King_Dodongo
Bob-omb
I will use next weekend just to play FEngage
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StarTopic Future Nintendo Hardware & Technology Speculation & Discussion |ST| (Read the staff posts before commenting!)
- Thread starter Dakhil
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Your talk about the 3060 and ray tracing reminds of of Nvidia GDC 2021 demo of Wolfenstein running with an rtx 3060 and MediaTek Kompanio 1200 Arm processor.
I am curious on the level of RT that the NuSwitch can use, I can believe why people think that the NuSwitch can deliver a more robust level of Ray Tracing in comparison to the Series S but I am not going to say they can hit 4k 30fps with RT...maybe something more in the line of 1080p 30fps with RT + DLSS or maybe at it's absolute best 1440p with RT+ DLSS in Nintendo games...low balling because we don't know anything about the clocks or rt capabilities but it's exciting to know what is possible.
ertaboy356b
Resident Troll
Arch + Gnome? How well does Nvidia drivers work on Linux?
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Re: Whether 480p->720 or 480->1080 would look better:
Using the standard modes available in PC games I couldn't compare 480->720 and 480->1080, but 360->720 (Performance) and 360->1080 (Ultra Performance) was possible, so that's what I went with. Went through opening cutscenes of Edge of Eternity, mashing F12 at scene changes hoping to get some decent images very very close to each other for both. Then as with previous 720/1080 comparisons I've done, nearest neighbor scaled them up to 4K as the least common multiple. Some I split in half down the middle, some I cropped the same half and put side-by-side. I think the latter turned out much better. For both object edges and textures, I think 360->1080 is a winner over 360->720. FWIW, this is DLSS 2.2.11.0.
Using the standard modes available in PC games I couldn't compare 480->720 and 480->1080, but 360->720 (Performance) and 360->1080 (Ultra Performance) was possible, so that's what I went with. Went through opening cutscenes of Edge of Eternity, mashing F12 at scene changes hoping to get some decent images very very close to each other for both. Then as with previous 720/1080 comparisons I've done, nearest neighbor scaled them up to 4K as the least common multiple. Some I split in half down the middle, some I cropped the same half and put side-by-side. I think the latter turned out much better. For both object edges and textures, I think 360->1080 is a winner over 360->720. FWIW, this is DLSS 2.2.11.0.
This guy does find some nuggets.
I keep thinking that Retro Studios are very secretive and that they may have an ace up their sleeves.
(Yes, I'm quoting myself because I need validation to justify my existence, and I seem to be the only one willing to grant it) /s (or not)
SiG
Chain Chomp
Are you able to use and test DLSS 2.5.1 (using DLSS Swapper or the .dll file swap)?
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I think a goal for Nintendo moving forward, as far back as when Iwata was still alive, was eShop continuity (one of the favoured interpretations of Iwata's "family of systems" comments that fell away in an effort to drive the pro-revision agenda) and the only effective way to achieve that is through BC.
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I agree 100%. I was just pointing out that without BC (continuity), Switch and it’s successor do nothing to establish a relationship with consumers any different than any console before it.
Instro
Like Like
We largely have a pretty good idea of what happened with Retro after 2014. They worked on a game for several years which Nintendo eventually canned. After which they were put on porting Tropical Freeze, and remastering/remaking Prime, and/or the entire Prime trilogy, while also assisting with MP4 when it was under development with Bamco. Eventually they took over MP4 entirely, and the project to remake all of the Prime games became just Metroid Prime, with the rest to come later. Allegedly Prime 1 has been "done" for some time now.
How much of that is actually accurate I guess we'll find out in the next year or two. If it's at all accurate then there is no other project between Prime 1 and Prime 4, and anything else they may have started dev on recently would likely be remaking Prime 2/3, given that the majority of the staff is probably still working on 4.
Dark Cloud
Warpstar Knight
Retro had brought in 2 Writers on a contract back in July. I’ve seen them. Who is this person?
Retro hired an engineer programmer from Rockstar to be a gameplay engineer in July also
Retro hired an engineer programmer from Rockstar to be a gameplay engineer in July also
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mariodk18
Install Base Forum Namer
Metroid Prime FIVE baby
Vash
Tears of the Kingdom Enjoyer
Agreed. My favorite has been the animal crossing one just because of how simplistic it is
YugamiSekai
T239 vs. Picross 4K
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I wonder if Prime 1 remake/remaster is being saved as a Drake launch title. That and those alleged Zelda remakes that we heard about last year.
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I was pretty partial to the Splatoon 3 one but missed my chance. I just loved those joycons.
Kazuyamishima
Moblin
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- He
Unless they did something big with the Zelda remakes I doubt they'd save them for Drake
4 tf is the best possible clock speed scenario. It's almost certainly less than that.
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Truth. Clearly they had a rough patch, but I’m super excited to see a return to form. Can’t really overstate how important Metroid Prime games were for me on GameCube - among the most memorable games on the console. We’re a bit far removed from them now, but knowing their focus is on a remaster and MP4 gives me a lot of hope.
YugamiSekai
T239 vs. Picross 4K
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Well if they were all 4K remasters then there's only one system I could see that being useful for. Maybe they'd do a regular 1080p version for the original Switch also.
Kazuyamishima
Moblin
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- He
Them upscaled to 4k is a very small difference, you can see people doing it in videos. Now if they revamped the textures and lighting and it ran at 4k I could see it being for Drake. But just a 4k resolution bump probably isn't enough for Nintendo to make it a Drake release
MrEevee98
Founder of nintenleaks
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Not all Nintendo Switch special editions have had the Nintendo Switch logo, so I don't think that's proof that it's real or fake.
Kazuyamishima
Moblin
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It doesn't seem like any videos with the TOTK OLED have been taken down by Nintendo. Was this the case for the Splatoon OLED when it leaked?Not all Nintendo Switch special editions have had the Nintendo Switch logo, so I don't think that's proof that it's real or fake.
CocaFormula
Cappy
Wasn't that leaked just prior the announcement?
Kazuyamishima
Moblin
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- He
I think it was like a week or something I'm not sure to be honest I didn't really pay attention. I was wondering if people that were making videos on it if they were taken down. It might be an indication on wether the TOTK OLED is real or not maybe.
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I didn't want to go in with a version I hadn't yet tried out, but I'll give it a go now. I tried to recreate the last four images and added them to the bottom of the same gallery. To me it doesn't seem like a big change--sometimes an edge rougher in one version or the other, seems like luck of the frame.
SiG
Chain Chomp
From the comparisons, I think the hair mostly resolves better in the latest DLSS version than compared with version 2.2.11.
MrEevee98
Founder of nintenleaks
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It was leaked 1 day before the announcement, if I remember correctly, it didn't make any sense to start the claims.
kvetcha
hoopy frood
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Yeah, if you're talking about upscaling DLSS output to 4K by other means, I agree the higher target resolution is preferable. I was under the impression we were talking 720p/1080p targets for handheld.
MilkyChance
Cappy
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- they/them
Not sure if anyone posted this, the PS4 Pro vs Xbox Series S.
Kind of gives you an idea what could Nintendo's next gen hardware could be capable of. It didn't matter if the PS4 Pro had higher CU's or a faster clock speed, the Xbox Series S is capable at running games with better fidelity. It will be indeed interesting once we get our hands on with what Nintendo is cooking, and compare it to last gen and this gen
Kind of gives you an idea what could Nintendo's next gen hardware could be capable of. It didn't matter if the PS4 Pro had higher CU's or a faster clock speed, the Xbox Series S is capable at running games with better fidelity. It will be indeed interesting once we get our hands on with what Nintendo is cooking, and compare it to last gen and this gen
OP
OP
I believe Nintendo's new hardware equipped with Drake won't achieve 4 TF in terms of raw performance.
Kenka
Like Like
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Yeah, 4 TF is too much. PS4 level of graphical performance (which is already equivalent to a 750Ti!) would be enough. Memory bandwidth will be as much of an important metric to follow.
Aether
Tingle
Actually doesnt look that great to me... and not because "not strong enough", but with such realistic detailed artstyles it kinda feels rough, every low asset, resolution drop, stiff animation feels way stronger, and the worlds partially feel so stiff, like wheres the movement of the environment.
Having that with a more stylized look that cleans it up more would be magic. It would look stunning. Nintendo, come on, give us a strong switch follow up that we can see what YOU can do with such processing power!
(i don't expect similar raw performance, but better feature sets /architecture)
Also, its obvious that those games where made with higher power in mind and those are the "reduced" performances. i have seen enough footage of those games that looked so much better, probably PS5 or PC footage. (except witcher 3, but i never found that game to have a good looking artdirection)
Dekuman
Kremling
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PS4 Pro will be very old tech by the time the next Nintendo console launches. I think as with anything, if the new device has >8GB of RAM and it most certainly will have a more mdoern architecture and features, it will outpace PS4 Pro performance.
Agree even docked, it's unlikely to hit for 4 nvidia Tflops, but I'm not as up to date on the covnersion with amd and nvidia flops, but even if its 1-1, i suspect the more modern featuresets will more than make up for the shortfall.
Agree even docked, it's unlikely to hit for 4 nvidia Tflops, but I'm not as up to date on the covnersion with amd and nvidia flops, but even if its 1-1, i suspect the more modern featuresets will more than make up for the shortfall.
Serif
𝕽𝖊𝖓𝖊𝖌𝖆𝖉𝖊 𝕬𝖓𝖌𝖊𝖑
Disregarding teraflops, I anticipate Drake at a minimum will hit "PS4 Pro"-like visuals after DLSS, with DLSS doing a better job than checkerboard rendering.
So watching that video as a rough comparison of how Drake might fare with cross-gen titles, it's pretty exciting to imagine.
I'd be comfortable with Drake (and PC) being my go-to for next-gen, probably will end up buying most titles on Drake for the convenience. Even with so called impossible ports I don't anticipate significant visual downgrades.
So watching that video as a rough comparison of how Drake might fare with cross-gen titles, it's pretty exciting to imagine.
I'd be comfortable with Drake (and PC) being my go-to for next-gen, probably will end up buying most titles on Drake for the convenience. Even with so called impossible ports I don't anticipate significant visual downgrades.
D
Deleted member 887
Guest
This should be a reminder to stop using GPU power as the only marker of system performance. That's why "7/8ths of a PS4" is always a frustrating way to talk about it to me.
We won't know what the final clocks will be like, but the GPU's raw performance is unlikely to get in 4TFLOPS territory (and that it will has become a kind of strange meme that we should fight against). But Drake's overall design looks a lot more like a small modern console than a big last gen one.
I can't find a geekbench 5 result for the PS4 Pro anywhere, only geekbench 4 results, which aren't comparable to 5 values.
@ILikeFeet @ReddDreadtheLead @oldpuck @LiC
correct me if I'm wrong in my line of thought here but:
If I'm not mistaken, drake would perform similarly in multicore compared to the steam deck but lose considerably in single core perf. under geekbench 5.
My point of reference is this benchmark for the AGX orin which I know, is a 12 core orin device instead of the 8 on drake and running on a 2GHz clock even. But afaik, clock speed doesn't scale linearly (far from it) on geekbench however, core count on multicore scores kinda does (again, afaik).
So I'm assuming at worse a ~33.3% reduction in multicore from the AGX Orin score(~4000ish points end result) followed by another drop (related to the clock speed drake would run at) which would put it around the same ballpark as the steam deck's CPU score (again, in multicore).
But considering this is what the current switch performs like on geekbench 5, and the arguments made ITT in the past, I expect at the very least, a 3x increase on that single core score under drake.
But going back to the whole PS4 Pro vs drake conversation (CPU-wise), I still think drake wouldn't lose by much versus the PS4 Pro's CPU.
The GPU talk is kinda pointless when it comes down to TFLOPs considering drake has half the bandwidth to work with compared to the PS4 Pro and series S.
@ILikeFeet @ReddDreadtheLead @oldpuck @LiC
correct me if I'm wrong in my line of thought here but:
If I'm not mistaken, drake would perform similarly in multicore compared to the steam deck but lose considerably in single core perf. under geekbench 5.
My point of reference is this benchmark for the AGX orin which I know, is a 12 core orin device instead of the 8 on drake and running on a 2GHz clock even. But afaik, clock speed doesn't scale linearly (far from it) on geekbench however, core count on multicore scores kinda does (again, afaik).
So I'm assuming at worse a ~33.3% reduction in multicore from the AGX Orin score(~4000ish points end result) followed by another drop (related to the clock speed drake would run at) which would put it around the same ballpark as the steam deck's CPU score (again, in multicore).
But considering this is what the current switch performs like on geekbench 5, and the arguments made ITT in the past, I expect at the very least, a 3x increase on that single core score under drake.
But going back to the whole PS4 Pro vs drake conversation (CPU-wise), I still think drake wouldn't lose by much versus the PS4 Pro's CPU.
The GPU talk is kinda pointless when it comes down to TFLOPs considering drake has half the bandwidth to work with compared to the PS4 Pro and series S.
Don't kill my dream of a limited edition Zelda Switch. That is the one limited edition Switch that needs to happen!!!!!!!!!!
If the Wii U had one, how can the Switch not? Best selling console, and no limited edition Zelda console? I don't think so.
mariodk18
Install Base Forum Namer
It’s been said by some that we may be missing parts of this whole Drake puzzle. Who’s to say that ScriesM and/or MVG aren’t also forgetting some small aspects regarding BC or shaders. I mean, these are singular persons making valid claims, but that doesn’t compare to the entire T239 team at Nvidia.
I’m going to ask this because I feel like it’s never been truly answered. How exactly do PS5/XBS achieve BC? How specifically does Rosetta 2 and Apple’s other translation methods work on Apple silicon Mac systems? What, if anything, would prevent such methods or something else being used to emulate the Switch GPU?
And regarding those Maxwell GPU snags, what is the current level of BC of the Maxwell GPU in relation to Ampere? I’ve heard the discussion on the pre-compiled shaders, of course, but what about the rest of the GPU? Is the entire Switch GPU incompatible with Drake’s in every facet? And for emulation/translation: is it feasible for Drake to do so solely for the pre-compiled shaders “portion”? Yes or no?
And if not, why not? Are they forced to emulate the entire TX1 GPU? Is partial GPU emulation a preexisting concept? Has it been attempted before? And Nintendo has already done GPU emulation with SM3DAS, so what’s the difference with Switch?
I’m going to ask this because I feel like it’s never been truly answered. How exactly do PS5/XBS achieve BC? How specifically does Rosetta 2 and Apple’s other translation methods work on Apple silicon Mac systems? What, if anything, would prevent such methods or something else being used to emulate the Switch GPU?
And regarding those Maxwell GPU snags, what is the current level of BC of the Maxwell GPU in relation to Ampere? I’ve heard the discussion on the pre-compiled shaders, of course, but what about the rest of the GPU? Is the entire Switch GPU incompatible with Drake’s in every facet? And for emulation/translation: is it feasible for Drake to do so solely for the pre-compiled shaders “portion”? Yes or no?
And if not, why not? Are they forced to emulate the entire TX1 GPU? Is partial GPU emulation a preexisting concept? Has it been attempted before? And Nintendo has already done GPU emulation with SM3DAS, so what’s the difference with Switch?
D
Deleted member 887
Guest
I think this is very very supported by the data we have, certainly.
I think Serif's look at it is pretty accurate. PS4 Pro will be old, but it was GIGANTIC. Being able to get PS4 level perf squeezed into a tablet is as much a leap as anything else. DLSS, however, could take it up to PS4 Pro-esque experiences. Different paths to a similar end.
It's actually pretty close to 1:1, but only when AMD is running the rest of the system optimally.
DLSS means that Drake just needs to modestly outperform the original PS4, to do PS4 Pro level stuff. That's a target it will very likely reach.
RT hardware is likely an analogous situation but for Series S. RT perf won't be quite what the Series S has, but by targeting a lower resolution and then using DLSS to upscale, it can likely do similar sorts of things. Possibly better, actually, though RT reflections don't interact with DLSS super well.
CPU wise, Drake is definitely outclassing PS4 Pro and XboneX, by a long shot. Last gen had slow clock speeds on bad architecture. Modern machines have good clocks on good architectures. Drake has good arch, but the lower clock speed for power reasons. Here you're totally right, the arch makes it out perform PS4 Pro by a long shot, even if it can't hit Series S.
Storage speed is similar. Last gen consoles were stuck with spinning disks and spinning harddrives. Modern machines have SSDs so fast they start to look like an extended memory pool. Drake's game cards and onboard storage look like a modern machine, but are running much more slowly for power and cost reasons.
RAM wise, we don't know where Drake will land, but the much slimmer OS means it will likely have more usable RAM than last gen, or even Series S.
Bandwidth wise, probably about the same as PS4 or better, but again, arch matters. Drake's arch is much much less bandwidth hungry than the older PS4 Pro's. PS5/Xbox Series X consoles also have that less bandwidth hungry design, but with even more bandwidth as well. A consistent pattern here, a modern design, just smaller. Series S has a particularly bad design here.
I've heard some devs say that Nvidia's desktop GPUs are somewhat limited bandwidth wise, and Drake seems in keeping with those machines. I have no sense if a consoles shared memory pool makes this situation better or worse.
The wild card is the FDE. I have no sense how this will perform, or how many cross-gen games will be able to take advantage of it. But it potentially frees up CPU cycles, allows small game install sizes, and maximizes storage throughput, all of which are potential limitations of Drake relative to modern consoles, though series X also has decompression hardware.
OP
OP
AMD mentioned that "The new RDNA [1] architecture is optimized for efficiency and programmability while offering backwards compatibility with the GCN architecture."
And the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X|S use the RDNA (1) architecture as the base for the GPU (here and here). So that's at least part of how the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X|S achieve backwards compatibility.
here's PS4P
N/A - Geekbench Browser
Benchmark results for a N/A with a DG1307SML87IB processor.
browser.geekbench.com
pretty hard for Drake to be under PS4P
What's up with all these Switch 2 videos on the same day from the Spawncast?
Honestly, I think the reason Sony and MS moved up to $70 for new games is because they discount their games fairly early alongside 3rd-parties. With Nintendo, it takes far longer, if ever, for them to discount their games outside of general holiday sales and whatnot. Barely any permanent price drops, and they are making bank on that. They could stick to the $60 price tag for Switch 2 games, and they could likely still earn more profit than the others that start off high that then drop off later.
Should Switch games on Switch 2 take advantage of the stronger hardware, allowing games to hit the "Switch" limits instead of dealing with dynamic resolution/fps, or go even further with cross-gen patches that take games to 4k and games initially locked to 30 to become 60fps, that gives them less reason to discount those games once Switch 2 releases.
D
Deleted member 887
Guest
I'm gonna give you the long ass answer to your question, as Dakhil already gave you the concise (correct) one.
PC apps never talk to the GPU directly, console games do. If PCs let random apps touch the GPU not only would you be infected with viruses that take over your screen, every random app could cause the entire system to crash. Minimize a calculator window and forget about it? Well, if it crashes your whole system reboots! Consoles are a different world, so console games get raw hardware access, for extra performance
This is why Rosetta 2 doesn't have to emulate a GPU at all.
PC games don't have precompiled shaders, console games do: When you change a tiny detail about a graphics card, you have to recompile your shaders. There is no way for PC games to do this for every combination that already exists, and even if they did, they wouldn't support new hardware. So PC games don't ship precompiled shaders, they ship the raw shader code, and your PC compiles it when it needs it.
Consoles are a single target, so it is feasible to ship precompiled shaders. This has big performance benefits. If you've heard of #stutterstruggle this is what they're talking about, and why consoles don't have it. But it is also why console games don't "just work" without changes on different GPUs
GPUs don't work that way. There is no way to run something like Rosetta on the GPU, and even if it could, it wouldn't matter, because the game runs on the CPU. Shaders are GPU programs that get squirted over to the GPU in individul blobs, and are usually run immediately.
The way a Rosetta for Shaders would work, is it would run on the CPU, load up games into a kind of container where the game couldn't directly access the GPU. It would then intercept shaders, recompile them for the new architecture, and then squirt them over to the GPU itself.
This could work, emulators do it all the time. But it would introduce #stutterstruggle to the console games. Emulators try to work around this stutter, but they are 1) not completely successful and 2) it requires huge computing resources that Drake won't have.
Console talk directly to the GPU. That means that each game basically builds in its own driver. Drivers need to know stuff like where physically on the chip parts of the GPU are, or exactly how many of component X or Y are, or the magic value of Q that only works on that chip.
Fortunately, even if every single one of these is different between TX1 and Drake, you don't need a complex emulator, you just need a remapper. If a Switch game wants to send command 0x800DBA14 to interrupt 0xD01E2A3D then all that drake has to do is catch it, and then look up those locations.
"Hmm, command 0x800DBA14 on TX1 is 'add' and interrupt 0xD01E2A3D is the first SM. My first SM is at 0xD02E3A0D, and my add command is 0x800DBA11. Let me just substitute one for the other it will Just Work"
Ampere and Maxwell are similar enough for this sort of technique to work. Driver emulation is simple and fast.
It's the shaders that are tricky, for the reasons I talked about before. Shaders are complicated, they're basically whole programs. Ampere might add an instruction that does what took 5 instructions before, while deleting 4 of those old useless instructions, which might take 2 new instructions to fake. Doing that translation is complex and slow.
But again, Shader recompilation isn't emulation in that way. That is why it is tricky
SM3DAS's team had access to the raw source code of the original games, and could patch it if they wanted. Drake has to work with on every Switch game without every seeing the source code, and without ever changing it.
SM3DAS only had to work with 3 games, and doesn't have to emulate any features those games didn't use. Drake has to emulate every bit of the Switch hardware that any game uses.
SM3DAS's emulation only needed to reach the speed of the Wii, to run a 16 year old game. SM3DAS's emulation needs to reach the power of the Switch, to run games that haven't released yet.
The shader situation is well understood, and the Lapsus$ hack heavily suggests that they are both right about the shader situation.
This would be a book. Seriously, this is a get your PhD in compsci level question. Those systems use multiple BC technologies. But the one you probably care about is how are they compatible with PS4 shaders, and the answer is that they didn't break backwards compatibility when they designed the newer GPUs. They kept the hardware from the PS4 era to execute old shader instructions that modern games don't need anymore.
Rosetta 2 is a binary translator which monkey patches API calls. Here are two key points when talking about PC backwards compat:
PC apps never talk to the GPU directly, console games do. If PCs let random apps touch the GPU not only would you be infected with viruses that take over your screen, every random app could cause the entire system to crash. Minimize a calculator window and forget about it? Well, if it crashes your whole system reboots! Consoles are a different world, so console games get raw hardware access, for extra performance
This is why Rosetta 2 doesn't have to emulate a GPU at all.
PC games don't have precompiled shaders, console games do: When you change a tiny detail about a graphics card, you have to recompile your shaders. There is no way for PC games to do this for every combination that already exists, and even if they did, they wouldn't support new hardware. So PC games don't ship precompiled shaders, they ship the raw shader code, and your PC compiles it when it needs it.
Consoles are a single target, so it is feasible to ship precompiled shaders. This has big performance benefits. If you've heard of #stutterstruggle this is what they're talking about, and why consoles don't have it. But it is also why console games don't "just work" without changes on different GPUs
Rosetta runs on the CPU. It reads the code from an old program, dynamically retranslating as it goes, and then feeds the retranslated instructions back out to the CPU. In essence, the CPU doesn't even see the emulated program, it only sees Rosetta. Meanwhile, Rosetta only has to read tiny chunks of the emulated program at a time, very quickly recompile it, and send it on in tiny, fast bursts. Lots of CPU code is repetitive, going around in loops, so many times, Rosetta doesn't even have to do anything, because it has already recompiled the code.
GPUs don't work that way. There is no way to run something like Rosetta on the GPU, and even if it could, it wouldn't matter, because the game runs on the CPU. Shaders are GPU programs that get squirted over to the GPU in individul blobs, and are usually run immediately.
The way a Rosetta for Shaders would work, is it would run on the CPU, load up games into a kind of container where the game couldn't directly access the GPU. It would then intercept shaders, recompile them for the new architecture, and then squirt them over to the GPU itself.
This could work, emulators do it all the time. But it would introduce #stutterstruggle to the console games. Emulators try to work around this stutter, but they are 1) not completely successful and 2) it requires huge computing resources that Drake won't have.
Sorta? But it doesn't matter much, only the shaders are a tricky problem.
No, but again, only the shaders are tricky.
Console talk directly to the GPU. That means that each game basically builds in its own driver. Drivers need to know stuff like where physically on the chip parts of the GPU are, or exactly how many of component X or Y are, or the magic value of Q that only works on that chip.
Fortunately, even if every single one of these is different between TX1 and Drake, you don't need a complex emulator, you just need a remapper. If a Switch game wants to send command 0x800DBA14 to interrupt 0xD01E2A3D then all that drake has to do is catch it, and then look up those locations.
"Hmm, command 0x800DBA14 on TX1 is 'add' and interrupt 0xD01E2A3D is the first SM. My first SM is at 0xD02E3A0D, and my add command is 0x800DBA11. Let me just substitute one for the other it will Just Work"
Ampere and Maxwell are similar enough for this sort of technique to work. Driver emulation is simple and fast.
It's the shaders that are tricky, for the reasons I talked about before. Shaders are complicated, they're basically whole programs. Ampere might add an instruction that does what took 5 instructions before, while deleting 4 of those old useless instructions, which might take 2 new instructions to fake. Doing that translation is complex and slow.
You can't really partially emulate anything the way you mean, but you can essentially "pass through" the parts the are identical. Your emulator always has to sit in the middle of the whole thing, and you pay a performance cost for that. But when two systems are very very similar, your emulator only has to work hard at the differences.
But again, Shader recompilation isn't emulation in that way. That is why it is tricky
SM3DAS could do all these recompilation steps in advance, on a developer's powerful workstation. Drake has to do it in real time, using nothing but a fancy tablet.
SM3DAS's team had access to the raw source code of the original games, and could patch it if they wanted. Drake has to work with on every Switch game without every seeing the source code, and without ever changing it.
SM3DAS only had to work with 3 games, and doesn't have to emulate any features those games didn't use. Drake has to emulate every bit of the Switch hardware that any game uses.
SM3DAS's emulation only needed to reach the speed of the Wii, to run a 16 year old game. SM3DAS's emulation needs to reach the power of the Switch, to run games that haven't released yet.
LiC
Member
These shitty thumbnails that YouTubers use make me physically ill.
Not really? Because their contention isn't merely that a new GPU architecture can't natively/directly run the shaders in current Switch games -- which is true, and not something you need the leak to tell you -- it's that the solutions to this problem are intractable or that Nintendo won't pursue them for some reason. That's the stupidity of the arguments that they make (which the leak has no bearing on).
OP
OP
I think people are too obsessed with 100% backwards compatibility, hence the argument that Nintendo needs to have the Tegra X1 installed on the DLSS model*'s motherboard for backwards compatibility, which I think is a ridiculous argument to begin with.
* → a tentative name that I use
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