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

[Terrell]

What you just argued, is probably very close to the argument Nintendo gave themselves to dismiss the idea of a Wii HD upgrade console ~2010.

Something they now lament and suggest they won’t make any such similar mistakes in the future.

The proof is in the pudding. Engagement in Switch software and services is the entire goal.

If this is the midpoint of the Switch lifecycle, as Nintendo thinks, the entire goal is to keep engagement in the Switch ecosystem high for another 4-5 years.

The money put into the R&D of this new model will accomplish that goal. The return on investments will justify its exsistence. It doesn’t have to sell more than the ps4 pro to do this.

The mistake would be to ignore the usefulness of this upgrade, and ride out the current switch as is, and watch its latter life cycle drop like a stone in its engagement…ala the Wii.

The other mistake would be to release something now that represents a generational break from an incredibly popular system that’s currently in momentum and growth…and cutting it off at the knees.

So they won’t do either of those things.

Nintendo doesn’t really care if you are playing Mario Switch 2025 on your 2019 Lite, your 2021 OLED, or your 2022 4K Switch. They really don’t.

The R&D for this SoC is exponentially higher than it would be for something like Mariko or OLED; this isn’t up for debate: a die shrink and an OLED screen are frankly cheap compared to engineering an SoC that’s designed on a completely new architecture (and all its requisite engineering advances) than the one in use that was designed 7 years ago. So it needs an exponentially larger ROI than either of those pieces of hardware did.

Also, saying Nintendo regrets not releasing a Wii HD console makes you sound like Michael Pachter, all without having any evidence to suggest a Wii HD would have made a difference in the outcome there; the Wii audience didn’t walk away because they wanted better graphics, this is pretty well-documented to not be the case.

And lastly, as no one seems to remember, Switches will not explode upon the release of new hardware; it will be up to Nintendo and the consumer to determine if the Switch as retail hardware still has value upon the release of newer hardware and what that value might be. But the software? So long as they keep buying, Nintendo and 3rd-parties will almost certainly keep selling on that platform. Evergreens will continue selling regardless until new games in their respective series on new hardware, especially if the new hardware plays Switch games seamlessly, so the only thing that will be lacking is new software releases after a cross-gen period has concluded sometime in 2025/2026.

Again, GBC launched with Nintendo exclusives. Having colors in games is a huge gameplay difference between previous monochrome. Better resolution graphics iq bump? Not so much. Not enough of a difference to start fragmenting your development between two different systems.

Is the GPU the only thing being updated here? No? Then there’s gameplay differences to be had with new hardware. Just to name some things that the SoC coupled with other hardware advances will allow beyond image quality off the top of my head:

• Faster load times (better CPU + potentially faster storage)
• Higher volume of enemies/objects on screen without greatly diminishing image quality or frame rate to achieve it
• Significantly improved AI (far more performant CPU + GPU Tensor cores), meaning...
  • far easier implementation of rollback netcode
  • smarter computer enemy/NPC activity
  • hardware much more suitable for simulation games
• Faster internet connectivity (currently bottlenecked/artificially capped by RAM and write speed on storage, as I understand it)
• Bluetooth 5 functionality, which means…
  • Diminished input lag
  • Longer battery life for controllers without requiring larger batteries

To boil this hardware advancement down to "better image quality", even when looking only at the SoC itself, is reductive to the point of disbelief.

 

[NateDrake]

Yeah I think if anything this leak just corroborates things that both you and Mochi have said pretty consistently...

It does but remember: Mochi lies and I made it all up for clickbait and both of us have been saying it since 2015 or something.

The only error made was conflating it for the OLED model. Otherwise, everything has been accurate.

 

[Skittzo]

I forget the exact details, but there’s something specific on the GPU side with how Switch games are made that means BC won’t be automatic on Nintendo’s end, however there no reason why it should have to come to games having to be patched to run on the new machine. Nvidia could potentially have made some sort of native solution or Nintendo could do something like translation or partial emulation on the one specific issue.

IIRC it's that Maxwell shaders are precompiled with every shipped Switch game.

What those words mean? Don't ask me.

 

[NineTailSage]

It does but remember: Mochi lies and I made it all up for clickbait and both of us have been saying it since 2015 or something.

Right I forgot about those facts! Lol

YouTubers made a lot of videos trying to discount the information both of you were sharing, but I guarantee they will never make any stating that they were wrong or that you guys are vindicated by this recent leak of information.
The internet sure is funny that way...

 

[Instro]

Jeff Grubb has confirmed some stuff as well that Nick has heard in the past so I wouldn't call the man a fraud as I'm sure he has some connections out there in the industry.

Fair enough. Maybe I've only seen the bad stuff. Confirmation bias and all that.

 

[NateDrake]

Right I forgot about those facts! Lol

YouTubers made a lot of videos trying to discount the information both of you were sharing, but I guarantee they will never make any stating that they were wrong or that you guys are vindicated by this recent leak of information.
The internet sure is funny that way...

Such a thing will never happen because it shows integrity.

When OLED was announced, I immediately said it was not the hardware I had been discussing and still stood by the Switch hardware with DLSS information as accurate and that devkits had been distributed in late 2020 and throughout 2021. People called it a lie.

Enter the leak...

Silence from those individuals or they pivot to, "You called a Pro & it's a 2... so you were wrong".

 

[ArchedThunder]

IIRC it's that Maxwell shaders are precompiled with every shipped Switch game.

What those words mean? Don't ask me.

Regardless of what the issue is, emulation on PC shows that it’s not an unsolvable issue. Plus with it being one specific thing one would think that only partial emulation (or translation if possible) would be necessary.

 

[ILikeFeet]

IIRC it's that Maxwell shaders are precompiled with every shipped Switch game.

What those words mean? Don't ask me.

the game gives a list of instructions to the hardware on what to do. if the hardware can't do those instructions the game either doesn't run or runs looking fucked up. the obvious workaround to this is the new hardware translate the instructions into ones it can run

 

[Skittzo]

Regardless of what the issue is, emulation on PC shows that it’s not an unsolvable issue. Plus with it being one specific thing one would think that only partial emulation (or translation if possible) would be necessary.

Yeah there's no way it's an insurmountable problem. I'm sure it's something they can and did figure out without too much effort.

 

[Vladimir]

Do you guys see Nintendo re-releasing "Definitive" like physical editions for this more powerful Switch? Or would Nintendo patch released games to take advantage of the stronger hardware? Or both?

 

[My Tulpa]

IMO this model will be $399 while OLED will shortly after that go to $299, while OG will be discounted.

Just curious though, why didn’t Nintendo release the OLED at $299 and discount the regular hybrid to $249? In your opinion.

So we would have:

• Switch 2 - $399
• Switch OLED - $299
• Switch Lite - $199

That pricing sounds great, of course later we will have Switch 2 Lite, Switch 2 V2..

Best case scenario at launch:

4K Switch - $449
OLED - $299
Switch - $249
Lite - $149

This would be until Mariko chips and LCD screens last of course.

Nintendo always wants to have somehow more affordable price for their consoles, there is no way that next Switch hardware will be $499 in any case.

It’s fine to go high since their support and sales of the current devices isn’t going away any time soon. The whole point of positioning as a mid gen upgrade option (not gen break)

I don’t see how you can argue a $399 price. All that new, custom hardware inside…is costlier than $50. They aren’t going to lose money on each 4K Switch sold, that’s for sure. They don’t need a quick uptake on this model.

Actually is good example, point is that OLED is revision not new platform, so Nintendo can launch next gen regardless last revision,
especially because OLED will keep selling alongside new Switch 2 for 2 years at least.

If the 4K Switch is going to act as a gen breaking successor, why bother selling the OLED another 2-3 years? The 4K Switch is iterative and BC. You don’t keep last gen consoles around that long anymore.

Well, sooner or later Nintendo will start forcing current users to upgrade to "Switch 2" by start releasing exclusive "Pro" games, logical assumption that would be around 2 years after "Switch 2" launch.

This is the template for a conventional console lifecycle, sure.

Actually it has plenty of sense to market it like "Switch 2", clearly this is not simple stronger revision, we talking about more than hole generation upgrade, not only in term of GPU, CPU, RAM but also talking about DLSS and who knows what other new and next gen features, also while this new Switch hardware is out, Switch will around 6 years old so again makes more sense to market it like next gen Switch than simple revision.

Why? Why not just say it’s a model that enhances Switch games? Why make people think it’s pointless to buy an OLED Switch next year if it’s going to lose support by Nintendo?

My argument is that it makes no business sense to market this expensive model as a gen breaking successor.

Market it like next gen Switch launch, and you are getting much better sales and faster addoption compared to revision.

Again, Nintendo doesn’t care how fast the 4K Switch is adopted. They don’t have to care. It doesn’t matter what model you buy in the next ~4 years. As long as it keeps you engaged in the services and software they release.

Sooner or later they will want to stop supporting older revisions and force current Switch owners to upgrade, especially because we talking about huge power/feature difference when we comparing current Switch models an this new Switch model.

As far as I know, this huge power/feature difference is mostly going to be used to make Switch games run at 4K/60fps instead of 900p/30fps. And a few other graphical effects.

The on-paper specs doesn’t really matter when it comes to the resultant Nintendo product. My wife will notice that Animal Crossing will look different on the 4K Switch vs her Switch…but she won’t think it’s THAT big a difference.

 

[Skittzo]

the game gives a list of instructions to the hardware on what to do. if the hardware can't do those instructions the game either doesn't run or runs looking fucked up

So essentially by using precompiled Maxwell shaders they've made the games use instructions that an Ampere GPU wouldn't understand?

The alternative would've been the OS translating whatever other shader language the game uses into Maxwell syntax, so that it could've easily been tuned to do the same for Ampere syntax?

Something along those lines?

 

[ArchedThunder]

the game gives a list of instructions to the hardware on what to do. if the hardware can't do those instructions the game either doesn't run or runs looking fucked up. the obvious workaround to this is the new hardware translate the instructions into ones it can run

If that’s really what the issue is then I’m REALLY confused as to why MVG has never brought up translation as a solution before. It’s especially weird after he just released a video about how Switch us able to run Vita apps with translation.

 

[TonyBaduy]

Oh, our controllers will last longer thanks to Bluetooth 5, maybe the miracle that was the Wii U Pro controller will happen again (or maybe "just" a 60hrs Pro controller)

 

[Dark Cloud]

It does but remember: Mochi lies and I made it all up for clickbait and both of us have been saying it since 2015 or something.

The only error made was conflating it for the OLED model. Otherwise, everything has been accurate.

It’s ok. You made me a lot of YouTube money

 

[ILikeFeet]

So essentially by using precompiled Maxwell shaders they've made the games use instructions that an Ampere GPU wouldn't understand?

The alternative would've been the OS translating whatever other shader language the game uses into Maxwell syntax, so that it could've easily been tuned to do the same for Ampere syntax?

Something along those lines?

yea, pretty much. as with any kind of translation, errors are expected, but 99% of the time, things should work as the end user expects

Do you guys see Nintendo re-releasing "Definitive" like physical editions for this more powerful Switch? Or would Nintendo patch released games to take advantage of the stronger hardware? Or both?

I don't see rereleases, but patched games. anything that still gets printed will either have the patch on the cartridge or as part of a day one patch

 

[ArchedThunder]

So essentially by using precompiled Maxwell shaders they've made the games use instructions that an Ampere GPU wouldn't understand?

The alternative would've been the OS translating whatever other shader language the game uses into Maxwell syntax, so that it could've easily been tuned to do the same for Ampere syntax?

Something along those lines?

If the issue is what he said then they just need to run games through a translation layer that redirects all the instructions to their Switch 4k equivalent.

 

[Dark Cloud]

Do you guys see Nintendo re-releasing "Definitive" like physical editions for this more powerful Switch? Or would Nintendo patch released games to take advantage of the stronger hardware? Or both?

No re-releasing games

 

[ArchedThunder]

Oh, our controllers will last longer thanks to Bluetooth 5, maybe the miracle that was the Wii U Pro controller will happen again (or maybe "just" a 60hrs Pro controller)

I don’t know the exact hours but my Switch Pro controller lasts a long time before needing a charge.

 

[NateDrake]

It’s ok. You made me a lot of YouTube money

Where are my royalties?

 

[Skittzo]

If the issue is what he said then they just need to run games through a translation layer that redirects all the instructions to their Switch 4k equivalent.

Right, I understand the solution, I was just trying to figure out the problem.

It's fortunate that ARM is binary compatible. A very minor GPU compatibility layer should be pretty easy and lean.

 

[NineTailSage]

Do you guys see Nintendo re-releasing "Definitive" like physical editions for this more powerful Switch? Or would Nintendo patch released games to take advantage of the stronger hardware? Or both?

To be honest at this point I probably see Nintendo doing something similar to Sony and charging $5-10 for patches or NSOnline Expansion pass members get this included with membership.

 

[Terrell]

If that’s really what the issue is then I’m REALLY confused as to why MVG has never brought up translation as a solution before. It’s especially weird after he just released a video about how Switch us able to run Vita apps with translation.

He has, on Nate's podcast. I've heard him suggest it myself, albeit sort of in passing as one of many potential options.

 

[Tentacle-tropes]

To be honest at this point I probably see Nintendo doing something similar to Sony and charging $5-10 for patches or NSOnline Expansion pass members get this included with membership.

Considering Nintendo already has done it with the WiiU VC I could see them reintroducing it. Though I’m sure people will loudly bemoan it like they did with the WiiU VC upgrade as well.

 

[ArchedThunder]

He has, on Nate's podcast. I've heard him suggest it myself, albeit sort of in passing as one of many potential options.

I’ve never watched any of the podcasts (other than the Spawn Wave one today), I’ve been going off of what others have said in this thread and nobody has ever corrected me, lol. Either wayI don’t see why he doesn’t have that as his main suggestion, he seems set on the idea of patches instead for some reason.

 

[NineTailSage]

If that’s really what the issue is then I’m REALLY confused as to why MVG has never brought up translation as a solution before. It’s especially weird after he just released a video about how Switch us able to run Vita apps with translation.

MVG and Nate actually had a full discussion about this very topic and he never states its impossible for newer Switch hardware to have a fix for BC. His position is clear that out of the box the hardware isn't 100% compatible (because of the uArch change) and it will take some efforts to achieve such a thing with the full Switch library of games.

 

[ArchedThunder]

MVG and Nate actually had a full discussion about this very topic and he never states its impossible for newer Switch hardware to have a fix for BC. His position is clear that out of the box the hardware isn't 100% compatible (because of the uArch change) and it will take some efforts to achieve such a thing with the full Switch library of games.

I never said that he said it was impossible, I’m just confused as to why he keeps going back to patches as his main go to solution as opposed to the much more straight forward option of translation.

 

[Deleted member 2548]

I never said that he said it was impossible, I’m just confused as to why he keeps going back to patches as him main go to solution as opposed to the much more straight forward option of translation.

If this device is shaping up to be a decent bit stronger than people were expecting, would a universal translation layer be more feasible / practical than previously expected too?

 

[Terrell]

I’ve never watched any of the podcasts (other than the Spawn Wave one today), I’ve been going off of what others have said in this thread and nobody has ever corrected me, lol. Either wayI don’t see why he doesn’t have that as his main suggestion, he seems set on the idea of patches instead for some reason.

Because 100% compatibility won't be possible without that anyways. Translating the Maxwell instructions can achieve broad compatibility, but not full compatibility, as there is likely to be quirks and abnormal conditions present that have to be patched over. It depends how efficient that instruction translation is. MVG said the absolute best they could likely achieve with just instruction translation alone is 99% compatibility.

It's another reason to suggest this is not something that can be marketed as an iterative hardware revision, because the architecture can't guarantee full compatibility with Switch software without SOME degree of code patching at the individual game level or including the OG Switch SoC, which is intensely unlikely given space constraints. It's a LOT of legwork to guarantee full compatibility before a single piece of hardware is sold.

 

[Pokemaniac]

Low key one of the better aspects of this all getting finally revealed will be no longer having to read weird takes on BC from people who should really know better.

Right, I understand the solution, I was just trying to figure out the problem.

It's fortunate that ARM is binary compatible. A very minor GPU compatibility layer should be pretty easy and lean.

It's a difference in philosophy between CPUs and GPUs. The CPU directly exposes its instruction set to the developer, while typically GPUs don't, allowing all sorts of changes between generations, and expect the shaders to be compiled into a final binary at runtime by the driver. Consoles are a weird exception case due to the hardware being completely fixed, so you can just ship the shaders precompiled as a performance optimization.

 

[ArchedThunder]

Because 100% compatibility won't be possible without that anyways. Translating the Maxwell instructions can achieve broad compatibility, but not full compatibility, as there is likely to be quirks and abnormal conditions present that have to be patched over. It depends how efficient that instruction translation is. MVG said the absolute best they could likely achieve with just instruction translation alone is 99% compatibility.

99% is a whole lot more than if they just did patches instead. Honestly 99% is a great number, it’s pretty much what Xbox has and if any major games had issues they could be patched. My confusion comes from him seemingly so focused on the idea of them just doing patches instead. In the video today he never mentioned translation and only brought up patches and rereleases.

 

[NineTailSage]

I never said that he said it was impossible, I’m just confused as to why he keeps going back to patches as his main go to solution as opposed to the much more straight forward option of translation.

Sorry for me implying that it just seems that because it's a concern from multiple people I have seen that mentioned before.
Again many may not have full faith in Nintendo developing a software translation option when they most recently struggled to add N64 emulated games to their online services. I would much rather Nintendo does something similar to Microsoft and dedicate a team to the BC and work on mainly that for a number of years.

Patches would at least guarantee that on a game by game basis the software has been tailored to take advantage of the new hardware features Ampere brings over Maxwell...

 

[LoneRanger]

Any journalist/insider reading this thread, we need the answers of these 2 questions for next switch hardware:

1) If its getting a full backward compability without too many issues and improvements.
2) how does this next HW compares to previous gen consoles (PS4/PS4 Pro/XBO/XBO X) and current gen ones (PS5/XB Series S/X).

I don’t care in extreme about the specs, I’m curious but at least answering those 2 questions I would be happy .

 

[Terrell]

99% is a whole lot more than if they just did patches instead. Honestly 99% is a great number, it’s pretty much what Xbox has and if any major games had issues they could be patched. My confusion comes from him seemingly so focused on the idea of them just doing patches instead. In the video today he never mentioned translation and only brought up patches and rereleases.

99% is the maximum achievable compatibility. Such a method could end up lower than that, but that would absolutely be what Nintendo and Nvidia would be aiming to achieve; whether or not they achieve it would be another matter entirely.

 

[Tentacle-tropes]

Low key one of the better aspects of this all getting finally revealed will be no longer having to read weird takes on BC from people who should really know better.

Lol I wish this would be the case.

Any journalist/insider reading this thread, we need the answers of these 2 questions for next switch hardware:

1) If its getting a full backward compability without too many issues and improvements.
2) how does this next HW compares to previous gen consoles (PS4/PS4 Pro/XBO/XBO X) and current gen ones (PS5/XB Series S/X).

I don’t care in extreme about the specs, I’m curious but at least answering those 2 questions I would be happy .

I’m not sure why this is a great idea to directly proposition them for information. Nor do I think trying to give you hard answers is a great idea at this current time.

 

[Dakhil]

while it's a benefit, it'll probably be designed around. unlike PCs, dev can keep latency low by manually allocating tasks to cores

Also, I imagine implementing 6-8 CPU cores using one Cortex-A78C cluster is much simpler than implementing 6-8 CPU cores using two Cortex-A78 or Cortex-A78AE clusters, assuming Nintendo wants 6-8 CPU cores.

---

Sorry for me implying that it just seems that because it's a concern from multiple people I have seen that mentioned before.
Again many may not have full faith in Nintendo developing a software translation option when they most recently struggled to add N64 emulated games to their online services. I would much rather Nintendo does something similar to Microsoft and dedicate a team to the BC and work on mainly that for a number of years.

Patches would at least guarantee that on a game by game basis the software has been tailored to take advantage of the new hardware features Ampere brings over Maxwell...

I think Nintendo could also approach backwards compatibility similarly to how Sony approached PlayStation 4 backwards compatibility with the PlayStation 5.

---

I still believe the MSRP being in the range of $449.99 - $499.99 is also still very much possible, although I also believe $399.99 is the minimum for the MSRP.

 

[bloopland33]

What do you guys now make of those journalist/insiders' comments from the first half of last year (pre-OLED reveal) from Era? Imran made the comment of "it's neat" or "it's a New 3DS type situation," can't remember which he was. New 3DS, I think. And then I can't remember the other guy's name...he didn't pop up much but when he did he had a reputation of being supremely reliable, if that rings any bells. I think he made the "it's neat" comment. These were in one of the Bloomberg threads I believe.

I don't think they were talking out of their ass, so I do wonder how those square with what we learned this week or what was up with those. Particularly the n3DS comment, this thing is way, way more exciting than even the optimists of us thought it would be.

Edit: you know what, I'm answering my own question as I think about. Probably as simple as they obviously didn't know details. Knew it existed, and knew enough to know it was an upgrade, but didn't have the full picture and were assuming/doing informed speculation with what they knew? So you can disregard this now.

 

[karmitt]

Such a thing will never happen because it shows integrity.

When OLED was announced, I immediately said it was not the hardware I had been discussing and still stood by the Switch hardware with DLSS information as accurate and that devkits had been distributed in late 2020 and throughout 2021. People called it a lie.

Enter the leak...

Silence from those individuals or they pivot to, "You called a Pro & it's a 2... so you were wrong".

u got u covered on that last one fam

Furukawa on next gen Switch: still thinking about the concept of the machine, too early to talk about it, current Switch still in mid life

No matter when its coming, I'm still super pumped for dane.

famiboards.com

 

[ArchedThunder]

Sorry for me implying that it just seems that because it's a concern from multiple people I have seen that mentioned before.
Again many may not have full faith in Nintendo developing a software translation option when they most recently struggled to add N64 emulated games to their online services. I would much rather Nintendo does something similar to Microsoft and dedicate a team to the BC and work on mainly that for a number of years.

Patches would at least guarantee that on a game by game basis the software has been tailored to take advantage of the new hardware features Ampere brings over Maxwell...

My expectation would be translation or partial emulation with select games getting patches adding enhancements.
The N64 this is a whole different issue from translation on Switch 4k. NSO games are full emulation and N64 is notoriously difficult to emulate.

99% is the maximum achievable compatibility. Such a method could end up lower than that, but that would absolutely be what Nintendo and Nvidia would be aiming to achieve; whether or not they achieve it would be another matter entirely.

Ok, but the problem still remains that if they just went with patches they wouldn’t get anywhere near 99%, and thus my confusion as to why that’s the solution he keeps mentioning. Only doing patches would never result in as many compatible games as translation or partial emulation.

 

[Dakhil]

We still don't have confirmation of Orin being on Samsung's 8nm process, I do find it weird that Nvidia has never confirmed the manufacturing process yet(maybe at GTC in March coming up soon).

Or Nvidia could be saving that information for Hot Chips 34, similar to how Nvidia mentioned which process nodes were used for the fabrication of Nvidia's Arm based SoCs during Hot Chips, such as Xavier, the Tegra X2, the Tegra X1, and the Tegra K1.

 

[Josh5890]

Also, I imagine implementing 6-8 CPU cores using one Cortex-A78C cluster is much simpler than implementing 6-8 CPU cores using two Cortex-A78 or Cortex-A78AE clusters, assuming Nintendo wants 6-8 CPU cores.

---

I think Nintendo could also approach backwards compatibility similarly to how Sony approached PlayStation 4 backwards compatibility with the PlayStation 5.

---

I still believe the MSRP being in the range of $449.99 - $499.99 is also still very much possible, although I also believe $399.99 is the minimum for the MSRP.

I'm becoming less and less optimistic for $399.99. Hopefully I can still get a couple hundred trading in my OG Switch.

 

[NateDrake]

Any journalist/insider reading this thread, we need the answers of these 2 questions for next switch hardware:

1) If its getting a full backward compability without too many issues and improvements.
2) how does this next HW compares to previous gen consoles (PS4/PS4 Pro/XBO/XBO X) and current gen ones (PS5/XB Series S/X).

I don’t care in extreme about the specs, I’m curious but at least answering those 2 questions I would be happy .

This will be covered in my upcoming episode.

 

[Gotdatmoneyy]

What does “clean generational break” even mean, if you think that’s what ms and Sony are doing?

Cause to me, both of them are more or less iterations, Xbox even more than PS.

This is a new system that will be the future of our ecosystem going forward and we are letting everyone know now. There is a difference between tge Xbox Series and rhe Xbox One X for example. And what MS and Sony did this gen isn't much different than last gen. There was a period of cross gen before the current gen took over but it was never ambiguous what systems would be continuing the trend. Not sure why we are acting like it isn't obvious the PS4 was the Successor to the PS3 the same way the PS5 is obviously the successor to the PS4.

 

[Instro]

What do you guys now make of those journalist/insiders' comments from the first half of last year (pre-OLED reveal) from Era? Imran made the comment of "it's neat" or "it's a New 3DS type situation," can't remember which he was. New 3DS, I think. And then I can't remember the other guy's name...he didn't pop up much but when he did he had a reputation of being supremely reliable, if that rings any bells. I think he made the "it's neat" comment. These were in one of the Bloomberg threads I believe.

I don't think they were talking out of their ass, so I do wonder how those square with what we learned this week or what was up with those. Particularly the n3DS comment, this thing is way, way more exciting than even the optimists of us thought it would be.

Edit: you know what, I'm answering my own question as I think about. Probably as simple as they obviously didn't know details. Knew it existed, and knew enough to know it was an upgrade, but didn't have the full picture and were assuming/doing informed speculation with what they knew? So you can disregard this now.

It was Matt who said "it's neat". I believe Imran's only comment was just affirming that it exists and he heard dev kits were out there.

 

[ReddDreadtheLead]

@NateDrake can you do me 1 favor, a single request, and this is for your next podcast.

Can you ask MVG to clarify what he means by “100% is not possible for BC unless they have the hardware inside it”?

And by that I mean, is he saying that unless they pull a “Wii inside the Wii U” scenario, then it cannot have BC in any fashion?

Or, is he saying “100% (as in every single title) will not run” and expecting absolutely every single title to run out the box is unrealistic, but that a situation like the PS5 (which has like 99% compatibility with the previous titles and needed a patch to run on the PS5) is a more realistic stance to have with respect to expectation?


The only thing, possibly ad verbatim.

Or, “are you saying 100% BC like the Series consoles is not possible, or are you saying a PS5 scenario who isn’t 100% compatible, but 99% compatible is what’s possible, but the 100% isn’t and need a patch for that 1%?”

The sole request.

 

[Z0m3le]

Part 2 of Thraktor's attempts to underclock his GPU!

So, after investigating a bit more, it turns out that the command line tool nvidia-smi (which you'll probably be familiar with if you've ever used CUDA) allows you to set fixed GPU clocks, and supports clock speeds as low as 405MHz. This is exactly what I was looking for, however after looking at the data it's not behaving quite as I'd like when it comes to voltages, which limits its usefulness for our purposes a bit. Anyway, I figured I'd report my findings here.

For these runs, I set the fixed clock speed on my RTX 3070 using nvidia-smi, performed a benchmark run of Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition (4K ultra settings with high raytracing and balanced DLSS) and used GPU-Z to log GPU data during the run. Then I took the average GPU chip power consumption (which excludes RAM and other GPU components), and the GPU voltage. The voltage would typically vary a bit, so I took the peak sustained voltage during the run. I also tracked the FPS reported by the Metro Exodus benchmark tool, just to have it. Here's the data I got:

Clock (MHz)	Voltage (V)	Power Draw (W)	FPS	W/SM	FPS/W
405	0.781	37.1	15.09	0.807	0.4067
495	0.781	41.6	18.40	0.905	0.4420
600	0.781	47.3	22.12	1.027	0.4681
705	0.781	52.3	25.73	1.138	0.4916
795	0.781	56.5	28.54	1.227	0.5056
900	0.781	61.5	32.05	1.336	0.5214
1005	0.781	66.0	35.14	1.435	0.5323
1095	0.781	70.5	38.09	1.532	0.5404
1200	0.781	76.1	41.35	1.654	0.5434
1305	0.781	79.7	44.44	1.733	0.5575
1395	0.793	87.6	46.68	1.905	0.5326
1500	0.837	102.5	49.71	2.227	0.4851
1605	0.868	120.4	52.30	2.617	0.4344

Now, if you look at the voltage column, you'll probably notice the issue. Below 1.3GHz, when I set a clock speed using nvidia-smi, the voltage doesn't drop lower than 781mV. This contrasts to the behaviour when I limit clock speeds using MSI Afterburner, where I managed to run at 1155MHz at 721mV. I added the higher-clocked runs to test this, and it looks like everything at and above 1.3GHz is running the same voltage as I see on the default voltage curve in Afterburner, but below this point nvidia-smi seems to set 781mV as a limit for some reason. The nvidia-smi tool itself doesn't allow you to directly control voltages, so I'm not sure if there's a way I can work around this.

As a result of this voltage limitation, every clock speed below 1.3GHz is consuming more power than it should, were it at optimal voltage. If we compare to my previous 1155MHz/721mV run which ran at about 62W, the same clock here would consume over 10W more, due to the higher voltage. So effectively this is reasonably accurate for the range of frequencies that Nintendo would never use, but inaccurate in the range of actually plausible frequencies!

In any case, this is actually a useful instruction on how hitting a voltage floor impacts power efficiency. The last column is FPS/W, which is a measure of efficiency. If you read this from the bottom up, you can see as clocks drop from 1.6GHz down to 1.3GHz efficiency improves quite a lot, as the reduced voltage means power consumption is dropping faster than performance is. However, below 1.3GHz the voltage is static, so efficiency gradually gets worse as you go below that point. You still save power by dropping clock speeds, but you're giving up more performance than you're saving in power consumption.

This is why I suggest that Nintendo might disable some SMs in portable mode. The actual peak of performance per Watt will be at a much lower frequency than we've got here, probably in the 400-600MHz range, but there is a point where clocking down actually loses efficiency, and if they're not capable of running all 12 SMs at that peak efficiency clock in portable mode, then they'll get better returns by disabling SMs than clocking lower.

Still pretty useful, the mobile clock of 400MHz across 12SM is under 10 watts in your experiment, but real world voltages would drastically reduce power consumption further, could be looking at 5 or 6 watts for the GPU when portable, meaning total system power during such a clock could be around 10 watts, similar to max OG switch power draw.

 

[Thugstas]

It does but remember: Mochi lies and I made it all up for clickbait and both of us have been saying it since 2015 or something.

The only error made was conflating it for the OLED model. Otherwise, everything has been accurate.

True

 

[bloopland33]

It was Matt who said "it's neat". I believe Imran's only comment was just affirming that it exists and he heard dev kits were out there.

That was it! It was on the tip of my tongue

 

[karmitt]

That was it! It was on the tip of my tongue

Matt mentioned around the same time that it was a Day 0 buy for both handheld and docked players.

Imran mentioned it’d be more of a Pro than a successor - more for framerates and resolutions than anything else. He also said the following when the Bloomberg "4K Switch 2021" article dropped (pre-OLED announcement).

 

[Mr Swine]

Why? Why not just say it’s a model that enhances Switch games? Why make people think it’s pointless to buy an OLED Switch next year if it’s going to lose support by Nintendo?

My argument is that it makes no business sense to market this expensive model as a gen breaking successor.

Makes a ton of sense. If Nintendo releases this as a simple revision that plays current games better and has 4K capability then there is a risk that sales will eventually fall off like it did with previous handheld revisions.

Calling it Switch 2 makes more sense and they can have ads showing it playing current Switch games and the new Switch 2 exclusive ones. Future exclusive games will have a “Only on Switch 2” on the box while cross gen will have ”Works on Switch and Switch 2”.

Otherwise how will you market exclusive Switch games on a revision that is supposedly to be on the same family and that is way more powerful?