Working backwards from 4LPP to get to 8LPP, take the 3 Ghz@1 watt, then go 3/(1.11*1.11*1.09) ~= 2.23 Ghz@1 watt.
Given that, my guess for how much power 1.7 Ghz would require would then be...
2.23/1.7 ~= 1.31 (ratio of the two frequencies)
1.31^2 ~= 1.73 (the relative increase in power to go from 1.7 Ghz to ~2.23 Ghz)
1/1.73 ~= 0.58
So, at best, 0.58 watts to get a single A78 to 1.7 ghz on Samsung's 8 nm node. More likely to be a bit higher than that. Probably fair to round it up to 0.6 watts?
If we stick your handwavy math into MY handwavy math, what do we get?
This is the preset power profiles on the Orin NX 8GB. For those asking why I was using the AGX as my base - I looked at both to try an isolate the power costs of the TPCs, which is how I started, but the AGX had a profile that looked most "Drake like". But, this power profile conveniently sits at 15 watts and has CPU clocks at about 1.7Ghz.
The Orin devices have AE cores. Let us assume that the power draw for a single AE core is the same two C cores. So the CPU config here looks exactly like what we're talking about - 8 CPU cores, running at 1.7 GHz. Running your math in, the CPU cores are consuming 4.8W of the 15W available.
This config has the PVA Core off (though some of the ancillary PVA hardware is still available), so for our handwavy estimates lets just assume the PVA cost is negligible. Two single speed DLA cores run in the range of 4-6W, so let's call it 5W for simplicity.
That leaves 5.2W to run 2TPCs @ 620Mhz. Now, obviously, there is still overhead to be cut here. The NX/AGX kits here are using LPDDR5 just like we expect Drake to use, but we haven't factored that out. Let's handwave some more and say that, overall, there is 10% power savings to be had just factoring out IO pins and the like from these dev kits.
More handwaving - let us assume that the differences between Orin Ampere and Drake Ampere are power neutral.
440Mhz seems like a floor for the GPU in handheld mode, to match various seemingly corroborated rumors about the performance of the device. Assuming that, at these clocks, TPCs scale linearly with power, and knowing that Drake has 6 TPCs...
5.2 * 0.9 * (440/620) * 3 = ~9.96W for Drake's GPU alone, in handheld mode, on Samsung 8nm.
If we assume that
@Look over there 's CPU numbers are wildly optimistic, ironically, we can just about make it work if CPU's are consuming a full watt per core - but that doesn't pass the smell test on ARM efficiency or Ampere efficiency.
I've long generally assumed that Drake was 8nm, because I didn't see a reason to assume otherwise, and that we would see very low clocks to compensate power-wise. My assumption has also been that this would be positioned as a "Pro" device and that Nintendo would be able to squeeze a "Successor" device out of the same investment by some combination of die shrinking Drake and/or riding other efficiency gains to let them up the clocks. But I think I have to finally concede that doesn't track.