

This. Mario Kart 8 is a far better comparison. Much better art direction than 3D World. It's night and day. Those sorts of visuals in a 3D Mario game at 1080p60fps.....lawd jesus.
 
RAM is one area where the two form factors will necessarily differ. It would make sense to change the allocation between platforms. Exactly how they would differ depends on how the OS is architected.



Iwata used iOS and Android, two platforms which share libraries between various form factors, as an example of what they want their software ecosystem to be like.


Why would the RAM allocation need to differ between the two? Why arbitrarily take more RAM for the OS that could be used by games just because it's a home console instead of the handheld? This is assuming there's feature parity between the two.
 
Captain Toad imo looks quite a bit better than 3D world. Probably because it doesn't have to render 4 playable characters.
 
Still dont know, even ratchet and clank is not close to that. It looks good in screenshots,actually playing it, its a bit different

Well, Ratchet and Clank have also been putting in more graphical stuff as they've given up on 60fps for weird reasons.

Mario is much more simple and clean, even Mario Galaxy with its really good art style is simple and clean. On Dolphin, Mario Galaxy looks crazy good. Though because of the clean art style I could see them adding in a bit more bells and whistles with effects.

Mario Kart 8 is a good example too. It's a different art style but still maintains a simple and clean look while adding in some bells and whistles.
 
Why would the RAM allocation need to differ between the two? Why arbitrarily take more RAM for the OS that could be used by games just because it's a home console instead of the handheld? This is assuming there's feature parity between the two.

Yeah this doesn't make sense unless the OS offers features that differ on console. The only ones I can think of are maybe those revolving around having multiple profiles, which a handheld wouldn't have (Nintendo seems pretty adamant about consoles = for families, handhelds = for individuals), but even then if you can go with a smaller OS footprint why not?
 
The answer is that PS4 and Xbox One paired a relatively capable GPUs with a weak CPU.

PS3 and 360 the cpus used more than half of the TDP.

Xb1 and PS4 the cpus used like 1/6 of the TDP.

The configuration that I gave would have the NX CPU use 1/3 of the TDP.

But they wouldn´t need such a "strong" cpu in that system? Doesn´t sound like a very well balanced system either.
 
I wonder if there aren't any dev kits because it's mostly just SDKs like developing for android and iOS.
Pretty sure there aren't any android dev kits and that's kind of what Nintendo said they were going for.
Or at least maybe they're aren't any dev kits out yet until the reveal.
I think that would explain a lot of issues we've heard. Why different sources say different things and why we have no idea what the controller is.

There are no android dev kits because computers can usually emulate them pretty well or you test on the actual hardware. You dev for last years version to work on next year's version and then patch it up once it's out. At least that's what some smaller devs do.
 
CPU is 20-30% stronger than that of Xbox One.
GPU is 62-77% of Xbox one in raw specs. But due to newer architecture most likely 80-90%.
Ram amount is the same. So porting should be quick.
Total system bandwidth should be similar to Xbox one.

Overall this system is probably a 5-7 times more powerful than Wii-U. Which is enough to run Wii-U titles in 1080p 60fps with some room for improved graphics.
Ports from Xbox One and PS4 will have lower resolution / paired down effects, but the gap from PS4 to Xbox one would be bigger than from Xbox One to NX. OS would run smoother than PS4 / Xbox One due to the stronger CPU.

System form factors would be pretty big due to the DDR4 ram. Somewhere between PS4 and Wii U in size.

This is the absolute minimum that I would expect from Nintendo.

This isn't bad you're just using a lower gpu than I hope or think they need to get away with the porting claim that's been floating around. I say it has to be stronger I think people said the basis of the gpu in x1 is about a 7750 in terms of performance and real world power. People think of marketing numbers too much cause 7850/7870 is the ps4. They both actually do better in certain games than a pc using them. Both use low level apis. Have to say I'm glad to see someone else was cynical enough to mention the power ever actually being used by devs (not necesarily you), this is how a shitty sdk/tools hits you nintendo. They don't need other devs an fcat like analysis tool is all they need and they can test games. Again no clue how it works cause the info just don't exist in certain parts outside of the "Dream Team" hope we don't get another cruisin port situation.

I love the numbers but low level apis are changing that. If the GPU is equal now espcially in certain examples we have like a RTS or openworld the cpu will be the bottleneck unless the gpu is shit which they can't do if they want PS4 titles. Nintendo has one advantage we can't account for and that they are notorious for altering what they get. Of the big 3 there's no question who loves to do this regardless of the power that is there. They do it just cause they can and cause quite frankly why not improve on the past, we got pentium 2s improving on old. The current GCN improvements which now in low level api games and tech demos has proved compute processing is hella fucking strong. Vulkan can make 120$ cpu compete with 350-450$ dollar one. Xbox one is proof you need decent hardware to reach certain performance targets otherwise clear sacrifices will be made. Nintendo can be blamed for weak hardware but against things it was targeted again they rarely fall short. For the record we have threads of plenty doubting WiiU could pull of mario kart like it did, the public has spoken haters be damned. Quantum break is proof you can have something like that and end up with a bad pc port where even things in SLI are having trouble at 1080p/1440p/4k staying in tune.

If it's polaris and it's on Vulkan, vulkan variant alone will do more and I think people will notice benefits it's fps averages or just strongers assets. Most people need to remember X1 is having trouble matching PC or PS4. Nintendo only appeasing MS devs. Ubisoft and EA teams are always greedy if the power is there. How can you tell look at the current NFS from a year ago. If it's another WiiU we will have this machine and end up with things like NFS:Most Wanted coming out but not Project Cars. For the record that game is a total system crusher, leave mechanics out of tech debate plz. Start adding cars on big races at night will crush even the best pcs, see how this thing performs in that scanerio. Just cause 3 is another port that exists on other 2 consoles and pc that shows you need a good cpu, . Nintendo has plenty of games now or in the future that they should know how well things perform. Port talk gets me going as you can see. There's so much there to that rumor then how badly nintendo will still screw up their online platform most likely.

Someone said 7950 is 3+ TFLOP machine, sounds about right in my experience can post 4850,7950 and 970 just to relate things. 7950 oced can beat a stock 7970, Most of the GCN stuff we talked about old and newer gcn is a decent improvement.. I buy enough cards including a 380x and a 270x, Nintendo isn't using old GCN, again they'd be dumb and more so it wouldn't fit in to the new system to do so and they are power watt gluttons.

2.5 Tflops and above on those architectures is a good pipe dream it's just a bit shy of where the price, size, and tdp need to be. I like this pessimist thing it's my ideal outside of the ram. I'm with others and to drop hints as I have in the past. Original GC all embedded ram, was suppose to be 64MB total not what we got. Too fucking pricy then and it wasn't suppose to be a midgrade 750 powerpc. Esram is nice and a little predictable but nintendo already knows it's not enough. This is there little niche they will get what they want especially if they stop holding on to the past. You don't need that config even for BC. 1.2-2.3 Tflops on a modern architecture is a good ballpark.

I'm accounting for performance through the magic of a good architrecutre, not low balling the spec, and using a low level api which at this point is almost required just to claim certain performance aspects. Whether demos and games show it will always be the case, but to say it don't happen at this point even on two weak systems just means you weren't paying attention. One thing I do get say about this gen or the newer apis much more improvement more quickly than I felt we saw till the end of last gen. Resogun like mario kart is what I'm trying to get at too many people want to talk about drive club, the division, or the order for good reason too.

Nintendo is on the upside of 2.5 years of tech changes software and hardware that they decided not to go with until whatever this thing is we will see soon.
 
Captain Toad imo looks quite a bit better than 3D world. Probably because it doesn't have to render 4 playable characters.

I think it's the combo of a more adjustable camera, the levels being much smaller, and the game just being unique looking in general whereas 3D World was a direct sequel to 3D Land and draws inspiration from the 2D games.

Mario Kart 8 looks better in terms of art because the huge twisty turny tracks and detailed backgrounds. Unless 3D Mario goes open world again I don't think it can have quite the same effect.

I still think 3D World is a really good looking game btw. If they move away from the 'blocky' aesthetic of 3D World/Land and return to something more like Galaxy (which I think has the best presentation in the series) they can wow some people.
 
50W TDP peak. 35W for the SOC.

2 x 4 core module PUMA 1.8-2.0GHZ
512:40:16 GCN 1.2 gpu at 800 mhz. 800 gigaflops. Might be 10CUs 1 teraflop if they clock the cpu lower.
32mb Edram 256-512gb/s
8GB of DDR4 on a 128bit bus. 50 gb/s

This is the ABSOLUTE minimum that I think you can except from NX, if Nintendo decides to cheap out again.

That's actually very, very close to my original guess, based on the assumption that Nintendo may want low (but not super low) price point and tdp. Here, i wrote this a few months ago:

NX Home
AMD 64-bit ARM-based SoC 28nm
CPU: ARMv8 Cortex-A57/A72 big.LITTLE 6 core 2GHZ(+2 core A53 for OS)
GPU: custom AMD 28nm (10CU, 640 stream processors, 800MHZ, 1024 GFLOPs)
RAM: 32MB eDRAM+8GB DDR3 (2GB for OS)
249$
Holiday 2016
Obviously i'd hope that if LCGeek reports are correct and the CPU is noticeably faster than what the Xbox One has, the GPU would be noticeably faster as well. And considering what (according to those PS4K rumors) Sony can fit into a 499$ price point, maybe there's a good margin to beat the PS4 at 299$ if Nintendo cares less about tdp this time, considering how it went with the Wii U.

Did? That game hasn't been released. In fact it's been in development for about 4 years.
They actually made that real time footage a couple of years ago though.
 
50W TDP peak. 35W for the SOC.

2 x 4 core module PUMA 1.8-2.0GHZ
512:40:16 GCN 1.2 gpu at 800 mhz. 800 gigaflops. Might be 10CUs 1 teraflop if they clock the cpu lower.
32mb Edram 256-512gb/s
8GB of DDR4 on a 128bit bus. 50 gb/s

This is the ABSOLUTE minimum that I think you can except from NX, if Nintendo decides to cheap out again.
Reasonable (as already discussed to hell and back in other threads).

In a parallel universe, people are getting 2x A72 @ 2.5GHz @ 20nm in $170 phones ;p
 
8GB of GDDR5X on a 128bit bus. SOC would be the same. Nintendo won't be using a bit fat SOC like Sony and MS.

The edram would help with emulating Wii-U titles tho.

What about the rumored specs from 2014? :)
http://gaminrealm.com/2014/01/21/nintendo-next-gen-system-specs/
FUSION TERMINAL

GPGPU: Custom Radeon HD RX 200 GPU CODENAME LADY (2816 shaders @ 960 MHz, 4.60 TFLOP/s, Fillrates: 60.6 Gpixel/s, 170 Gtexel/s)
CPU: IBM 64-Bit Custom POWER 8-Based IBM 8-Core Processor CODENAME JUMPMAN (2.2 GHz, Shared 6 MB L4 cache)
Co-CPU: IBM PowerPC 750-based 1.24 GHz Tri-Core Co-Processor CODENAME HAMMER
MEMORY: 4 Gigabytes of Unified DDR4 SDRAM CODENAME KONG, 2 GB DDR3 RAM @ 1600 MHz (12.8 GB/s) On Die CODENAMED BARREL
>802.11 b/g/n Wireless
>Bluetooth v4.0 BLE
>2 USB 3.0
>1 Coaxial Cable Input
>1 CableCARD Slot
>4 Custom Stream-Interface Nodes up to 4 Wii U GamePads or 4 DSc
>Versions with Disk Drive play Wii U Optical Disk (4 Layers Maximum), FUSION Holographic Versatile Disc (HVD) and Nintendo 3DS Card Slot.
>1 HDMI 2.0 1080p/4K Port
>Dolby TrueHD 5.1 or 7.1 Surround Sound
>Inductive Charging Surface for up to 4 FUSION DS or IC-Wii Remote Plus Controllers
>Two versions: Disk Slot Version with 60 Gigs of Internal Flash Storage and Diskless Version with 300 Gigs of Internal Flash Storage.


“Nintendo has already began making demo software for the targeted prototype hardware in efforts to curb the Wii U mistake in the software pipeline (they started creating software after prototyping and were unable to give major software push the first two years as a result). Nintendo plans to make most of the software prototypes into games and applications around the launch of the unit.”
 
Nintendo software may be technically competent, but their hardware definitely isn't.

This is a common misconception. Nintendo actually produce very good hardware for what they are targeting.

It's not like they were aiming to produce a powerhouse and accidentally made a WiiU. A Wii-backwards compatible, Xbox 360 level, low wattage box is exactly what they set out for.

Their decision to target that spec may not have been competent, but that is another debate.
 
Also it remains to be seen how the wii u version will actually stack up to this. If so, the NX version will be truly spectacular.

That camera being so zoomed out and the grass everywhere is probably covering up some rather nasty textures lol if the game awards footage is anything to go by.
 
To be fair to 3D Zelda games, they run at 30fps and they put more into everything else. 3D Zelda is the game that usually shows off what their system is capable of (regardless of art style).
 
Mmmh, I suppose your team / your friends' team (can't actually remember specifically) didn't ask for the handheld dev kit due to, maybe, developing a game that can't be scaled down for the handheld then? Just suppositions :P

Thanks for the answer.

I'm wondering if HH dev kits are even out to devs yet, though. Do you think the HH could come this year?
 
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