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

[Serif]

Nintendo Switch is heavily downclocked, so it allow Nintendo to meet battery standard, could Nintendo also downclock the console, to meet a performance/battery criteria? even if mean downclock around 30/50% of what Switch sucessor is possible, kinda like they did with Switch.

Nintendo and Nvidia worked together to customize the chip for Switch 2 unlike the Tegra X1 for Switch 1, they would have the performance/energy criteria for both handheld and docked modes in mind from day 1 and wouldn't need to stifle the potential of their machine.

 

[darthdiablo]

Nintendo Switch is heavily downclocked, so it allow Nintendo to meet battery standard, could Nintendo also downclock the console, to meet a performance/battery criteria? even if mean downclock around 30/50% of what Switch sucessor is possible, kinda like they did with Switch.

That’s pretty much a given, no question. They’re not going to clock up to max, they’ll clock probably close to the most efficient clock speed which would be lower than the max clock speed

 

[Gerald]

Nintendo Switch is heavily downclocked, so it allow Nintendo to meet battery standard, could Nintendo also downclock the console, to meet a performance/battery criteria? even if mean downclock around 30/50% of what Switch sucessor is possible, kinda like they did with Switch.

T239 drake is chip special made for switch 2, they dont choose existing chip and downlocked that

 

[TLZ]

Holy spit...didn't realize the jump was that massive!

I know SSDs helped in Ratchet and Clank, but what other benefits does fast storage potentially have for Nintendo games?

Well for one seeking storage is much quicker on SSD compared to HDDs. SSDs don't need duplicates of assets too which help game sizes shrink.

 

[Concernt]

Yeah, but I figured there really isn't much to add with all that extra space in there, unless there's a new piece of equipment inside that we don't know about. The Switch OLED has shown that there was plenty of space savings to be had as a result of optimization over several revisions, but Nintendo ultimately chose not to pursue it, possibly because of costs associated with retooling some of the parts. Thus there was a lot of dead space inside the Switch OLED.


That is another way of looking at this, yes. So it really comes down to whether Nintendo wants to achieve a greater level of performance with a similar battery life as, say, the Switch V1 or a more conservative approach with the added bonus of vastly superior battery life.

I'm leaning on the former. But if it does turn out to be 2W for the CPU, we're still looking at 1.7GHz at the minimum. That's not that bad, to be perfectly honest. 2.0GHz will need 3W though, not 4W. We're pushing clocks much higher than 2.0GHz at 4W.

I think you being up some valid points. I think Nintendo wants to prioritise their own unique usecase, the handheld and tabletop aspect, above sheer performance. That said, in theory a 3W CPU wouldn't cut the battery life in half or anything like it. A 3W CPU, 4W GPU, ~3W sundries power budget brings us to 11W in handheld mode, which isn't... The end of the world? It would place battery life somewhere between the V1 and V2, which wouldn't be absurd. The V1 could, in extraordinary circumstances, reach 12 hours. Something between the two could theoretically be advertised as 6H, which seems reasonable.

 

[Giancarlo]

You are 100% correct, but there are a lot of people, myself included, who would like to make Switch 2 their 1st and only console, not their second console. With the diminishing returns Playstation and Xbox are giving, I wouldn't underestimate Switch 2's ability to take a shot at this market even if that isn't Nintendo's main goal.

I do think Indie titles are on their way to replace AAA games though for most gamers, or at least fill up that AA space.

Nintendo will treat Switch as a second console, kinda like they previously have a handheld and a home console in the market, in that case it will be a high end expensive console(Switch sucessor) and a low end console(Switch), keep both consoles in the market for at least 3 years, and then Nintendo could fully focus on the Switch sucessor, they will not ditch a 100+milions console userbase, simply to focus on it next hardware.

 

[Gerald]

I think you being up some valid points. I think Nintendo wants to prioritise their own unique usecase, the handheld and tabletop aspect, above sheer performance. That said, in theory a 3W CPU wouldn't cut the battery life in half or anything like it. A 3W CPU, 4W GPU, ~3W sundries power budget brings us to 11W in handheld mode, which isn't... The end of the world? It would place battery life somewhere between the V1 and V2, which wouldn't be absurd. The V1 could, in extraordinary circumstances, reach 12 hours. Something between the two could theoretically be advertised as 6H, which seems reasonable.

I will repeat that we will also have bigger battery with much higher capacity, of about 5000-6000 mah looking at today standards

 

[HyruleanKnight]

I think you being up some valid points. I think Nintendo wants to prioritise their own unique usecase, the handheld and tabletop aspect, above sheer performance. That said, in theory a 3W CPU wouldn't cut the battery life in half or anything like it. A 3W CPU, 4W GPU, ~3W sundries power budget brings us to 11W in handheld mode, which isn't... The end of the world? It would place battery life somewhere between the V1 and V2, which wouldn't be absurd. The V1 could, in extraordinary circumstances, reach 12 hours. Something between the two could theoretically be advertised as 6H, which seems reasonable.

I was actually considering the minimum battery run times for all of my calculations. Games like Zelda BoTW maxed out the TX1 in all the departments so realistically run times were between 2.5 to 3 hours. Based on that, I expect Nintendo to attempt a roughly 3 hour minimum run time with the maximum performance profile of the Switch 2. That's why a 6 hour minimum run time with the same performance profile as the Switch doesn't make sense, it's absurd at the least and comical at worst. Can you imagine running indie games on the Switch 2 for 20+ hours?

 

[P4bl0]

Nintendo will treat Switch as a second console, kinda like they previously have a handheld and a home console in the market, in that case it will be a high end expensive console(Switch sucessor) and a low end console(Switch), keep both consoles in the market for at least 3 years, and then Nintendo could fully focus on the Switch sucessor, they will not ditch a 100+milions console userbase, simply to focus on it next hardware.

That's right

 

[Dekuman]

PS5 actually sells almost same as PS4 in same timeframe, Xbox Series X|S sells same as Xbox One, Also GTA VI is next year and it will sells consoles massive

That 'closeness' included COVID boost, but looking at the past year, they dropped their projections from the FY that just ended from 25 million to 21 million and they sold 20.8. ; Missing initial projecitons by that much is not a good sign and last year was their peak, which alters the curve going forward Next year they expect to sell less than last year, about 18 million. Assuming no unexpected upward adjustment PS5 will fall further behind.

 

[HyruleanKnight]

Holy spit...didn't realize the jump was that massive!

I know SSDs helped in Ratchet and Clank, but what other benefits does fast storage potentially have for Nintendo games?

In Nintendo games, none. Yet.

On PS5, games have little to no loading times. Ghost of Tsushima on PC uses Direct Storage, a similar tech, and I'm able to fast travel from one end of the map to the other in the blink of an eye. It's really amazing.

 

[Gerald]

That 'closeness' included COVID boost, but looking at the past year, they dropped their projections from the FY that just ended from 25 million to 21 million and they sold 20.8. ; Missing initial projecitons by that much is not a good sign and last year was their peak, which alters the curve going forward Next year they expect to sell less than last year, about 18 million. Assuming no unexpected upward adjustment PS5 will fall further behind.

25M was very hard to reach, that good fiscal year even ps2,ps4,switch 1 never have, no one ever have

 

[Gerald]

I was actually considering the minimum battery run times for all of my calculations. Games like Zelda BoTW maxed out the TX1 in all the departments so realistically run times were between 2.5 to 3 hours. Based on that, I expect Nintendo to attempt a roughly 3 hour minimum run time with the maximum performance profile of the Switch 2. That's why a 6 hour minimum run time with the same performance profile as the Switch doesn't make sense, it's absurd at the least and comical at worst. Can you imagine running indie games on the Switch 2 for 20+ hours?

Also 7-8w for cpu and gpu and 3w for rest of system what give us 10-11w is very small compared to literally all these pcs handhelds

 

[Concernt]

I was actually considering the minimum battery run times for all of my calculations. Games like Zelda BoTW maxed out the TX1 in all the departments so realistically run times were between 2.5 to 3 hours. Based on that, I expect Nintendo to attempt a roughly 3 hour minimum run time with the maximum performance profile of the Switch 2. That's why a 6 hour minimum run time with the same performance profile as the Switch doesn't make sense, it's absurd at the least and comical at worst. Can you imagine running indie games on the Switch 2 for 20+ hours?

I don't really understand what you're getting at, more battery life is always better all else being equal. The OLED Model can more than breach the 12 hour mark with Shovel Knight.

It's not absurd or comical to want and expect respectable battery life - OLED Model hits 6 hours in many games, even demanding ones, the advertised battery life is up to 9 hours.

 

[Concernt]

Also 7-8w for cpu and gpu and 3w for rest of system what give us 10-11w is very small compared to litearlly all these pcs handhelds

That's just one to two watts more than my own expectations(dare I call them projections?), it really isn't that absurd to think that. I don't think 4W for the CPU is unachievable, it isn't. I just think it's inefficient. 20% battery life decrease for marginal gains in performance? And then it's stuck like that, they can't realistically vary the clock speed by mode or model. You can always upclock after launch if problems arise, if you have the power budget, and that would be within that budget. But you can't put that genie back in its bottle.

This happened with the Switch, too, with updates and games changing clocks after launch.

 

[Dekuman]

25M was very hard to reach, that good fiscal year even ps2,ps4,switch 1 never have, no one ever have

may be so, but they projected that after a strong year before that. Switch had 2 FYs selling 23 million units sandwhiched in between a massive 28 million year during peak covid.

we may never see those numbers again, but in that context 25 million porjection. Maybe they really thought they could hit that.

 

[HyruleanKnight]

Also 7-8w for cpu and gpu and 3w for rest of system what give us 10-11w is very small compared to litearlly all these pcs handhelds

Mobile cooling and battery tech has also advanced a lot since 2017. The Switch was like a cloth made entirely out of patch work of off-the-shelf parts Nintendo could find with limited time, resources and choice of parts.

Nintendo had years to shop around for Switch 2 parts, so I fully expect a much more effective cooling system and a significantly denser (and physically larger too) battery. 5000-6000mAh are extremely conservative numbers, we have much smaller and thinner smartphones with that kind of capacity. I don't think anything less than 8000mAh is on the cards.

Apple's new M4 iPads have batteries so thin that it makes me question their ability to not bend from the slightest touch yet capacity is over 8000mAh. That, and a slightly bumped up performance profile (3-4W for CPU, 4-6W for GPU) and I don't think a 3 hour minimum run time is very unrealistic.

 

[Gerald]

Mobile cooling and battery tech has also advanced a lot since 2017. The Switch was literally a cloth made entirely out of patch work of off-the-shelf parts Nintendo could find with limited time, resources and choice of parts.

Nintendo had years to shop around for Switch 2 parts, so I fully expect a much more effective cooling system and a significantly denser (and physically larger too) battery. 5000-6000mAh are extremely conservative numbers, we have much smaller and thinner smartphones with that kind of capacity. I don't think anything less than 8000mAh is on the cards.

Apple's new M4 iPads have batteries so thin that it makes me question their ability to not bend from the slightest touch yet capacity is over 8000mAh. That, and a slightly bumped up performance profile (3-4W for CPU, 4-6W for GPU) and I don't think a 3 hour minimum run time is very unrealistic.

Very good points

 

[HyruleanKnight]

I don't really understand what you're getting at, more battery life is always better all else being equal. The OLED Model can more than breach the 12 hour mark with Shovel Knight.

It's not absurd or comical to want and expect respectable battery life - OLED Model hits 6 hours in many games, even demanding ones, the advertised battery life is up to 9 hours.

I mean to say that advertised battery life is not a very useful metric since it accounts for all types of games, both heavier and lighter stuff inclusive. It's meant to give the end user an estimated play time, not what it is capable of on a technical level.

Here we're doing a hardware discussion, so we're theorizing on what is physically possible and financially feasible to put inside the Switch 2. How Nintendo markets the battery life (minimum, average, maximum) afterwards doesn't matter in this case.

Let's say the Switch 2 has a 8620mAh battery (might be stretching it a bit, but bear with me) - that is exactly double of the current Switch's battery (4310mAh), so logically speaking we're looking at 5 hours of minimum run time instead of Switch V1's 2.5 hours. This is assuming the Switch 2 has the exact same performance profile as the Switch. Of course with a minimum at 5 hours, the maximum will be much, much higher, like 15-20 hours, which is absurd.

This is why I'm saying a 5 hour minimum run time is a little too much; the more realistic approach would be 3 hours minimum and maybe 10-12 hours maximum - slightly better than Switch V1. But if they're targeting a 3 hour minimum run time on a significantly larger battery, where do you think all that extra juice is going to go?

Hence I'm proposing a more power hungry performance profile for the Switch 2, such that the larger battery will be used to achieve a minimum acceptable run time while dishing out far more performance than the same performance profile as the Switch V1 would've allowed. Otherwise there is literally no reason to expand the Switch 2's dimensions - they could've achieved better battery life and identical performance profile as the Switch V1 within the same chassis with just the TX1 swapped with the T239.

 

[Molybdenum]

I did mention I am not accounting for every possible factor, and I was basing the IPC difference from that table. Assuming the table itself isn't off, with my proposed 2.0GHz clock that is the number I got.

Interestingly, if I were to take the clock frequency out of the equation I do get 2.33*2.479 = 5.78x uplift, maybe that's where the 6x number came from.

Actually now that I think about it, the only way a 6x uplift would make sense is if clocks were extremely low, like ~1GHz. Think about it, we're getting a 2.33x uplift in core count, no way to refute that. We also know we're getting at least a 2x IPC uplift, so multiplying those two gives us 4.66x, meaning for the 6x to make sense we need clocks as low as 1.3GHz at the maximum, and almost exactly 1GHz at the minimum. Those kinds of clocks don't make sense at all.

Keep in mind that gaming workloads basically never scale their performance 1:1 with core count. Not to say that doubling the physical cores gets you nothing, but the increase in per-thread performance that comes from improved IPC and clock speed is generally more important.

 

[Machrider]

* Hidden text: cannot be quoted. *

I never thought of that until now, but yeah that does make a lot of sense.

 

[Machrider]

I mean to say that advertised battery life is not a very useful metric since it accounts for all types of games, both heavier and lighter stuff inclusive. It's meant to give the end user an estimated play time, not what it is capable of on a technical level.

Here we're doing a hardware discussion, so we're theorizing on what is physically possible and financially feasible to put inside the Switch 2. How Nintendo markets the battery life (minimum, average, maximum) afterwards doesn't matter in this case.

Let's say the Switch 2 has a 8620mAh battery (might be stretching it a bit, but bear with me) - that is exactly double of the current Switch's battery (4310mAh), so logically speaking we're looking at 5 hours of minimum run time instead of Switch V1's 2.5 hours. This is assuming the Switch 2 has the exact same performance profile as the Switch. Of course with a minimum at 5 hours, the maximum will be much, much higher, like 15-20 hours, which is absurd.

This is why I'm saying a 5 hour minimum run time is a little too much; the more realistic approach would be 3 hours minimum and maybe 10-12 hours maximum - slightly better than Switch V1. But if they're targeting a 3 hour minimum run time on a significantly larger battery, where do you think all that extra juice is going to go?

Hence I'm proposing a more power hungry performance profile for the Switch 2, such that the larger battery will be used to achieve a minimum acceptable run time while dishing out far more performance than the same performance profile as the Switch V1 would've allowed. Otherwise there is literally no reason to expand the Switch 2's dimensions - they could've achieved better battery life and identical performance profile as the Switch V1 within the same chassis with just the TX1 swapped with the T239.

I'd like to see the Joycons be able to feed battery power into the main unit in a higher undocked performance profile.

With larger Joycons, you certainly would have more room to put larger batteries into those too, they could function like two little battery packs on the side of the system.

For a "performance mode" that would be useful, maybe you could squeeze an extra 30-60 minutes of battery life that way.

If there is a fan in the dock, then they are probably going for bigger performance docked, so I wouldn't be surprised at all at a bigger performance modes in undocked too.

 

[HyruleanKnight]

I'd like to see the Joycons be able to feed battery power into the main unit.

With larger Joycons, you certainly would have more room to put larger batteries into those too, they could function like two little battery packs on the side of the system.

For a "performance mode" I wouldn't mind.

If there is a fan in the dock, then they are probably going for bigger performance docked, so I would be surprised at all at a bigger performance mode in undocked too.

That sounds like unnecessary expense, tbh. The batteries in the current Joy-Cons are so small by design - they don't take too long to charge, don't leech off the main unit's battery too much and still deliver very long run times. Designing a system where power can go both ways across the Joy Con rail also sounds like extra unnecessary engineering to me. If those batteries are to be useful in any capacity, they'd have to be 3-4x the size of current Joy Con batteries at the minimum.

 

[Machrider]

That sounds like unnecessary expense, tbh. The batteries in the current Joy-Cons are so small by design - they don't take too long to charge, don't leech off the main unit's battery too much and still deliver very long run times. Designing a system where power can go both ways across the Joy Con rail also sounds like extra unnecessary engineering to me. If those batteries are to be useful in any capacity, they'd have to be 3-4x the size of current Joy Con batteries at the minimum.

If they bumped the Joycon batteries up to say 1200 MaH each ... two of those could probably give you 30-60 minutes extra juice, no? It just seems like someone the Switch design lends itself to, you have two extra batteries just sitting on the left and right of the system. Are we even sure the "Joycon rail" is coming back? Could be an different design.

 

[Concernt]

I mean to say that advertised battery life is not a very useful metric since it accounts for all types of games, both heavier and lighter stuff inclusive. It's meant to give the end user an estimated play time, not what it is capable of on a technical level.

Here we're doing a hardware discussion, so we're theorizing on what is physically possible and financially feasible to put inside the Switch 2. How Nintendo markets the battery life (minimum, average, maximum) afterwards doesn't matter in this case.

Let's say the Switch 2 has a 8620mAh battery (might be stretching it a bit, but bear with me) - that is exactly double of the current Switch's battery (4310mAh), so logically speaking we're looking at 5 hours of minimum run time instead of Switch V1's 2.5 hours. This is assuming the Switch 2 has the exact same performance profile as the Switch. Of course with a minimum at 5 hours, the maximum will be much, much higher, like 15-20 hours, which is absurd.

This is why I'm saying a 5 hour minimum run time is a little too much; the more realistic approach would be 3 hours minimum and maybe 10-12 hours maximum - slightly better than Switch V1. But if they're targeting a 3 hour minimum run time on a significantly larger battery, where do you think all that extra juice is going to go?

Hence I'm proposing a more power hungry performance profile for the Switch 2, such that the larger battery will be used to achieve a minimum acceptable run time while dishing out far more performance than the same performance profile as the Switch V1 would've allowed. Otherwise there is literally no reason to expand the Switch 2's dimensions - they could've achieved better battery life and identical performance profile as the Switch V1 within the same chassis with just the TX1 swapped with the T239.

I think this is an impasse, 5 hours absolutely isn't "too much", it's an entirely reasonable goal with T239 on 4N. There is absolutely nothing "absurd" about having 15 hours on the high end with light usage. That's what laptops, tablets, and I don't know, the Nintendo Switch family of systems, have been doing for years!

Also remember if your "minimum" is 3 hours, all guns blazing, screen at max, network maxed out at a gigabit or whatever, that's going to translate into ~5hrs with more moderate use.

I don't see the appeal of wanting less of a good thing, something battery life is. No amount of additional battery life is bad, absurd, or undesirable unless the concessions are literally "too weak to run X game", which would be a very extreme route to take, and one I'm every much not advocating for.

 

[HyruleanKnight]

Keep in mind that gaming workloads basically never scale their performance 1:1 with core count. Not to say that doubling the physical cores gets you nothing, but the increase in per-thread performance that comes from improved IPC and clock speed is generally more important.

Ye, I was just doing a basic comparison for just how much more performant the Switch 2's CPU is compared to the Switch in terms of compute.

That said, if Nintendo and Nvidia decided to keep 8 cores instead of, let's say, a single 6-core cluster (which is possible with the A78C) surely Nintendo intends to use all 7 cores. Unlike the TX1 the T239 is a completely custom chip designed specifically for the Switch 2, no reason to physically have something they won't need.

 

[Concernt]

That sounds like unnecessary expense, tbh. The batteries in the current Joy-Cons are so small by design - they don't take too long to charge, don't leech off the main unit's battery too much and still deliver very long run times. Designing a system where power can go both ways across the Joy Con rail also sounds like extra unnecessary engineering to me. If those batteries are to be useful in any capacity, they'd have to be 3-4x the size of current Joy Con batteries at the minimum.

What... Joy-Con Rail... IS two way! It literally is, already! Meanwhile their total battery capacity is like, 1000mAh, unless their voltages are different (which I don't think they are), that would give the system like 20% additional battery life by allowing fully charged Joy-Con to feed the system back.

 

[RennanNT]

25M was very hard to reach, that good fiscal year even ps2,ps4,switch 1 never have, no one ever have

It is very hard, but it has been done 5 times. DS did it 3 times in a row (31, 30 and 27M), Switch and Wii did once in their peak (28.8 and 25M respectively).

 

[Steve]

What... Joy-Con Rail... IS two way! It literally is, already! Meanwhile their total battery capacity is like, 1000mAh, unless their voltages are different (which I don't think they are), that would give the system like 20% additional battery life by allowing fully charged Joy-Con to feed the system back.

That would be extremely cool to see Nintendo do, like making the joycons like mini battery for the system for extra game time, sounds like a decent idea.

like if the system is 20% battery, than the joycons can either keep it at place until the joycons reaches 20%.

 

[HyruleanKnight]

What... Joy-Con Rail... IS two way! It literally is, already! Meanwhile their total battery capacity is like, 1000mAh, unless their voltages are different (which I don't think they are), that would give the system like 20% additional battery life by allowing fully charged Joy-Con to feed the system back.

They do that? I didn't know, that's a surprise. That would mean the Switch technically has 4310+525x2 = 5360mAh battery

I never knew.

 

[Concernt]

That would be extremely cool to see Nintendo do, like making the joycons like mini battery for the system for extra game time, sounds like a decent idea.

like if the system is 20% battery, than the joycons can either keep it at place until the joycons reaches 20%.

I admit there would be challenges involved, and the inefficiency of charging batteries off batteries, but if they can deliver it I do think it would be a practical innovation.

 

[Machrider]

What... Joy-Con Rail... IS two way! It literally is, already! Meanwhile their total battery capacity is like, 1000mAh, unless their voltages are different (which I don't think they are), that would give the system like 20% additional battery life by allowing fully charged Joy-Con to feed the system back.

Yeah I was going to say I think the system already transmits power over the Joycon rails, right? I thought I had misremebered that.

 

[Concernt]

They do that? I didn't know, that's a surprise. That would mean the Switch technically has 4310+525x2 = 5360mAh battery

I never knew.

Joy-Con Rail CAN reverse the direction, but Nintendo Switch can't accept it. I'm just saying it wouldn't be a design restraint for the controllers or connector, you'd need a way for the battery controller to handle it, but that isn't going to be a notable BOM difference, if it's any difference at all. It's essentially USB, and the Nintendo Switch already has a USB port that can charge or be charged.


The connector, Joy-Con Rail is technically capable, the system doesn't "know" how to do it. Unless I'm badly understanding how the system is designed, it's more a matter of "it's not supposed to do that, so we didn't wire it to do it", rather than "it would be a huge engineering challenge for minimal gain". Sorry for not being clearer.

 

[Concernt]

Y'all, I've come down with a cold. I'm messing up my posts more than what I think is acceptable and my head hurts. I'm gonna take a break from this thread for a bit. Hope it isn't smug of me to say I want to hold my postings here to a higher standard than my sickness allows.

Slán for now!

 

[oldpuck]

Multiplying the three, we get 2.333*1.961*2.479 = 11.34x or a 1034% total increase in CPU performance. This does not account for any shortcomings due to cache/RAM differences, but even so that is an astronomical jump.

Yeah. I’m not expert on this kind of thing but I thought things like # of cores was accounted for when it was estimated Switch 2 would be 6x more performant compared to Switch 1 when that calc was shared here couple of months ago (I might be misremembering)

Geekbench runs on jailbroken Switches, though no one has ever submitted a score that isn't overclocked. But here is a comparison of Orin NX (8 Cores, 1.9GHz) to a "mild" overclocked Switch (1.7GHz)



Considering the Switch is running a 70% overclock here, that single thread score is nicely in the 6-8x area, about what I expect from the GPU. Multicore however really would hit that 1000% line.

 

[RedSpring]

Nintendo Switch is heavily downclocked, so it allow Nintendo to meet battery standard, could Nintendo also downclock the console, to meet a performance/battery criteria? even if mean downclock around 30/50% of what Switch sucessor is possible, kinda like they did with Switch.

Depend on what you mean by downclocked. You can take PS5/Xbox Series chip and clocked higher with better cooling and more energy. If you consider those console downclocked then the Switch 2 will also be downclocked.

 

[Dekuman]

Geekbench runs on jailbroken Switches, though no one has ever submitted a score that isn't overclocked. But here is a comparison of Orin NX (8 Cores, 1.9GHz) to a "mild" overclocked Switch (1.7GHz)



Considering the Switch is running a 70% overclock here, that single thread score is nicely in the 6-8x area, about what I expect from the GPU. Multicore however really would hit that 1000% line.

Do you have the comparison you posted with the A78 vs. Zen2 clocks?

 

[HyruleanKnight]

Geekbench runs on jailbroken Switches, though no one has ever submitted a score that isn't overclocked. But here is a comparison of Orin NX (8 Cores, 1.9GHz) to a "mild" overclocked Switch (1.7GHz)



Considering the Switch is running a 70% overclock here, that single thread score is nicely in the 6-8x area, about what I expect from the GPU. Multicore however really would hit that 1000% line.

Extrapolating from the single core data, Switch 2 @2.0GHz would be at 883.83 points and Switch @1.02GHz would be at 97.99 points

That's still a 9.0x boost, not really that far off from 11x which was an estimate of estimates anyways, and still an incredible 800% increase.

 

[Giancarlo]

Depend on what you mean by downclocked. You can take PS5/Xbox Series chip and clocked higher with better cooling and more energy. If you consider those console downclocked then the Switch 2 will also be downclocked.

i meanth, in a sense Switch was downclocked meet to Nintendo criteria, by overclocking the console, you get a much higher performance, so my question in regarding Switch sucessor is, will Nintendo downclock the console to meet it specific battery/perfomance criteria, or they keep the normal clock in order to arcive this?

 

[Zeal543]

Sorry if this has been answered already but this is a high volume thread: Assuming switch 2 comes out March-May 2025, when can we expect mass production to begin?

 

[ILikeFeet]

Sorry if this has been answered already but this is a high volume thread: Assuming switch 2 comes out March-May 2025, when can we expect mass production to begin?

before the end of the year, like the first switch. I think it was October when that happened. I'm still thinking we'll get a proper reveal in September rather than October though

 

[Serif]

i meanth, in a sense Switch was downclocked meet to Nintendo criteria, by overclocking the console, you get a much higher performance, so my question in regarding Switch sucessor is, will Nintendo downclock the console to meet it specific battery/perfomance criteria, or they keep the normal clock in order to arcive this?

The chip is custom, the normal clocks are whatever it is designed to run at to function as a hybrid console in handheld and docked mode.

It is not like the Switch 1 using the same chip as the Nvidia Shield TV and needing to downclock to avoid thermal throttling. They are in control of the chip's characteristics now.

 

[Semi Lazy Gamer]

Nintendo will treat Switch as a second console, kinda like they previously have a handheld and a home console in the market, in that case it will be a high end expensive console(Switch sucessor) and a low end console(Switch), keep both consoles in the market for at least 3 years, and then Nintendo could fully focus on the Switch sucessor, they will not ditch a 100+milions console userbase, simply to focus on it next hardware.

Going to add to this: expect to hear "pillars" or something similar to it again.

Won't be any third pillars since there will be only two, rather than three like when the DS came out.

 

[RedSpring]

i meanth, in a sense Switch was downclocked meet to Nintendo criteria, by overclocking the console, you get a much higher performance, so my question in regarding Switch sucessor is, will Nintendo downclock the console to meet it specific battery/perfomance criteria, or they keep the normal clock in order to arcive this?

The normal clock is the clock to meet energy consumption/performance criteria. PS5 chip's clock are also chosen for the energy consumption/performance because they only got so much cooling in that form factor. You can design a chip so the base performance is better but that also mean the max performance is also better. To have a device with a chip maxed out is like having a car with an engine that can only go up to the street limit instead of 140mph normally. Yeah, there's is no "wasted" performance but now your engine is smaller and running at lower efficiency while being pushed to the limit during normal driving.

 

[Steve]

The chip is custom, the normal clocks are whatever it is designed to run at to function as a hybrid console in handheld and docked mode.

It is not like the Switch 1 using the same chip as the Nvidia Shield TV and needing to downclock to avoid thermal throttling. They are in control of the chip's characteristics now.

In reality the best way to know how the console will be clocked, is mostly if we understand Nintendo mindset for NG Switch.

From everything we’ve heard it seems that Nintendo won’t downclock the system, compared to the Switch.

like from everything we’ve heard and received from shipping details and also the mindset of Nintendo, it seem that Nintendo wants to create a console and a successor that’s appealing for everyone one, hardcore, casual, Nintendo gamers and also third and first party studio, I’m guessing that Nintendo will keep the mindset they’ve created of ,,the system meant for everybody’’

Like I’m guessing Nintendo were in talk with countless of third party and got feedback of what need improving, for example Ram now isn’t a problem for third party no more and I’m guessing the bandwidth will also be resolved for developers.

 

[Shareholder Chad]

That 'closeness' included COVID boost, but looking at the past year, they dropped their projections from the FY that just ended from 25 million to 21 million and they sold 20.8. ; Missing initial projecitons by that much is not a good sign and last year was their peak, which alters the curve going forward Next year they expect to sell less than last year, about 18 million. Assuming no unexpected upward adjustment PS5 will fall further behind.

Just as a general rule for tech companies, No growth causes leadership changes which in turn causes current leadership to be more open to bigger fundamental changes to their business. I'd expect more effort into the PS5 -> PC first party releases including possibly a PSVR2 porting project (First party PSVR releases on PC as well as official support for the headset on PC). I'd personally like to see first party releases on PC sooner but I can see them holding on that.

For most, PS5 sales being close or slightly behind may seem just whatever and not worthy of any concern but tech companies are just different. Its a disgusting rat race thanks to investor behavior. Sony isn't exactly on solid footing money wise or strategy wise right now either (hence their willingness to publicly pivot on some things)

 

[Steve]

Just as a general rule for tech companies, No growth causes leadership changes which in turn causes current leadership to be more open to bigger fundamental changes to their business. I'd expect more effort into the PS5 -> PC first party releases including possibly a PSVR2 porting project (First party PSVR releases on PC as well as official support for the headset on PC). I'd personally like to see first party releases on PC sooner but I can see them holding on that.

For most, PS5 sales being close or slightly behind may seem just whatever and not worthy of any concern but tech companies are just different. Its a disgusting rat race thanks to investor behavior. Sony isn't exactly on solid footing money wise or strategy wise right now either (hence their willingness to publicly pivot on some things)

I’m guessing with the absolute success of Helldiver 2, Sony will be more willing to have a multi release for certain games, mostly game as of service games.

But isn’t the PS5 selling extremely well, just slightly behind the PS4, I would presume Sony bigger problem is right now the first party outputs, since those are the real money maker, since all the profits goes to them.

Also the increase gaming cost is now more noticeable, since Spider-Man 2 was somehow 300M+ in development cost. (Even had blatant product placement for miles, with adidas, reminds me when MK8 used real cars)

 

[oldpuck]

i meanth, in a sense Switch was downclocked meet to Nintendo criteria, by overclocking the console, you get a much higher performance, so my question in regarding Switch sucessor is, will Nintendo downclock the console to meet it specific battery/perfomance criteria, or they keep the normal clock in order to arcive this?

"Downclock" means "go below the standard clock". You cannot downclock a custom chip, because the "standard clock" will be whatever Nintendo wants it to be.

Nintendo will go back and forth with Nvidia. Nvidia will deliver a first "draft" of the chip, in a simulator. Nintendo will have a first "draft" of the Switch 2, that takes that simulator chip and combines it with the specs of the intended screen, blue tooth chipset, joycon design, battery, fan, all of those things.

That first draft will cost too much, and it will be too hot, and it won't be powerful enough and Ko Shiota will probably have a pretty dark day. Then Nintendo will redesign some parts, and go back to their various vendors and as if they really need to draw this much power, or if there is a fix, and another engineer will look at redesigning the inside to make room for more battery, and they'll do a second draft.

And when they do a second draft, they'll go back to Nvidia and say "We need more performance" or "we need more battery life" and Nvidia will say "well, you should change the clock speed" or they'll say "actually, the clock speed won't fix the problem, we need to change the number of cores" and Nintendo will say "great, but what's that going to do to the cost."

After a while they'll settle on a third draft, and fourth, and a fifth. Eventually those drafts will get off the simulator and will result in sample chips, and those sample chips will go on a breadboard, and be attached to a bunch of off the shelf components or samples of future components for other vendors. And Nintendo will tweak the clocks again and again, shifting the internal design to accommodate the change in heat and battery life.

And finally, Nintendo will have a final chips design and 95% locked clock speed, and Nvidia will not only slap that into the chip as the "default" clock speed, they'll do final adjustment of power curves to make that exact clock speed as optimal as possible.

Nintendo might alter the clocks past that point, if there is a late stage issue that needs resolving. But it's highly likely that if they do alter the clock speed, it's to dial it up, not down. There is a chance that something goes wrong and they need more thermal room late in the process - it's unlikely they'll get the battery life wrong, but heat is always tricky. And they might adjust clocks down for that.

But the more likely scenario is that developers are in their last pass optimizing a launch game, and can't quite hit 30fps, and someone does a hail mary pass in asking the hardware team for some last minute juice. And probably, at that point, the hardware team says "no." But usually those folks will have built in as much wiggle room as possible, just because it makes the hardware more reliable. Someone will run the numbers and if they can give the software team extra power, but only drop 99% reliability down to 98%, maybe they say yes and the clocks get pushed.

But considering how long this development process has gone on, I truly doubt that's where it lands. Nvidia has a reputation for lots of time on the simulator before sending chips out for sampling. And this hardware team has done 4 versions of the Switch hardware already. I think that they're probably in pretty good shape by the time sampling is coming.

 

[Shareholder Chad]

I’m guessing with the absolute success of Helldiver 2, Sony will be more willing to have a multi release for certain games, mostly game as of service games.

But isn’t the PS5 selling extremely well, just slightly behind the PS4, I would presume Sony bigger problem is right now the first party outputs, since those are the real money maker, since all the profits goes to them.

Also the increase gaming cost is now more noticeable, since Spider-Man 2 was somehow 300M+ in development cost. (Even had blatant product placement for miles, with adidas, reminds me when MK8 used real cars)

Well that’s what I mean when I say at face value the PS5 being equal or slightly behind the PS4 “seems” like a nothingburger but in reality will be a driving force for changes. We can debate on what “reason” it is but at the end of the day it always goes back to lack of growth and revenue.

I suspect Sony is in the middle of a big strategy shift. We’ve all heard the rumors that they went too far with shifting major franchises toward live service with cancelled Horizon and Last of us multiplayer games (someone correct me if I’m misspeaking on the horizon one). Also we’ve seen the Spider-Man/Wolverine roadmap leaks. Then you have a constant stream of remakes like supposedly the Horizon 1 remake.

I kind of feel like they lost focus. Take a look at PS2-PS4. You had so many other franchises get iterations that haven’t been present on PS5. Everybody’s golf, Twisted metal, Ape escape, Killzone, Infamous, gravity rush, and even PSVR franchises such as blood and truth, Astrobot, and more.

Edit: Just to stay on topic and relate this back to Nintendo and switch 2. One thing Nintendo hasn’t done is lose focus on their strategy and direction for first party games. They’ve done a good job there and even find ways to keep surpassing themselves. The switch first party offerings had tons of best in series iterations.

 

[Machrider]

They do that? I didn't know, that's a surprise. That would mean the Switch technically has 4310+525x2 = 5360mAh battery

I never knew.

They could possibly hit like say 8600 MaH in a "turbo performance mode" for undocked if they really wanted to (say 6600 MaH main battery + 1000 MaH x 2 on the larger Joycons).