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StarTopic Future Nintendo Hardware & Technology Speculation & Discussion |ST| (Read the staff posts before commenting!)
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Shoulder
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The Series S could’ve been paired back a bit more…reasonably imo, say instead of 20 CU for the GPU (52 for the Series X), literally cut it in half to 26, though maybe there were other reasons why it was cut down to 20CU.
As far as memory goes, the way it’s split is goofy. We know there’s like 7-8GB available for developers. Is the 2GB pool of memory at 56GB/sec meant purely for the OS, or is the OS utilizing both pools?
I think the general quantity of ram is generally fine for a system that came out in 2020, but the way how the ram is structured is woefully inadequate I think.
By comparison, the Series X is 10GB of 560GB/sec pool, and 6gigs of 336GB/sec pool. Same question as before, does the OS use only one of the pools, or both?
Needless to say, I think the general consensus is MS should’ve gone away with split pools entirely, and gone the Sony route. They had a serious leg up during the 360 era with a single pool of 512MB of memory rather than the split pool for the CPU, and GPU for the PS3. And then for Xbone, they decided to pull a Nintendo like they did for the Wii U, and have that pool of super fast ESRAM compared to the PS4’s single pool of GDDR5 memory.
Yes, I like exotic hardware at times, and when developers can use it correctly, it’s impressive what it can accomplish. But I think to simplify things for developers these days, stick with a single pool of memory, and call it a day.
Ghostsonplanets
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If Nintendo, when deciding on Switch memory back in 2015, went with 4GB of RAM, which was 2x - 4x higher than what was used on comparable mobile devices of its time, I fail to see why there's so much dooming that they will go with 8GB. Specially when prices of memory are in the mud.
The slow pool is exclusively reserved for the OS. 7.9x GB are addressable by games on SS.
Shoulder
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Cool. Thank you.
So next question I have is how much of the available 16GB of total ram is available for developers, and which pool is part of the OS? I would imagine for Series X, the slower pool is for OS functions, but I don’t recall all 6gigs of it is reserved for the OS, correct?
Just thinking some numbers here, the 224GB/sec memory in Series S is exactly 2.5x slower than the 10GB on Series X at 560GB/sec.
And given the Series S is marketed as a 1080p device primarily (though can output at 1440p), and the available CUs is 2.6x less on Series S vs. Series X, AND let’s not forgot in terms of raw horsepower, the Series S is 4TFLOP, and Series X is 12.
The more I’m looking at this, the Series S really just comes across as a Series X, but for a 1080p display. Series X is for that full 4K.
I guess what I’m getting at is theoretically, there should be enough overhead between the two systems to target their respective looks, frame rates, and resolutions.
Or am I completely missing something here?
Ghostsonplanets
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PS5: 12.5GB of memory adressable for games. 3.5GB for the OS
Xbox Series X: 13.5GB of memory adressable for games. 2.5GB for the OS(OS can only adress the slow pool of memory)
Both PS5 and XSX: 10GB of 16GB are exclusively reserved for the GPU. On Xbox Series X, the 10GB for the GPU are only from the faster pool of RAM(560 GB/s)
There are no pools. Just one pool of ram at the same speed
They're using gddr which has a limit on how big chips get. Lpddr doesn't and can get up to 32GB on two chips
Sol
Moblin
Where does this information come from? I thought both Series X and PS5 had 13.5 GB of usable RAM for devs.
Please people, just for one time.
If you are neither a developer nor an engineer, please stop posts like:
16 GB is Overkill etc.
Devs would blast you off for comments like these.
12 GB is way too low for a 2025 console (release holiday 2024).
8-10 GB will be allocated to games, and devs are already mad at the Series S in regards to this as a painful bottleneck.
If you are neither a developer nor an engineer, please stop posts like:
16 GB is Overkill etc.
Devs would blast you off for comments like these.
12 GB is way too low for a 2025 console (release holiday 2024).
8-10 GB will be allocated to games, and devs are already mad at the Series S in regards to this as a painful bottleneck.
Shoulder
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So in other words, making games for Series S at a 1080p target resolution, or close to it should be achievable compared to Series X targeting at or close to 4K.
Yes, I’m simplifying things for the sake of argument.
I still stand by what I said earlier that MS made a mistake going the route they did.
Another quick question: are the chips made for Series S completely different compared to Series X, or are some/all Series X chips that don’t meet the X standard are binned as Series S chips?
In other words, are they actual manufacturing two entirely separate chips, on two different lines? That what the impression I got earlier based on how different they were, but now I’m curious.
And yes, I know this doesn’t exactly pertain to Switch hardware, but it does imply that things could be easier for developers.
Ghostsonplanets
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It really isn't. Anything above 8GB is more than fine for a 2024 consumer application. Unless devs are targeting DataCenter or Cloud machines for their games to run, they need to adhere to reality. RAM isn't scaling as much as it used to scale and big RAM jumps are things of the past.
Two entirely different SoC/Chips. Both manufactured on TSMC N7. Both Xbox Series X and Series S are already using "binned" chips. Xbox Series X GPU is 60 CU with 4 disabled for yields. Xbox Series S GPU is 24 CU with 4 disabled for yields.
Xbox Series X SoC is 360mm². You would be wasting and losing tons of money by disabling 2/3 of the GPU to be used for a smaller and cheaper console.
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Concernt
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"Devs are mad they have to optimise things." isn't new, but being mad won't make it any more impossible to port a game. Developers work on already basically impossible deadlines. Most can't be met with 9-5 working hours, and that's wrong. But that's not because consoles are 3GB off what developers would like. That's pure, utter mismanagement. The Series S isn't difficult to work it, it takes longer to optimise things to work within its power and memory budget, but teams aren't getting extra time, and that creates frustration. If managers demand graphics with so much detail even a Series S can't handle it, that's not the Series S' fault.
Getting mad at technology not having high enough numbers, or others pointing out that the numbers are high enough if you have the time to work with it, it's misdirected. The whole system of producing videogames is economically and socially broken. No amount of RAM can fix absurd deadlines and clueless executives.
If developers "blast" someone for saying 16GB is more than enough, then that's wrong of them.
For NG Switch, it's still a mobile device running at mobile power levels with a mobile chip, and targeting lower internal resolutions and more than likely lower asset quality than the competition. And that's OK! If a team wants their game to function on NG Switch, or Series S, or even moderate to low end PCs, then they need to put in extra time and effort. And that's OK, too!
But they need the budget, staffing and time to do that. Things they often don't get in this industry.
Kazuyamishima
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Keyword "fine"
Ghostsonplanets
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Yes, fine. You work with what you have. If corporate mandate that you will have to target the weaker console with limited amount of RAM, you do it. Specially as, on Series S case, you need a Series S build to be able to ship a Xbox SKU.
Concernt
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The lines and wafers are the same, they can flip back and forth. In theory you could bin a Series X chip to a Series S chip, maybe, but in reality I'm pretty sure they don't. It's on a very refined node, and both systems are manufactured with more CUs than they actually use, so if one, or two, or even 4 fail, it can still be used.
eye0h
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Thank God they made it downloadable
Dekuman
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The dooming came in response to a post to someone who allegedly has dev info saying 16GB is out of the question.
I personally don't know this person, or their credibility so I'm just working backwards by noting that 8GB would definately be too little, as it would barely be enough to accomodate for rough doubling of asset sizes from going to a higher resolution (most likely target)
If we go by how Switch was designed as a kind of a XBOX 360 2.0 and those , Switch 2 would need at least 10GB allocated to games to best the 8GB adressable to those consoles, so 12GB seems like a reasonable floor, with the potential to go to 16GB if Nintendo spurges, or even perhaps Nintendo moving the OS portion of the RAM to its own chip, leaving the faster RAM all to the games.
Ghostsonplanets
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I see. You're more or less correct in your reasoning, so I don't see why people went with 8GB except for "It's Nintendo". For the OS thing, it's possible, but not what you want to do. You're only incurring extra expense. They will reserve a portion of RAM and 1/2 CPU cores for the OS.
Kazuyamishima
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On a somewhat unrelated note, do you know what compelled Jeffgrubb to say there's a %70 chance that switch releases this year when devkits have only been sent out recently? (Forgive me if I misinterpreted and forgot what he actually said I can't seem to find the tweet)
Dekuman
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They have to the trolling. RAM is one area Nintendo's never been stingy on.
NateDrake
Chain Chomp
I'm not familiar with the quote or info you are referencing.
D
Deleted member 887
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Are you a developer or engineer? Not trying to be a dick, but I was one of the folks saying "16 GB is overkill" (which I admit was an exaggeration) I feel like if you're gonna call folks out about their credentials, I'm wondering what yours are.
You're talking about a console with a performance envelope in the neighborhood of last gen, but with something in the arena of 2x more RAM than last gen. What occurred in the last 7 years of rendering that drastically altered the amount of RAM needed? What new techniques are 3x heavier on RAM? What techniques do you expect to become mainstream in the next 7 that will vastly increase RAM usage while being viable on NG's small GPU?
The NG is not the Series S on many levels, but it seems 12GB is not only 25% more RAM than the Series S, it seems highly unlikely that Nintendo will ship an OS with a resident set size anywhere near the Series S's OS. If Nintendo doubles their current OS's size, that would still make 10GB available to games, when Series S has something on the order of 7.5GB available. Series X is 13.5. 16GB would obviously be rad as hell, but the idea that 12GB is somehow the critical limiting factor for a device whose 3rd parties games will mostly be ports based on PS4 era tech where only 4.5 GB was available to devs doesn't pass the smell test.
Kazuyamishima
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Dekuman
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To be fair, I think most people are taking PS4 era late ports and cross gen games as locked in more or less. I think we're shooting too low if all we're looking for is that.
I am sure this is not what you meant, but people just want enough RAM for it to not be an issue for new multiplatform games that will primarily be aimed at power profiles above the PS4.
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Semi Lazy Gamer
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NG will have a resolution ceiling far above 1080 which was the ceiling for last gen base machines, and it's expected to get down ports from far more powerful systems. I don't think "last gen had 8, so 16 is overkill" is nescesarily a good way of looking at it. By that logic, 4gb was overkill for switch 1, something like 6-7 times the 360 for games.
Concernt
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I do wonder what the ceiling is. I'm going to be extremely generous with my example here, but imagine a Switch game that targets 1080p right now. A native 4K is well within range with a NG port. With enough resources left over, it could DLSS up to 6 or 8K.
Whether the system can output 8K would tell us a lot of information, I think. It would mean, for instance, that they have media consumption on the mind since few if any games can or should try to reach 8K. It tells us that the dock is definitely new and different, and that it supports HDMI 2.1 or above. It tells us that this isn't just aiming to be a better Switch, but wants to trade punches with the full fat home consoles, even if that isn't wise.
I don't expect 8K support. But if we learn about it, it would certainly answer some questions. If they confirm a 4K cap, that also answers some questions.
Interesting few months (or weeks) ahead of us.
Dark Cloud
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necrolipe
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Kazuyamishima
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There's no way switch NG does anything over 4k
plank
Piranha Plant
How about RAM that's also storage?
D
Deleted member 887
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The only area where it's never an issue is the same amount as the other consoles. And even then, you're still stuck with the global memory problems that every console has.
The primary drive of whether or not NG gets a good port is how much money the publisher is going to make. The lower the install base, less money. The easier it is to port, more money. A $100 premium for an extra 8GB of RAM might make games easier to port, but it will also cut into the install base. RAM isn't getting cheaper like it once did, that $100 premium is likely to extend to the "cheap" revision in 2 years. 16GB may reduce the likelihood of a Lite/cost reduced model in the future.
The PS4 was only 9GB of RAM and was targeting 4K.
My point was slightly more nuanced than that. The PS4 era brought about Physically Based Rendering as an overhaul of the previous gen's rendering pipeline. PBR is much more memory intensive, and memory was significantly cheaper than the PS3 era, so adding much more RAM enabled modern engines (at lower resolutions and fidelity) to run nicely, as very low cost.
Since that era, there hasn't been a radical overhaul in the way rendering is done, while memory has stopped scaling as it once did, and prices are coming up. That cost constraint doesn't just affect Nintendo - both Nvidia and AMD are shipping 8GB current gen graphics cards with 5-10x the expect performance of the NG. Digital Foundry is saying that the 16B RTX 4060 Ti - a 30 TFLOP card - isn't a good value prospect because of the excessive RAM. The Series S only has 7.5GB available for games, and will remain the baseline of current-gen multiplats going forward, for better or worse.
The Switch has the GPU perf of last gen, and an amount of RAM halfway between the last gen and the current gen. To repeat that with the NG would be 12GB. If Nintendo allocates 2GB for the OS - twice what they do now - a 12GB device would have 10GB of RAM, significantly more than the RAM constrained Series S. All while having a much smaller memory bus, half as many CPU threads, likely half as much CPU single threaded perf, and likely half as much storage bandwidth.
The PS4 and XBone allocated 3.5GB for their OS. 10GB available for games would be a 100% RAM increase over the PS4/Xbone. Would 16GB be better? Sure, but the notion that 12GB is insufficient for modern games - and that anyone who doesn't have certain qualifications* aren't allowed to say so - is frankly ludicrous. When it comes to down ports from the 9th gen consoles that were not already cross-gen, the most likely barrier isn't RAM, or GPU power, or storage speed, but CPU. More games are gonna die on the CPU hill than would hit some sort of RAM barrier at 12GB.
"12GB is not enough for modern games" is hyperbole. Hyperbole is fine. Telling other people to shut their hyperbole up because your hyperbole is the only valid hyperbole is a jerk move.
Not to mention both RT and DLSS are memory hungry.
Not that I think 12GB is overly low or anything, but I don't think this is a useful way to look at the situation. Ports from PS4/XB1 will undoubtedly be a large portion of the system's library, but that's not what it's built for. The system is designed with a similar featureset to PS5/XS in order to run next gen Nintendo games, and hopefully pick up some ports from those systems on the side. Games built with it in mind will absolutely be adopting newer rendering techniques, some of which are known to be fairly RAM hungry, like RT. In addition, while native 4k rendering is likely not a priority, best practices for scaling to that resolution via techniques like DLSS dictate that you pay a significant portion of the memory cost regardless, in the form of higher resolution textures.
The next generation Switch is a much more modern system than PS4/XB1 and exists in a much different context. There are limits to how applicable analogies between the systems will be.
devs would not prefer that. better to add more actual ram
Kazuyamishima
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"Targeting" did the ps4 actually run any game with decent graphics in a native 4K? Or was it all checkerboarded
Smash Kirby
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24 GBs of RAM confirmed. /s
All this talk of RAM is interesting. I'd think 12 is enough for now, allow current switch games to default to the faster RAM speeds.
Now you got my imagination spinning on what system-level features Nintendo can bring to the table with that kind of boost.
More comprehensive online features?
An Eshop thats fast and is a good shopping experience?
Dare I say it ... themes!?
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/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22013076/vpavic_201103_4275_0252.jpg)
Microsoft gives Xbox Series S devs more memory to improve graphics performance
Some Xbox Series S games will get a performance boost.
www.theverge.com
The issue is the amount of memory, the bandwidth is an issue but the amount is an even bigger issue for them.
Concernt
Optimism is non-negotiable
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I mean, objectively, it certainly COULD, it's more whether Nintendo would LET it, because it wouldn't be very good at it.
Kazuyamishima
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Yes it could "objectively" run at 1fps, draw a lot of power, heat up the system, and be unpleasant, but of course Nintendo won't let that happen. It's not worth even discussing almost.
Concernt
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A 1440p presentation, little to no lag in the eShop and NSO app, faster loading times and themes would be my baseline expectations, while an improving recording and captures system would be high on the wishlist.
Concernt
Optimism is non-negotiable
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That's not really how rendering works. Simple games could absolutely achieve 8K at 30 or even 60FPS on T239 even at Switch clocks. It's worth discussing because it's possible. It's just that few games would (or even could) take advantage. When you add in DLSS, the gates really start to open up, because you could, in theory, have a game that runs in 1080p on the base Switch running at an internal resolution of 4K on the NG Switch, with DLSS Performance Mode bringing that to a reconstructed 8K. Worth the effort? I don't think so, but technically possible, absolutely. Resolution isn't some all powerful force that can crush a console beneath its heel. Even the lowly PS2 could do 1080i.
eye0h
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If Doctre has one fan, then I'm THAT ONE.
If Doctre has no fans, that means I'm dead.
Kazuyamishima
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My 3050ti* with DLSS that is 80W cannot do anything at 8k above 10fps. I get that console games look worse and have lower quality textures, assets and polygons to their advantage but switch will be a 15w chip probably in a small device without much cooling. There is no way it's reasonably hits even close to 8k resolution
Edit: listed wrong GPU
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Apex Legends, now at 60fps
1UpMango
I'm late to Team 2023
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This part about media tablet functionality reminded me about this lol
I have nothing against your theory and I totally welcome more media functionality with open arms, let's just pray Nintendo doesn't mention "TV" more than 3 times in their next-gen reveal and the console will likely be successful haha
In retrospect, as much as it sucked that the Nintendo charm disappeared (no music in the OS etc.) with the Switch, Nintendo's focus on games, games, games really worked out for Nintendo
Concernt
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Reasonably, it absolutely, objectively, could, with the right game. It's also not a good comparison since 1050ti can't even do DLSS... And is weaker than T239 would be at 15W even with conservative clocks (unless it's on 8nm, which is unlikely.).
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, assuming they don't try to brush up the lighting or textures in a way that could add extra strain, could probably do it. I mean, it can do 1080p60 working with less than 500GFLOP, NG Switch is operating in the thousands of GFLOPs AND has hardware upscaling.
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