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StarTopic Future Nintendo Hardware & Technology Speculation & Discussion |ST| (Read the staff posts before commenting!)

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Dakhil said:
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In terms of the type of CPU, GPU, RAM, and internal flash storage, no.

The only thing about the CPU, GPU, and RAM that can be changed with 6 additional months is how high or how low the frequencies are.

And the only thing about the RAM and the internal flash storage that can be changed with 6 additional months is the capacity (i.e. the amount).
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that being said, all that is likely locked down at this point, aside from possible minor tweaks.
 
Hermii said:
The only thjng there that's slightly controversial is the camera thing. Everything else seems very likely.
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Only because he’s so vague. He made a Video on the specs before and he got almost nothing right.10 SM GPU and 78 AE alone are already a red flag. Not to speak of ridiculous low storage and RAM.
4JBI4pm.png
 
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heyonme said:
https://news.samsung.com/global/sam...ce-ai?utm_source=nr_twitter&utm_medium=social
Now just who is this mysterious customer...
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I remember that there was a talk last year about a Samsung employee working on a Nintendo game card.
However, what is mentioned there is the eMMC protocol, which is different from the NVMe protocol used by SD Express.

SAMSUNG SDS KOREA · Full-time
Jul 2022 - Sep 2022 · 3 mos South Korea · On-site
"To collaborate Nitendo Game Card project with DSR system LSI member for eMMC protocol test case development and verification from hostlevel."
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Discostew said:
Samsung 8nm is the lowest cost/transistor node on the market? Unless I'm understanding this wrong, given the 1536 CUDA cores and the analysis that TSMC 4N is cheaper per chip, something doesn't add up with one of those testimonials...
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The second testimonial which is the only one that seeems to know what they're talking about, doesn't actually say it's 8nm, at least in the transcribed portion.

Edit: and all our math about prices is napkin math at best, as we dont know the full picture of what Nvidia/ Nintendo would pay.
 
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BowserIsMyFather said:
Is 8nm the end of the world though?
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Dosent make sense, unless they made ampere a hell of a lot more efficient and at that point it woudnt matter to much.

Regular ampere likely woudnt be able to hit ideal power efficiency clocks at that chip size within the expected handheld power budget.
 
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8nm is probably not happening (I hope it’s not happening because it would kill battery life, performance, or both) and 8gb is definitely not happening because it would kill 3rd party support.
 
I'm sceptical of TSMC 4N being cheap, Nvidia swerved to Samsung because of the costs of TSMC 7nm, and I didn't think 4N was meant to be significantly cheaper per transistor than 7, but Samsung wasn't a realistic option for Nvidia the next time around.
 
thegodsend said:
I can't watch it, anything interesting or more or less a summary of what we've been discussing here already?
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He thinks its 8nm. he has one Nvidia source saying 8nm is cheapest per transistor and another Nvidia source that was allegedly involved saying what we already know about T239 is final. Second source doesnt say anything about Node.
 
Despite everything, I made my peace with 8nm, I think 4N is more likely, but if Nintendo manages to deliver clocks and battery at Switch V1 level with 8nm it would be a great console, perhaps not far ahead of what the Switch was in its time, but I believe it's enough to have beautiful Nintendo games and even greater third party support.
 
LinkURL said:
Despite everything, I made my peace with 8nm, I think 4N is more likely, but if Nintendo manages to deliver clocks and battery at Switch V1 level with 8nm it would be a great console, perhaps not far ahead of what the Switch was in its time, but I believe it's enough to have beautiful Nintendo games and even greater third party support.
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It would just be a completely baffling decision to run it at those clocks, that or our assumptions about ideal efficiency clocks are dead wrong.
 
LinkURL said:
Despite everything, I made my peace with 8nm, I think 4N is more likely, but if Nintendo manages to deliver clocks and battery at Switch V1 level with 8nm it would be a great console, perhaps not far ahead of what the Switch was in its time, but I believe it's enough to have beautiful Nintendo games and even greater third party support.
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8gb is also just not happening if they care at all about 3rd party support there real big games will probably take longer to come out, and they need games for there core audience during those times (not aa stuff for kids like Peach’s show time, actually big games)
 
Hermii said:
It would just be a completely baffling decision to run it at those clocks, that or our assumptions about ideal efficiency clocks are dead wrong.
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Considering that I really believed in the chance of using the TX2 on the Switch 1, or even overclocking the TX1 above 1GHz on the dock, I don't have such high expectations about that.
Clock with peak efficiency is also just that, a peak, it doesn't mean that running below it doesn't save battery, but I still think our best argument is in favor of higher clocks.
 
LinkURL said:
Clock with peak efficiency is also just that, a peak, it doesn't mean that running below it doesn't save battery, but I still think our best argument is in favor of higher clocks.
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Thats true, but it doesnt adress the argument of why they didnt go with a smaller, cheaper chip running at peak efficiency.
 
Hermii said:
Thats true, but it doesnt adress the argument of why they didnt go with a smaller, cheaper chip running at peak efficiency.
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Maybe they really wanted the extra RT and Tensor cores that would come with 12SMs, maybe they plan to upgrade to a better node with better clocks in the future.
 
That whole Samsuns SD card thing has enough "custom" wording in it to wake up the "proprietary" fear in me. If it's even for Nintendo, of course.
 
As Not-An-Expert®, is compatibility with regular, slower micro SD cards feasible in the same card slot? As in, could one sacrifice performance and use regular, rat-faced commoner micro SD cards if they want? If so, that provides the most flexibility. Sure, enthusiasts and the like want the best performance and will pay a premium for it. Then eventually, unless Samsung/Nintendo get greedy, the price will drop. Others merely want the extra storage and would be happy spending peanuts on a any ol' micro SD card or will merely transfer the one they have in their Switch currently. Maybe they upgrade later when it's convenient and cost efficient to do so.

Fortunately, unlike the PS Vita 1000 model, Switch 2 will have internal storage so a memory card isn't required for merely saving progress. That mitigates the main issue with anything "custom" or "proprietary". Initial higher cost for SD Express micro SD cards would still suck (particularly for cheapos like me), but at least it isn't technically mandatory.
 
I could see Nintendo going with less RAM or other lower specs and still being fine in theory. They could still get many last gen ports that are more than just AA titles. The only real thing that speaks against it, is that I think people have higher standards these days.

A new game on new hardware having ~30fps + dynamic resolution might have been acceptable a few years ago or on an device now mainly seen as a handheld like the Switch, but I think now the overall perception would be more negative. Where as People said that Witcher 3 was a miracle port a few years ago, now a graphically heavily compromised version of let’s say Final Fantasy 16 on Switch 2 would have people asking why this game looks so bad if they can play a much better version of the game on all the other PC Handhelds or just play it on their aging base PS4 and have a similar experience.

Especially when Nintendo wants to market Switch 2 as Home console too, I think it has to be at least more powerful than last gen in the sense that games get higher resolution and such.
 
Langstonboy said:
Samsung 8nm node huge, inefficient, and has somewhat shitty yields.
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Stinky Horse said:
And I've seen enough arguments for why Nintendo would never go for a 20nm stock TX1 for NX that I don't trust anything people write here.
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Forgive me if this question has been asked before, or if it's silly given my lack of knowledge on these subjects, but I remember Nintendo being able to negotiate a good deal with Nvidia for TX1 because it was a technology already used by the Nvidia Shield but which lacked an outlet on the market. It was probably an interesting opportunity for Nintendo.

So the question I have is whether it's possible that Nintendo and Nvidia have negotiated a specific deal with Samsung that somehow, for similar reasons, makes Samsung 8nm particularly attractive in terms of cost, much more so than we assume.

But maybe what I'm saying is totally far-fetched and things do not work that way at all.
 
boodream said:
Forgive me if this question has been asked before, or if it's silly given my lack of knowledge on these subjects, but I remember Nintendo being able to negotiate a good deal with Nvidia for TX1 because it was a technology already used by the Nvidia Shield but which lacked an outlet on the market. It was probably an interesting opportunity for Nintendo.

So the question I have is whether it's possible that Nintendo and Nvidia have negotiated a specific deal with Samsung that somehow, for similar reasons, makes Samsung 8nm particularly attractive in terms of cost, much more so than we assume.

But maybe what I'm saying is totally far-fetched and things do not work that way at all.
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yes its possible. But even then, I dont think Samsung woud reccomend using 8nm for a handheld, they would sell them one of their higher end nodes.

I think all of the node/ price calculations in this thread is crude napkin math and should be taken with some salt. We cant possibly take every factor into account without inside knowledge.
 
8nm in 2025 💀


If it's true I'm going to go PC handheld then unfortunately. While the 1st party games are going to be great no doubt, it's going to be a slightly better situation than the current Switch when it comes to 3rd party support. But it's still going to be really bad to where people are still going to have to plead for ports from 3rd party developers for the entire generation. Honestly the constant dreaming of what ports could come way past their release dates on other platforms is something I can no longer tolerate
 
Switch 2 launching March 2025 with Samsung 8nm would mean it was launching 4.3 years after its competition (PS5 and Xbox Series) with a worse node. Has this ever happened before in console history?
 
Stinky Horse said:
Yeah that's the part I'm doubting for the reason I gave above.
And I've seen enough arguments for why Nintendo would never go for a 20nm stock TX1 for NX that I don't trust anything people write here.
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I agree with this on a superficial level even if it might be a false equivalency. Back then in 2016 people in the speculation threads had convinced themselves that a fabled Pascal or X2 chip made more sense than a stock X1 chip. Then around 2020 there was this idea floating around that it made financial sense for Nintendo to stop producing the regular Switch as it was not cost effective anymore, a console they're still producing in 2024. And now I'm seeing a similar pattern with 8nm vs 4N, that somehow the option we don't want is also the more expensive so Nintendo won't do it. We seem very good at convincing ourselves that the thing we want actually make all the financial sense in the world and being proven wrong in retrospect.
 
boodream said:
Forgive me if this question has been asked before, or if it's silly given my lack of knowledge on these subjects, but I remember Nintendo being able to negotiate a good deal with Nvidia for TX1 because it was a technology already used by the Nvidia Shield but which lacked an outlet on the market. It was probably an interesting opportunity for Nintendo.

So the question I have is whether it's possible that Nintendo and Nvidia have negotiated a specific deal with Samsung that somehow, for similar reasons, makes Samsung 8nm particularly attractive in terms of cost, much more so than we assume.

But maybe what I'm saying is totally far-fetched and things do not work that way at all.
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I think the 'good deal' is now thought to be around Nvidia's software support rather than them the idea of them giving the chips away for practically nothing, which never made sense when we're talking 35+ Million chips.
Although I don't know if we have any idea of what kind of deal Nvidia got with Samsung for 8nm, but it was presumably good enough to not go with TSMC's better 7nm offering, which is what I was alluding to earlier.


I think the root of the 8nm idea is that this was never originally planned as a product coming 8 whole years after the Switch. And so far there's no evidence that they've migrated to a newer chip in the mean time, which I guess is still a possibility if all they're making is devkits right now.
 
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More research should be done on Google Tensor G2 chip as it's the closest approximation of the T239 in some key respects:
  • Arm Cortex-A78
  • Samsung 5nm process node
 
I think it's fun to discuss the production node because we don't have anything else's the T239 specs are quite clear and whatever happens, the system will be around PS4 levels with some extra bells and whistles.
The moment we see games, I don't think production node will matter a lot anymore and we treat the topic as more important than it actually is.
One might be the cheaper option than the other, in any case both would be a powerful system that will deliver what we expect. It's not like 4nm will be a great hardware and 8nm will be shit....
 
Stinky Horse said:
I think the root of the 8nm idea is that this was never originally planned as a product coming 8 whole years after the Switch. And so far there's no evidence that they've migrated to a newer chip in the mean time, which I guess is still a possibility if all they're making is devkits right now.
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An 8-year life cycle is certainly a long time. However, I'm not sure it's as outrageously long as a lot of people are saying at the moment. The PS4 and Xbox One had a 7 year lifecycle before the release of the next generation. 7 years is less than 8 years, but it's not dramatically less.

I know Sony and Microsoft release midgen revisions, but insofar as they don't offer any exclusive games and the entire user base can access all the games, I don't see how a possible Switch Pro, if it had existed, would have made any difference to the fact that Nintendo, like third-party publishers, still had to run games on the original model.
 
lexony said:
I could see Nintendo going with less RAM or other lower specs and still being fine in theory. They could still get many last gen ports that are more than just AA titles. The only real thing that speaks against it, is that I think people have higher standards these days.

A new game on new hardware having ~30fps + dynamic resolution might have been acceptable a few years ago or on an device now mainly seen as a handheld like the Switch, but I think now the overall perception would be more negative. Where as People said that Witcher 3 was a miracle port a few years ago, now a graphically heavily compromised version of let’s say Final Fantasy 16 on Switch 2 would have people asking why this game looks so bad if they can play a much better version of the game on all the other PC Handhelds or just play it on their aging base PS4 and have a similar experience.

Especially when Nintendo wants to market Switch 2 as Home console too, I think it has to be at least more powerful than last gen in the sense that games get higher resolution and such.
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In fact, I don't think so, this generation has so far been marked by graphics that are not impressive, and a large part of the public would accept PS4-level graphics without any major problems.
I believe that a port of FFXVI for a machine with, say, 2.4 TFLOPs with DLSS, would be more beautiful today than The Witcher 3 was on Switch in 2019.
 
LinkURL said:
In fact, I don't think so, this generation has so far been marked by graphics that are not impressive, and a large part of the public would accept PS4-level graphics without any major problems.
I believe that a port of FFXVI for a machine with, say, 2.4 TFLOPs with DLSS, would be more beautiful today than The Witcher 3 was on Switch in 2019.
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Time has nothing to do with how beautiful a game is (the only reason some games looked in their times better than today is because they were optimized for CRT). Even though I agree that PS4 graphics looks still pretty decent in comparison to the next generation and Switch 2 will allow especially 1st party devs to reach fantastic fidelity, even if it isn’t as powerful as expected.
 
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lexony said:
I could see Nintendo going with less RAM or other lower specs and still being fine in theory. They could still get many last gen ports that are more than just AA titles. The only real thing that speaks against it, is that I think people have higher standards these days.

A new game on new hardware having ~30fps + dynamic resolution might have been acceptable a few years ago or on an device now mainly seen as a handheld like the Switch, but I think now the overall perception would be more negative. Where as People said that Witcher 3 was a miracle port a few years ago, now a graphically heavily compromised version of let’s say Final Fantasy 16 on Switch 2 would have people asking why this game looks so bad if they can play a much better version of the game on all the other PC Handhelds or just play it on their aging base PS4 and have a similar experience.

Especially when Nintendo wants to market Switch 2 as Home console too, I think it has to be at least more powerful than last gen in the sense that games get higher resolution and such.
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There are plenty of heavy AAA games on steam deck that only run with stable frametimes when locked at 30 or 40 FPS. Yet people love the device regardless.

Switch 2 will be fine.
 
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