Still working on my dlss 3.5 breakdown, but basically : In its full desktop form, dlss 3.5 would be useful only in some edge cases. For the vast majority of RT workloads they'd be better off with a cutdown version.
This is why I'm waiting for UE5 DLSS 3.5 integration. We can compare the performance of RR against the closest thing the industry has to "standard" denoisers.
Given the willingness to pay for the latest nodes and the latest cores, could Nintendo have, in this hypothetical situation, released a Switch 2 within their realistic power budget, with an ARM CPU that could keep up with Microsoft's hypothetical 2020 ARM CPU well enough to at least run most current gen exclusives?
Assuming I understand your question, I don't think the situation would be radically different than it is now.
Switch 2 wouldn't change. The core in the Xbox would, but we have a pretty good idea of what that would look like. The 2018 ARM core, has a high performance server class variant, called the N1, which was optimized for the same process node that the Series consoles already use. At similar clocks, the Zen 2 devices tend to outperform it, but not by huge margins, and the power efficiency is much much higher. Which means that Microsoft could probably afford to push the clocks even further than they did in the Series consoles, making up some of that gap.
it's super cool that all the top tier hardware posters know the codename while I'm sitting here scratching my stinky ass staring blankly at the fucking wall
If people don t leak it, does it mean it says something about the console ?
I've heard this console name - probably code name, though I guess there is a microscopic chance that it's the
actual name - from multiple people. However, I suspect at least a couple of those people have the same source behind the curtain. Not willing to put that Ultimate Source on blast.
The only "special information" that this code name has is that it allows you to instantly spot a certain class of fake leaks - leaks which look fake for other reasons anyway.
Also the thing that tells me benchmarking againt past leak cycles to draw a conclusion on release or announcement is pointless. Previous codenames were known very early on (café, revolution, dolphin etc). That we don't know it by now is a sign that Nintendo cracked down strongly on plumbing issues I guess.
I think this has to do with Nintendo changing their software release cadence. The "next" console was always a sort of open secret, and Nintendo (and other companies) almost needed to talk about them early, simply because they needed to fill the late-gen software slump with excitement. Code names were a way to do that.
Nintendo has really tried to kill the software slump this gen. During the ramp up, they depended on Wii U ports, and here in the cooldown, a lot of remasters/remakes, but there is a Giant Tentpole Release pretty much every year. Nintendo doesn't have a separate handheld line to keep making software sales from during the ramp up. I think Nintendo wants all eyes on Switch until the last minute.