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Will they?
Because that’s, like, literally what Nintendo has done multiple times, and any worries about “people feeling duped” hasn’t seem to stop them.
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StarTopic Future Nintendo Hardware & Technology Speculation & Discussion |ST| (Read the staff posts before commenting!)
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Because that’s, like, literally what Nintendo has done multiple times, and any worries about “people feeling duped” hasn’t seem to stop them.
Alovon11
Like Like
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Well like, it's more like NVIDIA making the console really.You should post this in the "Nintendo should make a powerful console" thread.
Either way, even if clock speeds are TBD (And likely will be until launch), we know the actual GPU specifications now outside of that so we can extrapolate a fair bit.
12SMs is what was in the hack, and that means the system will be powerful.
Heck, it will match up to the PS4 before DLSS at as low as 586Mhz.
And that is before DLSS and considering the massive CPU leap due to the sheer uArch improvement the A78 family is versus the Jaguar cores in PS4/Xbone and the A57s in the OG Switch units.
Kevin
Chain Chomp
I'll offer my opinion;
I feel that if Switch Pro or whatever is coming in late 2022 or Spring 2023 then the sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild would absolutely used as a crossgen title with next gen enhancements. Not only has Nintendo done this several times with Zelda but I also feel like Zelda is the perfect game to do this with as it's a game that is very popular and a good core title which is exactly the kind of game you would want to launch new hardware with.
This is why I believe that if the next Zelda comes out and there is still no Switch Pro then I feel like Nintendo is holding off the launch of new hardware to 2024 or later. Obviously I hope this isn't the case.
This is just my opinion of course. In my mind the release of the new Zelda will essentially either confirm new hardware is imminent or not or at least that will be the way I perceive the situation until further evidence suggests otherwise.
I feel that if Switch Pro or whatever is coming in late 2022 or Spring 2023 then the sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild would absolutely used as a crossgen title with next gen enhancements. Not only has Nintendo done this several times with Zelda but I also feel like Zelda is the perfect game to do this with as it's a game that is very popular and a good core title which is exactly the kind of game you would want to launch new hardware with.
This is why I believe that if the next Zelda comes out and there is still no Switch Pro then I feel like Nintendo is holding off the launch of new hardware to 2024 or later. Obviously I hope this isn't the case.
This is just my opinion of course. In my mind the release of the new Zelda will essentially either confirm new hardware is imminent or not or at least that will be the way I perceive the situation until further evidence suggests otherwise.
Look over there
Bob-omb
To add on to what Skittzo said and address cost specifically to a partial degree:My question is how tech from x box series s can fit in switch which is what, 10 times smaller in size AND have good battery life AND not be super expensive. I am preparing for a modest upgrade model in 2023 but if it is something close to what you guys are discussing then hats off to Ninty! I'll be the first in line in both cases anyway
Skipping the details, but what things boil down to for the chip inside the system is that, size is money. The chip in Drake will be smaller than the chip in a big console like PS5 or Xbox Series. All else being equal, Drake chips will be simply cheaper than PS5/Xbox Series chips.
I also think that there's a decent probability of Drake's ram being cheaper.
PS5/Xbox Series use GDDR6 chips. Going by this, back in 2019, 1 GB GDDR6 chips cost like $10-12 each. PS5 uses eight 2 GB GDDR6 chips (plus 512 MB of DDR4). By speed, it should be 14 Gbps.
Xbox Series X and S... look a little odd to me. For the X, the alleged bus width suggests 10 chips, but the speeds suggest 16 chips in total (if they were 14 Gbps chips). The die shot shows 10 spots for ram. The ram size suggests 8 or 16 chips. For the S, the alleged bus width suggest 4 chips, but the speeds suggest 5. The size suggests 5 or 10 chips. Reason being that, as far as I'm aware, GDDR6 is only manufactured in capacities of 1 or 2 GB.
Citing this page, 12 GB of 64-bit LPDDR5 cost like $44. We expect 128-bit for Drake, so that'd be two modules. But we're not expecting 12 GB per module. Realistically, more like 4 or 6 GB per module. Anyway, my interpretation is that LPDDR is manufactured on a larger scale than GDDR6 (phones versus GPUs), so economies of scale is in its favor.
The storage of that phone should be UFS 3.X, right? That should be 'Memory: Non-Volatile'? So $23.50 for 256 GB? Hmm, wonder what storage costs for PS5/XSeries...
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Deleted member 1324
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I'd be pretty disappointed if BotW 2 launched with Drake and all it had was a higher resolution and 60fps. If the hardware is as powerful as was leaked a while ago (~2tflop GPU with RT and DLSS support / 6x CPU / 2x RAM / 4x Mem Bandwidth) then I'd want visual improvements across the board from texture and shadow resolution to a ton more foliage and clouds while in the sky area and a much higher draw distance with much better lod's. This isn't a WiiU to Switch like leap in hardware, it's more akin to a full generational leap in tech (if the Nvidia leaks are true).
They can keep the higher res / fps patches for their old games that they improve with DLSS and 60fps like the original BotW, Mario Odyssey, MK8D etc.
Tentacle-tropes
Kremling
I mean if it is like the WiiU situation where they worked themselves to get it on the system then expect minimal improvements. If Aonuma/Fujibayashi want the game to remain parity with the last system then expect better resolution/30fps with some minor improvements.
It doesn’t matter how powerful the system if the teams involved don’t wanna use it or don’t have the time.
the game would have had to been designed for scalability from the start. adding that late in development is a big ask, unless you're ok with a proper next-gen update a year or two later
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I think this is exactly what we should expect.
I still trust the messaging we got from Imran back in 2021: We should expect it's mostly used for resolution and framerate improvements. That's not to say that exclusive titles won't use it for more - why else would they be exclusive? And I don't personally think this is a bad outcome.
Edit:
https://www.resetera.com/threads/bl...ev-kits-going-out.388253/page-7#post-59996876
There's no reason to believe something's drastically changed since then. He'd also tweeted hearing about dev kits going out, and this is the context he added.
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Deleted member 1324
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All modern engines are scalable. Assets are also built at much higher fidelity then scaled down. Increasing the amount of foliage, textures, shadows and better lod isn't an issue at all. If they hold it back so it looks the same as the base Switch outside of resolution then I'll be pretty annoyed.
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For cross gen games in general that's just not all that realistic whatever the hardware is. The amount of extra development work needed for all of those improvements for an install base a tiny fraction of the size just doesn't make sense for most games.
That being said, if they are making a handful of "showpiece" games, then that kind of effort does make sense. It's hard to say it BotW 2 will be one of those showcase games but I think there's a possibility it is, and it will have some more major differences than just 4k resolution.
D
Deleted member 887
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What you're asking for is the game to be native to Drake and down ported. I understand the desire, but I would prepare to be disappointed. Better draw distances seem doable though, but I wouldn't expect them to be massive. The game is going to be built around the world looking good and being visually comprehensible on base Switch.
Everyone wants a generational upgrade in power, on a revision schedule, with games operating like native ports, but full backwards and forwards compat. This circle cannot be squared.
Nintendo has repositioned themselves with the Switch. They dropped their entire legacy architecture, and hitched their wagons to the MASSIVE economies of scale in the phone/tablet market, and their most invested and knowledgeable technical partner since SGI and the N64. They can take this opportunity to cover a HUGE amount of ground in the power game. Portables will never be able to catch up to a massive power hungry, heat emitting box under your TV, but with console generations getting longer, but phone generations getting shorter, they can get alarmingly close, if they want to be in this market for the long haul.
But that's just on the hardware side, taking advantage of a whole bunch of winds in their favor at once. The software side is totally different. They cannot go whole hog on a new piece of hardware, no matter how powerful, while supporting the broader switch ecosystem. Do not confuse the theoretical power of the platform with the games that will actually be made for this.
When Nate talks about "just a revision that does 4k" that's where we should be putting our expectations for the first year of this thing's existence. It will throw a lot of power at games so that their scalable components (frame rate, resolution) are maxed out as much as possible, and offer DLSS on top of that. Even early exclusives will not be "maxing out" the hardware for the same reason that early games for a platform aren't yet achieving everything the hardware can do.
I'm personally of the opinion that Nintendo intends to phase out the old switch model for the new one, extending the Switch "generation" for a long time, and that we'll get games that take proper advantage of drake's power. But it ain't gonna be in year one
Future Boy Nemo
Daydream Believer
While I would also love to see denser foliage and such I don't expect it, but frame rate, draw distance, and level of detail differences seem like reasonable expectations considering the game is still in development. Shadow resolution, too. Anything that requires Drake exclusive assets (such as higher res textures or higher poly models) is unlikely, but even without DLSS Drake is going to be so much over Switch in power that quick, unoptimized implementations of the aspects I mentioned should be able to run decently.
I remember reading that the final stretch of BOTW's development was difficult (which I assume was code for crunch) once it was decided there would be a Switch version, so it's natural to have worries about the same thing happening here, but they had to change from PowerPC to ARM and from AMD to Nvidia, from one SDK to an entirely different one, and they had to overhaul the controls to have parity between Switch and the Gamepad. Compare that to today: it's still ARM. It's still Nvidia. The API is as iterative as the hardware. Going from Wii U to Switch, the challenge was to get it running at all and to keep the versions similar. Going from Switch to Drake, the form factor and controls are similar by nature (we're assuming) and getting it running in the first place is practically a non-factor. Not to mention, the Switch's entire conceit is that games developed for it are scalable; not to the extent we're talking about here of course, so they would need to intentionally take advantage of the hardware, but it wouldn't surprise me if shadow resolution or level of detail will already be different depending what mode you're in on Switch.
As for the idea BOTW2 might be 30fps on Drake, I straight up can't imagine that. Unless going 60fps breaks the engine somehow (which happens sometimes, but not for BOTW so far as I'm aware based on emulators), the Nintendo that advertised SSHD being 60fps isn't going to sandbag the biggest showcase game for their new system's launch just to keep parity. Assuming BOTW2 is a launch game, of course.
Layfolk like myself underestimate game development as a rule, so I'm 100% certain there are difficulties I'm not accounting for, but on the whole I can't imagine the upgrades I've mentioned (again, resolution and frame rate, draw distance, quality of shadows and level of detail) would add anywhere near as much headache to the team as porting BOTW to Switch caused.
If those are the things you meant (aside from frame rate) by minor improvements, sorry for throwing that wall of text at you.
To build even more on what the others have said (thanks for letting me stand on your shoulders, giants), Drake isn't going to match XSS in CPU power. It might be around one-third of its processing power. But that's a ton closer than Switch, or even PS4 and XBOX One are; imagine Drake is getting D- and XSS is getting A-. Just looking at their grades one is way worse than the other, but they both passed the admissions test and are taking the same class, so they're at least close enough to compare. For the GPU, it would have to be clocked at 1.3Ghz to match the XSS's performance, which is supremely unlikely (maaaaaybe if Drake is on the newest tech Nvidia uses, 4nm [which is really 5nm+], it might reach that in docked mode, but the chances are low we'll be so lucky), but 800Mhz is almost two-thirds that and seems achievable even on the worst-case scenario node (8nm), and between target resolutions being lowered and DLSS (not black magic, but close) likely to be used for quite a few ambitious games, it should look very nearly as good as XSS versions of multiplatform games shared between them.My question is how tech from x box series s can fit in switch which is what, 10 times smaller in size AND have good battery life AND not be super expensive. I am preparing for a modest upgrade model in 2023 but if it is something close to what you guys are discussing then hats off to Ninty! I'll be the first in line in both cases anyway
@Look over there wrote about the price difference between the sorts of RAM used by Xbox and what we expect Drake will use (95~% certainty), and another detail about that comparison is the difference in power consumption. Drake's memory will be a little under half the bandwidth compared to XSS, which saves on power consumption. For the CPU and GPU, power moves along an upward-banana shaped curve, which means if you push things to their max potential (highest stable frequency) the power efficiency is going to be lower, while if you set a processor to, say, one-third the performance of what it's technically capable of it will be using considerably less than one-third the power. To take the CPU for instance: ARM tends to be more efficient than X86 (@Skittzo alluded to this, and it's another point in Nintendo's favor), so the impact will be even more dramatic in reality, but if Drake's CPU cores are set to 1.2Ghz vs XSS's 3.6Ghz, based purely on those numbers (so putting aside whether Drake might be on a more advanced node) you would expect Drake to use around 12% of the power for 33% of the performance. This benefits lower power machines like Switch, as it helps get them into the same ballpark as much higher-energy machines on a fraction of the power budget, though it obviously keeps them from ever matching or surpassing contemporary powerhouses. Nintendo is also piggybacking on the ridiculous amount of R&D that smartphone and tablet manufacturers have pumped into the industry for the past ten to fifteen years. Earlier I mentioned the GPU might be around 800Mhz, but that's in docked mode; portable it'd be half that at most, which is another thing that helps battery life be acceptable. The RAM also slows down, though not nearly as much.
If that's too wordy or technical (I'm exhausted just proof reading it), Drake will be weaker than XSS, but not by too much, it'll be within earshot, and processors use a lot more energy per calculation as they get faster so you can run a sizable fraction of the same calculations using a less sizable fraction of electricity, aka battery life =
Disclaimer: Whenever I use definite words like 'will' or 'is' about Drake, mentally add a 'likely' before them, since I'm not a time traveler and they're just predictions. Also, I'm not an expert on any of this so take it with a grain of salt, and hit me up with truthfacts if there's a section you think is incorrect. There's a lot of numbers in there so I don't doubt I slipped up somewhere in the hour I spent writing it (lots of fact checking, lol). And I apologize for all of the parentheses, my thought process is nested and I know that can make it hard to read at times.
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I, too, make conclusions without giving context.
Perhaps, gasp, ARM isn’t comparable to Zen 2 in power draw??
Oh my, it’s a shock!
davec00ke
Octorok
ARM can't perform miracles.
bigger question will be what game will be so cpu-limited
davec00ke
Octorok
pong
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Deleted member 1324
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Nothing I asked for is unreasonable and no I don’t want the game built for Drake and downported to Switch. All of the things I listed will already exist in their development libraries and adding more bushes, trees, higher resolution textures, shadows and improved lod are basic improvements to a cross gen game when working on a much more powerful platform.
I am not asking for better cell shading, better lighting, better character models, a more geometrically complex World or ray tracing.
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No one talked about miracles, but comparing a CPU that can’t compare to ARM CPU is with perf/watt was already a really disingenuous argument and stance to make on this matter. Let alone the fact that you also compared it to the system that has several GDDR6 modules that are plenty power hungry, to a system that won’t even be using that memory type.
Really disingenuous and dishonest from a person that has been in this topic for a while and hasn’t provided much to the discussions.
Anyway, last post on this matter, I’m off.
Tentacle-tropes
Kremling
I expect the following:
- Stable framerate (30fps)
- Better resolution
- Smaller bells & whistles (detail, draw distance, shadows)
IamPeacock
Piranha Plant
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Where is this coming from?
Speculation or something you know?
Nintendo investors meeting on the 10th
Once the system is revealed, you can probably expect new marketing footage that isn't explicitly comparing things to switch over pretty quickly, at least for Nintendo (third parties probably will as well, but not all of them will have devkits right away). Marketing in general is going to try to show things off at their best.
ArchedThunder
Uncle Beerus
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Why do people think we’ll learn anything in the investor meeting? Don’t they regularly deny new hardware in those, even when they have new hardware coming?
I don't know. The only thing we could possibly extrapolate something from is hardware forecasts, which has already leaked.
Its against the law to lie to investors, so they won't do that. What is perfectly legal, is to answer as vague as humanly possible.
ShadowFox08
Paratroopa
I bet Nintendo is aiming for 720p handheld and 900 adaptive in docked for botw 2 like botw1.
That's more than enough. Drake could be 2k 60fps or 4k 30fps with better draw distance, lighting and textures. but most likely just resolution differences. Just like Wii u bite and switch botw, but a bigger upgrade.
But targeting switch resolution identical to botw 1 isn't bad at all and to be expected.
There are key differences between the Wii U situation and botw 2 situation. Last time, playing a game like botw in the palm of your hands was wow worthy enough, and a great proof of concept for the Switch. Showcasing the extra power of the switch, wasn't even necesary to wow people, the handheld nature of it did that by itself. Nobody had ever played a game like that on a handheld.
If the extra power is a major selling point for Drake switch, Nintendo has an incentive to create a spectacular patch.
PedroNavajas
Boo
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Another key difference, is that the Wii U to Switch (hanheld) jump is considerably smaller than what we can expect from Switch to Drake.
D
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Honestly, giving a serious answer for a moment, there's only really going to be a handful of games that are absolutely CPU bound, which I feel more-often-than-not the amount of CPU Core/Threads each console for Xbox and PlayStation has is at this point is more-so "just-in-case" territory. I can think of a few games that would be for sure though (and most of them tend to run best on PC configurations and often are simulation tests and such).
Speaking of which, I know the dream is effectively dead for 8 cores given information we have, but do we have any hope for a possible 6-core configuration? That one seems doable depending on some factors.
PedroNavajas
Boo
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While you are right in stating that its very difficult (or impossible) for a 12W chip to approach the performance of a 75W one without a huge node advantage, I will say there's a few valid points you are not addressing. One is that ARM CPUs are much more efficient than an equivalent x86 on for the tasks we expects for games. But the most important one is that the Switch 2 does not need to consume 12W. A fully clocked Orin is more powerful than the XBSX and consumes 50W.
I fully expect the new Switch to consume closer to 30W than 12W. But I still think the XBSX to be more powerful, but for less than an integer factor.
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Kenka
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What makes you think that? The Switch has a 15.95 Wh battery. 30W would eat into that in half an hour. Unless you are talking about docked mode? But even then, although the USB-C would be able to deliver such power, the thermals would still take a beating. I don't think it's realistic.
Plus, it would mean a gulf (more or less 4x) in power between portable and docked modes. I don't see a use case for that.
PedroNavajas
Boo
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Yes, docked mode. That's about what the Steam Deck consumes while fully clocked. The dock itself could provide some cooling. The gulf in power make sense when you are comparing a 720p screen in portable mode and a 4K in docked mode, even factoring DLSS (which requires a non insignificant amount of power). Otherwise, I cannot make sense on such a big chip for drake.
kvetcha
hoopy frood
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Assuming they stick with a 720p portable screen they're gonna want that extra grunt to ensure solid 4k performance, even with DLSS.
edit: I literally just repeated the comment above mine because I did not read. sorry, @PedroNavajas.
where are you getting "8-core dream is dead"? there's nothing that implies that
and so far, Lumen in UE5 seems rather cpu-heavy. it really wants higher clocks rather than more cores. I do think this is due to scale of the scene though. open world games that use Lumen, might be limited to 30fps
Stinkmeiser45
Piranha Plant
Why would you assume they will stick with 720p portable? 1080p makes much more sense.
One, because you don't want the gap between portable and docked to be that noticeable, and two because even in handheld there is still s substantial difference in quality for 720 vs 1080p.
One, because you don't want the gap between portable and docked to be that noticeable, and two because even in handheld there is still s substantial difference in quality for 720 vs 1080p.
Crusters
Koopa
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I'm not particularly concerned with the thermals on a docked power switch at 30 watt intake (maybe 31.6? With charging joycons?) The system has a simple functional solution, that fan keeps cooler air consistently flowing across the entire board and that j tube heat sink and right out the top. A monument to kiss design.
'Overclocking' (clocking up to spec) my og v1 switch brings power draw up to 20 watts (2/3rds of the way), and temp up to 64 C. So, I'm not particularly worried.
PedroNavajas
Boo
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Even the Steam deck has ~720p resolution for a reason. The higher resolution is too taxing for a portable system. The Switch should have been 540p.
D
Deleted member 1141
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A lot of people looking at the current spec-sheet seemed to think power draw would be too much to have all 8-cores enabled, possibly even with the final chipset being customized. This is why I was under the impression 8-core wasn't feasible.
Gotcha. I do wonder if this process could change down the road as UE5 becomes more mature.
PedroNavajas
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But how much power do the tensor cores consumes, though? I know DLSS is seen as a free upgrade in the PC world, and that make sense if they consume 30w in a 300w GPU, but for a 7w System, 3w is far from free.
I know that running x resolution with dlss consumes significantly less power than running the same res natively. But the case here is running 720p with dlss vs running 1080p with dlss, and that I don’t know.
It's certainly no guarantee that the investor meeting will provide clarity, but Nintendo does sometimes announce new hardware at/around them.
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A higher res screen would make existing Switch games that aren't patched look much worse due to scaling. If this is an upgrade platform they'd want to avoid that.
Also many of us theorize that the OLED model exists partially in order to shore up production capacity for parts that Drake will use too. Including the screen.
Foltzie
Uncle Muji
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Indeed, plus the 720p screen already has a PPI above ~220. Thats in Apple laptop territory (though less than Apple phones at 330PPI). So at a normal holding distance (arms length) a Switch is in "retina" territory, though if you hold your Switch close to your face you could see distinct pixels.
Would upping the display to 1080P (~315PPI) really make things look better for the average user? I would expect that the OLED change mattered more than the extra resolution.
I cannot speak on if targeting 1080P in handheld mode provides some benefits for docked mode.
ShadowFox08
Paratroopa
Oh absolutely. The power difference will clearly be bigger than Wii U to Switch in all areas (CPU, GPU and bandwidth)
The point I was trying to take home is that Nintendo will likely try to match botw 1 performance and resolution with botw 2 on the switch, and it will satisfy most switch owners, so they won't be reeling over an enhanced drake port. I would be pleasantly surprised if they pull 1080p on docked, but not expecting it.
With Drake/Switch 2, they have a lot of options of course, but I'm not expecting them to go all out, especially on level of detail.. It's a multi gen/switch port after all. Theoretically, if they could match ps4 pro performance with DLSS, then they could give like 10x more performance. Not expecting 4k 60fps vs a 900p 30fps switch port, but perhaps they might offer several profiles, including one with ray tracing, and overall better lighting, draw distance, shadows. and more foilage at default perhaps.
4k 30fps resolution mode
2k 60fps performance
1k/2k 30fps with really high fidelity/detail ray tracing perhaps
Would be really interesting to see if Nintendo offers these proflies. It would be a first for them
that's assuming the SoC is made on 8nm. it's why 5nm (from TSMC or Samsung) is on the table
Crusters
Koopa
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Lumen doesn't play well with Amdahl?
Kenka
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Now, I don't know how you measured the temperature of your Switch nor do I have comparisons at hand, but 64°C is a shit ton of °C.
kvetcha
hoopy frood
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Not that bad when you're talking CPU/GPU temp.
A stock Switch sits around 59C-60C under load before throttling.
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