• Hey everyone, staff have documented a list of banned content and subject matter that we feel are not consistent with site values, and don't make sense to host discussion of on Famiboards. This list (and the relevant reasoning per item) is viewable here.
  • Do you have audio editing experience and want to help out with the Famiboards Discussion Club Podcast? If so, we're looking for help and would love to have you on the team! Just let us know in the Podcast Thread if you are interested!

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

Reader mode
Terrell said:
Ummm... there's stuff on the Tegra X1 that's not in use or usable. Erista (and quite likely Mariko) feature a totally unused Cortex-A53 CPU on the SoC. But I see what you're angling at.

If portable mode does not require every available core to be active in order to achieve desired results at the correct thermal envelope (which seems likely), they absolutely could introduce binning as a way to maximize usable chips produced on each wafer. By their nature, cores are only ever active when necessary to perform tasks, either multiple tasks at once or multi-threading a single larger task. If testing shows that no game in portable mode is using more than 50% of the CPU or GPU cores, they could effectively use binned chips for a Lite model where 25% of the cores are faulty and disable those cores (no power can be sent to activate them) and the software would simply indicate that the cores they think should be there are halted (not idle, just off), while still giving an extra 25% CPU/GPU cushion to the expected usage of cores on the SoC just as a precautionary measure, and still be fine since the faulty cores for sure would never be active anyways.

EDIT: And getting that maximum necessary core figure is theoretically easy: stress-test the SoC in TV mode at its maximum achievable spec, then run the same test rendering at the target display resolution in portable mode, find out how many cores are never put into use and then conservatively estimate how many CPU/GPU cores a binned chip can do without based on those tests.

I wouldn't be shocked if the Switch Lite is taking advantage of binned Mariko chips already and no one's really done the work to find out.
Click to expand...
Chip binning doesn't just mean core count, so I could see them using low binned chips for the Drake Lite that can't reach the high frequencies needed for TV Mode. As far as I'm aware that is (or was) already the case for Nintendo Switch, with Nvidia products (Shield, Automotive) getting high binned chips, while those that can't quite reach the necessary speed were handed off cheap as chips to Nintendo, since the Switch doesn't need them to hit the highest speeds anyway. I believe many Intel Core i5 processors have the same core count as the i7s they're binned from, just not the same speed.

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong about this.
 
ReddDreadtheLead said:
While Capcom is doing that, I suggest you all raise your “red flag radars” and smell the roses.
Click to expand...

Man, i have only flown over this thread the last two weeks and don't really know what's going on. I just saw your post and had to make the "Capcom requests more RAM" joke. ^^

Hopefully it won't become a meme until 4 years in and the next portable MonHun or Capcom port/game happens sooner. ;D
 
0
Homura said:
Luigi's Mansion 3 is arguably the best looking Switch game and a strong technical showcase. And from a sales point of view, it's definitely a massive seller lmao , 3 sold around 12 million copies. Definitely more than Kid Icarus could ever hope to achieve.
Click to expand...
Its huge because of its animation, and while the ligting is great and for shure would benefit from more power...
i dont think the game can push it to the next level in regards to WOW factor.

I hate to push on this, but Open World games are simply the easiest showcase. It was so clear where the limitations where on the switch, even with Odyssey. Just showing how clean and far the world can be rendered in Odyssey and BotW could wow some people. Or something with a hyper realistic artstyle like pikmin (at least for the fruits... see Pikmin 3) could be a showcase... (actually, yeah, pikmin 4 could be a fun reveal)

Depending on what direction Prime 4 took i could see some Open Areas being a great showcase of the differences.

Mind you: im not saying that more stylized games dont profit from the increase, but i feel like its less evident to sell the real jump to people, especially for technically less versed.

Heck, just look at KH3, im shure you have a ton of people that are like "this look exactly like in the movies!" when pixar worlds come up.

And while looking at a comparison for Horizon FW on PS4/Pro/5 it was clear, that without a 4k tv many people will be like "yeah... better, but not that much. The switch is behind PS4, so the jump will be clearer, but choosing a good showcase is important.
 
Mirev said:
My biggest fear is that they may choose a name that confuses the audience. If it really is a new generation of Switch and should also receive exclusive Nintendo games in the future, they must make it clear also from the name itself or it goes back to the mistakes of the past.

And if it's not "Switch 2", the perfect choice to me is New Nintendo Switch. Things like "Pro", "Ultra", "Super" would not be very clear in my opinion, because it would lead to think of the improved base model, but not a new gen
Click to expand...
One of thr better known Nintendo successors was literally named the same as the predecessor system but with "super" in front of it. Super Nintendo Switch would do just fine.

IMO, what prevented the One X and PS4 Pro from really taking root was that they didn't flat out replace the base systems nor did they have exclusives.
 
Subrosian Link said:
Wow, pinned! I spent easly a minute looking for the thread til I realized! Nice.
Click to expand...

The thread has become a staple in the community, has been consistently active, and presumably will only keep accelerating as Drake gets closer, so we decided to try pinning it on the board! Should be quicker for people to access now (after we get used to it being pinned). :)
 
Concernt said:
Chip binning doesn't just mean core count, so I could see them using low binned chips for the Drake Lite that can't reach the high frequencies needed for TV Mode. As far as I'm aware that is (or was) already the case for Nintendo Switch, with Nvidia products (Shield, Automotive) getting high binned chips, while those that can't quite reach the necessary speed were handed off cheap as chips to Nintendo, since the Switch doesn't need them to hit the highest speeds anyway. I believe many Intel Core i5 processors have the same core count as the i7s they're binned from, just not the same speed.

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong about this.
Click to expand...
Binning based on frequency performance is what leads to "chip lottery" scenarios. That may be fine and dandy for Intel and its sales partners, but for Nintendo, that level of variable performance from chips binned this way isn't likely to fly; if cores are not hitting intended hertz performance targets, they become a performance risk, as the "chip lottery" also leads to a bunch of chips that can potentially conk out or fall below advertised performance prematurely as their defects continue to progress after fabrication (binned Intel chips were known for having a premature lifespan problem, part of the reason Apple ditched Intel, among others), so we can logically assume that's probably not the route Nintendo is likely to go down with binning.
 
Subrosian Link said:
Wow, pinned! I spent easly a minute looking for the thread til I realized! Nice.
Click to expand...
Chaotic Neutral said:
The thread has become a staple in the community, has been consistently active, and presumably will only keep accelerating as Drake gets closer, so we decided to try pinning it on the board! Should be quicker for people to access now (after we get used to it being pinned). :)
Click to expand...
I definitely spent a couple minutes trying to figure out if the thread had been deleted or something.

Pinned is good!
 
YolkFolk said:
Yep. I think the marketing is going to be so important. Most people don’t want a ‘Pro’ piece of hardware and it would be strange for such a radical evolution in technology to not be selling at the rate of a brand new console. Imagine the PS4 marketed as a PS3 Pro despite all the costs and effort put into it. I guess the major driver will be how many major exclusive games they can get on this hardware as they will help drive sales higher than a usual ‘Pro’ model.
Click to expand...

I keep seeing comments like this one and I don't quite understand the sentiment...
We are currently in a marketplace where new hardware consistently comes out and runs the existing software with improvements.
The Switch isn't a stationary console so yes while PS4 and PS5 might be harder to update with newer hardware iterations, the Switch is easier to understand and it's been on the market since 2017.

Hajeman said:
This is also my opinion in previous post. Me as a general gamers want a clear massage if Drake is Pro or 2. For this kind of power, better call it as a Switch 2 that have BC for Switch 1 families. Just satisfy with 3rd place under PS2 & DS
Click to expand...

A simple moniker like "Switch Advance" with 4k graphics on the box will sell this device to all the right people.
The current Switch has performance issues on many of its games, so newer hardware will instantly alleviate this unlike what PS4 Pro was in comparison to the PS4(in which the base hardware already did a great job of presenting its games).

Bonejack said:
I think Apple has conditioned people to understand something with the postfixes "Pro" or "Max" or similar power-words mean it's an improved / more powerful version.


As long as they're not doing another Wii U naming catastrophe, they're fine.
Click to expand...

This all day!
Upgraded hardware isn't a new concept anymore and especially if Nintendo follows their hand-held history of moving on, the 3DS came along and still played DS games but everyone knew what it was. The Switch is just taking all of this methodology to another level for Nintendo by making the software the nucleus in their platform and the hardware evolving around that...
 
Raccoon said:
as a progenitor of bullshit myself, my bullshit sniffer is best in class
Click to expand...
I don’t think you need a sniffer to see BS of 6GB for a retail product and using a 16GB Developer Kit.

If it’s 6GB for a retail unit, when a 6GB 128-bit doesn’t exist (nor does 3GB 64-bit), that means devs were working with less memory than with the PS4/XB1 consoles.


Why would Nintendo upgrade a system and offer less RAM than the previous generation of systems from its contemporaries?




Thraktor made a post about this not too long ago. I linked the post with his name, simply click.





I had a whole write up, however I just felt like linking this post should just make it clear of what people should expect from 8GB or 12GB.


A 6GB retail product cannot exist unless people believe Nintendo is good at wasting resources.
 
Polygon said:
16gb is in the devkits, the previous devkit was 10gb with 6gb planned for retail (the devkits are a mess silicon wise ‘glued together’ so don’t read into ram modules etc).
Click to expand...
I've mentioned this before, but I don't think 64-bit 24 Gb (3 GB) LPDDR5 modules exist, so 128-bit 6 GB LPDDR5 for retail units seems very suspect to me.
Concernt said:
As far as I'm aware that is (or was) already the case for Nintendo Switch, with Nvidia products (Shield, Automotive) getting high binned chips, while those that can't quite reach the necessary speed were handed off cheap as chips to Nintendo, since the Switch doesn't need them to hit the highest speeds anyway.
Click to expand...
The Tegra X1's GPU thermal throttled to 614 MHz when the Tegra X1's CPU's running at 2 GHz on the Nvidia Shield TV (2015).

And even if the Tegra X1's CPU's running at 1 GHz, the Tegra X1's GPU can thermal throttle down to 768 MHz depending on the Tegra X1's CPU's workload on the Nvidia Shield TV (2015).

So the Tegra X1 on the Nintendo Switch is probably the same SoC as the Tegra X1 on the Nvidia Shield TV (2015).
 
ReddDreadtheLead said:
I don’t think you need a sniffer to see BS of 6GB for a retail product and using a 16GB Developer Kit.

If it’s 6GB for a retail unit, when a 6GB 128-bit doesn’t exist (nor does 3GB 64-bit), that means devs were working with less memory than with the PS4/XB1 consoles.


Why would Nintendo upgrade a system and offer less RAM than the previous generation of systems from its contemporaries?




Thraktor made a post about this not too long ago. I linked the post with his name, simply click.





I had a whole write up, however I just felt like linking this post should just make it clear of what people should expect from 8GB or 12GB.


A 6GB retail product cannot exist unless people believe Nintendo is good at wasting resources.
Click to expand...
I interpreted it as 6GB usable RAM rather than 6GB total.
 
The Direct announcement may yet bear fruit: they didn't say "exclusively on software", but rather "mostly focused on" software launching in Winter.

They have left the door open to announce hardware. Whether they wil or not, who knows, I think it's unlikely but possible.

Almost DEFINITELY a Breath of the Wild 2 title drop, at least, and if we do get hardware, a tech dive into the improvements .
 
Aether said:
Its huge because of its animation, and while the ligting is great and for shure would benefit from more power...
i dont think the game can push it to the next level in regards to WOW factor.
Click to expand...
Luigi’s Mansion could easily be a “killer app” use for ray traced lighting. There is a reason a haunted house game was the showpiece title for the game cube
 
I'd also like to say that an announcement during TGS isn't unwarranted, and in fact could suit their marketing needs:

Nintendo doesn't attend TGS.

Their partners do, and may want to show off Super Switch games.

The Direct this week could either tease or reveal the hardware, but at the very least probably has games that will be supported by the new hardware at launch.

Nintendo puts out the Direct just before TGS, then fans the flames with a hardware announcement during it (not that they'd attend but in the same timeframe). I don't think 25th is totally off the cards, personally, but, feel free to call me a nutcase for saying that.

This Fiscal Year Gang ✌️
 
Concernt said:
The Direct announcement may yet bear fruit: they didn't say "exclusively on software", but rather "mostly focused on" software launching in Winter.

They have left the door open to announce hardware. Whether they wil or not, who knows, I think it's unlikely but possible.

Almost DEFINITELY a Breath of the Wild 2 title drop, at least, and if we do get hardware, a tech dive into the improvements .
Click to expand...

Eh, the "mostly focused" is likely just for BotW2 etc...games which aren't launching this winter. (title drop and not much more is what I'm expecting). Even if BotW2 and possibly other games being launched in 2023 will have Drake upgrades, that won't be mentioned at all imo. Partners can just announce their games (the majority that will be released on both) as Switch games...then announce them again as Drake games later on.
 
Last edited:
oldpuck said:
Luigi’s Mansion could easily be a “killer app” use for ray traced lighting. There is a reason a haunted house game was the showpiece title for the game cube
Click to expand...
If the focus is really on Ray Tracing.
But as is, it was even hard for people in the know to spot the difference, and i have not seen a huge push from the big 2.
Its really resource heavy, and while it can be used greatly to increase the overall fidelity of a scene, its not that "in your face" popping upgrade that the general ublic understands. (at least from my point of view, maybe im missing something).
heck, if they are updating some games they can have different games to showcase different improvements, one for framerate, one for resolution, another for HDR (belive...), one for higher render distance (botw2) and LM for Ray Tracing.

But... i dont expect that.
 
Concernt said:
The Direct announcement may yet bear fruit: they didn't say "exclusively on software", but rather "mostly focused on" software launching in Winter.

They have left the door open to announce hardware. Whether they wil or not, who knows, I think it's unlikely but possible.

Almost DEFINITELY a Breath of the Wild 2 title drop, at least, and if we do get hardware, a tech dive into the improvements .
Click to expand...

Man, i cant predict the future or Nintendo, but there's like a 99.99999999999999998% chance there's nothing hardware related in it.
 
Rowsdower said:
And with this “leak”, Polygon revealed themselves as a low-tier troll, so hopefully the thread moves on.
Click to expand...
Ah now, there's no need to be so mean spirited. We're here for fun, not to be right. I for one have heard similar stuff from elsewhere with the 12GB of RAM and such. You just never know until it happens!
 
ezidro3 said:
They always do this so they can talk about software releasing the following year
Click to expand...
Not always! They often use the words "exclusively on software"! Plus, their wording here is "winter" rather than this year, and that lasts nearly 3 months into 2023.

Polygon said:
Again Q1 2023 is the launch window think due to Fairy Sky Boy 2.
Click to expand...
Doesn't Q1 2023 end in the same month as winter?
What. A. Coincidence.

Edit: to clarify, yes, I am high on hopium.
 
Concernt said:
The Direct announcement may yet bear fruit: they didn't say "exclusively on software", but rather "mostly focused on" software launching in Winter.

They have left the door open to announce hardware. Whether they wil or not, who knows, I think it's unlikely but possible.

Almost DEFINITELY a Breath of the Wild 2 title drop, at least, and if we do get hardware, a tech dive into the improvements .
Click to expand...
Really want they tease about Drake & BOTW2 tomorrow 🤤
 
Can someone explain the 'red flags' of Polygon's post? I don't have enough technical knowledge to find the discrepancies, unless the red flags are about attitude.

Taking it all with a grain of salt anyway, the Nvidia leak already convinced me Switch Ultra is a lil beast so even if it's fanfiction it doesn't raise my expectations above what they already are.
 
Concernt said:
The Direct announcement may yet bear fruit: they didn't say "exclusively on software", but rather "mostly focused on" software launching in Winter.

They have left the door open to announce hardware. Whether they wil or not, who knows, I think it's unlikely but possible.

Almost DEFINITELY a Breath of the Wild 2 title drop, at least, and if we do get hardware, a tech dive into the improvements .
Click to expand...
That also leaves the door open for Mario movie news like last September's direct. 100% no hardware will be in this direct.
 
0
Concernt said:
Not always! They often use the words "exclusively on software"! Plus, their wording here is "winter" rather than this year, and that lasts nearly 3 months into 2023.


Doesn't Q1 2023 end in the same month as winter?
What. A. Coincidence.

Edit: to clarify, yes, I am high on hopium.
Click to expand...

Making me wonder if they used 'winter' here solely because they used 'spring' for the Zelda delay lol
 
Aether said:
If the focus is really on Ray Tracing.
But as is, it was even hard for people in the know to spot the difference, and i have not seen a huge push from the big 2.
Its really resource heavy, and while it can be used greatly to increase the overall fidelity of a scene, its not that "in your face" popping upgrade that the general ublic understands. (at least from my point of view, maybe im missing something).
heck, if they are updating some games they can have different games to showcase different improvements, one for framerate, one for resolution, another for HDR (belive...), one for higher render distance (botw2) and LM for Ray Tracing.

But... i dont expect that.
Click to expand...
the public doesn't understand shit when it comes to graphical features. as long as it looks better and the words "ray tracing" pops up, they'll believe that to be the reason even if it isn't.

and RT doesn't have to be resource heavy. it's quite scalable when you take it into account from the start rather than bolt it on like a lot of games do
 
I get fan fiction vibes from Polygon because of how decorative they describe how they got the infos and the 'ban me if I‘m not right, I don‘t care' rhetoric, not necessarily from that 12GB comment.
 
Serif said:
Can someone explain the 'red flags' of Polygon's post? I don't have enough technical knowledge to find the discrepancies, unless the red flags are about attitude.

Taking it all with a grain of salt anyway, the Nvidia leak already convinced me Switch Ultra is a lil beast so even if it's fanfiction it doesn't raise my expectations above what they already are.
Click to expand...
I'll explain what I've noticed

Hidden content is only available for registered users. Sharing it outside of Famiboards is subject to moderation.
 
lexony said:
I get fan fiction vibes from Polygon because of how decorative they describe how they got the infos and the 'ban me if I‘m not right, I don‘t care' rhetoric, not necessarily from that 12GB comment.
Click to expand...
Eh, it's been a journey for them to end up being defensive like that. It's not their first post and a previous one or two had received a similar response (of varying degrees of intensity) so it's kind of a protective preemptive strike sort of thing. In my eyes anyway. Even Nate gets irritable from time to time dealing with it all.
 
ILikeFeet said:
the public doesn't understand shit when it comes to graphical features. as long as it looks better and the words "ray tracing" pops up, they'll believe that to be the reason even if it isn't.

and RT doesn't have to be resource heavy. it's quite scalable when you take it into account from the start rather than bolt it on like a lot of games do
Click to expand...
It would be "bolt it on" by definition if its an update to LM. (The topic was updates, wasnt it?), but even with a new entry...

"know shit" is good and well, but lets look at the nature of RT: it usually influences the shading of stuff thats already there, and does not add new stuff except if yu have a reflection heavy scene.
In other words: it changes whats already there.

For it to pop for people that dont get it, you have 2 options: mor realistic (they know whats real, so closer to that is easy to grasp), or more details. First one does not work with LM, second one less so because of the artstyle.

Mind you, im not against it, would be great and all, but i just dont see LM as a front runner for showing the new switch, because there would be examples that are more obvious for the marketing.
 
kvetcha said:
Sir, I knew Zap Rowsdower, and Zap Rowsdower weren't no snowflake.
Click to expand...

TightShamelessDartfrog-size_restricted.gif
 
Dakhil said:
I've mentioned this before, but I don't think 64-bit 24 Gb (3 GB) LPDDR5 modules exist, so 128-bit 6 GB LPDDR5 for retail units seems very suspect to me.

The Tegra X1's GPU thermal throttled to 614 MHz when the Tegra X1's CPU's running at 2 GHz on the Nvidia Shield TV (2015).

And even if the Tegra X1's CPU's running at 1 GHz, the Tegra X1's GPU can thermal throttle down to 768 MHz depending on the Tegra X1's CPU's workload on the Nvidia Shield TV (2015).

So the Tegra X1 on the Nintendo Switch is probably the same SoC as the Tegra X1 on the Nvidia Shield TV (2015).
Click to expand...

Many of us might be giving Nintendo to much credit and maybe this next Switch evolved extremely since the early devkits...
I'm thinking like if the earlier kits only had a total 64bit memory bus and maybe that was either achieved by a mix and matching of RAM modules(maybe or maybe not LPDDR5). I personally could have seen Nintendo try and get away with more RAM than the original Switch but only using one 64bit LPDDR5 memory module to achieve this in the design.

The final product will definitely give us more clearance on this in the end but the Nvidia leak completely caught absolute everyone off guard by how large the GPU was, so things definitely changed at some point in time.
 
0
Aether said:
It would be "bolt it on" by definition if its an update to LM. (The topic was updates, wasnt it?), but even with a new entry...

"know shit" is good and well, but lets look at the nature of RT: it usually influences the shading of stuff thats already there, and does not add new stuff except if yu have a reflection heavy scene.
In other words: it changes whats already there.

For it to pop for people that dont get it, you have 2 options: mor realistic (they know whats real, so closer to that is easy to grasp), or more details. First one does not work with LM, second one less so because of the artstyle.

Mind you, im not against it, would be great and all, but i just dont see LM as a front runner for showing the new switch, because there would be examples that are more obvious for the marketing.
Click to expand...
realism can be defined in a number of ways. realistic light propagation would do a lot to affect the look of a game. I can show some ray traced cartoony stuff for example. the "influences what's already there" is a bit reductive, IMO. Luigi's Mansion 3 isn't doing much that isn't in a game like Astro Bot, but that easily looks better without relying on RT.

as I said elsewhere, RT does a lot for discontinuities in an image's visuals. LM3 won't benefit that much unless they redo a lot of texture work being baked in though. LM4 would be a showpiece, I think. Next Level, Monolith, and the Zelda team, I feel, are at the forefront of visual research at Nintendo
 
ILikeFeet said:
realism can be defined in a number of ways. realistic light propagation would do a lot to affect the look of a game. I can show some ray traced cartoony stuff for example. the "influences what's already there" is a bit reductive, IMO. Luigi's Mansion 3 isn't doing much that isn't in a game like Astro Bot, but that easily looks better without relying on RT.

as I said elsewhere, RT does a lot for discontinuities in an image's visuals. LM3 won't benefit that much unless they redo a lot of texture work being baked in though. LM4 would be a showpiece, I think. Next Level, Monolith, and the Zelda team, I feel, are at the forefront of visual research at Nintendo
Click to expand...
I don't think Splatoon is too far behind, personally. It looks absolutely stellar with what appears to be pinsharp image reconstruction.
 
Concernt said:
I don't think Splatoon is too far behind, personally. It looks absolutely stellar with what appears to be pinsharp image reconstruction.
Click to expand...
I think Splatoon 3 traded increased visual fidelity for stability and better IQ. it holds the top end resolution more often than Splatoon 2 did. there's probably not much wiggle room for increased fidelity given that 60fps is paramount for the game
 
Polygon said:
Same company, new higher contact from party I ended up at this weekend. They're talking more openly. Much more openly (could have been the copious amounts of coke lol). I wonder if an announcement might be imminent to go along with the first BotW 2 gameplay...

If i get the chance i'll ask who I know about ram but I mostly see them at weekend parties. Possible the memory isn't unified like Series S? Might be cheaper to have a separate slower pool for OS. Retail is definitely 16gb as of now.

Enjoy the Direct tomorrow y'all!
Click to expand...

Don't you mean 12 GB?

And who is this contact in terms of position within the company?
 
Polygon said:
Same company, new higher contact from party I ended up at this weekend. They're talking more openly. Much more openly (could have been the copious amounts of coke lol). I wonder if an announcement might be imminent to go along with the first BotW 2 gameplay...

If i get the chance i'll ask who I know about ram but I mostly see them at weekend parties. Possible the memory isn't unified like Series S? Might be cheaper to have a separate slower pool for OS. Retail is definitely 16gb as of now.

Enjoy the Direct tomorrow y'all!
Click to expand...
I’m going to assume you mean the drink.
 
Reader mode
You must log in or register to reply here.
Please read this staff post before posting.

Furthermore, according to this follow-up post, all off-topic chat will be moderated.
Last edited:


Back
Top Bottom