Namely cost, if Nintendo spoke with Nvidia through multiple meetings between their engineers, and they were looking for a product that offered the best efficiency, and then they got that, but they build a system as if the the silicon inside the system is woefully inefficient and requires more robust cooling or a huge battery, then the question becomes why did you even leave step one in the first place? If the system is bigger, you’d need to accommodate for that larger size as it isn’t free, the main body is what I’m talking about here.
It would increase the cost of the device. The ROG Ally and the steam deck are noticeably bigger devices than the switch, even though they have a similar screen size. There’s many ways to create this system I feel, and if they were looking to minimize the cost of such system as much as possible while getting what they want, they wouldn’t go out of their way to make the system bigger. In a sense it defeats the purpose.
Oh, wow! That's a big difference when comparing with those windows PCs (which were what I had in mind when thinking about power draw).
On a steam deck for example, if the APU is using 8W or 12W, the system power draw (total) is gonna be double of that (16W/24W)
If that's not the case with T239, then maybe we really don't even need all that wattage.
Since T239 (the console, not the chip, but what ever
) will share many components with those in phones and tablets that have to run for long hours and consume little, they are designed with efficiency first and performance second, even Apple does this. Things such as the screen, the storage, the memory, the sensors etc are all suited for a device that’s meant to operate at low power. So, it would be counterintuitive if all of those consumed a lot of power when the system is designed to not waste so much power.
Some things of course, do consume more than others and are power hungry by default like the SoC or the Screen which can end up being the biggest consumer of power in a smartphone.
Rather than opt for an M.2 storage in a phone for example, that at the lowest can consume 3W, they opt for in-house methods like the iPhone or they opt for something like UFS which operates at a magnitude lower than M.2 drives and still delivers favorable speeds to the system.
RAM, such as LPDDR5, as per an Nvidia doc 2 modules consume about 1.5W at full load and less than a W when reduced.
But DDR and GDDR aren’t designed to be efficient and low power like LPDDR.
So it’s a multiple combination factor as for how much the system would even end up using.
The only thing that would be consuming power and is active is the fan in the device, but if the system is efficient and doesn’t get too hot, then the system would be able to spin the fan at the appropriate speed when needed and not waste any excess on what needs to be cooled.
So on and so forth. Nintendo has the benefit of taking advantage of the many advances to create a system where the whole system can operate at sub-10W and still deliver acceptable performance and playing time for games.
Didn't see this edit. Well, I don't think a 'bigger switch' would make it not a switch anymore lol
A bigger switch no, but that’s not really a form factor change. It still follows relatively close to the same format. The 3DS had the same form factor as the DS for example.
The way you used form factor gave me the impression that it was changing the device entirely and we didn’t know that though, so I only responded in the way I believed was appropriate for it. Going from a tablet to a clam shell with the buttons on the bottom body and the screen plus speakers on the top body would be an example of form factor change.
To end it off for all three parts of the quoted posts, while Nintendo can do that, you’d have to ask your self why are they doing this or what did they do that make them end up like this and why did move on from the first step if it was pointing to this outcome. They have the data and they have partner who’d be able to inform them of power draw and their own engineers would need to make an adequate system for that.
So if nvidia is able to provide a system on chip that can be cooled relatively easy without causing a raise in cost for making said system thus increasing the cost of the console more than they’d like, the better. All while delivering a solid performance, then it’s the likeliest scenario they’ll end for or try to get close to without blowing up the budget either.
T239 already has some Lovelace improvements that should help it be more efficient than the other Ampere parts, but it isn’t going to give a magical 2x improvement in efficiency.
