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[TyMiles2012]

This is why I was excited to see an Nvidia Tegra X1 in this system! The K1 was able to pull off 1TFLOP of performance at full power with proper cooling and bare metal. The X1 was supposed to be nearly double that in those conditions.

The Nvidia Shield systems are running Android, which are prone to severe overhead as the OS wasn't meant to be bare metal. You're getting raw performance from the Switch. At those clock speeds, the docked Switch should be VERY comparable to the Xbox One. When undocked, the CPU isn't underclocked, so game logic won't be a big deal, it would be all about lowering graphical settings. While PS4 and Xbox One are indeed close to bare metal, I've been hearing around that games still don't properly distribute workload evenly between cores in the SoC they're working with. I think NVN is supposed to make this much easier and more manageable. On a 720p display with a very high pixel density, rendering a game at 600p or even 540p would be like looking at a 900p game on a 40-60" 1080p screen. Most PS4 and Xbox One gamers are used to this. Devs can just compress textures, current systems I think try to go for uncompressed or nearly lossless, to fit the RAM requirements. Xbox One I think only has 5GB available for applications, and textures take up a surprisingly big amount of space.

 

[JaseMath]

The final version looks like an unfinished prototype of the dev version. ��

I don't get that design decision at all.

Because gloss is terrible. Do you know how many minutes I've spent wiping away grease and smudges and fingerprints from the face of my Wii U pro controller? DO YOU?!

I played a few rounds of Splatoon 2 and USF, honestly, it's fucking amazing. The large buttons and d-pad are very comfortable and give a nice feedback, the material on the grips is very good too. Of course, this is immensely subjective, but I didn't feel that at all.

 

[Astral Dog]

Something is not right,that says less bandwith than the Wii U rumored 35GB/s

 

[Jonneh3003]

This is why I was excited to see an Nvidia Tegra X1 in this system! The K1 was able to pull off 1TFLOP of performance at full power with proper cooling and bare metal. The X1 was supposed to be nearly double that in those conditions.

The Nvidia Shield systems are running Android, which are prone to severe overhead as the OS wasn't meant to be bare metal. You're getting raw performance from the Switch. At those clock speeds, the docked Switch should be VERY comparable to the Xbox One. When undocked, the CPU isn't underclocked, so game logic won't be a big deal, it would be all about lowering graphical settings. While PS4 and Xbox One are indeed close to bare metal, I've been hearing around that games still don't properly distribute workload evenly between cores in the SoC they're working with. I think NVN is supposed to make this much easier and more manageable. On a 720p display with a very high pixel density, rendering a game at 600p or even 540p would be like looking at a 900p game on a 40-60" 1080p screen. Most PS4 and Xbox One gamers are used to this. Devs can just compress textures, current systems I think try to go for uncompressed or nearly lossless, to fit the RAM requirements. Xbox One I think only has 5GB available for applications, and textures take up a surprisingly big amount of space.

This is good to hear, I don't know much about specs. I'm just happy to have Wii U quality games on a handheld.

 

[Peltz]

Comparing the dev Nintendo Switch Pro controller (left) to the final version (right).

Anyone else think the locations of the Plus, Minus, Home, and Share button are a bit awkwardly placed? That's a lot of surface area being taken up by "non-gameplay" buttons.

 

[OrbitalBeard]

Nah, people deserved to be called out on this forum when it comes to the "NX." Too much BS was going around for a whole year. With the "fan-fiction" thread you could say it's still going on.

The people that actually deserved to be called out were dealt with by the mods a month ago.

 

[Ryoku]

Eh... Not great, but not bad when all things considered. It's safe to say that the jump from Wii U to Switch is much greater than GC to Wii right?

For sure. Based on FLOPS alone, Switch is 3x Wii U. But there's more to it than that, so take it as you will.

 

[Skittzo0413]

Something is not right,that says less bandwith than the Wii U rumored 35GB/s

Nvidia's tile based rasterization is supposed to help with the bandwidth but keep in mind this info is from the July devkits, and the more recent ones (and final hardware) might be fairly different.

 

[TannerDemoz]

I can confirm this too now from two sources who work at Smyths.

- Delete. Wrong thread.

 

[casey_contra]

Not too specific to this thread, but maybe someone who has dug into the docs/has played the Switch can chime in...

Is there a way to power on the Switch from the detached Joy-Con setup or the pro controller? Maybe the home button?

 

[WiiRevolution1]

It's in the parental controls app.

In this leak? If so can you post pics since only the first two load for me in each folder before crashing my web browser.

If its not from this leak and from the parental video they did with the Bowsers then thats not really a Activity Log. Tho a few people were saying it in previous threads, the functions shown in that video were no where near as in depth as the current Activity Logs.

Also good news to see theme management. I know we've already seen two colors but hopefully they have a full theme shop day one. I need some Zelda menu music on there.

 

[Zedark]

I think the difference in resolution is simply the output of the dock. I doubt games are developed with both modes in mind, and so would take advantage of higher resolution textures etc while undocked.

It's simply an output. Think of the Xbox One S for example, it technically outputs at 4k but there's no real difference between playing Horizon 3 on an Xbox One S and an OG Xbox One. Playground games haven't had to change anything with regards to development for example.

Yes it's common knowledge to many on here that the Xbox One S can provide slight differences in terms of framerate due to the slightly different clocks of the hardware, and I'm not ruling out slightly different performance in terms of framerate between a game in portable mode and docked.

What I am ruling out however is extra development that focuses on specific optimizations while docked.



Who know's, if anything who's to say portable games might have slightly better performance while portable. It's pushing a lower resolution afterall.

Breath of the Wild will be a good game to test, and Digital Foundry will likely do comparisons between docked and portable.

Infact I'd bet my life on it that they take an area in the game that is subject to frame rate drops and then test while docked and portable to determine whether the performance is the same.

It's not simply an output, though. Every leaked spec sheet, whether Eurogamer or Foxconn, mentions that the Switch is 2.5 times more powerful when docked than when undocked. The Xbox One S is 1.06 or 1.07 times as strong. The Xbox One S outputs at 4K Only when connected to a 4K TV, and because the TV itself upresses the image. The Switch, however, renders at different resolutions inside the system itself, meaning that in undocked mode it produces 720p images and projects them on the screen, while in docked mode it produces 1080p images and projects them to the TV, which then resizes them to the native resolution of the TV itself. This, therefore, is where we see that we are not simply dealing with upressing: the Switch produces 720p Zelda in undocked mode, while only 900p Zelda in docked mode. On the other hand, Mario Kart does have a 1080p docked mode native resolution. Also, we know Splatoon runs at 720p in both docked mode and undocked mode. This would mean, if you were correct about there not being any specific development for both modes, that Splatoon is somehow malfunctioning by not producing native resolutions of 1080p like Mario Kart (you can check the resolutions in this Digital Foundry video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2r2-nVHZ_bQ&t=237s). So, this should basically confirm that there is in fact development on the docked and undocked modes separately, otherwise there is no reason whatsoever for different games to have different resolutions in docked mode.

Eh... Not great, but not bad when all things considered. It's safe to say that the jump from Wii U to Switch is much greater than GC to Wii right?

Yes, GC to WII was a factor 2 (6 GFLOPS to 12 GFLOPS).

 

[Zedark]

Sorry about the double post!

 

[Skux]

It's a sad state of affairs when we get the most information about this console from a leak, and not an official announcement.

 

[The Futurist]

Surprised by the amount of discussion.

It's Nintendo.

Did anyone really think they were going to come out with some high powered device?

I wish it was a $300 home console that was as powerful as a PS4 or Xbox One, but knowing Nintendo, even their $300 home console at this point would be significantly weaker than the current consoles.

I've gone back and forth since I pre-ordered. Will probably end up keeping it, but I know what I'm getting.

The Xbox One S outputs at 4K Only when connected to a 4K TV, and because the TV itself upresses the image.

This is not correct. The Xbox One S has its own upscaler. If you choose 1080 as the video output, the TV can handle the upscaling. If you choose 4K, the One S will.

 

[ArchedThunder]

This is from July 15th IIRC.

EDIT: here it is, July 15th, so this isn't the final devkit, makes some sense with some of the features too like disabled SD card slot... It tells us a lot of new stuff, but not the final configuration.

Weren't the specs supposedly bumped in the final devkits?

 

[Jonneh3003]

In this leak? If so can you post pics since only the first two load for me in each folder before crashing my web browser.

If its not from this leak and from the parental video they did with the Bowsers then thats not really a Activity Log. Tho a few people were saying it in previous threads, the functions shown in that video were no where near as in depth as the current Activity Logs.

Also good news to see theme management. I know we've already seen two colors but hopefully they have a full theme shop day one. I need some Zelda menu music on there.

Nah not in the leak, there's a cute video detailing this app:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03bAayBtcb0

Lets you see how long you've been playing games for.

 

[vern]

Surprised by the amount of discussion.

It's Nintendo.

Did anyone really think they were going to come out with some high powered device?

I wish it was a $300 home console that was as powerful as a PS4 or Xbox One, but knowing Nintendo, even their $300 home console at this point would be significantly weaker than the current consoles.

I've gone back and forth since I pre-ordered. Will probably end up keeping it, but I know what I'm getting.

I'm so glad it's not this.

 

[Skittzo0413]

It's not simply an output, though. Every leaked spec sheet, whether Eurogamer or Foxconn, mentions that the Switch is 2.5 times more powerful when docked than when undocked. The Xbox One S is 1.06 or 1.07 times as strong. The Xbox One S outputs at 4K Only when connected to a 4K TV, and because the TV itself upresses the image. The Switch, however, renders at different resolutions inside the system itself, meaning that in undocked mode it produces 720p images and projects them on the screen, while in docked mode it produces 1080p images and projects them to the TV, which then resizes them to the native resolution of the TV itself. This, therefore, is where we see that we are not simply dealing with upressing: the Switch produces 720p Zelda in undocked mode, while only 900p Zelda in docked mode. On the other hand, Mario Kart does have a 1080p docked mode native resolution. Also, we know Splatoon runs at 720p in both docked mode and undocked mode. This would mean, if you were correct about there not being any specific development for both modes, that Splatoon is somehow malfunctioning by not producing native resolutions of 1080p like Mario Kart (you can check the resolutions in this Digital Foundry video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2r2-nVHZ_bQ&t=237s). So, this should basically confirm that there is in fact development on the docked and undocked modes separately, otherwise there is no reason whatsoever for different games to have different resolutions in docked mode.

Actually I'm pretty sure the bolded is untrue.

The DF article is the only actual source which shows different performance for docked or undocked modes. The Foxconn leak does not say this.

Not that I don't believe it will be the case, as I think we've had insiders confirm it will be, but really the only outlet which has said claimed this is the case is Digital Foundry.

Weren't the specs supposedly bumped in the final devkits?

Supposedly the October devkits were stronger, I think according to LKD. Then again, Digital Foundry reported the clock speeds were less than half of what we see in the OP for the final device at launch, so who knows.

 

[Matt]

Surprised by the amount of discussion.

It's Nintendo.

Did anyone really think they were going to come out with some high powered device?

I wish it was a $300 home console that was as powerful as a PS4 or Xbox One, but knowing Nintendo, even their $300 home console at this point would be significantly weaker than the current consoles.

I've gone back and forth since I pre-ordered. Will probably end up keeping it, but I know what I'm getting.

"It's Nintendo" has little to do with it.

A Sony or MS console in the same form factor would be very similar.

 

[Hoo-doo]

Nah, people deserved to be called out on this forum when it comes to the "NX." Too much BS was going around for a whole year. With the "fan-fiction" thread you could say it's still going on.

Those threads have already moved on to a mythical 'Supplemental Computing Device' that the Switch will dock into, packing the equivalent of a GTX1060.

They can't help it, the poor bastards. They gotta dream.

 

[shotgunbob04]

The final version looks like an unfinished prototype of the dev version. 🤔

I don't get that design decision at all.

Probably to get away from the shiny toy plastic look that Wii U peripherals had. The matte finish in the final version matches the Switch, Joy-cons, and dock.

I'm not entirely sure why Nintendo went with a translucent look for the middle part of the controller, but my ideas for their thinking behind the decision include 1) the translucent plastic helps separate this controller from the Wii U's Pro controller, 2) being able to see some of the controller's internals give a "pro" feel to it, and 3) translucent controller are a classic Nintendo look from past consoles such as the N64 and GameCube.

 

[asagami_]

"It's Nintendo" has little to do with it.

A Sony or MS console in the same form factor would be very similar.

Or worse. Maybe not, because NVidia are the hardware wizards here.

 

[Jonneh3003]

In this leak? If so can you post pics since only the first two load for me in each folder before crashing my web browser.

If its not from this leak and from the parental video they did with the Bowsers then thats not really a Activity Log. Tho a few people were saying it in previous threads, the functions shown in that video were no where near as in depth as the current Activity Logs.

Also good news to see theme management. I know we've already seen two colors but hopefully they have a full theme shop day one. I need some Zelda menu music on there.

Sorry for not including this in my first reply, here's the activity log in the parental controls app:

 

[Zedark]

Weren't the specs supposedly bumped in the final devkits?

Might be. THere is the discussion of Eurogamer vs. Foxconn, where the former states to have the specs that people were briefed on by Nintendo and were supposedly the specs for launch, but after that the people behind the leak report said the Foxconn leak could be a newer dev kit. We simply don't know.

The Foxconn leak has specs for GPU that are 20% higher than Eurogamer's, and CPU specs that are much higher, so it is an interesting question to see answered in the end (when someone analyses the guts of the system).

 

[Fularu]

It's currently limited to USB2 (as the poster said). Perhaps Gigabit Ethernet will only be possible after the update.

I can't find any information saying that the USB3 connector on the dock is limited to USB2, since that would make very very little sense

 

[Glass Joe]

So no Activity Log confirmed.

Fuck.

Fucking Nintendo why?

Are you sure? They let you sort by month played... So what happens if you click on the games here? Maybe that gives more play info? We know the parental controls app does some tracking so I don't know that similar functionality isn't present.

 

[Polygonal_Sprite]

But you've just kinda shown my point. I've specifically said that the only difference between a game docked and portable will be nothing more than a different resolution and you've then gone and listed different resolutions for games depending on whether they are docked or portable.

I just can't see Nintendo offering significant graphical differences depending on whether you're docked or undocked, and there sure as hell won't be additional features depending on the mode either.

What are people expecting exactly? Low settings on portable and medium or high while docked lol? Exclusive games that take advantage of the hardware while docked? Additional features while docked? Higher framerates, so 30fps portable and 60fps docked? I can't see any of that happening...At all.

It's as simple as this. Higher resolution while docked, lower resolution while portable. The game is the same aside from that.

You're making the mistake of thinking the portable Switch visuals will simply be "Wii U graphics" then the same again at 900p or 1080p when docked. The Wii U GPU is from 2008 and incredibly outdated. Switch has a much, much more modern GPU with a much, much better CPU with an extra 2gigs of twice as fast RAM to work with compared to Wii U. Let's not judge Switch on Wii U ports and early footage of unfinished games.

 

[plank]

In base GFLOPS terms, the Switch is 157 GFLOPS undocked and 393 GFLOPS docked, when we assume Eurogamer's clocks are correct. There are other things, that are hard to quantify exactly, that improve the Switch relative to the PS4 and Xbox One, namely architecture (the Switch architecture is likely a bit more efficient for every FLOP it has) and a technique called half-precision computation, which has the potential to add quite a significant percentage. According to one very technically proficient GAFfer (Thraktor), this half-precision should be easily implementable, and one dev on GAF said that a gain of 54% could be had from this technique (though I am very sceptical that this will be achievable in every game, it just sounds too big not to have been used much earlier in console tech).

Anyway, you can assume the Switch is 1-1.5 times as powerful as the WiiU in undocked mode, and about 1/3 to 50% of Xbox One when disregarding the aforementioned half-precision calculations.

PS4 uses fp16 doesn't it? Are there any games for it that takes advantage?

 

[WordAssassin]

And yet some will claim it's not a portable console because Nintendo didn't said so

Nintendo have actually explicitly said it's a portable console. I'm pretty sure that's their exact wording too.

What they are trying to avoid, for marketing and customer confusion's sake, is people saying it is a handheld with TV out. You and I and everyone on GAF knows that's exactly what it is, but their marketing language is that it's a console first, and you can take it on the go with you.

 

[Malus]

Sorry for not including this in my first reply, here's the activity log in the parental controls app:

Cool, looks better than the Wii U log.

 

[Astral Dog]

Nvidia's tile based rasterization is supposed to help with the bandwidth but keep in mind this info is from the July devkits, and the more recent ones (and final hardware) might be fairly different.

Yeah i guess the things we have seen wouldn't be possible with lesser memory even on portable mode.
We haven't seen all the picture yet.

 

[OCD Guy]

Also, we know Splatoon runs at 720p in both docked mode and undocked mode. This would mean, if you were correct about there not being any specific development for both modes, that Splatoon is somehow malfunctioning by not producing native resolutions of 1080p like Mario Kart

I've not watched the video yet (will watch it shortly) but based on what you've said above, all that says to me is Splatoon 2 is running with a 720p native framebuffer and is then output at 1080p while docked and 720p while portable.

It's like a PS4 or Xbox One game, they all have native framebuffers, some are 900p for example, that is fixed (well not necessarily as we've seen with dynamic resolution). The only thing that changes is what resolution your console outputs at and therefore the resolution the hardware scaler scales the image to.

edit: Just watched that digital foundry video where he states the game is at 720p, and then goes on to say that they might be able to get to 900p or even 1080p while docked.

To me he's talking about the framebuffer, not the output. Splatoon 2 docked technically outputs at 1080p right now, but looks like ass because of the 720 framebuffer.

Remember the Xbox tweet Aaron Greenburg said something like "You realize you will see every game in 1080p as your output right?" Yes ofcourse tehncially the console is outputting 1080p resolution.

But the issue with the jaggies and looking worse on a 1080p tv is splatoon is using only a native framebuiffer of 720p hence why it looks bad.

If you took a game with a framebuffer of 900p and 1080p on Xbox One and PS4 respectively even with both consoles outputting 1080p the PS4 version would look "better", despite the fact both consoles our outputting 1080p.

 

[Inferno313]

Anyone else think the locations of the Plus, Minus, Home, and Share button are a bit awkwardly placed? That's a lot of surface area being taken up by "non-gameplay" buttons.

Where else would you put them, other than the center of the controller, and what would you put in their place?

 

[Jonneh3003]

I can't find any information saying that the USB3 connector on the dock is limited to USB2, since that would make very very little sense

It's true, USB3 capability is coming in a future system update. There's currently no reason to support USB 3.0 as the dock doesn't support external hard drives yet. That was also hinted to be coming in an update.

 

[RoadHazard]

Must not be 90's Kid™, bruh.

Translucence is love, translucence is life.

I am, actually! But still, eeeh. 2 throwback 4 me.

 

[Kikorin]

Do you know if will be possibile to put Switch in "sleep mode" also when docked? That's would be great, take the pad and play ad fast as unlock a smartphone.

I tried the suspend and resume on my Xbox One, but a lot of times it fail and I've to close and reopen the game, anyway when it works is great.

 

[Zedark]

PS4 uses fp16 doesn't it? Are there any games for it that takes advantage?

Only the PS4 Pro can use fp16 (that's where the 8.4 TFLOPS rumour originated from). Unless I am terribly mistaken, but I don't think I am.

 

[Jonneh3003]

Do you know if will be possibile to put Switch in "sleep mode" also when docked? That's would be great, take the pad and play ad fast as unlock a smartphone.

I tried the suspend and resume on my Xbox One, but a lot of times it fail and I've to close and reopen the game, anyway when it works is great.

Yes it is possible, there's a dedicated button on the UI for it.

We've seen them put the system into sleep mode using the Switch's physical standby button in a Japanese stream, only makes sense to have it in the UI too for when you're playing docked.

 

[Herb Alpert]

I'm disappointed by the lack of activity log :/ Or is it part of the infamous phone app?

 

[Joelstinton14]

Too much talk about specs and not enough talk for the UI



The home menu they've shown is a little different than the leak so all the other UI shots are probably a little different from the final build too, but I think it's looking pretty promising.

This may be an odd thing to say but i the first thing i notice is the Font. It is so similar to PS4/X1 its... well a little unnerving ha.

 

[The Futurist]

"It's Nintendo" has little to do with it.

A Sony or MS console in the same form factor would be very similar.

Both PSP and the Vita would disagree with you.

It is Nintendo, they haven't prioritized processing power in the long time.

The Switch is no different.

 

[AmyS]

Imagine Switch 2 / Super Switch / Switch Pro, or whatever, with PS4 performance in 2021 on 7nm using Nvidia's Volta architecture, 512 Cuda cores.

 

[Matt]

Both PSP and the Vita would disagree with you.

It is Nintendo, they haven't prioritized processing power in the long time.

The Switch is no different.

...how do they disagree with me?

Tell me what you think a Switch made by Sony or MS would be running on.

 

[LegendofLex]

Nintendo have actually explicitly said it's a portable console. I'm pretty sure that's their exact wording too.

It's actually quite clever, the way they're positioning it.

http://www.nintendo.com/switch/

Nintendo Switch is designed to go wherever you do, transforming from home console to portable system in a snap. So you get more time to play the games you love, however you like.

Dock your Nintendo Switch and play in HD. Heading out? Take your game with you in handheld mode.

Home console
Portable system
Handheld mode

It's all of these things.

 

[Jonneh3003]

I'm disappointed by the lack of activity log :/ Or is it part of the infamous phone app?

See post 826, it's in an Parental Controls app which I believe is different to the online app.

 

[Razgreez]

"It's Nintendo" has little to do with it.

A Sony or MS console in the same form factor would be very similar.

I'd argue the contrary. E.g. even though the vita was under-powered on the CPU side it at least had extra GPU cores to make up for that deficiency. It also had a "top of the range for its time" OLED screen. It was, at least in some ways, cutting edge tech.

Take for example that image of the iphone and switch. I find it entirely amusing since the iphone, which I presume to be an iphone 6s, is more powerful than the switch. And even were it underclocked and given a large enough battery to last as long as the switch it would still be more powerful and likely not require active cooling to boot.

The switch is just quite a lot of money for mostly old tech. And we can now even tell that the "HD Rumble" is nothing but your standard linear actuator which is found in most recently released phones or smart watches. No, I'm afraid that, like the wii U, the switch is underpowered and expensive. The difference here is that because Nintendo did not learn from MS and Sony about getting into bed with Nvidia, it's likely costing them more to produce the switch than they had expected and they're having to pass that cost on to the customer through their pricing strategy

 

[Herb Alpert]

Both PSP and the Vita would disagree with you.

It is Nintendo, they haven't prioritized processing power in the long time.

The Switch is no different.

sigh... Can't you see that the design of the switch is different from the DS or even the 3DS? They clearly went for the most powerful they could while staying affordable. If you see the console as a handheld, it is really good. Better than what the vita was when it released.
As a home console it is meh, but seriously, cut the bullshit.

 

[Matt]

I'd argue the contrary. E.g. even though the vita was under-powered on the CPU side it at least had extra GPU cores to make up for that deficiency. It also had a "top of the range for its time" OLED screen. It was, at least in some ways, cutting edge tech.

Take for example that image of the iphone and switch. I find it entirely amusing since the iphone, which I presume to be an iphone 6s, is more powerful than the switch. And even were it underclocked and given a large enough battery to last as long as the switch it would still be more powerful and likely not require active cooling to boot.

The switch is just quite a lot of money for mostly old tech. And we can now even tell that the "HD Rumble" is nothing but your standard linear actuator which is found in most recently released phones or smart watches. No, I'm afraid that, like the wii U, the switch is underpowered and expensive. The difference here is likely that because Nintendo did not learn from MS and Sony about getting into bed with Nvidia, it's likely costing them more to produce the switch than they had expected and they're having to pass that cost on to the customer through their pricing strategy

None of this is true.

 

[Oregano]

Both PSP and the Vita would disagree with you.

It is Nintendo, they haven't prioritized processing power in the long time.

The Switch is no different.

Okay lets wait for the Playstation Trinity to show what a real handheld looks like.