StarTopic Future Nintendo Hardware & Technology Speculation & Discussion |ST| (New Staff Post, Please read)

[Mercury_Sagit]

Sorry, I was referring to 3050 laptop version which has half the tflops.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Mobile Specs

NVIDIA GA107, 1343 MHz, 2048 Cores, 64 TMUs, 32 ROPs, 4096 MB GDDR6, 1500 MHz, 128 bit

www.techpowerup.com

I think their 4.3TF figure is based on GPU clock at the lowest config (712-1057 MHz), which corresponds to the 35W mode in the "fine print".

 

[Z0m3le]

Sorry, I was referring to 3050 laptop version which has half the tflops.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Mobile Specs

NVIDIA GA107, 1343 MHz, 2048 Cores, 64 TMUs, 32 ROPs, 4096 MB GDDR6, 1500 MHz, 128 bit

www.techpowerup.com

Likely the RAM is making up the difference largely, though Orin is different than Ampere in general.

 

[Vash_the_Stampede]

I think their 4.3TF figure is based on GPU clock at the lowest config (712-1057 MHz), which corresponds to the 35W mode in the "fine print".

So then do you think the 3050M’s 35W/4.3k tflopand Orin’s 50W /4k tflop performance represents a 15w draw for the CPU, memory, and the rest of the SoC?

Doesn’t that feel like a lot?

 

[Z0m3le]

So then do you think the 3050M’s 35W/4.3k tflopand Orin’s 50W /4k tflop performance represents a 15w draw for the CPU, memory, and the rest of the SoC?

Doesn’t that feel like a lot?

2048*2*1.057 is 4.329tflops.
2048*2*0.712 is 2.916tflops. (this is probably the 35watt figure)

 

[Mercury_Sagit]

So then do you think the 3050M’s 35W/4.3k tflopand Orin’s 50W /4k tflop performance represents a 15w draw for the CPU, memory, and the rest of the SoC?

Doesn’t that feel like a lot?

This may not hold in long term since 4.3TF is peak throughput at 1057Mhz, while I'd suppose that the 35W figure is sustained. The stable clock to reach 35W on average in long-term may very well be under such clock speed.
On the contrary, the clock and power consumption of AGX and NX boards are already made under sustained load assumption since they are designed for battery-ran devices (AGX for cars and NX for edge AI applications). That's why it's not easy to compare power consumption between these two very different product lines.

 

[Alovon11]

This may not hold in long term since 4.3TF is peak throughput at 1057Mhz, while I'd suppose that the 35W figure is sustained. The stable clock to reach 35W on average in long-term may very well be under such clock speed.
On the contrary, the clock and power consumption of AGX and NX boards are already made under sustained load assumption since they are designed for battery-ran devices (AGX for cars and NX for edge AI applications). That's why it's not easy to compare power consumption between these two very different product lines.

Yeah, not to mention we don't know quite how Orin is measuring it's TFLOPs due to the changes in Cache versus Ampere indicating that it should be more Efficent per-FLOP.

So 4.3TFLOP 16SM Orin could equal 6TFLOP 16SM ampere for example

Even if NVIDIA calls it Ampere still, the Cache there just doesn't not exist

 

[Vladimir]

September 30 along side with xenoblade 3. One only can hope

I would legit die.

 

[Thraktor]

Just so I better understand

There is a AGX mode with 12x A78 and a Jetson Orin NX which is only 8x A78

The NX is offered in a little as 10w and 15w. Presumably this board comes with stuff the Nintendo won’t need.

Do we think Dane is half the AGX or a full NX?

I haven’t been able to find tflop specs for either at the lower power profiles. However, looks like AGX SoC consumes 50w at 4 tflops vs. the 3050’s 4.3 tflops consuming 80w. Both are on 8nm. Why such a big difference?

Jetson AGX Orin is a board with a full Orin die, with 12x A78 cores, 16 SMs on the GPU, as well as DLA/PVA hardware, etc. It also has 32GB of LPDDR5 RAM on a 256-bit bus on the board.

Jetson Orin NX is a smaller board with a binned Orin die with several components disabled. It has 8 A78 cores, 8 GPU SMs, the same DLA/PVA accelerators, and it has 12GB of LPDDR5 on a 128-bit bus.

A very important thing to keep in mind when looking at the power figures for these modules is that the lower-power modes won't necessarily have the full GPU enabled. The precise configuration and clocks for the power modes on the new Orin modules haven't been confirmed yet, but the Jetson AGX Orin white paper (page 14) it states:

Jetson AGX Orin supports three optimized power budgets: 15W, 30W, and 50W. Each power mode caps various component frequencies, and the number of online CPU, GPU TPC, DLA, and PVA cores.

That is, don't expect the full GPU to be available on the lower-power modes. (A TPC is a grouping of two SMs on the GPU, for reference). If you're using one of these boards you can configure the mode using a command-line tool called nvpmodel, and the documentation for this is quite informative here, as it shows how this works for the Jetson AGX Xavier, among other boards. In particular, the AGX Xavier makes 10W, 25W and 30W modes available, with the 30W modes having all 8 SMs running at up to 900MHz. For the 10W mode it is restricted to just 4 SMs at up to 550MHz. For the Orin-based Jetson boards I'm expecting something similar, with the number of running SMs (and CPU cores) dropped to about half on the lowest power modes, alongside reductions in clock speed.

 

[Look over there]

So my mind continues to periodically return to that NoA 'Senior Engineer - Multimedia' job posting. Then, combining that with the consistent reported aspect of 'DLSS up to 4k', I'm assuming an accompanying target of 4k video playback, especially using AV1. Then I think of that ol' dead horse, the Xavier NX; is it capable of playing 4k AV1 encoded video at a satisfactorily level? It'll have to be through software/CPU, since Volta's NVDEC doesn't support AV1.

Going back to the openbenchmarking page, for the 4k benchmark, the 'Cortex-A72 4-core' is averaging 13 fps. For the 1080p version of that benchmark, it's scoring 54 +/- 2, so the proportion basically checks out. That CPU's listed as running with a min clock of 628 mhz and max clock of 2200 mhz. For example's sake, let's meet in the middle and go with ~1.4 ghz (although in reality it should be sustaining higher than that for benchmarking, right?). Coincidentally, wikipedia tells me that the Tegra NX in 15W mode goes up to 1.4 ghz for either quad or hexa core config. The Carmel cores performance should land in the ballpark of the A75, so I'll use that as a proxy. According to ARM, A72->A73 improved NEON performance by ~5%, then A73->A75 improved NEON by ~33%, so altogether A72->A75 should be ~+40% NEON perf. 13 FPS *1.4 = 18.2 FPS. Then let's say it's a 6 core config and all 6 are used for video playback, system stuff in the background be damned (just to tilt things in favor of the NX) and that it's perfectly parrallelized (...I'm not sure on this, but eyeballing some of the scores here, the core scaling doesn't look bad at all). 18.2 FPS * 1.5 = 27.3 FPS. So even after tilting things in favor of the Xavier NX, I don't think that it can manage consistently smooth playback of a 4k 29.97 FPS AV1 encoded video.

 

[Mr.Gamerson]

All Nintendo has to do is a drop 4-6SM Dane chip with an added 2-4GB of ram in the oled model, and boom switch pro. That should hold the Switch line over until 2025/2026 When Switch 2 releases. Also, do a substantial update to the OS (folders,themes, miiverse etc). It will be $399 and they can drop the OLED down to $299. Launch it this fall and help keep your games from looking worse in the face of current-gen and other hybrid devices. If Nintendo expects me to play Xenoblade chronicles 3 at sub HD, we are going to have to fight.

 

[davec00ke]

All Nintendo has to do is a drop 4-6SM Dane chip with an added 2-4GB of ram in the oled model, and boom switch pro. That should hold the Switch line over until 2025/2026 When Switch 2 releases. Also, do a substantial update to the OS (folders,themes, miiverse etc). It will be $399 and they can drop the OLED down to $299. Launch it this fall and help keep your games from looking worse in the face of current-gen and other hybrid devices. If Nintendo expects me to play Xenoblade chronicles 3 at sub HD, we are going to have to fight.

You will lose the fight

 

[Alovon11]

All Nintendo has to do is a drop 4-6SM Dane chip with an added 2-4GB of ram in the oled model, and boom switch pro. That should hold the Switch line over until 2025/2026 When Switch 2 releases. Also, do a substantial update to the OS (folders,themes, miiverse etc). It will be $399 and they can drop the OLED down to $299. Launch it this fall and help keep your games from looking worse in the face of current-gen and other hybrid devices. If Nintendo expects me to play Xenoblade chronicles 3 at sub HD, we are going to have to fight.

The problem is Dane is a generational leap already.

Even at 4SMs it kicks the OG Swtich's shins in because the CPU is guaranteed to be a 4x single thread increase and a 6+X Multithreaded one depending on 6 or 8 Cores.

You'd have to wait until Altan-Next to get another jump that big and that won't be until 2028 or 2029.

So a "Switch 2 in 2025/2026" makes no real sense.

Not to mention it would be 2-3 years out from the next mainline Zelda so that doesn't help much for a launch candidate of a traditional generation.

 

[ILikeFeet]

So my mind continues to periodically return to that NoA 'Senior Engineer - Multimedia' job posting. Then, combining that with the consistent reported aspect of 'DLSS up to 4k', I'm assuming an accompanying target of 4k video playback, especially using AV1. Then I think of that ol' dead horse, the Xavier NX; is it capable of playing 4k AV1 encoded video at a satisfactorily level? It'll have to be through software/CPU, since Volta's NVDEC doesn't support AV1.

Going back to the openbenchmarking page, for the 4k benchmark, the 'Cortex-A72 4-core' is averaging 13 fps. For the 1080p version of that benchmark, it's scoring 54 +/- 2, so the proportion basically checks out. That CPU's listed as running with a min clock of 628 mhz and max clock of 2200 mhz. For example's sake, let's meet in the middle and go with ~1.4 ghz (although in reality it should be sustaining higher than that for benchmarking, right?). Coincidentally, wikipedia tells me that the Tegra NX in 15W mode goes up to 1.4 ghz for either quad or hexa core config. The Carmel cores performance should land in the ballpark of the A75, so I'll use that as a proxy. According to ARM, A72->A73 improved NEON performance by ~5%, then A73->A75 improved NEON by ~33%, so altogether A72->A75 should be ~+40% NEON perf. 13 FPS *1.4 = 18.2 FPS. Then let's say it's a 6 core config and all 6 are used for video playback, system stuff in the background be damned (just to tilt things in favor of the NX) and that it's perfectly parrallelized (...I'm not sure on this, but eyeballing some of the scores here, the core scaling doesn't look bad at all). 18.2 FPS * 1.5 = 27.3 FPS. So even after tilting things in favor of the Xavier NX, I don't think that it can manage consistently smooth playback of a 4k 29.97 FPS AV1 encoded video.

I'm not sure where you're going with this. video encoding/decoding will be handled by the gpu, not the cpu. Orin has AV1 encoding on the gpu too

and this is assuming Nintendo would support 4K encoding, which I don't think they will. for performance and storage reasons, limiting it to 1080p/60 would be best

 

[Alovon11]

I'm not sure where you're going with this. video encoding/decoding will be handled by the gpu, not the cpu. Orin has AV1 encoding on the gpu too

Yeah, Orin is among the few things out atm that can do AV1 Encode and Decode, not even RDNA2 and Ampere can do Encode/Decode, only Decode.

 

[Look over there]

Oh, I just wanted to see what I can conclude from that job posting, either on its own or with minimal other assumptions.
You, I, and the majority of people still following this thread are on the Orin derivative train, but occasionally someone (be it here or elsewhere) would bring up Xavier.
I'm also assigning some particular weight to that job posting since it's a signal out in public straight from Nintendo of something beyond the TX1's capabilities. I am willing to trust what we've consistently been hearing through this time, but you know how plenty of people will only consider things straight out of Nintendo's mouth.

 

[Dekuman]

I don't think there's any good reason to believe the next SoC isn't Orin based. Unless they decide to switch vendors which there seems to be no evidence of, they don't really have a lot of options under nvidia.

Based on what we've heard (from @Z0m3le ?) about the high clocked Mariko consuming more power than anticipated, it seems like even the worst case doubled clocked Mariko is unlikely, and that would be the most (old) Nintendo thing to do. Granted I think it does make a lot of business sense to have an overclocked design of your current device in the back burner as an emergency stop gap if the next-gen product is to run into trouble. We've seen Nintendo pull that rabbit out of the hat before with the GBC and Wii. I don't think we're on that route this time. So if you exclude the worst case scenario and assume no switch in vendors, the options of chips for Nintendo is very narrow.

The question is really about timing. I suspect whatever is announced, as soon as that trailer/press release/news article drops, no one will remember which side they were on and we'd be off arguing about clock speeds and relative power.

 

[Hosermess]

All Nintendo has to do is a drop 4-6SM Dane chip with an added 2-4GB of ram in the oled model, and boom switch pro. That should hold the Switch line over until 2025/2026 When Switch 2 releases.

The problem is Dane is a generational leap already.

So a "Switch 2 in 2025/2026" makes no real sense.

I figured it out.

Switch 2 (Dane) - coming out in 9-13 months

Switch 2 Pro - coming out in 2025/26

/s

 

[WAW_Greyhound]

This is very tehnical subject and I am a layman, though from what I am aware is that the smaller process node the higher leakage of electricity and heat generated due to thinner transistors and gates for former and greater density hence less space between transistors.

Correct me if I am wrong. Hence if what I have said makes sense and if its technically correct then makes sense that Mariko would consume more than one would expect.

As for Switch successor, if it keeps Switch branding then adding Neo would make sense.

If situation involving availability of chip productio capacity doesn't improve and 7nm is not commercially viable for Nintendo to have chip as powerful as Steam Deck if it could potential system too expensive along if Nvidia is even willing to provide its allotment/priority of 7nm it has due to profit margins GPUs nowadays have.

At bare minimum we can expect use of LPDDR5 that provides double the bandwidth hence double CPU cores and GPU SMM with latter potentially doubling the GPU clock of docked and portable modes compared to Switch. Nintendo could keep 4GB RAM since its internal storage and cartridges roughly have 3 times the bandwidth of PS4 or PS4 Pro. If we simply go by Dhrystone MIPS then if CPU was at least Cortex A75 at 1.6Ghz thus 8 cores could be equivalent to 4 Zen 2 cores of PS5 at most.

If by some miracle a miracle happens for semiconductor industry that there is capacity then Nintendo could go for handheld as powerful as Steam Deck at very least in 2024.

 

[SiG]

Oh wait...doesn't Switch production use Samsung NAND?

 

[WAW_Greyhound]

Oh wait...doesn't Switch production use Samsung NAND?

IIRC yes, but Switch is eMMC and not SSD.

 

[SiG]

IIRC yes, but Switch is eMMC and not SSD.

Ah okay...false alarm then.

 

[ReddDreadtheLead]

Oh wait...doesn't Switch production use Samsung NAND?

IIRC yes, but Switch is eMMC and not SSD.

Ah okay...false alarm then.

To be fair, the switch has an SSD.

 

[SiG]

To be fair, the switch has an SSD.

But it's made by Samsung, right? Not Western Digital?

 

[Skittzo]

Ah okay...false alarm then.

Eh we don't know what storage they planned to use for whatever model is coming next so it's still possibly relevant.

 

[Deleted member 1324]

All Nintendo has to do is a drop 4-6SM Dane chip with an added 2-4GB of ram in the oled model, and boom switch pro. That should hold the Switch line over until 2025/2026 When Switch 2 releases. Also, do a substantial update to the OS (folders,themes, miiverse etc). It will be $399 and they can drop the OLED down to $299. Launch it this fall and help keep your games from looking worse in the face of current-gen and other hybrid devices. If Nintendo expects me to play Xenoblade chronicles 3 at sub HD, we are going to have to fight.

I’m playing Xenoblade 2 right now when docked and it’s 720p. It’s blurry on handheld but it’s really not as bad as people make out especially when helped out with the OLED screen to make its art style pop. I’d say the framerate drops down to what feels like 20-25fps throughout the early game is more of an issue for me.

 

[karmitt]

I’m playing Xenoblade 2 right now when docked and it’s 720p. It’s blurry on handheld but it’s really not as bad as people make out especially when helped out with the OLED screen to make its art style pop. I’d say the framerate drops down to what feels like 20-25fps throughout the early game is more of an issue for me.

How far are you? It gets pretty rough sometimes. It wasn’t always a blurry game, but some locations and most fights really just tanked the resolution

 

[Deleted member 1324]

I think because of the Mario Movie's "delay" to the holidays, that a mainline Mario, that I have a gut feeling exists, is what they would want to release this holiday instead of Zelda. Remember they said they were 'targeting a 2022 release' for botw2, and I think if you are moving Zelda to March next year, that is when you release Dane.

I believe it will be a Gameboy Color type revision, specifically, I think they will call it "Switch 4K model" and I believe they are pursuing a cloud gaming service that I went over in the post you quoted.

I believe it will be 6-8 A78 cores and 6-8SMs, I think ultimately the count doesn't matter, we know that Orin has a 15W setting that offers ~36TOPs, because Dane uses the same architecture, we know it should be capable of very similar performance at that power consumption, which leaves me with the range I talk about in that post again.

Based on those numbers how many teraflops is that in handheld and docked mode?

I also agree about Mario. Odyssey 2 this fall and BotW 2 around March ‘23 (hopefully along with the next console) although I wouldn’t be shocked if it was a September ‘23 release especially if Zelda slips further into next year.

There’s still a lot of insiders with records saying a Wind Waker / Twilight Princess HD pack is also coming so if they slot that into October just before Mario in November they have both fan bases covered for this Fall then hopefully everyone who wants gets to play BotW 2 on the new model in ‘23.

If this is the current plan the I wouldn’t be surprised to see games like Mario + Rabbids 2 and Bayonetta 3 get moved into ‘23 to keep the new consoles momentum going after launching with BotW 2. 2022 is already stacked and with a Zelda HD bundle and a new 3D Mario this fall aswell as Kirby, Splatoon 3, FE Warriors 2 and Xenoblade 3 they don’t need them for this year imo.

 

[Deleted member 1324]

How far are you? It gets pretty rough sometimes. It wasn’t always a blurry game, but some locations and most fights really just tanked the resolution

Not that far. About 6 hours in. The first open area is very foliage heavy with a lot of creatures although it seems to be the town where it struggles most. From experience it runs better in handheld mode but it’s obviously a big downgrade image quality wise to get closer to 30fps. Seems like it’s GPU bound and with a more aggressive dynamic resolution bound in docked mode (say dropping to 540-600p) would see it perform better.

Sorry for dp.

 

[Dakhil]

This is very tehnical subject and I am a layman, though from what I am aware is that the smaller process node the higher leakage of electricity and heat generated due to thinner transistors and gates for former and greater density hence less space between transistors.

Foundry companies (Samsung, TSMC, etc.) have been using the "nm" nomenclature simply as a marketing nomenclature for a very long time and doesn't really have anything to do with the actual dimensions of the transistors due to the technological issues you've mentioned.

If situation involving availability of chip productio capacity doesn't improve and 7nm is not commercially viable for Nintendo to have chip as powerful as Steam Deck if it could potential system too expensive along if Nvidia is even willing to provide its allotment/priority of 7nm it has due to profit margins GPUs nowadays have.

I believe that in the likely scenario that Dane's fabricated using Samsung's 8N process node, Dane can definitely be competitive against Van Gogh in terms of performance, especially in the scenario where Dane uses the Cortex-A78C (6 or 8 Cortex-A78 cores) for the CPU, and a minimum of 4 SMs for the GPU.

Nintendo could keep 4GB RAM since its internal storage and cartridges roughly have 3 times the bandwidth of PS4 or PS4 Pro.

Third party developers have been very vocal about how the amount of RAM, as well as the RAM bandwidth, being one of the Nintendo Switch's biggest bottlenecks.


So I don't believe 4 GB of RAM is a sufficient amount of RAM.

---

Oh wait...doesn't Switch production use Samsung NAND?

Ah okay...false alarm then.

But it's made by Samsung, right? Not Western Digital?

The Nintendo Switch and the Nintendo Switch Lite have indeed used eMMC 5.1 from Samsung. But Nintendo has also used eMMC 5.1 from Toshiba (Kioxia). And Kioxia mentioned also being affected by contamination in the plants in Yokkaichi and Kitakami. And Western Digtial mentioned partnering with Kioxia for production in the plants in Tokkaichi and Kitakami.

---

Eh we don't know what storage they planned to use for whatever model is coming next so it's still possibly relevant.

Correct, since Kioxia and Western Digital also offer UFS, which I think is a definite possibility in terms of internal storage for the DLSS model*.

 

[Alovon11]

Foundry companies (Samsung, TSMC, etc.) have been using the "nm" nomenclature simply as a marketing nomenclature for a very long time and doesn't really have anything to do with the actual dimensions of the transistors due to the technological issues you've mentioned.

I believe that in the likely scenario that Dane's fabricated using Samsung's 8N process node, Dane can definitely be competitive against Van Gogh in terms of performance, especially in the scenario where Dane uses the Cortex-A78C (6 or 8 Cortex-A78 cores) for the CPU, and a minimum of 4 SMs for the GPU.

Third party developers have been very vocal about how the amount of RAM, as well as the RAM bandwidth, being one of the Nintendo Switch's biggest bottlenecks.


So I don't believe 4 GB of RAM is a sufficient amount of RAM.

---

The Nintendo Switch and the Nintendo Switch Lite have indeed used eMMC 5.1 from Samsung. But Nintendo has also used eMMC 5.1 from Toshiba (Kioxia). And Kioxia mentioned also being affected by contamination in the plants in Yokkaichi and Kitakami. And Western Digtial mentioned partnering with Kioxia for production in the plants in Tokkaichi and Kitakami.

---

Correct, since Kioxia and Western Digital also offer UFS, which I think is a definite possibility in terms of internal storage for the DLSS model*.

At the very least in either scenario Nintendo has 2/3 of their storage vendors accessible still more or less.

 

[Dakhil]

At the very least in either scenario Nintendo has 2/3 of their storage vendors accessible still more or less.

Absolutely. I'm simply agreeing with Skittzo that Kioxia and Western Digital being affected by the contamination at the plants plants in Tokkaichi and Kitakami is relevant for Nintendo, especially if Nintendo has plans to use Kioxia for the internal flash storage as well, alongside Samsung and SK Hynix, and perhaps Micron.

 

[Crusters]

I’m playing Xenoblade 2 right now when docked and it’s 720p. It’s blurry on handheld but it’s really not as bad as people make out especially when helped out with the OLED screen to make its art style pop. I’d say the framerate drops down to what feels like 20-25fps throughout the early game is more of an issue for me.

I remember it was the overbearing sharpening filter that made things really obnoxious when things got busy. I'm sure they've patched that by now.

...
......
Right?

 

[Mr Swine]

Maybe Nintendo wants to have a Dane Switch that replaces the Oled version with 2SM, 6GB ram and 4 core A78 at 1Ghz. I guess they would prefer longer battery life with a bit better performance all around than releasing with worse battery life and better performance

Probably waiting to release a full successor after 2025

 

[Alovon11]

Maybe Nintendo wants to have a Dane Switch that replaces the Oled version with 2SM, 6GB ram and 4 core A78 at 1Ghz. I guess they would prefer longer battery life with a bit better performance all around than releasing with worse battery life and better performance

Probably waiting to release a full successor after 2025

2SM is something that you'd see NVIDIA put in a thumb drive, it's unrealistic and GPU wise may be weaker than current Swtich, and incapable of using DLSS outright.

Primarily due to how Ampere/Orin are versus OG Swtich at such low core counts, but yeah, per-FLOP unless that Cache Orin added really moves it along, it will not surpass OG Switch much at all.

And anyway a config that low can't run DLSS which flies in the face of LITERALLY ALL THE RUMOURS RELATED TO IT SAYING IT WILL USE DLSS.

 

[ShadowFox08]

I remember it was the overbearing sharpening filter that made things really obnoxious when things got busy. I'm sure they've patched that by now.

...
......
Right?

I remember playin xenoblade 2 in docked mode and having no issues with the graphics. I loved the sharpness filter if anything. XB DE on the other hand in docked mode does not look good at all in open fields..

but man I would kill to play Xenoblade 720p in handheld and at least 1080p in docked with better draw distances.

 

[WAW_Greyhound]

Maybe Nintendo wants to have a Dane Switch that replaces the Oled version with 2SM, 6GB ram and 4 core A78 at 1Ghz. I guess they would prefer longer battery life with a bit better performance all around than releasing with worse battery life and better performance

Probably waiting to release a full successor after 2025

A78 would provide more than twice the MIPS raw performance in terms of Dhrystone along being able to better utilize input output bandwidth of eMMC. Anyway simply changing RAM from LPDDR4 to LPDDR5 would provide notable performance improvements, especially for games that are bottlenecked heavily by lack of RAM bandwidth.

 

[Crusters]

A78 would provide more than twice the MIPS raw performance in terms of Dhrystone along being able to better utilize input output bandwidth of eMMC. Anyway simply changing RAM from LPDDR4 to LPDDR5 would provide notable performance improvements, especially for games that are bottlenecked heavily by lack of RAM bandwidth.

That would be great, not just for games that struggle for performance because of bandwidth bottlenecks, but it can alleviate the texture tile checkerboarding in games like monster hunter rise.

 

[MP!]

I love that they measured it in GB haha
It’s probably somewhere between 7 million and 20 million chips lost I’d guess

 

[Hermii]

What the hell happened? How do you “lose” that amount of hardware?

 

[Mr.Gamerson]

They could just scrap dlss and save it for the next gen model or next gen pro model.

 

[Dakhil]

What the hell happened? How do you “lose” that amount of hardware?

Semiconductors are so complicated that materials being contaminated can be enough to lose a large amount of data.

They could just scrap dlss and save it for the next gen model or next gen pro model.

By disabling or physically removing the Tensor cores on Dane's GPU? I believe the latter is extremely cost prohibitive for Nintendo and Nvidia.

 

[Alovon11]

They could just scrap dlss and save it for the next gen model or next gen pro model.

 

[Mr.Gamerson]

I mean just not use the feature on the 4sm variant if it is not good enough to do it.

 

[Alovon11]

I mean just not use the feature on the 4sm variant if it is not good enough to do it.

4SMs might be able to do DLSS Performance mode (4x), but the problem there is the GPU power to make it a "4K Capabe console" may not be there.

But the main thing is we know they are targeting 4K for Dane based on all the info we have on the Devkits at the moment from Bloomberg and Nate, so that sort of contradicts that unless NVIDIA and Nintendo made DLSS literally twice as efficient in order to use Ultra Performance mode (9x) on 4SMs.

EIther that or they can bolt one of Orin's DLAs onto a 4SM Dane but that extra space could've been saved by just doing 8SMs and you'd get a lot more GPU power and memory speed in the process while getting the ability to use DLSS Ultra Performance properly back.

 

[Mr.Gamerson]

4SMs might be able to do DLSS Performance mode (4x), but the problem there is the GPU power to make it a "4K Capabe console" may not be there.

But the main thing is we know they are targeting 4K for Dane based on all the info we have on the Devkits at the moment from Bloomberg and Nate, so that sort of contradicts that unless NVIDIA and Nintendo made DLSS literally twice as efficient in order to use Ultra Performance mode (9x) on 4SMs.

EIther that or they can bolt one of Orin's DLAs onto a 4SM Dane but that extra space could've been saved by just doing 8SMs and you'd get a lot more GPU power and memory speed in the process while getting the ability to use DLSS Ultra Performance properly back.

It can be "4K capable" in the same way the PS4 Pro was. The 2022 switch would aim for 720p native handheld and 1080p docked for the more demanding games. Stuff like Smash and Mario Kart that already run at 1080p would aim for 1440p and possibly 4K. Tetris 99, streaming, and other simple games can push for 4K as well. In 2025 you can put out a 8sm variant that actually does 4K DLSS well across the board. Also, they can finally add HDR as well.

 

[Alovon11]

]

It can be "4K capable" in the same way the PS4 Pro was. The 2022 switch would aim for 720p native handheld and 1080p docked for the more demanding games. Stuff like Smash and Mario Kart that already run at 1080p would aim for 1440p and possibly 4K. Tetris 99, streaming, and other simple games can push for 4K as well. In 2025 you can put out a 8sm variant that actually does 4K DLSS well across the board.

Well the main thing is that without DLSS Ultra Performance, 4SM Dane sort of will not change anything in regards to the problems with third parties.

The GPU would be too far behind the Series S to get a majority of ports.

Nintendo will be fine with most if not all configs.

But Nitnendo also designs consoles with input from devs before and more importantly NVIDIA now.

And I doubt those two would want to skimp on the GPU to the point it's weaker than a PS4 when docked

 

[bloopland33]

Has anyone been able to listen to Nate’s new podcast today? I haven’t but I know there’s a section about future hardware. Not sure if it’s all speculation or if any concrete info is shared though.

 

[Skittzo]

What the hell happened? How do you “lose” that amount of hardware?

Chips are made in clean rooms to avoid getting particulates into the product at any stage of fabrication. If at any point the clean room is contaminated or malfunctioning then you no longer have any sort of assurance that the product will be functional at all.

 

[Dakhil]

In 2025 you can put out a 8sm variant that actually does 4K DLSS well across the board. Also, they can finally add HDR as well.

I'm not sure if Dane's GPU having 8 SMs is necessarily a guarantee that games can run at 4K with DLSS enabled across the board, especially when taking into account ray tracing. And there's at least one third party developer that's fully committed to ray tracing for games, which is 4A Games.

Has anyone been able to listen to Nate’s new podcast today? I haven’t but I know there’s a section about future hardware. Not sure if it’s all speculation or if any concrete info is shared though.

NateDrake and MVG don't agree with people's assumption that Nintendo releasing DLC for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe until the end of 2023 is an indication that Nintendo's not planning to release any new hardware until 2024 at the earliest.

MVG argued the fact that most third party games shown at the most recent Nintendo Direct didn't look very good and are running at low framerates (e.g. MLB The Show 22) is an indication that third party developers are hitting a roadblock in terms of developing games for the Nintendo Switch, with third party developers asking is it worth spending a large amount of money, as well as investing a large amount of time, to develop games for the Nintendo Switch. MVG believes Nintendo's plans to release new hardware hasn't altered. And MVG thinks Nintendo plans to launch new hardware in 2023 or 2024.

NateDrake thinks that the rollout of the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe DLC doesn't matter as long as the new hardware is still backwards compatible, where people can play Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, as well as the DLC, at higher resolutions with visual improvements.
NateDrake argued that since more and more third party games released on the Nintendo Switch recently are in a rough condition, and more third party developers are shifting away from the Nintendo Switch in favour of the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X|S, if Nintendo positions the new hardware as a Game Boy Color or as a PlayStation 4 Pro (i.e. a stopgap), Nintendo would make third party developers happy, resulting in a few more third party ports coming; and Nintendo could be buying more time to develop a new Mario Kart games for a "true" successor since the new hardware is backwards compatible with the Nintendo Switch, therefore the new hardware can play Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and the DLCs, but with 4K graphics with DLSS support.
Therefore, NateDrake thinks that the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe DLC reinforces the idea that new hardware is definitely coming in a similar manner to the Game Boy Color.

So there really isn't any new information. Saying that, I mostly agree with NateDrake and MVG here.

 

[Alovon11]

I'm not sure if Dane's GPU having 8 SMs is necessarily a guarantee that games can run at 4K with DLSS enabled across the board, especially when taking into account ray tracing. And there's at least one third party developer that's fully committed to ray tracing for games, which is 4A Games.


NateDrake and MVG don't agree with people's assumption that Nintendo releasing DLC for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe until the end of 2023 is an indication that Nintendo's not planning to release any new hardware until 2024 at the earliest.

MVG argued the fact that most third party games shown at the most recent Nintendo Direct didn't look very good and are running at low framerates (e.g. MLB The Show 22) is an indication that third party developers are hitting a roadblock in terms of developing games for the Nintendo Switch, with third party developers asking is it worth spending a large amount of money, as well as investing a large amount of time, to develop games for the Nintendo Switch. MVG believes Nintendo's plans to release new hardware hasn't altered. And MVG thinks Nintendo plans to launch new hardware in 2023 or 2024.

NateDrake thinks that the rollout of the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe DLC doesn't matter as long as the new hardware is still backwards compatible, where people can play Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, as well as the DLC, at higher resolutions with visual improvements.
NateDrake argued that since more and more third party games released on the Nintendo Switch recently are in a rough condition, and more third party developers are shifting away from the Nintendo Switch in favour of the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X|S, if Nintendo positions the new hardware as a Game Boy Color or as a PlayStation 4 Pro (i.e. a stopgap), Nintendo would make third party developers happy, resulting in a few more third party ports coming; and Nintendo could be buying more time to develop a new Mario Kart games for a "true" successor since the new hardware is backwards compatible with the Nintendo Switch, therefore the new hardware can play Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and the DLCs, but with 4K graphics with DLSS support.
Therefore, NateDrake thinks that the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe DLC reinforces the idea that new hardware is definitely coming in a similar manner to the Game Boy Color.

So there really isn't any new information. Saying that, I mostly agree with NateDrake and MVG here.

Yeah, I do say I agree with Nate's solution, with the caveat of instead of a stopgap it's the start of a more rapid and iterative release cycle for Hardware (As a Switch 2 with Altan will not be much of an upgrade over Dane, so moving to a smartphone like release model can mitigate that)