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

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ReddDreadtheLead said:
That said, with the FDE, the media engines on the device for video playback if there is, more potent hardware, etc., it shouldn’t come close to say RDR2 which was like >100GB
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It's pretty well all but certain that Switch supports hardware-accelerated AV1 decode and likely AV1 encode, as well. Which is a step up from similar VP9 decode support in Switch.
And yeah, so long as there's hardware acceleration on your device, that's the format Netflix is using to stream 4K at instead of h.265 due to significant video file size differences.
 
Pokemaniac said:
Even if Nintendo is currently archiving third party source code to a high enough standard to be able to modify and build it (likely not a trivial endeavor with how modern build systems are), there are a bunch of legal and technical reasons that's not really a good avenue to go down. It's the sort of thing they'd probably need explicit permission for, and their engineers would likely be completely unfamiliar with the codebases.

Even on Android, this is only sometimes true. Android apps typically ship Dalvik bytecode (which is notably not JVM bytecode, but typically derived from it) by default, which is hardware agnostic, but many apps, including what I'd estimate to be the vast majority of every game of note on the platform, also contain some amount of native code which can only run on whatever architecture(s) it's compiled for.

Android is going to have its own big dropping 32-bit support moment coming pretty soon with how the recent ARM cores are going.
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Google is already pushing to drop 32 bit support: the Pixel 7 lineup blocks 32bit code through a software flag and they've already announced that the Pixel tablet will not support 32bit applications at all.
 
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What do you guys think about a possible "Switch Micro"? A Switch in the size of a Vita, maybe thinner, using a TX1 in a even smaller node.

Launched like a Gameboy Micro, not to compete with Drake, but to reach another branch of market for Switch.

I think that a a device that could run switch games and fit inside a pocket would have a good appeal.
 
LinkURL said:
What do you guys think about a possible "Switch Micro"? A Switch in the size of a Vita, maybe thinner, using a TX1 in a even smaller node.

Launched like a Gameboy Micro, not to compete with Drake, but to reach another branch of market for Switch.

I think that a a device that could run switch games and fit inside a pocket would have a good appeal.
Click to expand...
Pointless. Die shrinking the tx1 again is a waste of money and people have already shown little interest in a non-hybrid unit
 
Pokemaniac said:
There are basically three options. Either they switch to custom cores which retain aarch32 support (fairly plausible with the current trajectory of Nvidia and ARM), they include lower power CPU cores that still support aarch32, or they emulate it. Right now I'm about 50/50 on the first and third option, especially as the likelihood of custom cores in general seems to be growing even outside this issue.

Considering the studio he works with and the projects he works on, I'd be very surprised if MVG has even been officially informed of the hardware's existence yet.

Yeah, you'd think one of the Switch emulators would have a decent list, but I've never found one.

I suspect the existence of 32-bit Switch games is a confluence of two factors:
  • With the Switch being just barely within the 32-bit memory addressing limit and the games in question seemingly being all ports from older platforms (not just Wii U, either, to my understanding), they're probably not giving much up, if at all.
  • Most games are written in low enough level languages that there will be some level of sensitivity to 32-bit vs 64-bit (the exact amount will be very case by case), providing some incentive for ports to just stick to 32-bit to minimize risks. For games coming from older ARM platforms (mostly 3DS), it's also entirely possible that there might be libraries or middleware that the developer never or (more likely) no longer has the source for, or code that uses features that don't directly translate to aarch64, as I think some features were dropped in the transition.
Is allowing 32-bit games a decision that will increase long term maintenance costs in favor of some shorter term development gains? Probably at least a little. Was it the right decision at the time? Quite possibly, though I don't recall how much dropping aarch32 was really on anyone's radar back then, because aarch64 was still pretty new when Nintendo was designing the Switch.
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I'd be surprised if any of Nvidia's custom ARM cores support aarch32. Grace is presumably 64-bit only (assuming the Neoverse V2 is based on the 64-bit only Cortex X2), and with their CPU focus seemingly on the HPC side of things, there's little reason for them to be concerned about 32-bit support going forward. In theory they could design a custom core specifically for Nintendo with aarch32 support, but that seems like an enormous expense for the sake of BC with maybe 20 games. It's a different matter if they continue to ship 32-bit games for Drake, but the writing's on the wall for 32-bit hardware now, and it seems unlikely to me that any developer would release a game specifically for Drake (ie not just a base Switch game that runs via BC) and willingly give up 50% or more of the available RAM for the sake of sticking to 32-bit.

My guess is emulation, or just patch their own games and drop support for the handful of 32-bit third party games.

LinkURL said:
What do you guys think about a possible "Switch Micro"? A Switch in the size of a Vita, maybe thinner, using a TX1 in a even smaller node.

Launched like a Gameboy Micro, not to compete with Drake, but to reach another branch of market for Switch.

I think that a a device that could run switch games and fit inside a pocket would have a good appeal.
Click to expand...

I'd buy it, but I'm not a particularly good gauge of the market. The Switch Lite is a bit too close in size to the regular Switch to warrant owning them both, but I'd like a proper Switch Micro.

The problem, of course, is that they would need to die shrink TX1 again, which probably wouldn't be worth the price for a relatively niche product. A shrink to TSMC's 7nm/6nm node would likely be enough to allow them to drop the active cooling, and with the power savings also allowing for a smaller battery, they could squeeze down the form-factor quite a bit over the Switch Lite. It'd be neat from a technological point of view, but probably not worthwhile for Nintendo.
 
LinkURL said:
What do you guys think about a possible "Switch Micro"? A Switch in the size of a Vita, maybe thinner, using a TX1 in a even smaller node.

Launched like a Gameboy Micro, not to compete with Drake, but to reach another branch of market for Switch.

I think that a a device that could run switch games and fit inside a pocket would have a good appeal.
Click to expand...

I want one - but I'm willing to wait for a Drake die shrink instead. Pack in an OLED screen and it would be a very lush handheld.

Though - the pocketability isn't super necessary, I didn't consider the Vita pocketable. But it'd make for a cute 'slip into a backpack and pop out on the train commute' device, the Switch is still a little too wide for me to comfortably do that.
 
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Terrell said:
It's pretty well all but certain that Switch supports hardware-accelerated AV1 decode and likely AV1 encode, as well. Which is a step up from similar VP9 decode support in Switch.
And yeah, so long as there's hardware acceleration on your device, that's the format Netflix is using to stream 4K at instead of h.265 due to significant video file size differences.
Click to expand...
The “if” in my comment was about “if there are video files” since I’m assuming games will move to real time playback, rather than relying on movies like it was in the PS4/XB1 gen. Not about if it has the hardware for it or not, sorry for the confusion.
Ojoloco said:
If something is missing, it will be unknown eshop games, not relevant games.

And botW doesn't use 32bit anyway
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Pokemaniac said:
I don't think I've ever seen BotW show up in lists of 32-bit Switch games. That one in particular is a game I'd expect probably wouldn't be because it launched as a cross-platform game. It's also not exactly a niche game, so one would think it'd have come up.
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Perhaps on the switch it is not a 32-bit game, but I’m pretty sure the original on the Wii U was a 32-bit game. And perhaps in the porting process from the Nintendo Wii U to the Nintendo switch a lot of games went and got updated to 64-bit over the 32-bit. The games that weren’t updated were basically from developers origin not updating those games. Such as Tokyo Mirage sessions still being a 32-bit game. But that’s atlus, not Nintendo.
 
Thraktor said:
The problem, of course, is that they would need to die shrink TX1 again, which probably wouldn't be worth the price for a relatively niche product.
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Out of pure tech curiosity, rather than discussing whether the R&D would be worth it...

Could they do a Switch Micro with a cut down Drake? or would the translation layer make it a lot less efficient than a TX1++ to the point they would need the active cooling?
 
LinkURL said:
What do you guys think about a possible "Switch Micro"? A Switch in the size of a Vita, maybe thinner, using a TX1 in a even smaller node.

Launched like a Gameboy Micro, not to compete with Drake, but to reach another branch of market for Switch.

I think that a a device that could run switch games and fit inside a pocket would have a good appeal.
Click to expand...
Game text will be too small.
 
chipsandcheese.com

Microbenchmarking Nvidia’s RTX 4090

Nvidia’s RTX 4090 features Nvidia’s newest architecture, named Ada Lovelace after a pioneer in early computing. Compared to their previous architecture, Ampere, Ada Lovelace enjoys a pr…
chipsandcheese.com chipsandcheese.com
Yeah, outside of larger Tensor cores, RT cores, and L2 cache, Ada seems to be performing practically very similarly (if not identically) to Ampere.
 
RennanNT said:
Out of pure tech curiosity, rather than discussing whether the R&D would be worth it...

Could they do a Switch Micro with a cut down Drake? or would the translation layer make it a lot less efficient than a TX1++ to the point they would need the active cooling?
Click to expand...
theoretically, they could, I guess
 
LinkURL said:
What do you guys think about a possible "Switch Micro"? A Switch in the size of a Vita, maybe thinner, using a TX1 in a even smaller node.

Launched like a Gameboy Micro, not to compete with Drake, but to reach another branch of market for Switch.

I think that a a device that could run switch games and fit inside a pocket would have a good appeal.
Click to expand...
I'd like to see one of those as well.

It would have to retain a 720p screen, I think. Not sure how small those can get.
The Switch Lite form factor seems ideal to me, maybe a little smaller if they increase the DPI.

Considering they nail backwards compatibility for Switch 2, would a revised Switch Lite with refreshed guts (binned Drake, 4 GB RAM, very downclocked, smaller battery, etc) be able to reach the 100-150$ price point? The specs seem lower than a lot of phones in the same price range.

If dockable, it would be a very compelling product and fill the low-end market left vacant by the other Nintendo handhelds.
 
Dakhil said:
chipsandcheese.com

Microbenchmarking Nvidia’s RTX 4090

Nvidia’s RTX 4090 features Nvidia’s newest architecture, named Ada Lovelace after a pioneer in early computing. Compared to their previous architecture, Ampere, Ada Lovelace enjoys a pr…
chipsandcheese.com chipsandcheese.com
Yeah, outside of larger Tensor cores, RT cores, and L2 cache, Ada seems to be performing practically very similarly (if not identically) to Ampere.
Click to expand...
That AMD and Nvidia seem to be converging on a compute design is telling. Makes me more excited to see RDNA 3.

With regard to Switch, it's interesting to see that Ampere may not be "behind" Lovelace in any relevant sense. As good as moar cache would be (and as clever a design as Infinity Cache is), Drake will have fewer SMs to feed than any other Ampere GPU. Hovi had the option of using Orin's double rate tensor cores, and chose against them, so presumably they decided that wasn't a win. Similarly, the souped up OFA in Lovelace is likely not a performance-per-watt win without DLSS 3, and DLSS 3 is a Bad Idea on Switch.

Considering the various bits of chatter around RT performance in testing, one wonders if they tried to stick Lovelace RT cores in there and couldn't make it work. As much as I would love to see Drake on some ridiculously small process node, purely for battery life reasons, Ampere's design looks to have a lot of life in it.
 
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ILikeFeet said:
Pointless. Die shrinking the tx1 again is a waste of money and people have already shown little interest in a non-hybrid unit
Click to expand...
Speaking as one guy, I'm not interested in the Lite because it didn't go far enough. If I'm going to lose out on all the benefits of a hybrid, shrinking it by about 12% in the X and Y dimensions isn't enough.
ertaboy356b said:
Game text will be too small.
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Depends on game, depends on eyeballs. In many situations it would still be better than any pre-2017 portable.
Cybergatuno said:
It would have to retain a 720p screen, I think. Not sure how small those can get.
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FWIW, doing a quick search the smallest phone I see with a 720p screen is this one with a 3.3" screen, just a little smaller than original model 3DS's top screen.
 
JoshuaJSlone said:
Speaking as one guy, I'm not interested in the Lite because it didn't go far enough. If I'm going to lose out on all the benefits of a hybrid, shrinking it by about 12% in the X and Y dimensions isn't enough.

Depends on game, depends on eyeballs. In many situations it would still be better than any pre-2017 portable.

FWIW, doing a quick search the smallest phone I see with a 720p screen is this one with a 3.3" screen, just a little smaller than original model 3DS's top screen.
Click to expand...
Instead of a micro, I'd like to see a switch that folds into a clamshell to make it more portable. That's assuming they would use a foldable screen.

The pros is that it has that wide screen for gaming but can be small enough if folded. Cons probably would be the crease and the hinge.
 
ertaboy356b said:
Instead of a micro, I'd like to see a switch that folds into a clamshell to make it more portable. That's assuming they would use a foldable screen.

The pros is that it has that wide screen for gaming but can be small enough if folded. Cons probably would be the crease and the hinge.
Click to expand...
Nvidia already made a clamshell TX1 device though. it could be shrink if you made concessions to controls (like going back to circle pads)
 
ertaboy356b said:
Instead of a micro, I'd like to see a switch that folds into a clamshell to make it more portable. That's assuming they would use a foldable screen.

The pros is that it has that wide screen for gaming but can be small enough if folded. Cons probably would be the crease and the hinge.
Click to expand...
Yeah, if a die shrink plus a foldable screen could make it roughly as pocketable as the OG 3DS while still having a 5.5+" screen at Lite's price, I'd buy it even after getting a Drake.

Sadly, die shrink comes with a R&D cost and foldable screens are expensive (at least Samsung phones with it are), so it would almost certainly be expensive and not have enough demand to justify it.
 
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No need for a foldable screen. :p
Nintendo-Switch-Clamshell-3D-Print-Header.jpg
 
ertaboy356b said:
Instead of a micro, I'd like to see a switch that folds into a clamshell to make it more portable. That's assuming they would use a foldable screen.

The pros is that it has that wide screen for gaming but can be small enough if folded. Cons probably would be the crease and the hinge.
Click to expand...
If it folded along the screen it wouldn't be able to close with controllers attached.
 
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ReddDreadtheLead said:
The “if” in my comment was about “if there are video files” since I’m assuming games will move to real time playback, rather than relying on movies like it was in the PS4/XB1 gen. Not about if it has the hardware for it or not, sorry for the confusion.


Perhaps on the switch it is not a 32-bit game, but I’m pretty sure the original on the Wii U was a 32-bit game. And perhaps in the porting process from the Nintendo Wii U to the Nintendo switch a lot of games went and got updated to 64-bit over the 32-bit. The games that weren’t updated were basically from developers origin not updating those games. Such as Tokyo Mirage sessions still being a 32-bit game. But that’s atlus, not Nintendo.
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But we are speaking about the switch versions.

On the 32-bit theme, I think that a compatibility layer could be added in the future, just as it happens in Windows.
 
John Omaha said:
Depends on your use case. What type of games will you be playing? What kind of framerates would you like to hit?

In general, you're better off spending less on the CPU and putting the money towards a better GPU, more RAM or a higher quality power supply. A 13600k will probably last you the entire generation.
Click to expand...
On the other hand, a more powerfull CPU can last multiple generations. You can still run current gen games at ~PS5 performance with an OC i7-5960X from 2014.
 
Ojoloco said:
But we are speaking about the switch versions.

On the 32-bit theme, I think that a compatibility layer could be added in the future, just as it happens in Windows.
Click to expand...
While a compat layer is possible, the way Windows does it is not possible for Nintendo, unfortunately.
 
Ojoloco said:
But we are speaking about the switch versions.

On the 32-bit theme, I think that a compatibility layer could be added in the future, just as it happens in Windows.
Click to expand...
The Switch is already running 32-bit games more or less the same way Windows handles 32-bit software on x86. Without hardware support, they'd have to resort to emulation (which Windows on ARM does for x86 software).
 
Pokemaniac said:
The Switch is already running 32-bit games more or less the same way Windows handles 32-bit software on x86. Without hardware support, they'd have to resort to emulation (which Windows on ARM does for x86 software).
Click to expand...
Windows only sort of does on ARM. Your main binary runs in a x86 emulator, but the emulator JITs (well, splats, honestly), and the code is dynamically patched with calls to a wow64.dll, which implements the entire Win32 API as shims into Win64. Library calls then run at native speed, so your emulator core doesn't need to be blazing fast, and can be dumb and simple, and without JIT stutter.

The shimming portion at least isn't really possible on a console. Nintendo will be stuck with a full emulator
 
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oldpuck said:
While a compat layer is possible, the way Windows does it is not possible for Nintendo, unfortunately.
Click to expand...
I didn't mean that they used exactly the Windows method, I put it as an example that compatibility layers have already been implemented previously
 
PedroNavajas said:
On the other hand, a more powerfull CPU can last multiple generations. You can still run current gen games at ~PS5 performance with an OC i7-5960X from 2014.
Click to expand...
This probably says more about my comfort level than anything, but the last few times I've got an all-new computer it's the GPU I've been most willing to slack on at first, because it's a fairly painless thing to upgrade several years in when quality/prices have changed a lot. I don't want to see my CPU lagging behind and have to try to do something about that...
 
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While I know there’s some minor doubt about how Nintendo will take advantage of Tensor cores/DLSS, the thing that has me most excited about this new hardware right now is the RT cores. It’s rarely discussed, but I have no doubt Nintendo will take advantage of those. They have a really strong habit of wanting to highlight and use better lighting and reflection techniques in their games when made available to them.
 
Terrell said:
While I know there’s some minor doubt about how Nintendo will take advantage of Tensor cores/DLSS, the thing that has me most excited about this new hardware right now is the RT cores. It’s rarely discussed, but I have no doubt Nintendo will take advantage of those. They have a really strong habit of wanting to highlight and use better lighting and reflection techniques in their games when made available to them.
Click to expand...

not only that but getting the best out of said technology when combined with their art styles. it's pretty unbelievable that MK8 is pushing on a decade old and still doesn't look that bad or dated, on the contrary. if and when we get Drake exclusives from Nintendo they'll be amongst the best looking games out period. pretty exciting!
 
Terrell said:
While I know there’s some minor doubt about how Nintendo will take advantage of Tensor cores/DLSS, the thing that has me most excited about this new hardware right now is the RT cores. It’s rarely discussed, but I have no doubt Nintendo will take advantage of those. They have a really strong habit of wanting to highlight and use better lighting and reflection techniques in their games when made available to them.
Click to expand...
finally

pokemon with good shadows
 
I know Ampere is better than RDNA2 in the desktop space with respect to Ray Tracing, but that includes the Infinity Cache to help it as much as possible. Overall RDNA2 perf seems to gain 25% from the IC. And the consoles don’t have that. So, they don’t get that 25% boost.

I’m curious as to how the Series S and Drake would trade blows with RT. I want to see it first before even bother to entertain the PS5 and Series X.

DF compared the PS5 and Series X from 2060S to 2080(?) with respect to Ray Tracing. But I don’t think they compared the Series S to anything? At least not off the top of my head.
 
ReddDreadtheLead said:
I’m curious as to how the Series S and Drake would trade blows with RT. I want to see it first before even bother to entertain the PS5 and Series X.
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I'd say they'd be equal at worst and slightly better at best. Drake has slightly more cores, but will most likely have a lower clock speed. memory might be more for games, but with a lower bandwidth.

if 4A or some other Embracer studio attempts to port Metro Exodus Enhanced, I don't think it'll be far off from the Series S in docked mode. but they might still go with 30fps because they need the juice for a decent handheld resolution. (Series S is around 512p upsampled to 1080p at 60fps)
 
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In a sense, doesn’t the series S help create a scenario where porting games for the Switch 2 will be less painful than porting PS4 games to Switch was?
 
Zeroth said:
In a sense, doesn’t the series S help create a scenario where porting games for the Switch 2 will be less painful than porting PS4 games to Switch was?
Click to expand...
Theoretically speaking, yes.
The engine being used for the Nintendo Switch version of Sonic Frontiers supports FSR, presumably FSR 1.0 based on the copyright year.
 
Pennington said:
Yeah I suspected this might not be the right thread to discuss this after all...
Click to expand...

It actually was discussed a bit (probably more than once). Some of it was framed around what they could do to differentiate it from the OLED model, given that already feels like a pretty premium product.

All I recall is that @Raccoon wants a glossy Switch 2 and he’s wrong
 
karmitt said:
It actually was discussed a bit (probably more than once). Some of it was framed around what they could do to differentiate it from the OLED model, given that already feels like a pretty premium product.

All I recall is that @Raccoon wants a glossy Switch 2 and he’s wrong
Click to expand...
a glossy switch can be cleaned, a matte one is disgusting forever
 
Raccoon said:
a glossy switch can be cleaned, a matte one is disgusting forever
Click to expand...

help me out here - what’s a good glossy handheld product you’d like them to emulate? because all I’ve got in my head is the Wii U and I just don’t want anything to do with it, materials or otherwise.
 
karmitt said:
help me out here - what’s a good glossy handheld product you’d like them to emulate? because all I’ve got in my head is the Wii U and I just don’t want anything to do with it, materials or otherwise.
Click to expand...
wii u is what I'm thinking of yeah

quick wipe with a microfiber cloth and my wii u looks good as new while my joy-cons look like they're from 2004
 
Raccoon said:
wii u is what I'm thinking of yeah

quick wipe with a microfiber cloth and my wii u looks good as new while my joy-cons look like they're from 2004
Click to expand...
This has been my experience too.

My gloss black WiiU still looks good as new.
My joycons look gross.
and I only used them for about a year, so that is kinda sad.
 
Raccoon said:
wii u is what I'm thinking of yeah

quick wipe with a microfiber cloth and my wii u looks good as new while my joy-cons look like they're from 2004
Click to expand...

but when ‘new’ looks and feels as cheap as the Wii U game pad I don’t really look to it for inspiration. if anything I’d rather they just iterate on the matte plastics. my series x* controllers have been handled plenty and don’t age as poorly as joycons - sounds like a joycon issue.

*Edit: not sure if that type of plastic can be described as matte, but it works. Steam Deck material also looks like it’ll age fine?
 
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Glossy like the Wii U? Absolutely not.

Perish the thought, along with the Wii U.

LET GO.

I will not go back to that 3DS gloss, I WON’T.

YOU CAN’T MAKE ME.
37407b9b3fffc220462c71c78349fbbacf9e9ee6.jpg
 
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