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

6 SM 768 GHz GPU, 4 A78 1Ghz CPU and 88 GB/s bandwidth Drake/Switch 2 confirmed! Gonna be nice having steam deck gpu specs in docked mode 🤔😂😐

Those specs PLUS DLSS

i mean ...i know these specs have been put out as a joke but how would this configuration look in comparison to a PS4/ PS4 PRO?
I will actaully limit my expectations to this, if it gets better i will just be happier.
 
Eventually it will be the system for exclusive first party games though. The specs clearly indicate a next gen system imo.

Edit: just realized I did something dumb. Please not let this become a revision/ successor thread.
Yeah eventually, but knowing how Nintendo loves to control the message I like to think they'd make it a priority to sell it as an upgrade right out of the gate, then slowly transition to exclusive games.
 
Honestly with the current situation that China is experiencing, I don't think we will see anything in 2022.
I think that's a much more logical reason for a Spring 2023 launch than to pair the system with BOTW2. Nintendo probably hasn't made a decision yet on the launch window but will probably nail that down soon.
 
I'm hoping for a Spring 2023 launch with Zelda but honestly if Zelda comes out and there is still no new hardware then I think it will be pretty safe to say Nintendo isn't releasing new hardware anytime soon. Zelda would absolutely 100% be a crossgen title if new hardware was launching in 2023. No doubt on this for me.
 
I think that's a much more logical reason for a Spring 2023 launch than to pair the system with BOTW2. Nintendo probably hasn't made a decision yet on the launch window but will probably nail that down soon.
A launch with BOTW2 seems like the logical thing to do, but in the end I guess that's just one factor.
Line-up of 2022, situation in China and lack of components are the others.

March 2023 or late 2023 now seems more plausible to me.
 
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If there is a lengthy cross gen period then I don’t see the need to launch an exclusive game with the Drake. You can launch a game with enhancements that show off whatever of the system you want and if it is good then it works.
A March '23 launch would mean a tape out deadline by September or so right? So if we don't hear anything by then, would it be safe to assume a delay?
Safe to assume it was never happening at that timeframe is more like it. Much like for the 2022 release the time for tape out is fast approaching so if you don’t hear anything about that then don’t expect it come in 2022.
 
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EDIT: The following post is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Unless something goes unprecedentedly and horrifically wrong, Nintendo's next system will NOT be using the specs discussed below.
i mean ...i know these specs have been put out as a joke but how would this configuration look in comparison to a PS4/ PS4 PRO?
I will actaully limit my expectations to this, if it gets better i will just be happier.
A78 x4 @ 1Ghz = roughly 80% of PS4, 60% of PS4 Pro*
6SM @ 768Mhz = 1.18TFLOPS, PS4 and Pro are 1.84 and 4.2 TFLOPS respectively, take with grain of salt because of architectural differences
88GB/s is exactly half the bandwidth PS4 has

Those percentages are based off the assumption A78 is three times more performant per clock than Jaguar. To reach that estimate was super simplified, so it's possibly more inaccurate than the rest. I've read that Jaguar performs similarly per gigahertz to A57, and separately that A78 is 3-3.5x performant vs A57. Also, in calculating the rough numbers I accounted for one core in each system being reserved by the OS. I have no clue how much cache each A78 would have or I would have liked to compare that too, but it's probably too granular a point to bother with anyway since this is all hypothetical.

In the alternate universe we were living in a few months ago when we believed these specs likely, I would be shocked if Nintendo clocked things that low.

TL;DR: If you set your expectations for almost PS4-level performance in docked mode, maybe at worst 720p where PS4 is 1080p, that will definitely be safe :) That's without accounting for DLSS, which, with those specs, would likely be impressive but not mind-blowing.
 
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A78 x4 @ 1Ghz = roughly 80% of PS4, 60% of PS4 Pro*
6SM @ 768Mhz = 1.18TFLOPS, PS4 and Pro are 1.84 and 4.2 TFLOPS respectively, take with grain of salt because of architectural differences
88GB/s is exactly half the bandwidth PS4 has

Those percentages are based off the assumption A78 is three times more performant per clock than Jaguar. To reach that estimate was super simplified, so it's possibly more inaccurate than the rest. I've read that Jaguar performs similarly per gigahertz to A57, and separately that A78 is 3-3.5x performant vs A57. Also, in calculating the rough numbers I accounted for one core in each system being reserved by the OS. I have no clue how much cache each A78 would have or I would have liked to compare that too, but it's probably too granular a point to bother with anyway since this is all hypothetical.

In the alternate universe we were living in a few months ago when we believed these specs likely, I would be shocked if Nintendo clocked things that low.

TL;DR: If you set your expectations for almost PS4-level performance in docked mode, maybe at worst 720p where PS4 is 1080p, that will definitely be safe :) That's without accounting for DLSS, which, with those specs, would likely be impressive but not mind-blowing.
Why is everyone bringing 6sm back up? Another leak happen?
 
Why is everyone bringing 6sm back up? Another leak happen?
@ShadowFox08 made a joke at Samsung's expense, and another user had the idea to set 6sm as their expectation so that when Drake is revealed (which we know is 12sm) they'll be pleasantly surprised by the performance no matter how low the clocks are, or at least that was my interpretation of their post. I took the opportunity their request presented to kill some time and stretch my brain running the numbers, since it's a slow day for me.

No new leaks that I know of. Once there are the entire thread will be talking about them, I'm sure.
 
@ShadowFox08 made a joke at Samsung's expense, and another user had the idea to set 6sm as their expectation so that when Drake is revealed (which we know is 12sm) they'll be pleasantly surprised by the performance no matter how low the clocks are, or at least that was my interpretation of their post. I took the opportunity their request presented to kill some time and stretch my brain running the numbers, since it's a slow day for me.

No new leaks that I know of. Once there are the entire thread will be talking about them, I'm sure.
Ah so...people are just shitposting now to keep expectations in check?

Be careful though. Someone might take these posts as facts! This is the internet, after all, and this has happened before...
 
Thing is, this was a completely reasonable, realistic expectation pre leak.
Looking at Steam Deck's performance per watt at 7nm, I'm starting to think that's really reasonable now. Pretty surprised to see SD at 20-25 watts at settings that aren't even max on CPU and GPU. I dunno if anyone has ever ran the full max 1.6Ghz GPU, and if they did, I wonder what the CPU clocks were.. Of course there needs to be come optimization with the OS as well, but I'm a bit dissapointed. At the same time I'm tempering my expectations for the switch 2/drake now, and it's interesting how Orion dev kits haven't been running very high clocks either and they are pretty close to their wattage max. Correct me if I'm wrong, I think they are 8nm Samsung though..


I'm not expecting the 3 TFLOPs 12SMs for Drake, That's gonna be really crazy
Ah so...people are just shitposting now to keep expectations in check?

Be careful though. Someone might take these posts as facts! This is the internet, after all, and this has happened before...
I'm definitely not shit posting. Some of it was in jest, but looking at Steam's underwhelming current performance on 7nm at 25 watts and then clocked profiles for the NX, I'm a tad bit worried/pessimistic about a 3 TFLOP Drake at 15-25 watt being feasible. Could it be done at 5nm TSMC? I dunno. 5nm isn't a huge jump from 7nm. Perhaps 12SMs is possible, but could we really get the 1Ghz GPU per SM and 1.5Ghz CPU with 8 78 CPU cores? We'll see.
 
I'm definitely not shit posting. Some of it was in jest, but looking at Steam's underwhelming current performance on 7nm at 25 watts and then clocked profiles for the NX, I'm a tad bit worried/pessimistic about a 3 TFLOP Drake at 15-25 watt being feasible. Could it be done at 5nm TSMC? I dunno. 5nm isn't a huge jump from 7nm. Perhaps 12SMs is possible, but could we really get the 1Ghz GPU per SM and 1.5Ghz CPU with 8 78 CPU cores? We'll see.
I wouldn't put myself to be that pessimistic. I'm not banking on such high clocks, but the performance advantages of an Nvidia SoC, coupled with some of the technologies discussed (DLSS) means that it's likely we'll see somewhat respectable TFLOPs but in the end it wouldn't matter much because of the AI upscaling.
You also have to keep in mind that many of the games on Steam haven't been optimized around the hardware, or at least, most of them are brute-forcing the performance to meet the "Designed for Deck" specification. Steam has to contend with OS overhead, while the Switch keeps it at a minimum.

You're not going to be spec-for-spec comparisons here. You simply can't. Steam Deck is more of a PC (It is a PC!), while the Switch successor will be a specialized device.
 
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Looking at Steam Deck's performance per watt at 7nm, I'm starting to think that's really reasonable now. Pretty surprised to see SD at 20-25 watts at settings that aren't even max on CPU and GPU. I dunno if anyone has ever ran the full max 1.6Ghz GPU, and if they did, I wonder what the CPU clocks were.. Of course there needs to be come optimization with the OS as well, but I'm a bit dissapointed. At the same time I'm tempering my expectations for the switch 2/drake now, and it's interesting how Orion dev kits haven't been running very high clocks either and they are pretty close to their wattage max. Correct me if I'm wrong, I think they are 8nm Samsung though..


I'm not expecting the 3 TFLOPs 12SMs for Drake, That's gonna be really crazy

I'm definitely not shit posting. Some of it was in jest, but looking at Steam's underwhelming current performance on 7nm at 25 watts and then clocked profiles for the NX, I'm a tad bit worried/pessimistic about a 3 TFLOP Drake at 15-25 watt being feasible. Could it be done at 5nm TSMC? I dunno. 5nm isn't a huge jump from 7nm. Perhaps 12SMs is possible, but could we really get the 1Ghz GPU per SM and 1.5Ghz CPU with 8 78 CPU cores? We'll see.

I know the shader cores are from the leak, but I ain't heard nothing about nothing on the CPU. We have reasonable deductions made on it being a78's, but I haven't heard any reasons for what core counts the CPU will be, all we have is that's the core counts known members of the arch family have.

Do we have reason to believe it won't be 6 a78 cores?
 
I'm sorry for the double post, but the Orin Series SoC Technical Reference confirms that Orin has 2nd Generation RT cores, which @ILikeFeet has confirmed to be the case.
unknown.png

So at the very least, Drake will feature 2nd Generation RT cores as well.

And although Nvidia's wording here is a little confusing, Nvidia seems to confirm that Orin has a RT core per SM.
2 Streaming Multiprocessors (SMs), each with its own Ray Tracing (RT) core.
(Notice that the wording mentions each of the 2 SMs has a RT core.)
unknown.png

So Drake having 12 RT cores, considering Drake has 12 SMs, seems likely.

And the November 2021 edition of the Jetson AGX Orin data sheet is now publicly available for everyone to read.
 
TLDR: Don't forget that a larger portion of the Steam Deck's power budget is being eaten by the CPU compared to the Switch, then in turn the Switch's GPU gets a higher percentage compared to the Steam Deck.

Rest of this post is just expanding on the above point:
For mobile Zen 2, I'll be using two charts from here.
image-25-1.png

Look at the red line of dashes for mobile Zen 2.
Key assumption 1: I'm assuming 4 cores to match up with the rest (and also for the charts to make sense, especially its performance relative to 4 desktop Zen 2 cores).
So far as the author can manage, it looks like we see the power draw range from as low as ~3.2 watts to ~26 watts, or about ~0.8-~6.5 watts per core.
image-27-1.png

This one tells us the range in clock frequency that the author managed to find. About ~1.7 ghz to 4 ghz. So let's map the end points; ~3.2 watts to ~1.7 ghz and ~26 watts to 4 ghz. But what about in between?

(disclosure: observant readers looking at the page I linked to will notice that the 7-zip compress chart has a slight difference in the range of power drawn. Clocks still look to have the same range. That's an example of different workloads stress different parts of the CPU, leading to differences in total power used despite the same frequency. Keep in mind that it's probably the case that for gaming, your power draw at a given frequency would be slightly lower compared to video transcoding, albeit not significantly enough to change the message)

Going back to the first chart, the perf/power curve looks like a reasonable shape. I also know that transcoding with x264 is generally understood to have performance (ie FPS) scale linearly with threads.
Key assumption 2: Ergo, I assume that the relationship between clock and perf is linear.
Starting with the end points... it's ~3.2 FPS at its slowest and about... ~6.3 FPS at its fastest. So let's map ~1.7 ghz to ~3.2 FPS and 4 ghz to ~6.3 FPS. Then, we can see that ~4/1.7 times the clock gets ~6.3/3.2 times the perf. Then if it's straight line, the scaling factor would be... x~=6.3 / 3.2 * 1.7 / 4 ~= 0.837.

Checking back with wikipedia, Steam Deck's listed with CPU frequency being 2.4 to 3.5 ghz...
2.4/1.7 * 0.837 ~= 1.182. Then I multiply that by 3.2 FPS to get ~3.781 FPS. On the chart, that's about... 4.6-4.7 watts (or 1.15-1.175 watts per core).
(btw, if it were 8 cores and thus not even 0.6 watts per core to hit 2.4 ghz, that would outdo ARM on a N7 node, and that certainly fails a sanity check)
3.5/1.7 * 0.837 ~= 1.723. Then multiply by 3.2 FPS to get ~5.514 FPS. On the chart, that's about... 10.7-10.8 watts (or 2.675 to 2.7 watts per core).

What about the Switch? That's a lot easier!
Remember that Erista is on TSMC's 20nm node. What would make for a reasonable comparison? Hmm...how about something on Samsung's 20nm node? It's not gonna be exactly the same, but it'll be close enough for the purposes of this post.
From this page, we have this chart that longtime readers of this thread may remember:
A57-power-curve.png

Quad A57 cores @1 ghz uses about 1.83 watts.

Personally, I expect Drake to target about 2 watts or less for the CPU. And that's fine. ARM Cortex-A cores shoot for 1 watt or less per core. The A78 specifically targets 3 ghz@1 watt on a 5 nm process (or so ARM promotional material says). Sure, 8 A78@3 ghz would then take up ~8 watts themselves. But we know that's not happening. Napkin math says slash the frequency in half to get quarter the power as a rough guesstimate, so you may be able to hit ~1.5 ghz at 2 watts on base N5. And that's ignoring that the core reserved for OS doesn't necessarily have to be at the same frequency as the rest, which could free up some centiwatts to spreads among the rest.
On a N7 node, ARM says A77 hits 2.6 ghz@1 watt. A78's slightly more efficient (-4% power) even on the same process, so let's stick with that number. Again, napkin math says half frequency/quarter power, so 8 A78 at 1.3 ghz should be doable within 2 watts.
And in total, the watts you save here on the CPU can be shifted over to the GPU. A few watts here gets you a few more deciwatts per SM.
 
6 SM 768 GHz GPU, 4 A78 1Ghz CPU and 88 GB/s bandwidth Drake/Switch 2 confirmed! Gonna be nice having steam deck gpu specs in docked mode 🤔😂😐
So it’s about what 3x the current Switch in terms of CPU/GPU/RAM bandwidth performance with DLSS as a bonus? I really hope they go with at least 12gb of RAM.
 
Quoted by: LiC
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So it’s about what 3x the current Switch in terms of CPU/GPU/RAM bandwidth performance with DLSS as a bonus? I really hope they go with at least 12gb of RAM.
There is no "it" to say "it" has 3x the power of current Switch. Everything everyone says about relative power is pure speculation. Or if there is an "it," it has 12 SMs as far as anyone knows. Extrapolations about power based on that are already dubious, but coming up with your own SM count and then extrapolating based on that is even more dubious.

Edit: And to be clear, speculation and extrapolations are all well and good if it's academic. If people want to try to figure out what the power could be like given a certain number of assumptions, awesome. But it seems like a lot of people read all the speculation and back-of-the-envelope math and are forming expectations based on it.
 
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Was the Chinese factory leak not real/major? They are expecting it this year.
It was one person claiming they saw a Switch backplate with redesigned hinges. Even if you believe them (and really, why should you), it takes a lot of extrapolation to get from that to a release date for a new Switch model.

This is another thing where yeah sure, it's fine to look at and talk about random "leaks" because who knows, they could real, and speculation is fun. But not everything needs to instantly be incorporated into the narrative about the actual real console we know is being developed. Some things can and will just turn out to be fake or not applicable.
 
It was one person claiming they saw a Switch backplate with redesigned hinges. Even if you believe them (and really, why should you), it takes a lot of extrapolation to get from that to a release date for a new Switch model.

This is another thing where yeah sure, it's fine to look at and talk about random "leaks" because who knows, they could real, and speculation is fun. But not everything needs to instantly be incorporated into the narrative about the actual real console we know is being developed. Some things can and will just turn out to be fake or not applicable.
Nobody knows for certain. I believe the Chinese factory rumours should be taken with a huge grain of salt.
I know but people act like there’s no major leak (real or not). Perpetuating into their own narrative. In reality, things have been leaking like crazy. In retrospect, it’s going to be funny just like the Lite situation/Aula deniers.
 
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Isnt the total performance level a lot more important to devs than core count?

Edit: do you even have a source? @brainchild does core count matter if it doesn’t affect performance level?
The ease of engine support is what matters a lot with portability of games as it eases the process significantly among the other things. Last gen set a baseline of 8 cores.

Devs do prefer more at least based on what Mark Cerny said in that wired video, but 8 seems like a sweet spot.
 
The ease of engine support is what matters a lot with portability of games as it eases the process significantly among the other things. Last gen set a baseline of 8 cores.

Devs do prefer more at least based on what Mark Cerny said in that wired video, but 8 seems like a sweet spot.
That’s if it scales to more performance

Edit: and total cores wouldn't matter in any case, what should matter (if it does) is cores available to games.

On last gen that was 5. this gen I assume its 7.
 
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Looking at Steam Deck's performance per watt at 7nm, I'm starting to think that's really reasonable now. Pretty surprised to see SD at 20-25 watts at settings that aren't even max on CPU and GPU. I dunno if anyone has ever ran the full max 1.6Ghz GPU, and if they did, I wonder what the CPU clocks were.. Of course there needs to be come optimization with the OS as well, but I'm a bit dissapointed. At the same time I'm tempering my expectations for the switch 2/drake now, and it's interesting how Orion dev kits haven't been running very high clocks either and they are pretty close to their wattage max. Correct me if I'm wrong, I think they are 8nm Samsung though..


I'm not expecting the 3 TFLOPs 12SMs for Drake, That's gonna be really crazy

I'm definitely not shit posting. Some of it was in jest, but looking at Steam's underwhelming current performance on 7nm at 25 watts and then clocked profiles for the NX, I'm a tad bit worried/pessimistic about a 3 TFLOP Drake at 15-25 watt being feasible. Could it be done at 5nm TSMC? I dunno. 5nm isn't a huge jump from 7nm. Perhaps 12SMs is possible, but could we really get the 1Ghz GPU per SM and 1.5Ghz CPU with 8 78 CPU cores? We'll see.
The Steam Deck is a very inefficient machine, both from a hardware and software perspective. It's very understandable how the machine came to get this way, when you consider Valve's design goals, but this really needs to be kept in mind when comparing it to a traditional console.
 
Isnt the total performance level a lot more important to devs than core count?

Edit: do you even have a source? @brainchild does core count matter if it doesn’t affect performance level?
You can make up for a core deficit with higher single core performance, but it's actually a slightly inefficient approach, assuming the code is threaded, because you'll have to eat a lot more context switches. If everyone's doing 8 cores, there are at least minor benefits to matching that.

Also I think there are power consumption benefits of more cores, so it might be preferable regardless.
 
Feb 21 Q&A, Q8:
"With this release schedule for new hardware and Nintendo Switch having just marked its highest sales in its fourth year on the market, we do not have plans to announce a new model."
Wasn't this from the 2021-02-01 Q&A? The OLED Model was later announced on 2021-07-06, merely 5 months after. The "plans" changed I guess?
 
Reminder that we're all adults here, and the onus is on individuals to get a grip of their emotions, rather than project lowball expectations onto others in the face of what is known, almost like a call to everybody else "keep theirs in check". Those "joke" specs are wild as hell, very embarrassing, unfit for a generational purpose in ways that Nintendo thoroughly understands, and I can't believe they're being entertained in these parts. No, DLSS wouldn't save that shower, as it's not some free unicorn, and that's before taking into account the partnerships they would be set to lose by aiming that low. It wouldn't get anything the Switch you already have couldn't do. It's a complete setback from where the discussion needs to be, and I continue to lament that the Nintendo fan has been conditioned in this way, to believe that it couldn't possibly be true if it's a positive. I would also say that the leaks from the horse's mouth very much vindicated my second post on here, but one never needed a rumour mill to point out the patently obvious or easily researchable- That one's for a blog post when I have the chance.
 
* Hidden text: cannot be quoted. *
Thanks for this fwd-bwd. Even if we should take this with a grain of salt the implications are interesting to discuss.

The possibility of a storage door is interesting. Sony and Microsoft both adopted NVME for storage which sets a precedent for it to be a standard in consoles going forward so I am wondering if Nintendo may go that route?

I know power consumption may be a concern but the speed, and as a consequence the power consumption of the drive will be limited by the speed of the cpu so it may work out. Especially when the storage will be accessed in bursts. Nintendo could also cap the operating speed artificially to keep power draw low.

Would certainly make expandable storage a non issue, I would whack a 2TB drive in immediately and be done with it.
 
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DQ XII launch exclusive for the Drake would be really big but I guess only in Japan , it would basically be a FFVII moment for the platform that the only franchise able to sell 2M retail first week in Japan in a decade chooses to release as a launch title exclusive for the Drake. Of course that's not realistic LOL
AFAIK, Dragon Quest XII uses Unreal Engine 5. I don’t think this is going to run nicely on the Switch if Square wants to publish the game only for PS5 / Series X/S.
 
AFAIK, Dragon Quest XII uses Unreal Engine 5. I don’t think this is going to run nicely on the Switch if Square wants to publish the game only for PS5 / Series X/S.
Unreal Engine 5 is compatible with all platforms.

In fact, Epic used Unreal Engine 5 in the Switch version of fortnite.
Performance was improved over previous versions when they updated the engine.
 
* Hidden text: cannot be quoted. *

Even though this has to be taken with a grain of salt, that is already two of them. When the first one came out a few weeks ago, I said we might be due to more of them soon. If this one is true I guess I was correct.
 
Unreal Engine 5 is compatible with all platforms.

In fact, Epic used Unreal Engine 5 in the Switch version of fortnite.
Performance was improved over previous versions when they updated the engine.
I get it but I don’t think Yuij’s team is going for a « Fortnite » look for their next mainline entry.

I guess we’ll have to wait and see but Yuji alreadly stated that the game would target the next generation of consoles (aka PS5 / Series X/S -weren’t revealed back then).
 
I get it but I don’t think Yuij’s team is going for a « Fortnite » look for their next mainline entry.

I guess we’ll have to wait and see but Yuji alreadly stated that the game would target the next generation of consoles (aka PS5 / Series X/S -weren’t revealed back then).
I think those statements were more focused on when they finished development, rather than making a graphically demanding game.

DXII is a development that goes for a long time, and when it comes out, it is most likely that the Switch successor will have even been released.
 
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Furthermore, according to this follow-up post, all off-topic chat will be moderated.
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