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

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carbvan said:
Saw some mentions a few pages back of the RAM actually being a multiple of 6 (ie 6, 12, 18 or 24). Now obviously I doubt they'd go 18gb of RAM or above, so that leaves 6 and 12. So what makes everyone do confident it's 12 and not 6? Not trying to be a downer but I didn't get the explanations from before, maybe that's on me for scrolling too fast.
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If you read the last page you would know.
 
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carbvan said:
Saw some mentions a few pages back of the RAM actually being a multiple of 6 (ie 6, 12, 18 or 24). Now obviously I doubt they'd go 18gb of RAM or above, so that leaves 6 and 12. So what makes everyone do confident it's 12 and not 6? Not trying to be a downer but I didn't get the explanations from before, maybe that's on me for scrolling too fast.
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Half of the bus would be unused and 2x4GB would probably be cheaper and grant dual channel benefits.
 
darthdiablo said:
Correct. Weak yen means exports are more desirable/profitable.

Weak yen doesn't put an upward pressure on MSRP for units being sold outside Japan, at least in countries where yen is weak against the other currency.
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I would also assume most of Nintendo's costs for the hardware are in USD (ie components and manufacturing costs), so the value of the Yen will have more of an impact on how much they'll need to charge in Japan than the rest of the world.
 
carbvan said:
Saw some mentions a few pages back of the RAM actually being a multiple of 6 (ie 6, 12, 18 or 24). Now obviously I doubt they'd go 18gb of RAM or above, so that leaves 6 and 12. So what makes everyone do confident it's 12 and not 6? Not trying to be a downer but I didn't get the explanations from before, maybe that's on me for scrolling too fast.
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12 has the benefit of being a dual channel setup while 6 is a single channel.
Dual Channel means a more efficient process. If they were going lower than 12 it would probably be dual 4GB for 8GB total instead
 
carbvan said:
Saw some mentions a few pages back of the RAM actually being a multiple of 6 (ie 6, 12, 18 or 24). Now obviously I doubt they'd go 18gb of RAM or above, so that leaves 6 and 12. So what makes everyone do confident it's 12 and not 6? Not trying to be a downer but I didn't get the explanations from before, maybe that's on me for scrolling too fast.
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there is no dual channel 3GB chip. so the only way 6GB would work is if they used one, single channel 6GB chip. that caps bandwidth to 60GB/s
 
carbvan said:
Saw some mentions a few pages back of the RAM actually being a multiple of 6 (ie 6, 12, 18 or 24). Now obviously I doubt they'd go 18gb of RAM or above, so that leaves 6 and 12. So what makes everyone do confident it's 12 and not 6? Not trying to be a downer but I didn't get the explanations from before, maybe that's on me for scrolling too fast.
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Here you go:
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Future Nintendo Hardware & Technology Speculation & Discussion |ST| (Read the staff posts before commenting!)

Everyone here agrees that the switch pokemon games look and run like poopoo, so better off without this disussion. The switch 2 could be as powerful as the ps5 pro and the games will continue to look like appstore shovelware.
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carbvan said:
Saw some mentions a few pages back of the RAM actually being a multiple of 6 (ie 6, 12, 18 or 24). Now obviously I doubt they'd go 18gb of RAM or above, so that leaves 6 and 12. So what makes everyone do confident it's 12 and not 6? Not trying to be a downer but I didn't get the explanations from before, maybe that's on me for scrolling too fast.
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Asked, answered. I asked this too after I realized I didn't question the 12 GB claim (and I know LiC doesn't normally make claims without explicit proof)

Nvidia leaks mention 128-bit bus. 6GB modules references in shipment data is 64-bit bus.

So 2 modules. 6GB x 2 = 12GB.
 
Raccoon said:
definitely disappointed by the size but I'm feeling very grateful for leaks for once

if we hadn't been warned eons ago I would've been despondent

now instead it just feels like an inevitable bummer. like when an old cat dies
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@Raccoon's bag arc starts now
 
Hi all, anything new?

Just kidding, I just read up on the last 20 pages. I stated months before that I personally feel that RAM bandwidth is a more important investment than absolute RAM capacity, at least in the battle between 16GB LPDDR5 and 12GB LPDDR5X. I'm glad to read we seem to be getting the latter.

I wonder how big of a deal 12GB vs. 16GB actually is for a device like this Switch 2 tbh. Games will probably use lower quality assets, which reduces the need for capacity vs. PS5/XSX. And additionally the decompression engine and high speed storage help with refreshing RAM contents pretty quickly anyway. So I feel having higher bandwidth, which feeds data from RAM to CPU and GPU and prevents those from stalling, is more important as a bottleneck than RAM capacity in my humble estimation.
 
Dakhil said:
Considering that HoYoverse mentioned that Android smartphones equipped with the Snapdragon 865, Dimensity 1200 (renamed as Dimensity 8050), Kirin 9000SL, Samsung Exynos 1080, or less powerful SoCs, will see reduced visual performance after the release of version 5.0, I think HoYoverse is no longer considering releasing Genshin Impact on the Nintendo Switch.
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Haha yeah that seems like a very reasonable conclusion. We've already seen how it could potentially run (with an overclock) on Android (with a Mariko switch) Geekerwan video about it . You can even see in the chapter before that how that overclocked device compared in a synthetic GPU benchmark against the Snapdragon 865, and it fell below that, although in Geekerwan's testing they mention how the CPU could be primarily bottlenecking the performance.
Interestingly enough the PS4 is also included in the reduced visual performance and I suspect that mostly comes down to its CPU.

edit; PS4 and PS4 Pro !
 
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Noleth said:
So essentially, we have nearly the entire system’s specs, excluding the power node and I think CPU?
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I assume you mean CPU clock speeds (we know the CPU, or rather the SoC). But yeah, if we know clock speeds that would narrow it down a lot for us for node process, barring a dieshot analysis (which is expensive).
 
darthdiablo said:
I am not as educated as some here are on relationship between SoC (or CPU) clock speed and RAM speed, but isn't SoC/CPU normally clocked at much higher speed than RAM?

Making me think RAM speed won't really tell us anything about SoC/CPU clock speeds.
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RAM Speeds and CPU clocks used to have a relationship between them back to 30 years ago due to the way CPUs were back then. It hasn't been true anymore since ~20 years. So, yes, it tell us nothing.
Noleth said:
So essentially, we have nearly the entire system’s specs, excluding the power node and I think CPU?
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CPU is 8 core Cortex A78C. We don't know clocks for GPU and CPU neither the node.
 
darthdiablo said:
Asked, answered. I asked this too after I realized I didn't question the 12 GB claim (and I know LiC doesn't normally make claims without explicit proof)

Nvidia leaks mention 128-bit bus. 6GB modules references in shipment data is 64-bit bus.

So 2 modules. 6GB x 2 = 12GB.
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Follow up question that is stupid: other than being wasteful, what would prevent them from just sticking 1 stick of 6gb in the thing.
 
darthdiablo said:
I assume you mean CPU clock speeds (we know the CPU, or rather the SoC). But yeah, if we know clock speeds that would narrow it down a lot for us for node process, barring a dieshot analysis (which is expensive).
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No I meant the actual CPU, it has been a while since I’ve kept up with the specs so I’ve forgotten several details.
 
darthdiablo said:
8 cores Cortex A78C
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Ghostsonplanets said:
RAM Speeds and CPU clocks used to have a relationship between them back to 30 years ago due to the way CPUs were back then. It hasn't been true anymore since ~20 years. So, yes, it tell us nothing.

CPU is 8 core Cortex A78C. We don't know clocks for GPU and CPU neither the node.
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Alright, thanks
Currently now begging for the clock speed and node to be good.
 
For those wondering if 12GB of RAM and 256GB UFS 3.1 would make Switch 2 particularly expensive compared to the original, I think it's worth pointing to a post I made at the start of this year which used notebookcheck review data to analyse the progression of RAM and storage in mobile phones over the past decade, to see how technology has changed since the original Switch. I'll just quote the last paragraph here:

Thraktor said:
If we were to look purely at changes in the smartphone market from 2016 to 2023, we've seen, on average, an 8.6x increase in storage capacity, a 7x increase in storage speed and a 3.4x increase in RAM capacity. If Nintendo's hardware choices for Switch 2 were to scale alongside this, we would expect 275GB of storage, 2.1GB/s storage read speeds and 13.6GB of RAM. Or, if we choose the closest parts which are actually available, it would be 256GB of UFS 3.1 storage and 12GB of RAM.
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With 256GB UFS 3.1 and 12GB of RAM, Switch 2 is in pretty much exactly the spot we'd expect it to be given improvements in technology since the original Switch. That doesn't necessarily mean it would be the same price as the original Switch, but it suggests that they're targeting the same ballpark, adjusting for inflation.
 
carbvan said:
Follow up question that is stupid: other than being wasteful, what would prevent them from just sticking 1 stick of 6gb in the thing.
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They woudn't leave a slot in dual channel setup blank. If cost was a factor, they'd just stick 2 x 4GB to make it 8GB.
 
carbvan said:
Follow up question that is stupid: other than being wasteful, what would prevent them from just sticking 1 stick of 6gb in the thing.
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Unless someone giga-goofed with the design of the chip, which compared to the past is a more particularly chip designed by NVIDIA with Nintendo for the specific purpose of being in a gaming console, and there is a major instability in the memory controller, not being able to handle two chips at a certain clock frequency, and it's more stable to just use one. Or there is a sudden price inflation by all memory chip suppliers, who quadruples the memory chip prices. Making it more expensive to use two instead of 1, then they could stick with 1 memory chip.
Game devs will have to take the hit and design their games to use half of the expected bandwidth they may have been using with their dev kits.
 
Thraktor said:
For those wondering if 12GB of RAM and 256GB UFS 3.1 would make Switch 2 particularly expensive compared to the original, I think it's worth pointing to a post I made at the start of this year which used notebookcheck review data to analyse the progression of RAM and storage in mobile phones over the past decade, to see how technology has changed since the original Switch. I'll just quote the last paragraph here:



With 256GB UFS 3.1 and 12GB of RAM, Switch 2 is in pretty much exactly the spot we'd expect it to be given improvements in technology since the original Switch. That doesn't necessarily mean it would be the same price as the original Switch, but it suggests that they're targeting the same ballpark, adjusting for inflation.
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So doing the maths $300 in 2017 is about $380 in 2024, at a minimum anyway of what to expect.
 
something crazy to think about. we're not far from this thread closure, what announcements would bring this thread to a close? Or maybe we'll have to wait for someone to open the console and see what's inside?
 
Kartina said:
something crazy to think about. we're not far from this thread closure, what announcements would bring this thread to a close? Or maybe we'll have to wait for someone to open the console and see what's inside?
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Well there's always the future, so if I stick around, maybe we'll see eachother again for the Switch NGNG aka 3.
 
Given the breadth of information we have:
T239's GPU size
Thraktor's power data
DLSS test data
SoC design and tape-out timeline
Rough die sizes and costs
Nvidia engineer LinkedIn profile leaks
And now
Higher than anticipated memory bandwidth and,
A device as slim as Switch 1...

Yeah it's on 4N
 
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YolkFolk said:
How do people feel about 256GB of storage - taking into account the potential size of third party games?
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Not terribly concerned.

It didn't take me that long to run out of space on Switch 1 internal storage - I probably ran out within 1st year of owning Switch. It've been SD card ever since.
 
GrandDemand said:
Given the breadth of information we have:
T239's GPU size
Thraktor's power data
DLSS test data
SoC design and tape-out timeline Rough die sizes and costs
Nvidia engineer LinkedIn profile leaks
And now
Higher than anticipated memory bandwidth and
A device as slim as Switch 1...

Yeah it's on 4N
Click to expand...

We don't know if it's as slim as Switch 1. What we're looking at could be only part of the shell of the console, ie just the front, or just the back, and when combined, it could be thicker.
 
Thraktor said:
We don't know if it's as slim as Switch 1. What we're looking at could be only part of the shell of the console, ie just the front, or just the back, and when combined, it could be thicker.
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Yeah that was a touch overzealous of me. Similar thickness to Switch 1 then
 
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