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

See some people online being disappointed visually with Spider-Man 2 when compared to the PS4 original despite exclusively being on a console which is a massive leap over the ancient tech inside PS4. (I’m playing it at the moment and think it’s ridiculously good looking to be clear).

Diminishing returns are very real despite some online saying they weren’t for the past decade. Cross gen games make things even worse.

Switch 2 exclusives especially the larger budget titles like 3D Mario, Mario Kart and Zelda will definitely be a large visual leap but I can’t see the likes of the mid to lower budget titles like Yoshi, Kirby, Animal Crossing, Mario Sports titles etc being that big a leap over what we have on Switch but at 4k instead of 900p.
I think Kirby, AC and especially Yoshi will get a big leap, actually. The new hardware will allow Good-Feel to push their arts and crafts artstyle to their fullest potential; I can see AC using RT to mimic the CGI renders more, having more detailed environments, etc, same with Kirby.
 
But then you're not making a comparison with the 4050 mobile (which has 1455 MHz as base clock and 1755 MHz as boost clock).

Anyway, they asked for a comparison with the 3050, so that was it.
Oh so your right, I was looking at the wrong one. This still makes the 1380 MHz clock seem super reasonable when docked if they can cool it enough.
 
See some people online being disappointed visually with Spider-Man 2 when compared to the PS4 original despite exclusively being on a console which is a massive leap over the ancient tech inside PS4. (I’m playing it at the moment and think it’s ridiculously good looking to be clear).

Diminishing returns are very real despite some online saying they weren’t for the past decade. Cross gen games make things even worse.

Switch 2 exclusives especially the larger budget titles like 3D Mario, Mario Kart and Zelda will definitely be a large visual leap but I can’t see the likes of the mid to lower budget titles like Yoshi, Kirby, Animal Crossing, Mario Sports titles etc being that big a leap over what we have on Switch but at 4k instead of 900p.
To be fair to Insomniac, Spiderman 2 had a much shorter development cycle than any AAA game these days and definitely way shorter than any other perfectionist Sony studio. The fact they managed to make a much bigger game using RT at 60 FPS and still massively improve their streaming/hair/lightning tech in like 2 years and a half of full production is an ridiculously impressive feat, wait until the real 5+ year AAA development cycles before claiming those are even a thing, because you might be jumping into conclusions.
 
To be fair to Insomniac, Spiderman 2 had a much shorter development cycle than any AAA game these days and definitely way shorter than any other perfectionist Sony studio. The fact they managed to make a much bigger game using RT at 60 FPS and still massively improve their streaming/hair/lightning tech in like 2 years and a half of full production is an ridiculously impressive feat, wait until the real 5+ year AAA development cycles before claiming those are even a thing, because you might be jumping into conclusions.
It doesn't help Spiderman that we got

The original on PS4 in 2018

A graphics enhance remake and a "half sequel half spin off" in Miles Morales in 2020

Had we got from just Spiderman PS4 to Spiderman 2 PS5, the jump would be much more striking for people.
 
They're really overselling the Nintendo Account thing. But seeing as that's really the only thing they can currently talk about in public, it makes sense why they always bring it up.

Laughed a little after he corrected himself "Well, first I can't comment — or I won't comment, I should say" - High level CEO speak right there.
Spoken like a man who values his job.
 
It doesn't help Spiderman that we got

The original on PS4 in 2018

A graphics enhance remake and a "half sequel half spin off" in Miles Morales in 2020

Had we got from just Spiderman PS4 to Spiderman 2 PS5, the jump would be much more striking for people.
That's true, they basically iterated on their engine and we all saw it on real time. Insomniac's pretty known for their insanely quick turnaround times and prolific output but that's not magic, it still comes at a cost that I suppose players have already accepted for them. If anything, SM2 further solidified my beliefs that current gen is yet to be truly pushed. and even a quick glimpse like this game is already blowing away outlets like Digital Foundry dedicated to this stuff, we have seen nothing.
 
That's true, they basically iterated on their engine and we all saw it on real time. Insomniac's pretty known for their insanely quick turnaround times and prolific output but that's not magic, it still comes at a cost that I suppose players have already accepted for them. If anything, SM2 further solidified my beliefs that current gen is yet to be truly pushed. and even a quick glimpse like this game is already blowing away outlets like Digital Foundry dedicated to this stuff, we have seen nothing.
Which is wild to think we're probably seeing a PS5 pro in 2024, and that there are some people in the gamer bubble already salivating for a more powerful ps5 due to perceived weaknesses in the ps5.
 
Which is wild to think we're probably seeing a PS5 pro in 2024, and that there are some people in the gamer bubble already salivating for a more powerful ps5 due to perceived weaknesses in the ps5.
PS5/Series X are awesome rasterization machines for sure, there's no doubt about that. Nvidia just happened to show the world where AMD's shortcomings really showed up this time and it's a shame honestly. This PS5 Pro is apparently trying to push extensive raytracing/pathtracing features, and I suspect it's Sony's excuse to futureproof the lightning solutions of their games until PS6 inevitably makes it the standard across the board.
 
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Hey, I’m new to this forum. Would you guys mind sharing if we have anything definitive as far as the L2 cache on T239? Nvidia made a huge deal (well more like justification) for a large L2 cache and smaller bus width on Ada with it having similar ballpark performance as a higher bus width, albeit, without it scaling as well at higher resolutions. It just doesn’t make sense to me that Nintendo knows full well the main bottleneck of the original Switch was the memory bandwidth issue in most of their in-house games, but decides to increase the GPU and CPU power by over 6x each while only having memory bandwidth be 4x higher.
 
See some people online being disappointed visually with Spider-Man 2 when compared to the PS4 original despite exclusively being on a console which is a massive leap over the ancient tech inside PS4. (I’m playing it at the moment and think it’s ridiculously good looking to be clear).

Diminishing returns are very real despite some online saying they weren’t for the past decade. Cross gen games make things even worse.

Switch 2 exclusives especially the larger budget titles like 3D Mario, Mario Kart and Zelda will definitely be a large visual leap but I can’t see the likes of the mid to lower budget titles like Yoshi, Kirby, Animal Crossing, Mario Sports titles etc being that big a leap over what we have on Switch but at 4k instead of 900p.

I don't know about that. Mario Party Superstars looked great for what it was.

I think even with lower budget titles games like Kirby, AC, etc can look really good next generation.

Especially Animal Crossing. It deserves a huge glow up for how much it sells.
 
Hey, I’m new to this forum. Would you guys mind sharing if we have anything definitive as far as the L2 cache on T239? Nvidia made a huge deal (well more like justification) for a large L2 cache and smaller bus width on Ada with it having similar ballpark performance as a higher bus width, albeit, without it scaling as well at higher resolutions. It just doesn’t make sense to me that Nintendo knows full well the main bottleneck of the original Switch was the memory bandwidth issue in most of their in-house games, but decides to increase the GPU and CPU power by over 6x each while only having memory bandwidth be 4x higher.
I think you can find it on the Nvidia leak, it's not any bigger to what's expected from Ampere GPUs so we're probably out of luck in there. Nintendo knows about the bottleneck for sure, they're probably expecting DLSS to lower the bandwidth demands about enough to not be an issue. That, or LPDDR5X being a legitimate possibility, who knows? There's an Intel-based handheld using LPDDR5X coming, maybe Nintendo read the writing on the wall.
 
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I’m so ready for this to be announced and specs given. This speculation is too much. It’s going to be such a fun time to see the meltdowns that ALWAYS occur.
people at the youtube comments section will say:

"dlss is cheating this isn't REAL 4k"
"ps5 better"
"nintendo uses rt cores? that's impossible"
"wii u 2.0 is here bois"
 
Hey, I’m new to this forum. Would you guys mind sharing if we have anything definitive as far as the L2 cache on T239?
It’s 1MB, consistent with the design of the rest of Ampere.

Nvidia made a huge deal (well more like justification) for a large L2 cache and smaller bus width on Ada with it having similar ballpark performance as a higher bus width, albeit, without it scaling as well at higher resolutions. It just doesn’t make sense to me that Nintendo knows full well the main bottleneck of the original Switch was the memory bandwidth issue in most of their in-house games, but decides to increase the GPU and CPU power by over 6x each while only having memory bandwidth be 4x higher.
All of Nvidia’s Ampere cards float between 25 and 30 GB/s of bandwidth for every TFLOP of GPU performance.

So T239 is spot on for the architecture. At 1GHz, T239 would hit that top line, with ~12% left over for CPU load.

At just about every level, t239 is built like the desktop cards.
 
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Unless they continue to manufacture switches indefinitely, BC is a no brainer. Imagine losing thousands of games once your switch dies and you can't buy one anymore.
Nintendo should allow us a easy tranfer to both digital/physical games to it next hardware.
 
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Not sure whether I can add anything useful rn but it’d be cool (literally) if it was just like... Ada with the node advantage instead of shrunken down [?] Ampere
There's basically no advantage on Nintendo's part to having full Ada compared to Ampere plus some extra features. The only major innovation was the OFA for Frame Generation, and as Oldpuck said, that wouldn't work particularly well for any game that isn't already hitting 60fps.
 
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The 2050 Is probably a decent comparison point though in raw performance the 3050 really isn't much of a step up from the 2050 in actual real-world performance. 2050 is pretty much a 1080P Medium to high settings card. Factor in DLSS and it can work some magic.

Obviously the T239 would have advantages in ways the 2050 wouldn't but it gives an idea. I think the takeaway though is RT while being possible would impact these games quite a bit.
I would argue the 3050M is closer due to optimization+128Bit bus shared between T239 and it versus the 64 Bit bus of the 2050M
 
Hey, I’m new to this forum.
Hi @CookieDog! I was on my phone before and couldn't give you a proper welcome. Welcome to the thread and Fami in general! Some general info.

Nvidia's Ampere gaming cards all pretty consistent with their layouts. There is a high level organization called a GPC, and as you go up the stack, you just get more and more GPCs, with each GPC having the same number of shader cores, tensor cores, rt cores, memory controllers, cache, ROPs, TMUs, tensor cores, etcetera etcetera*.

In that regard, T239 is a small but otherwise completely standard Ampere/RTX 30 GPU. It is one, single, full GPC, no more, no less, with all the bells and whistles. There are very few modifications, almost all related to energy efficiency. One of those being the lower bandwidth (and lower latency) LPDDR memory. The expectation is that Nintendo will keep clocks lower, which keeps the bandwidth and performance in balance (as well as keeping the battery life good).

T239's single, full** GPC design at low-ish clocks is basically the most power efficient design that Nvidia can make, while still offering all the features of the desktop cards. There is no solid clock information in the Nvidia leak, so all our clock speed guesses are just that - guesses. But based on the idea that Nvidia/Nintendo will go for the best battery life in handheld, and roughly double that in docked, we get 500-600MHz and 1GHz-1.2GHz respectively. Which matches nicely up with LPDDR5 RAM to provide a configuration that looks basically just like desktop.

The power draw curve is based on Nvidia's public data. It's always possible that T239 has modifications that shift the power curve. Slightly less possible, Nintendo might have gone with LPPDR5X RAM instead of just 5 - the standard was published just barely in time for Nvidia to take advantage of it. Both of those things might shift the calculus, obviously, but overall, there is no real concern that Switch NG will be bandwidth limited the way the Switch is.

Hope that answers your question a little better! And again, welcome!
 
Will something interesting happen already?
aint nothing happening for awhile my friend. seal yourself in a cryo chamber until january if you wanna speed this process up.
I'm fine but thanks.
The Switch trailer went private or have people forgot about that already? I find interesting how there’s not more buzz about it (Twitter, YouTube, etc.) compared to last time. Idk this feels like a bigger deal to me compared to last time, yet not as much talk. Most sites aren’t even reporting it 🤔.
 
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The 4050 draws 115W of power.

While obviously a lot of the power savings between the 4050 and the Switch 2 would be down to bringing clocks down to the sweet spot, how much to you think the difference between ARM and x86 will make to it? It's there any hard data on the PPW efficiencies of ARM?

it's too weak. the hardware is capable but the power is better used on other stuff. that's the general idea

Some devs might think that, but if the RT cores weren't going to be used it's likely Nintendo would've ordered them removed. T239 is a custom chip, after all.
 
The Switch trailer went private or have people forgot about that already? I find interesting how there’s not more buzz about it compared to last time. Idk this feels like a bigger deal to me compared to last time, yet not as much talk. Most sites aren’t even reporting it 🤔.
Nothing more than an oddity. Could have been privated for a number of internal company politics-related reasons that we're not privy to. Unless something else happens in relation to it it's just a slightly neat thing to speculate on.
 
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The Switch trailer went private or have people forgot about that already? I find interesting how there’s not more buzz about it compared to last time. Idk this feels like a bigger deal to me compared to last time, yet not as much talk. Most sites aren’t even reporting it 🤔.
Oh it has been reported plenty couple of days ago. The latest making rounds is basically "BC confirmed by Doug Bowser!"
 
The Switch trailer went private or have people forgot about that already? I find interesting how there’s not more buzz about it compared to last time. Idk this feels like a bigger deal to me compared to last time, yet not as much talk. Most sites aren’t even reporting it 🤔.
Trailer going down doesn't mean anything most likely. It's been 7 years since the original trailer, so the licensing probably expired. Not to mention there's a few fans of White Denim who have spoken up and said that the band has been having rights issues with their music for the past few months. Do not expect the video being taken down to lead to anything, there's only like 2 or 3 days left before the pattern doesn't fit..
 
Trailer going down doesn't mean anything most likely. It's been 7 years since the original trailer, so the licensing probably expired. Not to mention there's a few fans of White Denim who have spoken up and said that the band has been having rights issues with their music for the past few months. Do not expect the video being taken down to lead to anything, there's only like 2 or 3 days left before the pattern doesn't fit..
I don't know why some still insist on it being licensing.

Did Paraspikey not explain to you why that person who replied to you in the Reddit thread you made might not have correct information?

Secondly, if it's truly a licensing issue, Nintendo lawyers aren't going to fuck around, they're going to protect themselves. They will ask that videos be taken down from FB/Twitter as well. Which they haven't as far as I know - taken down only on YT.
 
I hope some of you guys aren't setting yourselves up for disappointment with all the 4k / RT talk.
Do you have an example of a claim or expectation made in this thread that might turn out to be a disappointment?

I think most people are expecting a generational leap in performance (not exactly controversial when we're talking about a next generation console) with the belief that specialized hardware will allow it to punch above its weight (a possibility or probability that can be demonstrated in comparisons of consumer hardware out there today that have such accelerators). The discussion here is all pretty grounded.
 
I don't know why some still insist on it being licensing.

Did Paraspikey not explain to you why that person who replied to you in the Reddit thread you made might not have correct information?

Secondly, if it's truly a licensing issue, Nintendo lawyers aren't going to fuck around, they're going to protect themselves. They will ask that videos be taken down from FB/Twitter as well. Which they haven't as far as I know - taken down only on YT.
sure, it might not be but nothing of what he said debunked it.
 
sure, it might not be but nothing of what he said debunked it.

Well, the licensing theory isn't solid in the first place. FB/Twitter videos are still up.

Nintendo isn't going to put themselves in legal peril by leaving those videos up on other platforms.

Not saying the YT video being taken is a sign of anything to come, but licensing ain't the reason.
 
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The Switch trailer went private or have people forgot about that already? I find interesting how there’s not more buzz about it compared to last time. Idk this feels like a bigger deal to me compared to last time, yet not as much talk. Most sites aren’t even reporting it 🤔.
Better to just expect the full reveal for next year and be surprised if it does get released earlier, than expect it for this year and be disappointed it doesn't.
 
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I'm sorry, but the license theory is weak. FB/Twitter videos are still up. Need to find a better theory.

Nintendo isn't going to put themselves in legal peril by leaving those videos up on other platforms, get real.

Not saying the YT video being taken is a sign of anything to come, but licensing ain't the reason, bud.
I find oldpuck to be like the most reliable guy here besides Nate so maybe im biased, but i put more trust into his word than a pattern of console revisions' reveal videos going down. And he's said a few different things about the licensing: comment 1, comment 2. Maybe it's not the music, maybe the people on reddit who claim they've spoken to the band are wrong, but there's so many other things contract related with that video it's too hard to count. Either the video got taken down because the music rights are potentially muddy, actors rights means the video had to be taken down, or a biajillion other licensing reasons... Or the video got taken down because it would match a pattern about revision and special edition consoles which itself is already inconsistent. I'll take my chances with the licensing disputes because they can get real stupid for no good reason.
 
I find oldpuck to be like the most reliable guy here besides Nate so maybe im biased, but i put more trust into his word than a pattern of console revisions' reveal videos going down. And he's said a few different things about the licensing: comment 1, comment 2. Maybe it's not the music, maybe the people on reddit who claim they've spoken to the band are wrong, but there's so many other things contract related with that video it's too hard to count. Either the video got taken down because the music rights are potentially muddy, actors rights means the video had to be taken down, or a biajillion other licensing reasons... Or the video got taken down because it would match a pattern about revision and special edition consoles which itself is already inconsistent. I'll take my chances with the licensing disputes because they can get real stupid for no good reason.
Yes, I've seen those writeups back then. Neither of those comments adequately addressed why videos would be left alone on other platforms.
 
Yes, I've seen those writeups back then. Neither of those comments adequately addressed why videos would be left alone on other platforms.
Imo I don't really think that matters. I don't know what to say other than that. Licensing is weird. Perhaps the contracts simply didn't state to remove it anywhere except YouTube. We'll never know. oldpuck says don't rule it out and I just think it makes the most sense.
 
Imo I don't really think that matters. I don't know what to say other than that. Licensing is weird. Perhaps the contracts simply didn't state to remove it anywhere from YouTube. We'll never know. oldpuck says don't rule it out and I just think it makes the most sense.

Given it's not taken down on other platforms, licensing issue theory makes the least sense, IMO.

I don't know what the explanation is going to be, but I seriously doubt it's licensing. We'll see what it is. If it is licensing issue, then I'd like to know what the conditions are that would have allowed Nintendo lawyers to say "okay, don't worry about other platforms, just take the YT one down".
 
My expectation is that [REDACTED] will have fantastic looking first party games and will get some modern and last gen ports.

Seeing as that was true of Switch when it released I doubt I'll be disappointed.

Plus Nintendo makes the best games in the industry in my opinion, so I'll be eating well.

DLSS + RT, The node, clock speeds etc are all just tools to make the above happen, I trust Nintendo and Nvidias decision making and know that these last final details aren't going to make much difference long term. I'm still going to be elated when this device releases.

It's fun to speculate, that's why we are all here, but I don't need any concern trolls telling me to keep my expectations in check, this device is super exciting, let people get excited.
 
Just based off the fact that Nintendo has been closely observing Apple’s business model in the smartphone market since the 3DS days and that they themselves had published apps on the App Store, I think it would be completely absurd for them to sell new devices without any BC. Like I get that Bowser’s statements about Nintendo accounts were PR talk but they could not have possibly been looking at Apple ID and thinking to themselves how they could still get away with no BC, especially considering the outcry when the App Store had its own compatibility issues for apps built around older iOS versions. No BC would be unwise and would likely lead to lots of negative publicity.
 
Will something interesting happen already?
1b2.jpg
 
I thin this thread, in general, has pretty realistic expectations regarding Switch 2 graphical capabilities. The most realistic ones in the entire internet, in fact, because they are informed. What it is not realistic is expecting a lot of first party games to look just like Switch games but with better FPS and resolution. That's pessimism and not based on reality.
 
See some people online being disappointed visually with Spider-Man 2 when compared to the PS4 original despite exclusively being on a console which is a massive leap over the ancient tech inside PS4. (I’m playing it at the moment and think it’s ridiculously good looking to be clear).

Diminishing returns are very real despite some online saying they weren’t for the past decade. Cross gen games make things even worse.

Switch 2 exclusives especially the larger budget titles like 3D Mario, Mario Kart and Zelda will definitely be a large visual leap but I can’t see the likes of the mid to lower budget titles like Yoshi, Kirby, Animal Crossing, Mario Sports titles etc being that big a leap over what we have on Switch but at 4k instead of 900p.


I know what you mean and its not the main point of your argument but thats a MASSIVE leap.
Thing is plenty of first party Switch games to this day already look great, but are held back by the poor image quality and low resolution which becomes a bigger issues on the big TV nowadays.

4k TV mode and 1080p portable for these more "simple" games would be a big boost.
Right now PS5/Series X are kinda killing themselves to get similar kind of output resolutions while providing a noteworthy jump from the best of what the last gen had to offer. Its not easy and even if the hardware is capable of it takes a lot of effort, optimisation and resources.
 
I know what you mean and its not the main point of your argument but thats a MASSIVE leap.
Thing is plenty of first party Switch games to this day already look great, but are held back by the poor image quality and low resolution which becomes a bigger issues on the big TV nowadays.

4k TV mode and 1080p portable for these more "simple" games would be a big boost.
Right now PS5/Series X are kinda killing themselves to get similar kind of output resolutions while providing a noteworthy jump from the best of what the last gen had to offer. Its not easy and even if the hardware is capable of it takes a lot of effort, optimisation and resources.

Yeah, I've seen a bunch of people emulating, say, SMTV at 4K and being profit confused at how the game can look SO much better from nothing more than a resolution increase.
 
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