• 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.

StarTopic Future Nintendo Hardware & Technology Speculation & Discussion |ST| (New Staff Post, Please read)

Reader mode
tbh if this is an argument between 99.9% compatibility and actual 100% I don’t think it’s worth having.

if the outcry is there for a specific game to be compatible and it’s not, I’d expect it’ll be taken into account and get some kind of post launch ‘patch’ (which I guess is a small porting effort)?
 
karmitt said:
I kind of thought the point being made was 99%+ for Drake. If you need true 100% you need to just keep your old machine
Click to expand...
Yeah, that’s all I’m saying, a little too bluntly though. I’m certain that Drake will have upwards of 99% BC out the gate and it’s likely that every game will run to some extent.

I’m just saying that if you want every software title to run as it did on Switch original hardware, the best bet would be to keep your Switch for those few titles that don’t work.
 
I agree 99 % compat up is probably a non issue.
The real danger is something like 80% compatability and its' unknown with thousand+ titles aren't quite compatible.

Full disclosure, I have no expertise to know if something like an 80% compatability is a real issue or if compatability ramps up exponentially once key issues are resolved so you can go from non comptability to 90% compatabilitry rather easily so those middle percentages are never a consideration. This is just me giving a range of where I think it would be a PR nightmare for Nintendo.
 
I’m probably alone but I’m actually excited to see current games improved by the next Switch whether automatically or by update.

I would think at least games like Fall Guys and Rocket League get updated as more power is available as they are ongoing games with no sight of a sequel.
 
TheGreatMightyPoo said:
I’m probably alone but I’m actually excited to see current games improved by the next Switch whether automatically or by update.

I would think at least games like Fall Guys and Rocket League get updated as more power is available as they are ongoing games with no sight of a sequel.
Click to expand...
mee too.
 
TheGreatMightyPoo said:
By that, I mean I’m most excited for that, haha.

I’m weird.

I play those games all the time.
Click to expand...

Gotcha. “most excited” I’m definitely not with ya, but it’s certainly up on my list for select games like Splatoon 3, Xenoblade 3 and Breath of the Wild (unless of course Tears renders the game obsolete for me).

Edit: and it goes without saying I want to see how Switch games that release cross generation are handled. Looking at you Metroid Prime 1/4.

To be frank, I haven’t begun to think about true next gen efforts
 
karmitt said:
tbh if this is an argument between 99.9% compatibility and actual 100% I don’t think it’s worth having.

if the outcry is there for a specific game to be compatible and it’s not, I’d expect it’ll be taken into account and get some kind of post launch ‘patch’ (which I guess is a small porting effort)?
Click to expand...
Yeah, if a high majority of games work right out of the box (like 90-95%), I think people will be fine with being notified if they have to connect online and get an update for particular games. So long as the high majority of games don't require doing that to just play them right out of the box.

I do expect updates to many Switch games to make use of Drake's faster hardware so they aren't software-locked below Switch's 1080p60 limit (like Xenoblade games), with some that go even farther to push beyond 1080p, or use Drake's unique features. Perhaps even some that go the extra mile with a "Drake" version that has better textures, models, etc, using the game cards purely for authentication for physical owners.
 
Dekuman said:
I agree 99 % compat up is probably a non issue.
The real danger is something like 80% compatability and its' unknown with thousand+ titles aren't quite compatible.

Full disclosure, I have no expertise to know if something like an 80% compatability is a real issue or if compatability ramps up exponentially once key issues are resolved so you can go from non comptability to 90% compatabilitry rather easily so those middle percentages are never a consideration. This is just me giving a range of where I think it would be a PR nightmare for Nintendo.
Click to expand...
The Switch is a pretty straightforward machine and Drake is very like it. 80% is unlikely.

Unlike the PS3 and the 360. Those were very weird machines and their successors were nothing like them. That’s where you are ekeing out every game.

Any compatibility solution on Drake is probably going to get very close to 100%. The bigger challenge isn’t compatibility but making sure performance stays consistent.
 
0
So we talk about DLSS, RT, etc, but what about other features the Ampere architecture provides? One I recall comes from Turing, and that is Variable Rate Shading. Section of a render that don't require fine details can be rendered at different shading rate (2x2, 4x4, etc) to reduce processing. Helpful when a scene has a lot of similar coloring in areas, motion blur, etc. If Nintendo were to push for VR, it would help there as well so long as they have access to eye tracking.
 
LinkURL said:
I don't understand why they cap Drake to 11~15W docked, it made sense on Switch, because more than that would cause thermal throtlle, and the target resolution difference between handheld and docked was 50% per axis (720p ~ 1080p).
With Drake, we know that the target on the dock would most likely be 4K, and the difference per axis can be 2x or 3x (depending on whether the screen is 1080p or 720p), along with the Dock with LAN having the option of delivering more than 15W It makes room for us to see a GPU that may reach a clock above 1GHz even if it were made in Samsung 8nm.
Click to expand...
There is only so much cooling a Switch can do, and only so much a dock can help. Thermals still matter, not just for hardware health, but because past a certain point Nintendo would have to stick a bigger fan in the tablet (making it larger and cutting battery life) or in the Dock (requiring reengineering and higher costs, plus the risk of failure if someone doesn't slot it in just right).

DLSS in performance mode still has an internal res of 1080. So it's still, at base a 720p/1080p machine, so that 2x gap makes sense. In quality mode the base of 1440p. That would be a 3.6x gap, which I don't think is really viable.

PS4 was a 1080p machine. Drake hits PS4 Pro performance around 600MHz, so you could do PS4 games at about that level. But DLSS would be extremely slow, and you'd have no breathing room to execute it.

At this point every extra bit of GPU performance both makes DLSS faster, and the game faster. At around 750MHz, back of the envelope, is the point at which those two meet - DLSS would run fast enough to run in the performance gap that that the faster game would make.

Past that point, every bit of extra GPU power does double duty. It makes DLSS faster, which decreases DLSS's cost on the frame, while making the game faster, expanding the gap in which new visual features could be added.

Till you hit 1GHz. Drake's actual GPU max is probably about the same as Orin's, 1.3GHz. But Drake also has limitations on the memory bandwidth and storage speed. Past 1GHz, that extra power starts to hit those limits and you're getting marginal gains out of it.

On the other side, the minimum clock is probably around 300 MHz in handheld mode, but past ~450 MHz I just don't think you can make the battery life plausible. At 300MHz, you can probably do PS4-but-720p graphics. You're not going to run DLSS performance mode on those games, which is good, because DLSS is slow as butt at that point. But by 375-400MHz or so you have enough power to do DLAA on those graphics.

Past 400Mhz, then, you have to start asking yourself if you want to up GPU power, or if you want to spend some extra watts on CPUs. You probably want to run the CPU cores the same speed in handheld and docked mode, the same way that the Switch currently does. So now is your chance to give your CPU a nice bump, or docked mode will be CPU limited.

I think 400/800Mhz is probably the sweet spot for the GPU. A nice 2x gap between your two modes, about 1.25x the PS4 to give you plenty of space for DLSS/DLAA, and a little left over to bump your CPU speeds. If you wanted to add RT effects, you'd probably have to use DLSS ultra performance mode, or run in 2k, but that ain't bad at all.
 
Discostew said:
So we talk about DLSS, RT, etc, but what about other features the Ampere architecture provides? One I recall comes from Turing, and that is Variable Rate Shading. Section of a render that don't require fine details can be rendered at different shading rate (2x2, 4x4, etc) to reduce processing. Helpful when a scene has a lot of similar coloring in areas, motion blur, etc. If Nintendo were to push for VR, it would help there as well so long as they have access to eye tracking.
Click to expand...
I wonder if the reason we don't see it much is because some devs are doing this in compute rather than hardware. Infinity Ward does things this way for instance
 
oldpuck said:
I'm interested in it technically because 1) I just think it's neat and 2) what it implies about the performance of Drake. But I agree with LiC, no reason to believe there won't be BC, and this weird meme that Nintendo screwed up the Switch and BC isn't possible just doesn't hold up. These are the same problems that BC has had to solve since the beginning of consumer computing. That Nintendo is having to deal with it now is mostly a historical issue. The PS6 is, mostly likely, going to face this same issue.

There is a simple, 3 part solution that solves 99% of the problems pretty easily.

1) Nintendo puts a Maxwell transpiler into Drake. This works for every game, forever, with no patch from the internet. It does potentially introduce some minor stutter into games. However, because transpiling code is much much faster than recompiling code in the first place, it's not like PC stutter struggle at all.

2) Nintendo updates their SDK. Even if you're developing a base Switch game after Drake launches, Nintendo's updated SDK generates the Drake shaders for you and packages them along. The transpiler sees those shaders and just replaces the TX1 shaders with the ones the SDK generated in flight. This eliminates the stutter for new games, or any game patched with the new SDK.

3) Nintendo forces an intern to play the 100 most popular eShop games. While the intern plays the most popular eShop games on Drake, the transpiler runs and generates converted shaders. Nintendo then takes those out, and packages them up as updates.

This is a simple solution that doesn't require complex engineering, a huge investment of effort, would work basically on every game, out of the box, without an internet connection. Most games you care about would work with 0 hitches at launch, and any further performance issues discovered after the fact are quickly resolved.

This is like the lo-fi version of the MS patch solution, but it's much simpler because Drake is much more like TX1 than anything was like the Cell. It's similar to what Valve is likely to do with the steam deck, but again, much simpler because they don't have to support the whole breadth of PC gaming.

This is a very solvable problem.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the very informative posts on the topic, it's super interesting!

Am I right to understand that for number 3, you would basically include in the Drake OS "patched" shaders for selected games to avoid transpiling at runtime? I assume size is not a big concern, so you could easily expand this compatibility library over time with more system updates. Or are shaders somewhat bigger in size than I imagine?
 
Thanks for the very informative posts on the topic, it's super interesting!
CocaFormula said:
Am I right to understand that for number 3, you would basically include in the Drake OS "patched" shaders for selected games to avoid transpiling at runtime? I assume size is not a big concern, so you could easily expand this compatibility library over time with more system updates. Or are shaders somewhat bigger in size than I imagine?
Click to expand...
I don't have an answer for space, but regarding time - precompiling shaders for Uncharted Legacy of Thieves Collection for PC takes "10 minutes or more on a powerful CPU". If a new Switch model has better network connectivity then it may be faster to download patches than wait for shaders to precompile on the device. The biggest issue with this is that you lose the plug-and-play benefits of game cards since you have to wait for something to finish before you can play.

This topic gets pretty good coverage from a PC perspective in this recent Digital Foundry video (starts at 1:00):


This video also shows how bad runtime shader compilation can be.
 
Last edited:
Quoted by: SiG
1
slsk said:
Digital Foundry

I don't have an answer for space, but regarding time - precompiling shaders for Uncharted Legacy of Thieves Collection for PC takes "10 minutes or more on a powerful CPU". If a new Switch model has better network connectivity then it may be faster to download patches than wait for shaders to precompile on the device. The biggest issue with this is that you lose the plug-and-play benefits of game cards since you have to wait for something to finish before you can play.

This topic gets pretty good coverage from a PC perspective in this recent Digital Foundry video (starts at 1:00):


This video also shows how bad runtime shader compilation can be.
Click to expand...

I thought shader compilation isn't an issue for consoles since they are a fixed spec?
 
SiG said:
Going to Japan to do recording for the Direct?
Click to expand...
Happening, this is it folks, the new Nintendo console is about to be revealed!

Hidden content is only available for registered users. Sharing it outside of Famiboards is subject to moderation.
 
oldpuck said:
MVG has listed several BC solutions, and last I heard him talk about it, he mentioned what he thought Nintendo's strategy would be. (Recent vague comments are so contextless I don't think they're worth considering).

But I've said repeatedly about SciresM that they are right abut the problem and wrong about the solution space, but in retrospect, looking at the last time SciresM was brought up in this thread, they're statement is basically "Pro hardware running on Ampere isn't viable", and in the absence of hardware support for the older shader instructions, they're probably right. We're just not talking about a 2x upgrade anymore.
Click to expand...
It's really on this point that I have a problem with what MVG says.

No one questions his obvious skills, or his relevance on these types of subjects, but it seems that when he has decided that something will happen a certain way, he repeats it over and over again without worrying about his own field of competence.

The solutions you present (and thank you very much for all your pedagogy and your contributions in general here, they are really didactic), he is quite capable of mentioning them of course. But he decided he knew what Nintendo was thinking better than Nintendo.

This is what has already led him to be wrong in the past on other subjects, it is a recurring attitude on his part, and to say this is obviously not disrespectful to him.
 
Layalseif said:
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.
Click to expand...
Calm down please
 
oldpuck said:
There is only so much cooling a Switch can do, and only so much a dock can help. Thermals still matter, not just for hardware health, but because past a certain point Nintendo would have to stick a bigger fan in the tablet (making it larger and cutting battery life) or in the Dock (requiring reengineering and higher costs, plus the risk of failure if someone doesn't slot it in just right).

DLSS in performance mode still has an internal res of 1080. So it's still, at base a 720p/1080p machine, so that 2x gap makes sense. In quality mode the base of 1440p. That would be a 3.6x gap, which I don't think is really viable.

PS4 was a 1080p machine. Drake hits PS4 Pro performance around 600MHz, so you could do PS4 games at about that level. But DLSS would be extremely slow, and you'd have no breathing room to execute it.

At this point every extra bit of GPU performance both makes DLSS faster, and the game faster. At around 750MHz, back of the envelope, is the point at which those two meet - DLSS would run fast enough to run in the performance gap that that the faster game would make.

Past that point, every bit of extra GPU power does double duty. It makes DLSS faster, which decreases DLSS's cost on the frame, while making the game faster, expanding the gap in which new visual features could be added.

Till you hit 1GHz. Drake's actual GPU max is probably about the same as Orin's, 1.3GHz. But Drake also has limitations on the memory bandwidth and storage speed. Past 1GHz, that extra power starts to hit those limits and you're getting marginal gains out of it.

On the other side, the minimum clock is probably around 300 MHz in handheld mode, but past ~450 MHz I just don't think you can make the battery life plausible. At 300MHz, you can probably do PS4-but-720p graphics. You're not going to run DLSS performance mode on those games, which is good, because DLSS is slow as butt at that point. But by 375-400MHz or so you have enough power to do DLAA on those graphics.

Past 400Mhz, then, you have to start asking yourself if you want to up GPU power, or if you want to spend some extra watts on CPUs. You probably want to run the CPU cores the same speed in handheld and docked mode, the same way that the Switch currently does. So now is your chance to give your CPU a nice bump, or docked mode will be CPU limited.

I think 400/800Mhz is probably the sweet spot for the GPU. A nice 2x gap between your two modes, about 1.25x the PS4 to give you plenty of space for DLSS/DLAA, and a little left over to bump your CPU speeds. If you wanted to add RT effects, you'd probably have to use DLSS ultra performance mode, or run in 2k, but that ain't bad at all.
Click to expand...
I think I exaggerated a bit when I said that it could go over 1GHz (although I don't think it's totally impossible, but as you said the jump wouldn't be that big for the bandwidth).
But 800MHz I believe it would already exceed the 15W target (if the node is really Samsung 8nm), I think it would be totally possible to reach 1GHz, thinking about the possibility of future proofing, the standard Switch already has great cooling, I believe that through of design and a Fan that reaches higher spin speeds (used only in dock mode for battery reasons of course) it would be possible to cool this chip decently at around 1GHz.
If the idea is to run games at 1080p natively, I'm afraid that 2.4 TFlops (800 MHz) will not be enough over time, maybe it's not enough for many games today, DLSS ultra performance is quite interesting, yes, but I think that the limit that the technique reaches today without showing major defects in the image is the performance mode.
 
Even with my 2017 Switch with CFW, running max GPU and CPU clocks, the temps rarely exceed 67 degrees, nowhere near throttling temps and the fan is still only spinning around 60-70%. Certainly plenty of cooling overhead in the Switch design. I would be curious to know what the power draw for the 20nm X1 at max clocks? Maybe 15 watts?
 
Kenka said:
Bowser's second tweet is from November of last year.
Click to expand...
We'll know soon enough if he's going for work or pleasure. He has tweeting skiing trips before, which is pleasure but didn't tweet from the plane. This seems oddly like an important work trip. if he follows up with tweets from kyoto then it's for work.
 
Last edited:
Dakhil said:
Click to expand...

I won't dance around the point, I genuinely think the reveal is coming soon.

Jensen's Japan visit, now Doug's (seemingly headed) there, all the smoke and chatter around it, apparently the factory leaks they supposedly wanted to clamp down on to avoid leaks before the reveal have seemingly started. And why would he tweet it like this unless he was teasing something slightly bigger? He doesn't tend to do this for Directs.

In no uncertain terms: I believe the reveal will be announced soon. I believe the reveal will be before February 14th, maybe because they have a Superbowl Ad to show, maybe because they want to flood Twitter with ads during it to make the most of a high traffic day.

Either way, I do actually think it's time.
 
Last edited:
Dekuman said:
We'll know soon enough if he's going for work of pleasure. He has tweeting skiing trips before, which is pleasure but didn't tweet from the plane. This seems oddly like an important work trip. if he follows up with tweets from kyoto then it's for work.
Click to expand...
How, exactly?
 
Concernt said:
I won't dance around the point, I genuinely think the reveal is coming soon.

Jensen's Japan visit, now Doug's there, all the smoke and chatter around it, apparently the factory leaks they supposedly wanted to clamp down on to avoid leaks before the reveal have seemingly started. And why would he tweet it like this unless he was teasing something slightly bigger? He doesn't tend to do this for Directs.

In no uncertain terms: I believe the reveal will be announced soon. I believe the reveal will be before February 14th, maybe because they have a Superbowl Ad to show, maybe because they want to flood Twitter with ads during it to make the most of a high traffic day.

Either way, I do actually think it's time.
Click to expand...
that tweet is from november...
 
Reader mode
You must log in or register to reply here.
Please read this new, consolidated staff post before posting.

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


Back
Top Bottom