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

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Shoulder said:
Nintendo has shown it can provide similar experiences yet go from 60hz to 30hz from Docked to Handheld mode, respectively as Bowser's Fury has done.
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Refresh rate ≠ frame rate

The refresh rate is the number of times the display is refreshed per second, whereas the frame rate is the number of frames a system is able to produce per second. The refresh rate is dictated by the display, whereas the frame rate is dictated by the CPU and/or GPU.

Both the Nintendo Switch's (and the OLED model's) display, and the TVs currently on the market, support a refresh rate of 60 Hz. Digital Foundry is talking purely about frame rates when talking about the differences between handheld mode and TV mode for Bowser's Fury.
 
Shoulder said:
Nintendo has shown it can provide similar experiences yet go from 60hz to 30hz from Docked to Handheld mode, respectively as Bowser's Fury has done.

So it is possible for Nintendo to provide an experience that is 60hz in handheld yet 120hz in Docked. Will they is another story, but I think in this day and age, there's less and less reasons to limit yourself to 60hz. 120hz isn't even a new thing, and hasn't been for years, a decade even. It may be new in the console space, but not for displays specifically.

Also, I think the perception is going from 120hz to 60hz is less jarring to the eye than 60hz to 30hz.
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can't make a conclusion off of one data point. especially when that data point has caveats that explain why there's a 60fps to 30fps shift
 
Most folk in general have not acknowledged the hack because (a) it's not as easily digestible (b) there's an air of exhaustion and dismissiveness around any Switch 2 rumor or leak no matter how credible and (c) an overabundance of caution to assume these are Switch 2 specs (though you have to strain credulity to explain what else it could be) or that the hardware in the leak will release at all.

On the flip side it'll be a pleasant surprise when it's unveiled.
 
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Dakhil said:
Refresh rate ≠ frame rate

The refresh rate is the number of times the display is refreshed per second, whereas the frame rate is the number of frames a system is able to produce per second. The refresh rate is dictated by the display, whereas the frame rate is dictated by the CPU and/or GPU.

Both the Nintendo Switch's (and the OLED model's) display, and the TVs currently on the market, support a refresh rate of 60 Hz. Digital Foundry is talking purely about frame rates when talking about the differences between handheld mode and TV mode for Bowser's Fury.
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I meant to say FPS than Hz, so apologizes on that. My point still stands, though I know you're just clarifying.

ILikeFeet said:
can't make a conclusion off of one data point. especially when that data point has caveats that explain why there's a 60fps to 30fps shift
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What it shows is a plausibility that it can happen. Might not be a conclusion, but given this is the speculation thread, it's worth mentioning. I'd also be curious if there are 3rd party titles that are 60fps in docked, and 30fps in handheld
 
NineTailSage said:
Yeah it definitely wouldn't be for those looking to quick swap their Switch out all the time as they showed the main Win 4 device needed to see the eGPU while booting up. I've just heard people say over the years that they only play their Switch while docked and an added solution might improve that experience.
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I can see a dock only Switch version in the future. But if someone always played docked then I'm not sure how having another thing to dock to will improve that experience
 
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maniacmaison said:
My TV supports VRR and it's true that it feels very very fluid, but I have a question: how does 40 fps feel in a regular TV that has no VRR? I mean, it's still more than 30 fps, but do you feel some stutter because of the Hz? Or it does feel better than 30 but still much worse than 60?
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It will be juddery, since 40Hz won't divide evenly into a 60Hz container. 120Hz can divide into 40Hz evenly 3 times so on PS5, Xbox, and PC, a 120Hz mode can easily support a stable 40FPS. Or do the Steam Deck way, bring down the entire refresh rate to 40Hz (in the case of the LCD), or bring up to 80Hz (in the case of the OLED, the frame will show twice).
 
YolkFolk said:
I watched IGN’s NVC from last week and Kat was dismissive of people for thinking they knew any specs at all for Switch 2. She seemed completely unaware about the leak.
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I really like Kat and especially her appearances on the Retronauts podcast. But I find a bit odd that as news director at IGN she doesn't have a better idea about the information out there. I mean, supposedly IGN portraits themselves as "journalistic" (obviously one can discuss how much actual journalism goes on there), and as such they should have people with technical and industry knowledge validating the info out there as much as possible. To just signal that nothing is known just because Nintendo hasn't communicated anything officially is a bit unserious, I think.
 
Ghostsonplanets said:
We know pretty much everything about both. What we're missing are the clockspeeds for them.

Yes. But even if we assume a super pessimistic stance, with low clocked as possible GPU and CPU, we would still get a Switch 2 with XOne performance Handheld but modern features and CPU and PS4 performance Docked but modern features and CPU. So even the worst scenario is a insane jump over Switch and Tegra X1.
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XOne?
 
what if Nintendo istead of teasing Switch sucessor in march/may, do a blowout presentation in june/july, istead Nintendo combine all this in a single presentation in june and 2 months later, everyone would be playing Nintendo next console
 
Giancarlo said:
what if Nintendo istead of teasing Switch sucessor in march/may, do a blowout presentation in june/july, istead Nintendo combine all this in a single presentation in june and 2 months later, everyone would be playing Nintendo next console
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The system will have leaked months before reveal in that scenario, since production needs to start in March anyway unless they want to bring 1M or fewer systems to launch.
 
When do you think T239 (the SoC, not the Swtich 2) will enter mass production?

Can we find this information from nVidia or their vendors?
 
BreakAtmo said:
Ahhh, thanks. Yeah, I was actually imagining it having a single huge chunk of L3 - knowing that it's more like 12 7800x3Ds together actually helps.



To be clear, the specific details of the chip don't matter to the cost, right? My understanding is that chip cost (not including the R&D of course) is defined by just the size of the chip and the cost of the wafer (with yield also depending on those things).

One thing - does extra cache drain power? I was considering your example and realised that they also have a power budget - I know more CUs would drain more power (or require them to lower clocks on the chip), would the extra cache require the same?
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Yeah, chip cost is related to the size of the chip and cost of the wafer, so one 10mm² bit of silicon will cost the same as another 10mm² bit of silicon. Yields are going to vary a little bit depending on what exactly is on the chip, but that's only going to have a very small impact on cost, particularly for small dies on high-yield processes, like we're talking about here.

Cache does consume power, as everything on a chip does, but it consumes a lot less power than accessing data from RAM itself, so can be a net saving overall. This is one of the major reasons smartphone GPUs adopted tiled rendering very early on, where each tile is designed to sit in on-chip cache while it's being rendered, because it consumes a lot less power than going back and forth to RAM. And also likely one of the motivations Nvidia started using tile-based rendering as well in their desktop GPUs, starting with Maxwell, although reducing overall bandwidth usage was probably also a significant factor there.
 
OctoSplattack said:
It really confuses me how "Does it really make sense for the next 3D Mario to be Switch 2 exclusive?" and "Does it really need big exclusives in the first year?" are such frequent discussions in this thread as if we're still talking about a Switch Pro.
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This must be the people who just got their switch.
NineTailSage said:
Yeah it definitely wouldn't be for those looking to quick swap their Switch out all the time as they showed the main Win 4 device needed to see the eGPU while booting up. I've just heard people say over the years that they only play their Switch while docked and an added solution might improve that experience.
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It would just be easier and cheaper to have a stationary console with the same SOC that Nintendo can overclock.
 
Giancarlo said:
what if Nintendo istead of teasing Switch sucessor in march/may, do a blowout presentation in june/july, istead Nintendo combine all this in a single presentation in june and 2 months later, everyone would be playing Nintendo next console
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I've been against this for the last bunch because the timing didn't make sense, but I think it's obivous that Nintendo can't go past the May shareholders meeting because any forecast for the next financial year has to include the Switch 2. So that would be the absolute latest date for them to announce/reveal it (which would be the absolute lamest way they could do it btw).
 
YolkFolk said:
I watched IGN’s NVC from last week and Kat was dismissive of people for thinking they knew any specs at all for Switch 2. She seemed completely unaware about the leak.

Beginning of the show:

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Yeah, I think they are mainly focus om the Taiwanese reports.
Serif said:
I'm unsure if even former Nintendo employees would or should acknowledge information obtained from an illegal data breach.

Most folk in general have not acknowledged the hack because (a) it's not as easily digestible (b) there's an air of exhaustion and dismissiveness around any Switch 2 rumor or leak no matter how credible and (c) an overabundance of caution to assume these are Switch 2 specs (though you have to strain credulity to explain what else it could be) or that the hardware in the leak will release at all.

On the flip side it'll be a pleasant surprise when it's unveiled.
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I think you're onto something. Even with gaming sites and companies. I remember what happened to Kotaku.
 
YolkFolk said:
I thought that at first but there’s also a general ‘nobody knows anything’ position taken.
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Just because they can‘t do the research doesn’t mean there isn‘t Information out there, you just have to search carefully (like people do in this thread).
 
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kvetcha said:
it's fitting you share your name with the oldest known star

(I kid, I kid)
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lol

One of my favorite times using this name was on GAF. There was a LOTR discussion regarding some stuff from the first age and one poster said "The elves were getting their asses handed to them until Earendil showed up and saved the day." I quoted him and simply said "You're welcome."

It was fun.
 
ILikeFeet said:
we'll never really know this. Nvidia will never bring it up and tegra division won't report increase in sales until after the product is out, probably.
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darthdiablo said:
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The question was about mass production, not production in general. SoC mass production has to start some number of months before console assembly starts, but we can't really determine anything beyond that.
 
LiC said:
The question was about mass production, not production in general. SoC mass production has to start some number of months before console assembly starts, but we can't really determine anything beyond that.
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Yeah - that's why I specifically avoided "mass production" mention. I was wondering what nvidia India was actually testing on at the time - were they testing on an actual T239 SoC, or were they merely testing on a "representation" of T239?

Reframing my question a bit - is it possible that nvidia India testing results will cause nvidia to need to modify the SOC template used for mass production? I know that's also not the question either, more of me learning about the process itself.
 
YolkFolk said:
I watched IGN’s NVC from last week and Kat was dismissive of people for thinking they knew any specs at all for Switch 2. She seemed completely unaware about the leak.

Beginning of the show:

Click to expand...

She seems confident that it wont have joy cons or any kind of movement controls. She’s been saying she is afraid of that for quite some time now. Or she knows something or she is not a legend at all. Just pure marketing.
 
darthdiablo said:
Yeah - that's why I specifically avoided "mass production" mention. I was wondering what nvidia India was actually testing on at the time - were they testing on an actual T239 SoC, or were they merely testing on a "representation" of T239?

Reframing my question a bit - is it possible that nvidia India testing results will cause nvidia to need to modify the SOC template used for mass production? I know that's also not the question either, more of me learning about the process itself.
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My mistake, I read that as a rhetorical question/response, rather than a new question.

It's normal for chips to go through a few revisions/tapeouts from the early samples to the final version. So I'm sure that happened in 2022.
 
LiC said:
My mistake, I read that as a rhetorical question/response, rather than a new question.

It's normal for chips to go through a few revisions/tapeouts from the early samples to the final version. So I'm sure that happened in 2022.
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Got it. I had the wrong picture (mostly) for a while.

I was thinking it was more like they're testing components (capacitors, other auxiliary chips, etc) in combination with a finalized T239 (no more revisions). "Figuring out how to make it work with the T239 we have here that cannot be revised". That's what I thought the circuit boards were for.

But in fact, it sounds like they're also testing the T239 SoC itself, and keeping it open for potential revisions.
 
darthdiablo said:
Yeah - that's why I specifically avoided "mass production" mention. I was wondering what nvidia India was actually testing on at the time - were they testing on an actual T239 SoC, or were they merely testing on a "representation" of T239?

Reframing my question a bit - is it possible that nvidia India testing results will cause nvidia to need to modify the SOC template used for mass production? I know that's also not the question either, more of me learning about the process itself.
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My assumption is that they're testing on something like engineering samples. These would usually be pre-production-but-final chips, made in small batches for integrators. Really critical for things like CPUs, where you might have a dozen companies building motherboards and needing to test heat/electrical tolerances and the like.

I'm a little less familiar with what this process looks like for something like a custom SOC, where there is only one customer. Engineering samples that I've seen in the wild are all CPUs, and they do differ from final chips, usually in having more options for overclocking.

Nvidia has a reputation for really hashing these things out to the Nth degree in simulation, and not having many iterations to get electrical/thermal tolerances dialed in. I'm not an electrical engineer, so I won't pretend to understand exactly what goes on, but there is some highly granular control over how the high level chip design interacts with the low level physical properties of that process node, and that's what engineering samples are designed to tune in. So I don't think any actual features of the chip are being rethought at that point.
 
darthdiablo said:
Got it. I had the wrong picture (mostly) for a while.

I was thinking it was more like they're testing components (capacitors, other auxiliary chips, etc) in combination with a finalized T239 (no more revisions). "Figuring out how to make it work with the T239 we have here that cannot be revised". That's what I thought the circuit boards were for.

But in fact, it sounds like they're also testing the T239 SoC itself, and keeping it open for potential revisions.
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The SLT (system-level test) boards are for testing T239 in the context of a full system, but the thing being tested is T239, not the system. The other components are generics/stand-ins that are there to exercise T239's features.

And like oldpuck just mentioned, to be clear, the potential revisions are to physical implementation stuff, not features/design.
 
ILikeFeet said:
we'll never really know this. Nvidia will never bring it up and tegra division won't report increase in sales until after the product is out, probably.
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Tegra isn't a separate reporting division for Nvidia these days. Revenue from Nintendo is included in Nvidia's gaming segment, alongside their gaming GPUs, so any impact on revenue will be masked by fluctuations in the GPU market.
 
Unless something changed in recent years, I always felt like the people involved on the NVC podcast are woefully uninformed regarding basic hardware stuff even with the current switch so it's not surprising to see their speculation or following of leaks being hit and miss too.
 
Notsowise said:
She seems confident that it wont have joy cons or any kind of movement controls. She’s been saying she is afraid of that for quite some time now. Or she knows something or she is not a legend at all. Just pure marketing.
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That's sounds horrible. That means no bedtime mode. I hope you can at least pair some joy-cons to get around that, but it would still be a massive downgrade on the experience.

And no motion? That's barbaric!
 
Glom said:
That's sounds horrible. That means no bedtime mode. I hope you can at least pair some joy-cons to get around that, but it would still be a massive downgrade on the experience.

And no motion? That's barbaric!
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Maybe it will be as small as the Game Boy micro./s

But seriously no motion control is almost more unrealistic than no Joy Cons, every console since Wii had some form of Gyro.
 
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I don't know why people expect Nintendo to toss out some of the signature aspects of the Switch after just one generation. I see this everywhere. "Maybe no joy-con" "Maybe it's not a hybrid" "Maybe there's no dock".

(ok I do know why lol)
 
Manu_12 said:
I also think it's coming out in 2024 but let's be honest, this is what is said every single year. "2022? it's obvious that it's releasing in 2021, stop doomposting." and it just repeats every year, let people be skeptical if they want to.
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Yeah, but saying that 2025 is more likely, when we're only halfway through January is the problem, here. There's a fine line between skepticism and pessimism and I think more people have crossed that line throughout this thread than you realize.
 
Tron1 said:
That's not good. I thought worse case was PS4 level. There were some people stating this thing would perform better than series S in some cases.
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The worst case scenario would be portable XBox One, and stronger than the PS4 in the dock, there is no world in which this chip is used below 400mHz portable or below 600mHz in the Dock.
 
D36 said:
Yeah, but saying that 2025 is more likely, when we're only halfway through January is the problem, here. There's a fine line between skepticism and pessimism and I think more people have crossed that line throughout this thread than you realize.
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I feel like once we get through February we will get a much clearer picture with most likely a direct, earnings report, and Nate the Hate podcasts. For now I believe that 2024 makes the most sense. Next fiscal year feels like a total lock but until we get confirmation we will not know for sure.
 
Tron1 said:
That's not good. I thought worse case was PS4 level. There were some people stating this thing would perform better than series S in some cases.
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PS4 is still worse case scenario in handheld mode. Series S is off the table thanks to how much power is flowing through the Series S. the move to 7nm to 5nm doesn't allow for this big a jump
 
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