• Hey everyone, staff have documented a list of banned content and subject matter that we feel are not consistent with site values, and don't make sense to host discussion of on Famiboards. This list (and the relevant reasoning per item) is viewable here.

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

Reader mode
BreakAtmo said:
My understanding of rollback is that if you build the game around it from the start then it's easier to add, and patching it into a change after-the-fact it's far more difficult - is that accurate?
Click to expand...
For rollback you mainly need a game engine that can do three things:
  1. Be deterministic.
  2. Rewind state.
  3. Advance state quickly and outside of the rendering pipeline.
All three are varying degrees of "hard" but I'd guess most engines these days can do the deterministic part. The rewinding and replaying state are the two bigger points IMO, and making core changes like are very tricky to do.
 
kingman said:
I may have asked this before, but wouldn't 16 GB be overkill for Switch 2 given the rest of its specs?
Click to expand...

Probably would minimize catastrophic RAM misses where the game has to resort to asking the SSD for data, but I don’t know how common that is even with a reasonable amount of RAM in console games.
 
Aufhebung RPG said:
So is 16GB RAM a potential clue or just wishful expectation?

Edit:The information I've come across basically points to 12GB, and 16GB just seems like a nice vision.
Click to expand...
there's no clue about any ram amount. people assume 12 or 16 because that's what's common on the market and easy to source. the Switch has equivalent amount of ram as flagships of the year it launched. flagships today are around 12GB, but some crazy phones go as high as 24GB (and some "flagships" go as low as 8GB)
 
GPKs3 said:
There's gotta be something at this meeting on May 7th, even if it's as simple as "We have new hardware coming this fiscal year. It's gonna kick all kinds of ass. Nintendo, bitches. We out."
Click to expand...
I don't know, I feel like we won't get anything until the fall, via a trailer. I know it might be a little too early to predict the rest of the year without any insight as to what to expect, but this will probably be a relatively light year for Nintendo and they seem confident that they can ride out this last year of the Switch. If they're keeping their cards this close to their chest, why reveal them to investors, when they honestly don't need to?

Also, Goddamn, the next meeting is next week? I've definitely been gone for a minute, lol.
 
ILikeFeet said:
there's no clue about any ram amount. people assume 12 or 16 because that's what's common on the market and easy to source. the Switch has equivalent amount of ram as flagships of the year it launched. flagships today are around 12GB, but some crazy phones go as high as 24GB (and some "flagships" go as low as 8GB)
Click to expand...
So until there are further clues I'm choosing to lower my expectations for Nintendo and think of 16GB as a nice vision, more likely 12GB
 
TLZ said:
I hope Switch 2 isn't conservative and more like Nextgen PS5 and XSX. I didn't wait 8 years for a conservative pro version.
Click to expand...
Hermii said:
They mean conservative conceptually compared to previous Nintendo gens where there was something radically new. This info says nothing about specs under the hood. We have the Nvidia leak for that.
Click to expand...

They mean how the new hardware will mostly likely be positioned as. More "pro" than anything else, is what they are theorizing.

Just because it will play Switch library of games with better graphics and performance and resolution doesn't mean it will be treated like a normal gen breaking, successor type thing.

Simbinha said:
My sincere guess is a June console reveal with a March 2025 launch date.
Click to expand...

I cant see any reality where Nintendo announces this new hardware 9 months before it releases.

Why would they need that kind of leadtime? There are only downsides doing that.

If its not releasing in 2024, The Summer Direct will be showing mostly games releasing Sept-Dec anyways. And if they do show a couple of hype 2025 titles...they can just show it running on the current hardware. A reveal or announcement this summer isn't necessary for 2025 hardware.
 
My Tulpa said:
10 seconds in, I can totally see babies' fingers being severed.

I think "magnet lawsuits" is going to be the new "drifting lawsuits". Nintendo continues to not think about the children with all their baffling choices.
Click to expand...
Bro what, its not got the atomic force of a truck slamming against each other 😭

Its a magnet. There is no way Nintendo's engineers have not thought of these concerns!!
 
My Tulpa said:
10 seconds in, I can totally see babies' fingers being severed.

I think "magnet lawsuits" is going to be the new "drifting lawsuits". Nintendo continues to not think about the children with all their baffling choices.
Click to expand...
Have these other companies gotten similar lawsuits? No? Then Nintendo isn't either. Like... What
 
My Tulpa said:
10 seconds in, I can totally see babies' fingers being severed.

I think "magnet lawsuits" is going to be the new "drifting lawsuits". Nintendo continues to not think about the children with all their baffling choices.
Click to expand...
with nothing between two magnets, they’ll slap together

but it doesn’t necessarily mean there’s enough force to sever a baby’s finger

like I can put my phone on its MagSafe charger and it slaps on there real good. Put my finger between? Eh, nothing.
 
Aufhebung RPG said:
Who else but Nate?So-called industry insiders to speaking means nothing because there are no working "industry insiders" at Nintendo.
Click to expand...
Good to add that SD have aleardy 16 in 2021, so is completely reasonable to expect 16 from Console release in 2025, also knowing that the biggest complain in Series S is RAM
 
My Tulpa said:
10 seconds in, I can totally see babies' fingers being severed.

I think "magnet lawsuits" is going to be the new "drifting lawsuits". Nintendo continues to not think about the children with all their baffling choices.
Click to expand...
Who suggested Nintendo Switch Blade a few days ago? lol.

My name tag for work has some pretty strong magnets (stupidly strong for the tiny piece of plastic it holds up), maybe half as strong as would be needed for joy-con 2.0, and there's not going to be any baby-finger-severing. Worst case scenario is a few kids get the skin on their fingers pinched and they're red and sore for half a day. That's less serious than getting caught in your pants zipper, and so far as I know YKK isn't bankrupted by lawsuits.
 
Gerald said:
Good to add that SD have aleardy 16 in 2021, so is completely reasonable to expect 16 from Console release in 2025, also knowing that the biggest complain in Series S is RAM
Click to expand...
I mean, you don't need to look for so-called "industry insiders" to give yourself credit when you think it's going to be 16GB of RAM, because the exact number of RAM is all based on speculation at this point.
 
0
However, I'm curious as to where drake's VRAM advantage lies, about which there was mainly a discussion under that thread the other day when we also mentioned VRAM's advantage over AMD's gpu when mentioning that drake has architectural advantages.
 
0
My Tulpa said:
They mean how the new hardware will mostly likely be positioned as. More "pro" than anything else, is what they are theorizing.

Just because it will play Switch library of games with better graphics and performance and resolution doesn't mean it will be treated like a normal gen breaking, successor type thing.
Click to expand...
Are we still on this 'Switch Next won't get exclusives' thing?
 
My Tulpa said:
Just because it will play Switch library of games with better graphics and performance and resolution doesn't mean it will be treated like a normal gen breaking, successor type thing.
Click to expand...
Is it also your position that Switch 2 won't be called a successor, despite Switch 2 getting games that cannot be ran on Switch 1?
 
Nintendo doubled the RAM from Wii U to Switch, and that was four years AFTER the PS4/Xb1 came out, and was half their amounts. Nintendo quadrupling their RAM from the Switch and matching the PS5/Xbsx would be quite the tall order. I'm on team 12 GB, myself.
 
I only want to drop by and say that if you want to imagine the switch NEXT and steam deck, envision this:

Switch 2 is a bus that can carry 30 people but only travels at max 25MPH/~40KPH, while the deck is a pickup truck that can carry 10 people but only travels max 45MPH/~72KPH, and the destination is a stop that is 10Miles/ ~16Kilometers away and you need to deliver 100 people, who will get to the 100 people delivery the fastest?


Food for thought.
 
kingman said:
Nintendo doubled the RAM from Wii U to Switch, and that was four years AFTER the PS4/Xb1 came out, and was half their amounts. Nintendo quadrupling their RAM from the Switch and matching the PS5/Xbsx would be quite the tall order. I'm on team 12 GB, myself.
Click to expand...
Not really comparable because higher than 4GB wasn't really a thing until just after Switch launched. We have phones with 24GB of ram now

kingman said:
Wait, 102 GB/s is MINIMUM? i thought that's the maximum for LPDDR5, and 136 GB/s is the maximum for LPDDR5X?
Click to expand...
That's assuming they go with LPDDR5. I'm expecting LPDDR5X. And I don't see them having the peak under 102GB/s. Not with a 4K target
 
kingman said:
Nintendo doubled the RAM from Wii U to Switch, and that was four years AFTER the PS4/Xb1 came out, and was half their amounts. Nintendo quadrupling their RAM from the Switch and matching the PS5/Xbsx would be quite the tall order. I'm on team 12 GB, myself.
Click to expand...
I wonder what should Nintendo expect? I think if we start asking ourselves questions more than we can find out what Nintendo would do.
  1. What do our (Nintendo) developers expect?
  2. What are our third party partners are asking for?
  3. Can we risk not having what they need?
  4. Can our developers work with the limit we gave them?
  5. Did we have enough system resource last time?
  6. What's new in tech and what is needed to make that tech functional?
If 8 was minimum for last gen and ray tracing is memory expensive and so is a 4K frame buffer then maybe 8 GB isn't on the table.
 
ILikeFeet said:
That's assuming they go with LPDDR5. I'm expecting LPDDR5X. And I don't see them having the peak under 102GB/s. Not with a 4K target
Click to expand...
Do you feel that since Nintendo has only one console instead of two they want something more performant? Idk, I get the feeling they don't want to come very lackluster performance wise.
 
seyfeselassie said:
Midori claiming every Atlus and Sega remake planned is coming to Switch 2, looks like Sega is going all in on Nintendo's next console.

Click to expand...

I've said before that thanks to Square the Switch has been the modern SNES I've always wanted, and now if Midori's right the 2witch might end up being the modern Genesis ❤️❤️❤️
 
ZaSpai said:
Random thought about the magnet side of successor joycon connections - if say the SL and SR buttons had some sort of small elbow bend / hook (/ loop), that the console edge / rail or whatever could interface with and securely hold position with whichever form of magnet works out best from an engineering perspective, could that potentially be enough from a structural integrity perspective to not end up as an expensive OHS hazard? I’d guess that the form factor (from size mainly) may make this unduly fiddly with micro-parts doing the work, but I’m no engineer so this practical problem’s not in my scope.
Click to expand...
They did say that the SL and SR buttons are now made of metals so probably the SL and SR buttons are the magnets.
 
Aether said:
That's what I thought before reading here there and on Reddit about "don't use other chargers" "Nintendos implementation is non standard, it could fry your switch!" And stuff like that...

(Ironically it's mostly people from the us... Maybe they sell way more crap chargers in stores? I still have tons of quality ones...)

Yeah, you convinced me.
Click to expand...

kvetcha said:
I'm assuming (perhaps unwisely) that Switch Next will adhere to USB-C PD standards. Switch Classic decidedly did not.
Click to expand...

Much like the Miracast in the Wii-U, USB-C is very much new when Nintendo started implementing it thus standards have not been used widely.
 
While I'm waiting for Luigi's Mansion 2, I was playing LM3 again, and this time handheld only. For me, this is the prettiest game on Switch. I know, those closed environments help a lot.

But I'm surprised that, in handheld, the game is using the 307.2 MHz profile. All the 1st party titles I have played use the other two profiles. I really can't wait to see what Next Level Games is cooking having ~10 times more GPU juice.
 
Last edited:
chocolate_supra said:
I've said before that thanks to Square the Switch has been the modern SNES I've always wanted, and now if Midori's right the 2witch might end up being the modern Genesis ❤️❤️❤️
Click to expand...
All Sega needs to do now is give Yokoyama a firm slap to the face and get him to port the next few Like a Dragon games to Switch 2. Infinite Wealth released on the Xbox One for fuck's sake.
 
redmutineer75 said:
All Sega needs to do now is give Yokoyama a firm slap to the face and get him to port the next few Like a Dragon games to Switch 2. Infinite Wealth released on the Xbox One for fuck's sake.
Click to expand...
It make sense to me. You have e this platform that dominates your home country and it can finally run your games and you won't put it on there. Just run a billboard and say you don't like money.
 
Aufhebung RPG said:
I don't have any inside info, I mean most of the speculation I've seen in related discussions points to 12GB (sorry I didn't express myself clearly)
Click to expand...

Real quick: The reason 12GB is the lower end is because at the time, the lowest nodes available and for the price (at the time), would've been 6GB sticks. It's why 8GB would not be the target, as 4GB wasn't available at the time of potentially finalizing the specs and when it was, it would've still been cheaper to have used the 6GB.
 
0
Tentacle-tropes said:
And they absolutely want to make a profit on the next device. There is no reason for them to incur unnecessary losses for little gain; it has little to do with WiiU & everything to do with the current economic market.
Click to expand...

I don't believe Nintendo is trying to make a profit off this new hardware.

I think they would love to be able to break even as much as possible that first year, and be somewhat ok with taking a slight loss so as this thing doesnt have too much a sticker shock.

AshenMortality said:
I ve read that the Chinese leaker mentions that the upgrade to switch 2 will be a rather conservative one akin to a switch Pro….Do all the tech kids here share the same sentiment or it is just the leaker’s view?
Click to expand...

A conservative positioning similar to a "Switch pro" is probably the most sensible guess at this point. Its the smartest bet. Supposedly BotW looks and runs fantastic on it! :p

There have been no leaks or insider knowledge (that im aware of) that suggest the new hardware does anything new or innovative in terms of gameplay. We only know that it greatly enhances Switch library graphics/performance compared to the other models. As well as some cosmetic changes (give it a more premium model quality)

yohoopzcrazy said:
I think the general sentiment is something akin to the DS -> 3DS transition - no changes to the core design (clamshell dual screen), but improvements in other areas like the addition of the circle pad, glassless 3D, proper OS with a HOME button, etc., and of course the power increase.
Click to expand...

I don't even think this thing will have anything close to going from 2d to 3d in gameplay. If there is any new innovation or "gimmick" that fundamentally changes their Switch game design going forward...we haven't heard anything about it.

So this seems more like 3DS - > n3DS XL transition.

Bigger screen, extra gameplay button, colored buttons!, QOL upgrades...but sharing, primarily, a very similar library.

I know people will yell at me about the power increase being substantially bigger than that example, and while that's of course true, i dont think that makes a difference how Nintendo positions it within its family of devices. I think much of that t239 R&D and going "wide" with its hugely increased CUDA core GPU structure was necessary to make DLSS/light RT on a basement dwelling absolute minimally clocked, minimally powered device actually possible and effective. I dont think its "power overkill" in order to have 4k/60fps DLSS Switch library gaming on a mobile chip within a relatively small portable device.
 
Codename_Steam said:
Nintendo stared NX development around 2014 for a 2016 launch window. Why is Nintendo taking a much longer time for Switch 2?

Didn’t we start hearing about a DLSS Switch around early 2021? What happened?
Click to expand...
Because it's take minimum 2 years to develop a new console
 
0
oldpuck said:
No, it isn't. Details lower down! Or you could just trust me ;-)


It's the max speed of LPDDR5 on a 128-bit bus. We know that Drake has a 128-bit bus from both the Nvidia hack and the Linux drivers, and LPDDR5 is the memory controller in Orin. Technically, it could go lower - Steam Deck also has a 128-bit bus and LPDDR5, but the OG model only goes up to 88 GB/s, probably for power reasons, though they jacked that up to the full 102.4 GB/s with the OLED model.

Technically it could also go higher, if they use a newer standard like 5X instead of 5. 5X claims power savings and performance increases, but it doesn't actually apply to Drake. The way 5X (and 4X before it) work is that the LPDDR5 standard gets set, then afterward Samsung manages to node shrink the memory and the memory controller. That creates power savings, and 5X is just an "official overclock" that allows phone manufacturers (also Samsung) to take advantage of the node shrink while waiting for the next big standard (LPDDR6) to come out.

That means for Drake, the power draw is pretty much baked into the SOC regardless of the name of the standard. As for the extra performance, it probably isn't super useful (again, see below).


This is all true, but the big win for Drake over the PS4 comes from the modern GPU. GPUs (both AMD and Nvidia's, though Nvidia got their first) changed their architecture so they don't use as much memory bandwidth.

Imagine you've got two shaders, one of which does anti-aliasing and another which does motion blur (these are just examples, the shaders can do anything). Both of these work per pixel, so they need to read from memory all the information about each pixel then write to memory the final result. Both of these use memory bandwidth.

The PS4 starts at the top right of the screen, and scans each pixel right to left, top to bottom, and runs the anti-aliasing shader. Then once that is complete, the motion-blur shader does the same thing.

Drake (and all other modern GPUs) cuts the screen up into smaller rectangles called tiles. For each tile, the GPU does the same process as the PS4, it starts in one corner, runs the first shader, and then when the shader completes, it starts the second shader.

This matters because of the cache. Both GPUs have caches that keep copies of data that is currently being worked on. Cache is much faster than memory, but also much more expensive, so it's much smaller. Newer data pushes old data out of cache, under the general principle that the thing you're most likely to use again is the thing you just used.

By running the anti-aliasing shader before the motion blur shader, the PS4 guarantees that the data the motion blur shader needs first - the pixels in the top right corner of the screen - has been pushed out by the data it needs last - the pixels in the bottom left that the anti-aliasing shader was just working on.

By splitting the screen up into much smaller tiles, the whole tile fits in cache. So for that tile, once the anti-aliasing shader is finished, the motion-blur shader never needs to use memory bandwidth. It's all in cache from the previous shader!

This also has a second knock on effect - different GPU cores can be working on different tiles at the same time (there are multiple tiers of cache, some of which are shared between cores, and some of which are not). This allows a modern GPU to be reading data for one part of the frame while rendering another, instead of needing to read/render/read/render. It's like the difference between a garden hose that goes straight to the garden, and a big bucket that you have to haul from the kitchen. The kitchen faucet might push out water faster but the garden hose never turns off, so they actually move the same amount of water in the same amount of time.

TL;DR - You can't compare the memory bandwidth situation on PS4 and Drake. That leads to the second question, is the 102.4 GB/s enough for Drake. And the answer is probably "yes".

TDR;NTL;GM (Totally Did Read, Not Too Long, Gimme More):

Each core in the GPU needs a certain amount of memory to do it's work, and the faster the cores, the more reads they'll need to do, so the more bandwidth they'll need. How much bandwidth each core needs will depend on the kind of work the shader is being asked to do, which varies by engine, and by game.

So to answer this question for Drake, a chip we don't have, we need to 1) Figure out a way to measure the combination of cores and their speed. 2) Benchmark a bunch of modern games on Drake's architecture. 3) Benchmark at different levels of cores and speeds, to see how Drake's architecture scales, and 4) Benchmark with the same cores and speed, but different amounts of memory bandwidth, to see what the right amount is. 5) Compare that to Drake

Number 1 is easy - that's what TFLOPS are. Number 2 is actually also easy, the internet is full of RTX 30 benchmarks and Digital Foundry's are particularly good for this purpose.

Number 3, I'll skip the big table, because I've shared this data before, but the entry level and midrange cards scale pretty well. In other words, if you look at the TFLOPS of a card, you can guess the performance pretty well. That says that Drake, which is a very small RTX 30 GPU, will probably run about how we expect, all else being equal.

Number 4 is hard, because we can't go build an RTX 30 GPU just for testing. Fortunately, Nvidia sells enough "Super" and "Ti" versions of cards, that we can actually compare benchmarks of the same chip with more memory bandwidth. And when we do, basically, the extra bandwidth doesn't seem to matter. 25GB/s/TFLOP is pretty consistently the sweet spot, across the line.

That leaves number 5, compare to Drake. Drake has 102.4GB/s of bandwidth, at max. One tiny challenge, that bandwidth has to also support a CPU. Let's be pessimistic and ballpark 20% of the bandwidth for the CPU. That leaves ~82GB/s for the GPU to eat.

We know that Drake has 1536 cores. So we just gotta ask what clock speed we can handle. Working backwards, that's enough bandwidth to support ~1.1Ghz clock speeds, or about 3.25 TFLOPS. @Thraktor has done his own analysis with power and heat and landed on a "optimum" clock speed of ~1.3Ghz.

All of that nicely lines up. Drake has a design that seems optimized for power efficiency (lots of cores), memory bandwidth is power-expensive, and Drake's clock speed curves matches the amount of bandwidth allocated.

Those Nvidia folks seem to know what they're doing.
Click to expand...
Nvidia + Nintendo = perfect combo when they are making heavy customised processor
 
NintenDuvo said:
The difference with this meeting is that it encompasses for the whole Fiscal Year ending in March 2025, which is the rumored timing for the next device, so there is hope that at least we can get a mention out of Nintendo
Click to expand...

When was the last time Nintendo revealed/announced new hardware at a FY meeting?

My Tulpa said:
And i like your Ad pitch, but im willing to bet much of it will also show people with older Switches (and joy-cons) gaming with people and their New Switch.
Click to expand...
kvetcha said:
I feel like this veers dangerously close to 'Wii U New Controller' territory.
Click to expand...

Naw.

The Wii U was trying to offer something different at the time. It was trying to show how it played games differently. Nintendoland spoke directly to that promise/sales pitch.

Nintendo stopped putting games on the Wii in 2011. It was a long dead ecosystem in their eyes.

Nothing is similar here.
 
Shoulder said:
Nintendo's engineers are like anyone else really. Just regular people who are hired to do a job. But said job can only be accomplished effectively, and efficiently provided they have the required time, and resources. They are no more special than anyone in any other field.

Why did TOTK turn out so good from a technical perspective? Time. That's all it was. Nothing groundbreaking. Just time. They weren't rushed by some arbitrary deadline in order to meet some bean counter's demands. The team took their time, and Nintendo was more than willing to let that happen.
Click to expand...
Plenty of games had a ton of time only to flop.

Suicide Squad is a famous example that took over 10 years to create.

Nintendo engineers are regular people, that are being treated very well though. Nintendo keeps talent, and allows people to hone their craft. They don't do bullshit layoffs for their developers, they properly scope and manage their games.

That makes the biggest difference out of everything. Because, how can you make something good when you are constantly hopping companies every 18 months just to be laid off again and start over at another project. There is no incentive to really hone everything.

Also, the fact that Nintendo includes everyone on the team in the creative process too.
 
Reader mode
You must log in or register to reply here.
Please read this staff post before posting.

Furthermore, according to this follow-up post, all off-topic chat will be moderated.
Last edited:


Back
Top Bottom