Does anyone know if it's partner, mini or general? What does people think?
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StarTopic Future Nintendo Hardware & Technology Speculation & Discussion |ST| (Read the staff posts before commenting!)
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robertman2
Chain Chomp
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Another chapter of Nintendo redacted stuff
edit: leaving here some tweets about the Nintendo part
lol florian mueller is such a fucking corporate shill
anyways I'm more curious about Valve's actual reasoning for rejecting a deal, since I'd imagine they wouldn't need to redact it if it's the public reasoning
Raccoon
Fox Brigade
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no one ever does
there's always a chance of a partner because first party shit leaks less often
I think it's less likely just because Nintendo's year is so empty
TSR3
Pilotwings
That was my estimate for a Xavier based 'Pro' model, back in the day (2020)
Ghostsonplanets
Ghost in the Sales
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Handheld XOne is basically worst-case scenario. Would still be pretty powerful and awesome.
RaymondBryce
Octorok
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Unknown, but Nintendo need to announce their August to December lineup at some point.
Raccoon
Fox Brigade
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mjayer
Bob-omb
Current Switch is this. What are you even?
Raccoon
Fox Brigade
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mjayer
Bob-omb
Well you are just wrong about that and there are far more educated people here than me that can explain that for you. Though i believe it’s been done a number of times in this thread already.
Edit: oh I see what your doing here. Semantics! A “modern 360” is Xbox One bruh haha. This is silly.
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Going from "Way better than Xbox 360" to "About as good as Xbox 360's successor" would be pretty low end for a generational leap.
Raccoon
Fox Brigade
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no it's not
are we seriously acting like the switch in handheld is comparable to the xbox one? wait, is it comparable to an xbox one? if so, why do the games look like that?
Chijin_08
Tektite
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Oh that’s interesting along with the mysterious digital event in July? That one might just be a Pikmin direct though- I think that’s likelier then what I’m hoping for
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An imaginary Xbox One with the speed dialed way down. So some super overclocked X1 could get you pretty close to the not-speed-dialed-down version.
TomNookYankees
Koopa
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Current switch is not xbox one. If it was then it would have gotten non-cloud versions of RE7/8/2make/3make.
It's like the video game equivalent to when people were cheering on disney buying fox. The corporate fandom is ridiculous these days.
if PS4 is on the upper end of your expectations, then you have to believe Drake doesn't exist, lol.
RennanNT
Bob-omb
The Switch uses similar or newer technology as the XB1, but just have half the CPU cores count, RAM and a third of the GPU cores count. The performance is more like ~1/4 of it due to thermal constrains and goes even lower when running on battery.
The Switch has roughly the same feature set as the XB1, meaning it can run XB1 games... at ~1/4 of the frame rate without any downgrade, which isn't acceptable so they downgrade the games.
In raw GPU power, the Switch would be much closer to the 360, so "360 but with modern architecture" makes sense if you only care about GPU.
IMO, "Cutdown and slowed down XB1/PS4" is the best simplified comparison with the other consoles, but even then it uses completely different architectures, so ...
The Switch has roughly the same feature set as the XB1, meaning it can run XB1 games... at ~1/4 of the frame rate without any downgrade, which isn't acceptable so they downgrade the games.
In raw GPU power, the Switch would be much closer to the 360, so "360 but with modern architecture" makes sense if you only care about GPU.
IMO, "Cutdown and slowed down XB1/PS4" is the best simplified comparison with the other consoles, but even then it uses completely different architectures, so ...
SirShorse
Shorserer Supreme
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Wait where did Jeff Grubb talk about June stuff? I missed that
robertman2
Chain Chomp
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Nintendo has events both month this and July?
hmmmmmmm
hmmmmmmm
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TomNookYankees
Koopa
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Even if it turned out this was another scrapped idea patent, this is further proof that nintendo is clearly looking at features around being able to connect smartphones to the Switch 2 as additional screens/controllers/sensors.
Concernt
Optimism is non-negotiable
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It is, to some extent. It's closer to the Xbox One than the Xbox 360, according to Microsoft. Microsoft quotes the Nintendo Switch performance next to Xbox One as 0.75TF on Switch vs. 1.4 on Xbox One. That plus a more modern architecture. Sure Witcher 3 looks worse on Switch, but it runs. But it couldn't run on Xbox 360.
I think it's pretty reasonable to see the next generation be similarly comparable. Maybe not pretty, but runs on Drake where it couldn't run on PS4. Taking Series S at the baseline, "a bit over half" is still 2 and a bit teraflops in handheld mode- something entirely possible on Drake. Something that the leak even included, a 4W, 2.2TF mode for the GPU.
With a 2.2TF baseline and up from there in TV mode, then DLSS on top of that, that puts the device closer to Series S than Xbox One. Which tracks with everything we know about it.
Again, there are physical limits to how low a processor can be clocked, while clocking lots of silicon super low is unlikely because it's not cost effective. Below PS4 isn't impossible, but it's extremely unlikely.
lattjeful
Like Like
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1080p with last-gen quality assets (Drake) VS. 4k with current gen assets (PS5/XSX) would be a lot better than what we have now with the Switch's miracle ports, so I'll take it. May not be pretty, but won't be fugly like the miracle ports on the current Switch.
Concernt
Optimism is non-negotiable
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I somewhat agree. "X Gen Assets" isn't the whole picture. See it could well have similar or more memory than Xbox Series S. So asset quality around Series S, maybe some heavy handed VRS, maybe some stronger texture compression, but comparable. Meanwhile resolution could be 1080p, sure, but that could be BEFORE upscaling, and upscaling, especially DLSS, is very effective.
It's not a stationary console and isn't trying to be. It has to make smart concessions, nips and tucks. Slower bandwidth, but adequate memory, lower raw power, but efficient tensor cores.
From what we've seen it's done those. It's not a last gen made a handheld. It's a this-gen console cut down until it fits in a tablet body. Just like Switch, but, with a bit more secret sauce.
Tentacle-tropes
Kremling
It only makes sense considering that one idea from Mario Party where they connect screens. Also would allow for easier roof top parties if people could use the controllers or their phone.
Concernt
Optimism is non-negotiable
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Isn't that... Just the technology being used in Everybody 1-2 Switch?
TomNookYankees
Koopa
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Do the phones connect directly to the switch or is it like jackbox games where they connect to online lobbies?
on his own game mess decides podcast thursday. He specifically mentioned next week.
I think Everybody 1, 2 Switch connects to phones for some of its mini-games
Tentacle-tropes
Kremling
As @ILikeFeet mentions it does use smart phone integration but I would like to see how it is implemented compared to the patents we see here. It could make an interesting gimmick for a future Switch device.
@TSR3 In addition, @necrolipe (Brazilian journalist) also confirmed June on both Fami and Twitter. NS News Subo (largest Chinese Weibo for Switch news) also hinted at June.
I don’t think that the mechanism has been disclosed. However, according to the leaked back cover, up to 100 (!) mobile players can join, therefore direct connections to the Switch seems unlikely.
D
Deleted member 887
Guest
Could [redacted] run Starfield?
The last time I did some truly in depth prediction on [redacted] performance it was in the context of PS4 and cross-gen. Since then, the launch of truly "next-gen" games has come along, and my own understanding has grown, so I thought it might be worth returning to.
Rather than do some abstract "Redacted is 73% of Series 5, assuming Nintendo picks Zeta Megahertz on the Right Frombulator" I thought it would be nice to look in depth at Starfield, a game I'm curious about, and think about what it might look like on a theoretical [redacted]. Which, I guess, is kinda abstract since we're talking about unreleased software on unannounced hardware, but let me have this.
TL;DR: The Takeaway
If there is one thing I want folks to come away with from this exercise it's "the problems of last gen are not the problems of this gen. Same for the solutions."
I know that's not satisfying, but the PS5/Xbox Series consoles are not just bigger PS4/Xbox One, and [redacted] is not just a bigger Switch. Switch had big advantages and big disadvantages when it came to ports - [redacted] is the same but they are different advantages and disadvantages.
For the most part, the Series S doesn't "help" [redacted] ports as much as some folks think. And obviously, Starfield is going to remain console exclusive to Microsoft's machines. But yes, I believe a port of Starfield would be possible. It would also be a lot of work, and not in the ways that, say, The Witcher III was a lot of work.
Zen and the ARM of Gigacycle Maintenance
Behold, the ballgame:
Graphs like this kill a lot of nuance, but they're also easy to understand. Last gen TV consoles went with bad laptop CPUs. Switch went with a good mobile CPU. That put them in spitting distance of each other.
[redacted] is set to make a generational leap over Switch, but PS5/Xbox Series have made an even bigger leap, simply because of how behind they were before. And, most importantly - the daylight between Series S and Series X is minimal. The existence of a Series S version doesn't help at all here.
This is especially rough with Starfield, a game that is CPU limited. With GPU limited games, you can cut the resolution, but that won't help here. Cutting the frame rate would - except it's already 30fps. There are no easy solutions here.
That doesn't mean no solutions. But this puts in solidly "holy shit how did they fit it onto that tiny machine" territory.
I Like It When You Call Me Big FLOPa
Good news: DLSS + The Series S graphics settings, done. Go back to worrying about the CPU, because that's the hard problem.
The tech pessimism - Ampere FLOPS and RDNA 2 FLOPS aren't the same, and it favors RDNA 2. Whatever the on-paper gap between [redacted] and Series S, the practical gap will be somewhat larger. If you want the numbers, open the spoiler. Otherwise, just trust me.
If you take those numbers, an imaginary 3TFLOP [redacted] isn't 75% the performance of the Series S, but closer to 55%. We will obviously not be able to run the Series S version of the game without graphical changes. So what about DLSS? Again, technical analysis below, but the short answer is "DLSS Performance Mode should be fine".
Whether you are willing to put up with DLSS here is a subjective question, but this is a pretty straight forward DLSS upscale, nothing unusual at all. Where it might become dicey is if Imaginary Porting Studio decided to do something wild like go to Ultra Performance mode, not because of the graphics, but to free up time for the CPU to run. In CPU limited games, that rarely gives you the performance you need, but it's worth noting that [redacted] and DLSS do give us some "all hands on deck" options.
In Space, No One Can Hear You Stream
It's not just CPUs and GPUs obviously. The ninth gen machines all advertise super fast NVMe drives. Meanwhile, we have no idea what [redacted]'s storage solution will look like. But I don't want to talk too much about abstract performance, I want to talk about Starfield.
Starfield's PC requirements are informative. It requires an SSD, but doesn't specify type, nor does it recommend an NVMe. It only requires 16GB of RAM, which is pretty standard for console ports, which suggests that Starfield isn't doing anything crazy like using storage as an extra RAM pool on consoles. It's pretty classic open world asset streaming.
Let's make a little table:
Nintendo has a lot of options, and pretty much all of them cross the Starfield line - if mandatory installs are allowed by Nintendo. There is a big long conversation about expansion and GameCard speed that I think is well beyond the scope here, and starts to get very speculative about what Nintendo's goals are. But at heart, there is no question of the onboard storage of [redacted] being fast enough for this game.
Don't Jump on the Waterbed
When you push down on the corner of a waterbed, you don't make the waterbed smaller, you just shift the water around.
You can do that with software, too. Work can be moved from one system (like the CPU) to another (RAM) if you're very clever about it (caching, in this case). Sometimes it's faster. Sometimes it's slower. But that doesn't matter so much as whether or not you've got room to move. This is likely one of the reasons that Nintendo has historically been so generous with RAM - it's cheap and flexible.
The danger with this next-gen ports isn't any one aspect being beyond what [redacted] can do. It's about about multiple aspects together combining to leave no room to breath. NVMe speed you can work around, GPU can cut resolution, CPU can be hyper optimized. But all three at once makes for a tricky situation.
At this point I don't see evidence of that in Starfield - I suspect only the CPU is a serious bottle neck. But some minor things worth bringing up:
RAM - reasonable expectations are that Nintendo will go closer to 12 GB than 8 GB, so I don't see RAM as a serious issue.
Storage space - PC requirements call for a whopping 128GB of free space. That's much larger than Game Cards, and most if not all of the likely on board storage in [redacted]. There are likely a bunch of easy wins here, but it will need more than just easy wins to cross that gap.
Ray Tracing - Starfield uses no RT features on consoles, so despite the fact that [redacted] likely does pretty decent RT for its size, it's irrelevant here.
Appendix: The Name is Trace. Ray Trace
But someone will ask, so here is the quick version: [redacted]'s RT performance is likely to be right up to Series S. But it's not like Series S games often have RT, and RT does have a decent CPU cost, where [redacted] is already weakest. So expect RT to be a first party thing, and to be mostly ignored in ports.
The last time I did some truly in depth prediction on [redacted] performance it was in the context of PS4 and cross-gen. Since then, the launch of truly "next-gen" games has come along, and my own understanding has grown, so I thought it might be worth returning to.
Rather than do some abstract "Redacted is 73% of Series 5, assuming Nintendo picks Zeta Megahertz on the Right Frombulator" I thought it would be nice to look in depth at Starfield, a game I'm curious about, and think about what it might look like on a theoretical [redacted]. Which, I guess, is kinda abstract since we're talking about unreleased software on unannounced hardware, but let me have this.
TL;DR: The Takeaway
If there is one thing I want folks to come away with from this exercise it's "the problems of last gen are not the problems of this gen. Same for the solutions."
I know that's not satisfying, but the PS5/Xbox Series consoles are not just bigger PS4/Xbox One, and [redacted] is not just a bigger Switch. Switch had big advantages and big disadvantages when it came to ports - [redacted] is the same but they are different advantages and disadvantages.
For the most part, the Series S doesn't "help" [redacted] ports as much as some folks think. And obviously, Starfield is going to remain console exclusive to Microsoft's machines. But yes, I believe a port of Starfield would be possible. It would also be a lot of work, and not in the ways that, say, The Witcher III was a lot of work.
Zen and the ARM of Gigacycle Maintenance
Behold, the ballgame:
Graphs like this kill a lot of nuance, but they're also easy to understand. Last gen TV consoles went with bad laptop CPUs. Switch went with a good mobile CPU. That put them in spitting distance of each other.
[redacted] is set to make a generational leap over Switch, but PS5/Xbox Series have made an even bigger leap, simply because of how behind they were before. And, most importantly - the daylight between Series S and Series X is minimal. The existence of a Series S version doesn't help at all here.
This is especially rough with Starfield, a game that is CPU limited. With GPU limited games, you can cut the resolution, but that won't help here. Cutting the frame rate would - except it's already 30fps. There are no easy solutions here.
That doesn't mean no solutions. But this puts in solidly "holy shit how did they fit it onto that tiny machine" territory.
I Like It When You Call Me Big FLOPa
Good news: DLSS + The Series S graphics settings, done. Go back to worrying about the CPU, because that's the hard problem.
The tech pessimism - Ampere FLOPS and RDNA 2 FLOPS aren't the same, and it favors RDNA 2. Whatever the on-paper gap between [redacted] and Series S, the practical gap will be somewhat larger. If you want the numbers, open the spoiler. Otherwise, just trust me.
GPUs are not FLOPS alone. There are also ROPS/TMUs/memory subsystems/feature set. There are also tradeoffs for going for a wider/slower vs narrower/faster design. If we want to game out how Series S and [redacted] might perform against each other we would, ideally, want two GPUs that we could test that roughly parallel all those things.
The Series S GPU is 1280 cores, 80 TMUs, 32 ROPs, with 224 GB/s of memory bandwidth, at 4TFLOPS
[redacted]'s GPU is 1536 cores, ?? TMUs, 16 ROPs, with 102 GB/s of memory bandwidth, at a theoretical 3 TFLOPS.
The RX 6600 XT is 2048 cores, 128 TMUs, 64 ROPS, with 256 GB/s of memory bandwidth + 444.9 GB/s infinity cache, at 10.6 TFLOPS
The RTX 3050 is 2560 cores, 80 TMUs, 32 ROPs, with 224 GB/s of memory bandwidth, at 9 TFLOPS.
No comparison is perfect, but from a high level, this is pretty close. The Ampere card is slightly fewer FLOPS built on 20% more cores, the RDNA 2 card supports that compute power with twice as much rasterization hardware. And the performance is within the same realm as the existing consoles, so we're not trying to fudge from something insane like a 4090.
The downside of this comparison is the memory bandwidth. The consoles and the RX 6000 series have very different memory subsystems. We're going to act like "big bandwidth" on consoles and "medium bandwidth plus infinity cache" are different paths to the same result, but it's the biggest asterisk over the whole thing.
Digital Foundry has kindly provided us with dozens of data points of these two cards running the same game in the same machine at matched settings. Here is the 1080, rasterization only numbers
As we can see pretty clearly, the Ampere card underperforms the RDNA 2 card by a significant margin, with only a 3.9% standard deviation. If we grade on a curve - adjusting the for the differences in TFLOPS - that improves slightly. Going as the FLOPS fly, Ampere is performing at about 74% of RDNA 2.
We could compare other cards, and I have, but the gap gets bigger, not smaller as you look elsewhere. Likely because where Nvidia spent silicon on tensor cores and RT units, AMD spent them on TMUs and ROPs.
The Series S GPU is 1280 cores, 80 TMUs, 32 ROPs, with 224 GB/s of memory bandwidth, at 4TFLOPS
[redacted]'s GPU is 1536 cores, ?? TMUs, 16 ROPs, with 102 GB/s of memory bandwidth, at a theoretical 3 TFLOPS.
The RX 6600 XT is 2048 cores, 128 TMUs, 64 ROPS, with 256 GB/s of memory bandwidth + 444.9 GB/s infinity cache, at 10.6 TFLOPS
The RTX 3050 is 2560 cores, 80 TMUs, 32 ROPs, with 224 GB/s of memory bandwidth, at 9 TFLOPS.
No comparison is perfect, but from a high level, this is pretty close. The Ampere card is slightly fewer FLOPS built on 20% more cores, the RDNA 2 card supports that compute power with twice as much rasterization hardware. And the performance is within the same realm as the existing consoles, so we're not trying to fudge from something insane like a 4090.
The downside of this comparison is the memory bandwidth. The consoles and the RX 6000 series have very different memory subsystems. We're going to act like "big bandwidth" on consoles and "medium bandwidth plus infinity cache" are different paths to the same result, but it's the biggest asterisk over the whole thing.
Digital Foundry has kindly provided us with dozens of data points of these two cards running the same game in the same machine at matched settings. Here is the 1080, rasterization only numbers
| Game | Ampere FPS | RDNA 2 FPS | Percentage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Doom Eternal | 156 | 231 | 67 |
| Borderlands 3 | 53 | 94 | 56 |
| Control | 54 | 83 | 65 |
| Shadow of the Tomb Raider | 90 | 132 | 68 |
| Death Stranding | 83 | 135 | 61 |
| Far Cry 5 | 95 | 139 | 68 |
| Hitman 2 | 96 | 146 | 65 |
| Assassin's Creed: Odyssey | 51 | 81 | 62 |
| Metro Exodus | 48 | 80 | 60 |
| Dirt Rally 2.0 | 62 | 104 | 59 |
| Assassin's Creed: Unity | 100 | 157 | 63 |
As we can see pretty clearly, the Ampere card underperforms the RDNA 2 card by a significant margin, with only a 3.9% standard deviation. If we grade on a curve - adjusting the for the differences in TFLOPS - that improves slightly. Going as the FLOPS fly, Ampere is performing at about 74% of RDNA 2.
We could compare other cards, and I have, but the gap gets bigger, not smaller as you look elsewhere. Likely because where Nvidia spent silicon on tensor cores and RT units, AMD spent them on TMUs and ROPs.
If you take those numbers, an imaginary 3TFLOP [redacted] isn't 75% the performance of the Series S, but closer to 55%. We will obviously not be able to run the Series S version of the game without graphical changes. So what about DLSS? Again, technical analysis below, but the short answer is "DLSS Performance Mode should be fine".
Let's do some quick math. At 55% of the performance of Series S, is Series S can generate an image natively in 1ms, [redacted] can do it in 1.78ms. According to the DLSS programming guide, our theoretical [redacted], we can get a 1440p image (the Series S target for Starfield) from a 720p source in 2.4ms.
Looking at those numbers it is clear that there is a point where DLSS breaks down - where the native image rendering is so fast, that the overhead of DLSS actually makes it slower. That should only happen in CPU limited games, but it just so happens, Starfield is a CPU limited game. So where is that line?
Series S GPU Time * 1.78 (the redacted performance ratio) * 0.25 (DLSS performance mode starts at 1/4 res) + 2.4ms (redacted's DLSS overhead) = Series S GPU Time
Don't worry, I've already solved it for you - it's 3.8ms. That would be truly an extremely CPU limited game. So DLSS seems extremely viable in most cases.
Starfield is a specific case, however, as is the Series S generally. Starfield uses some form of reconstruction, with a 2x upscale. If Series S is struggling to get there natively, will DLSS even be enough? Or to put it another way, does FSR "kill" DLSS?
Handily, AMD, also provides a programming guide with performance numbers for FSR 2, and they're much easier to interpret than the DLSS ones. We can comfortably predict that FSR 2 Balanced Mode on Series S takes 2.9ms. You'll note that DLSS on [redacted] is still faster than FSR 2 on the bigger machine. That's the win of dedicated hardware.
And because of that, we're right back where we started. For GPU limited games, if the Series S can do it natively, we can go to half resolution, and DLSS back up in the same amount of time, or less. If the Series S is doing FSR at 2x, we can do 4x. If Series S is doing 4x, by god, we go full bore Ultra Performance mode. And should someone release a FSR Ultra Performance game on Series S, well, you know what, Xbox can keep it.
Worth noting, that even then the options don't end for [redacted]. Series S tends to target 1440p because it scales nicely on a 4k display. But 1080p also scales nicely on a 4k display, giving us more options to tune.
Looking at those numbers it is clear that there is a point where DLSS breaks down - where the native image rendering is so fast, that the overhead of DLSS actually makes it slower. That should only happen in CPU limited games, but it just so happens, Starfield is a CPU limited game. So where is that line?
Series S GPU Time * 1.78 (the redacted performance ratio) * 0.25 (DLSS performance mode starts at 1/4 res) + 2.4ms (redacted's DLSS overhead) = Series S GPU Time
Don't worry, I've already solved it for you - it's 3.8ms. That would be truly an extremely CPU limited game. So DLSS seems extremely viable in most cases.
Starfield is a specific case, however, as is the Series S generally. Starfield uses some form of reconstruction, with a 2x upscale. If Series S is struggling to get there natively, will DLSS even be enough? Or to put it another way, does FSR "kill" DLSS?
Handily, AMD, also provides a programming guide with performance numbers for FSR 2, and they're much easier to interpret than the DLSS ones. We can comfortably predict that FSR 2 Balanced Mode on Series S takes 2.9ms. You'll note that DLSS on [redacted] is still faster than FSR 2 on the bigger machine. That's the win of dedicated hardware.
And because of that, we're right back where we started. For GPU limited games, if the Series S can do it natively, we can go to half resolution, and DLSS back up in the same amount of time, or less. If the Series S is doing FSR at 2x, we can do 4x. If Series S is doing 4x, by god, we go full bore Ultra Performance mode. And should someone release a FSR Ultra Performance game on Series S, well, you know what, Xbox can keep it.
Worth noting, that even then the options don't end for [redacted]. Series S tends to target 1440p because it scales nicely on a 4k display. But 1080p also scales nicely on a 4k display, giving us more options to tune.
Whether you are willing to put up with DLSS here is a subjective question, but this is a pretty straight forward DLSS upscale, nothing unusual at all. Where it might become dicey is if Imaginary Porting Studio decided to do something wild like go to Ultra Performance mode, not because of the graphics, but to free up time for the CPU to run. In CPU limited games, that rarely gives you the performance you need, but it's worth noting that [redacted] and DLSS do give us some "all hands on deck" options.
In Space, No One Can Hear You Stream
It's not just CPUs and GPUs obviously. The ninth gen machines all advertise super fast NVMe drives. Meanwhile, we have no idea what [redacted]'s storage solution will look like. But I don't want to talk too much about abstract performance, I want to talk about Starfield.
Starfield's PC requirements are informative. It requires an SSD, but doesn't specify type, nor does it recommend an NVMe. It only requires 16GB of RAM, which is pretty standard for console ports, which suggests that Starfield isn't doing anything crazy like using storage as an extra RAM pool on consoles. It's pretty classic open world asset streaming.
Let's make a little table:
| Switch eMMC | Old SATA SSD | Modern eMMC | SATA III SSD | iPhone NVMe | Series S NVMe | Android UFS 4 | UFS 4, on paper |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 300MB/s | 300MB/s | 400 MB/s | 500MB/s | 1600MB/s | 2400MB/s | 3100MB/s | 5800MB/s |
Nintendo has a lot of options, and pretty much all of them cross the Starfield line - if mandatory installs are allowed by Nintendo. There is a big long conversation about expansion and GameCard speed that I think is well beyond the scope here, and starts to get very speculative about what Nintendo's goals are. But at heart, there is no question of the onboard storage of [redacted] being fast enough for this game.
Don't Jump on the Waterbed
When you push down on the corner of a waterbed, you don't make the waterbed smaller, you just shift the water around.
You can do that with software, too. Work can be moved from one system (like the CPU) to another (RAM) if you're very clever about it (caching, in this case). Sometimes it's faster. Sometimes it's slower. But that doesn't matter so much as whether or not you've got room to move. This is likely one of the reasons that Nintendo has historically been so generous with RAM - it's cheap and flexible.
The danger with this next-gen ports isn't any one aspect being beyond what [redacted] can do. It's about about multiple aspects together combining to leave no room to breath. NVMe speed you can work around, GPU can cut resolution, CPU can be hyper optimized. But all three at once makes for a tricky situation.
At this point I don't see evidence of that in Starfield - I suspect only the CPU is a serious bottle neck. But some minor things worth bringing up:
RAM - reasonable expectations are that Nintendo will go closer to 12 GB than 8 GB, so I don't see RAM as a serious issue.
Storage space - PC requirements call for a whopping 128GB of free space. That's much larger than Game Cards, and most if not all of the likely on board storage in [redacted]. There are likely a bunch of easy wins here, but it will need more than just easy wins to cross that gap.
Ray Tracing - Starfield uses no RT features on consoles, so despite the fact that [redacted] likely does pretty decent RT for its size, it's irrelevant here.
Appendix: The Name is Trace. Ray Trace
But someone will ask, so here is the quick version: [redacted]'s RT performance is likely to be right up to Series S. But it's not like Series S games often have RT, and RT does have a decent CPU cost, where [redacted] is already weakest. So expect RT to be a first party thing, and to be mostly ignored in ports.
Let's look at some benchmarks again. The 3050 vs the 6600 XT once more. This time we're using 1440p resolution, For Reasons.
The method here is less obvious than before. We've taken the games at max settings with RT off, then turned RT on, and captured their frame rates. Then we've turned the frame rate into frame time - how long it took to draw each frame on screen. We've then subtracted the time of the pure raster frame from the RT frame.
This gives us the rough cost of RT in each game, for each card, lower is better. And as you can see, despite the fact that the 3050 is slower than the 6600 XT by a significant margin, in pure RT performance, it's faster. About 38% faster when you grade on the curve for the difference in TFLOPS.
There aren't a lot of games with good available data like this to explore, but there are plenty of cards, and you can see that this ratio tends to hold.
This gives us 43% improvement for Ampere, adjusted for FLOPS.
Applying this adjustment our theoretical 3TF [redacted] out performs the 4TF Series S by 3.5%.
It's worth noting that RDNA 2 doesn't have true RT hardware. Instead, the CPU builds the BVH structure, and then triangle intersections are tested by the existing TMUs that the GPU already has. Ampere performs both operations on dedicated hardware. This should reduce the CPU load, but also opens up the possibility of further wins when using async compute.
| Game | 3050 FPS | 3050 FPS w/RT | RT Cost | 6600 XT FPS | 6600 XT FPS w/RT | RT Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Control | 35 | 19 | 24.1ms | 49 | 20 | 29.6ms |
| Metro Exodus | 37 | 24 | 14.6ms | 60 | 30 | 16.7ms |
This gives us the rough cost of RT in each game, for each card, lower is better. And as you can see, despite the fact that the 3050 is slower than the 6600 XT by a significant margin, in pure RT performance, it's faster. About 38% faster when you grade on the curve for the difference in TFLOPS.
There aren't a lot of games with good available data like this to explore, but there are plenty of cards, and you can see that this ratio tends to hold.
| Game | 3060 FPS | 3060 FPS w/RT | RT Cost | 6700 XT FPS | 6700 XT FPS w/RT | RT Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Control | 55 | 28 | 17.5ms | 67 | 25 | 25.1ms |
| Metro Exodus | 54 | 35 | 10.1ms | 74 | 37 | 13.5ms |
Applying this adjustment our theoretical 3TF [redacted] out performs the 4TF Series S by 3.5%.
It's worth noting that RDNA 2 doesn't have true RT hardware. Instead, the CPU builds the BVH structure, and then triangle intersections are tested by the existing TMUs that the GPU already has. Ampere performs both operations on dedicated hardware. This should reduce the CPU load, but also opens up the possibility of further wins when using async compute.
- Pronouns
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I am amused by the fact that the "Watch on YouTube" thing in the corner changes the big text from "LEAKED" to "IFAKED".
Anatole
Octorok
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- He/Him/His
Sounds an awful lot like Iwata's QOL sleep monitor device.
TomNookYankees
Koopa
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Then it's not what I'm talking about, which would be having the ability for smartphones to connect directly to the console to then directly function as extra controllers/screens/sensors.
Insiders typically don't know this, but a Partner Showcase under the current circumstances would be quite strange. One can imagine scenarios where that could be made to work, but it would still be a weird move. Also, outside of a 2020 context, both mini and partner showcase would likely be signals that Nintendo is not done with announcements for the summer.
A Switch clearly doesn't measure up to an Xbox One, but there's some nuance here that is missing when you're comparing systems released at very different times. The Switch and Xbox 360 are two systems that were released more than a decade apart, and are built quite differently as a result. The Switch is much more of a weaker PS4/XB1 than a stronger PS360. Similarly the new system with Drake will be built like a smaller PS5/XS.
This architectural similarity (and even superiority in some cases, as the Nintendo chips are generally a bit newer and Nvidia just has some inherent advantages over AMD) is a key factor in why the Switch can get "impossible ports" while the Wii, for example was mostly relegated to heavily bespoke versions of games or PS2 ports (the PS2 lingered for a long time after its successor released).
Codename_Steam
Cappy
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I don’t know how reliable RedGamingTech is, but he has said that Nintendo was working on a Switch Pro, but it was canceled. He is now expecting a completely new console. (That is roughly on par with Xbox Series S, DLSS 3.0 support etc. 8:30-8:51 )
I don't keep up with hardware leaks anymore so I don't remember if he was credible or not, but I know he said that the GTA Trilogy Definitive Edition would use UE4 and DLSS, which was right.
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Oh, I just meant it as a general comment of what I see.
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Handheld PS4 seems very reasonable for this, I definitely wouldn't expect more than that.
I was always under the impression it's gonna be handheld PS4 and docked PS4 Pro level.
I was always under the impression it's gonna be handheld PS4 and docked PS4 Pro level.
I think that's realistic enough expectation, but not the whole story.
A78 blows Jaguar away, so on the cpu side it will be far superior. Ampere also has a much more advanced featureset, that can potentially enable ports from more powerful systems that PS4 would struggle to run. Kinda similar to how Switch has "miracle ports".
LinkURL
Bob-omb
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Just a detail, despite PS4 to PS5 being a bigger leap in single core performance than X1 to Drake, at the same time Drake will have twice as many cores than its predecessor which didn't happen on PS5 which continues Octa-core as the PS4. In addition to the fact that most likely Redacted will save only 1 core for the OS which would mean a jump from 3 to 7, which is more than double, there is still the issue of single cluster and better multithread performance scalability when comparing A78 vs Zen 2, but Zen 2 still has access to SMT which can help in some scenarios.
That said, I believe the performance difference between Drake CPU vs PS5/XS CPU will be less than it was Switch vs PS4/XOne.
And while I still hold onto my opinion that Starfield could run at 60FPS with proper optimizations (soon it would run on Drake at at least 30), the game didn't show me enough to make me believe they really needed to lock at 30FPS with the monster CPUs used on the XBox Series.
Concernt
Optimism is non-negotiable
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That's releasing in a few weeks under the Pokémon brand as Pokémon Go Plus+. It's technically "Nintendo Hardware" since they designed and manufactured (well, secured manufacturing for) it. I have one on Pre-Order and I'm curious as to how it functions.
OP
OP
I believe LiC mentioned that there's no support for DLSS 3 on NVN2. Of course, nobody knows how capable the OFA on Drake's GPU is comparable to the OFA on Ada Lovelace GPUs. But Drake's GPU does inherit from Orin's GPU the same OFA. But anyways, unless the performance of the OFA on Drake's GPU is comparable to the performance of the OFA on Ada Lovelace GPUs, and Nintendo and Nvidia have the option to add DLSS 3 support to NVN2 later on, I don't think DLSS 3 support on Nintendo's new hardware is likely.
Anyway, I think RedGamingTech is dubious when Nintendo's concerned.
RedGamingTech claimed that Nintendo's development teams expected the Nintendo Switch to use a SoC based on the Drive PX2 (probably AutoCruise), and Nintendo's development teams didn't expect the Nintendo Switch to use the Tegra X1. Outside of the larger memory bus width from the Tegra X2 vs Tegra X1, I don't think RedGamingTech's assertion that the Tegra X2 is vastly superior to the Tegra X1 is correct.
Although Nvidia does mention that the Tegra X2's GPU is a Pascal based GPU, and Nvidia did introduce DP4a instructions support with Pascal GPUs, the Tegra X2's GPU doesn't have DP4a instructions support.
That leads me to believe that there's very little difference, if any, between the Tegra X1 and the Tegra X2, GPU wise.
And there probably won't be any difference between the Tegra X1 and the Tegra X2, CPU wise, for Nintendo's use case, since Nintendo could ask Nvidia to disable the Denver 2 cores, especially if Nintendo couldn't find any use for the Denver 2 cores for video game development purposes, which means Nintendo still probably has four Cortex-A57 cores, regardless if Nintendo used the Tegra X1 or the Tegra X2.
I think the only practical difference between the Tegra X1 and the Tegra X2 is the process node being used for fabrication, which became non-existent with the Tegra X1+.
RedGamingTech also mentioned he thinks the "Switch Pro" was using a SoC based on Xavier. And I think LiC mentioned that Xavier wasn't mentioned anywhere on the NVN2 files, so that's probably not true.
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