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

[ReddDreadtheLead]

But comparing CUs to SMs like that doesn’t make sense. It‘s an apples to watermelons comparison. 1536 to 2304 would be a better way to put it.

If I did that the 6950XT would only be half the performance of the 3090, which we know isn’t true outside of Ray Tracing.

The 6950XT has 80CUs and the 3090 has 82 active SMs. The whole architecture of the 6950XT has it perform very closely to the 3090. Note I said the whole architecture.

That’s because of low bandwidth and Qualcomm GPUs architectures are not desktop class.

The Switch’s 2 GPU is desktop class.

There’s been a blur between desktop and mobile GPUs where the distinction isn’t as significant, especially when mobile GPUs aren’t scaled up significantly like a desktop GPU. As to the second point, Switch will also not have the same bandwidth! It’ll be 120GB/s (docked) vs the 217GB/s. Though, the architectural advancements help in this regard.

if it had that SLC, I think it would offer a nice bonus to reduce need to reach out to the RAM often.

 

[Darknut85]

For a time now I tried to wrap my head around the situation regarding upgrades. As the folks from GVG mentioned in their video, Nintendo COULD ask for an upgrade fee to unlock better visuals and performance for existing titles. As they also said, I think it's clear that this wouldn't fare with everyone that well and so I figured, why not make that a part of NSO too?
Hear me out, I know it's a bad move to lock everything in regards to performance behind a paywall, but I think implementing it for "free" for NSO user would get them a couple more subscribers and maybe that wouldn't look that bad compared to an upgrade fee of 10 bucks for every game you own.
Any thoughts and/or comments on that?

Even worse.

 

[Hermii]

@oldpuck

Is muji THE same thing you heard?

 

[ZaSpai]

For the record, irrespective of the veracity or accuracy of the codename, how did the boards manage to get so worked up over a basic spoiler post from an account that made its first post? (I do have other thoughts about fresh accounts posting in Hardware Spec as their first, but that’s a discussion for elsewhere.) Of course, expecting outsiders looking in to keep themselves in check was always going to be a losing battle.

Certainly would like to see more official sources trickle in the coming months to further consolidate the excellent synthesis the crew here have done (and cut through as much of the conflicting commentary that’s only bound to exponentially grow from now…)

 

[Aufhebung RPG]

That’s not how that would work out. These are two different architectures from two different companies. A CU is a CU, and an SM is an SM, these are the GPU “Cores”.

Later gens, like RDNA2 (or RDNA1? I can’t remember) and later, offer a WorkGroup Processor where it more shares resources more evenly if need be.

There have been times where AMD and Nvidia have been toe to toe and it has the same CU to SM count! Nvidia edging ahead because they had a few more.

Oh this doesn’t really have anything to do with that ideology on withered technology, I think they’ve been more loose with that for a few years now.

I think there’s a bit of a misunderstanding and taking what I’m saying as meaning “it’s dated and old”


Well, it helps that the switch doesn’t use the CELL processor, which was difficult. And it helps that it’s a much more popular system. And that it has a lower level API. And that it is a physically larger GPU, technically.


OK, you are somehow going way off topic here, you’re coming at me for talking to someone and addressing them as ma’am which is the most respectful way I can address someone that does not like to be infantilized by the term girl. If she doesn’t like that, she can say it herself. She has a voice and she can ask me how she wants me to address her and I’ll gladly comply as I’ve always done so. I can’t read minds. And this has nothing to do with the content of the post, there’s gonna be some extreme disappointment later on down the line when things are revealed because people were expecting PlayStation 4 Pro tier visuals before DLSS was even put there.

Teraflops does not translate to actual GPU performance of what people look for, when you’re comparing different architectures from different companies. 3.5 Tflop of Drake does not really mean it is going to be comparable to the PlayStation 4 Pro. It just means it is close to it in performing FP32 floating point operations per second, that’s all.


This reminds me of the whole “13TFLOPs of Turing would becomes 20TFLOPs of Ampere because it’s more efficient and somehow the same performance of Ampere despite having less! Means ampere is less efficient!” of 2020. A slog. (Yes those threads exist.)

My point was that having more modern graphics technology would give the switch2 graphics technology that it wouldn't have had in the ps4pro and x1x eras, and that even if the quality level was only 8th gen, we'd inevitably have to use the 9th gen gaming consoles as a reference for visuals, and I don't know if you'd agree with the premise of that discussion.

 

[Zedark]

For a time now I tried to wrap my head around the situation regarding upgrades. As the folks from GVG mentioned in their video, Nintendo COULD ask for an upgrade fee to unlock better visuals and performance for existing titles. As they also said, I think it's clear that this wouldn't fare with everyone that well and so I figured, why not make that a part of NSO too?
Hear me out, I know it's a bad move to lock everything in regards to performance behind a paywall, but I think implementing it for "free" for NSO user would get them a couple more subscribers and maybe that wouldn't look that bad compared to an upgrade fee of 10 bucks for every game you own.
Any thoughts and/or comments on that?

I hate the idea of paying for upgrade patches, but it is a somewhat realistic scenario, considering SONY also does it for select upgraded releases like TLOU. If they go for that, then adding it for free to NSO+ makes sense for them.

But please just don't. Release them as free updates. It will boost the evergreen status of your games, so it should be considered an investment imo.

 

[ReddDreadtheLead]

Would be hilarious if "muji" is actually for the backward compatibility layer to play Switch 1.


無印 is mujirushi
Muji is 無地, with 無 means no and 地 means earth/ground/texture. It essentially means no-texture or plain.

But we know how Japanese loves playing words with kanji, so muji could be written with 夢次 (dream+next) to imply that Switch 2 will be the next dream for Nintendo (after Switch 1).

I like that interpretation as well!

The strangest thing about this whole debate is that I don't know exactly what technical details they are debating pointing to, the ps4pro doesn't even have ray tracing even though the switch2 is only ps4pro level of quality in docking mode, having modern graphical features added including dlss including ray tracing would make the switch2's graphical standard to be 9th gen as a standard instead of 8th gen.

OK, I guess I need to elaborate on that, I don’t really think every single game is going to be actually use RT, it is a feature for a Devs to have but it’s not necessarily a feature you have to use, you know? So if they’re not using Ray tracing, they’ll have to fall back onto more traditional rendering, which is More to do with the PlayStation 4 pro or how the XB1X does it, or a sort of hybrid of next gen features (like Mesh Shaders) with last gen.


I have never once said the switch 2 will not have next generation features such as Ray tracing or DLSS.

 

[carbvan]

But please just don't. Release them as free updates. It will boost the evergreen status of your games, so it should be considered an investment imo.

Are you suggesting the Switch 1's evergreen games stay evergreens during the Switch 2? If I gotta choose between $60 Switch 1 games with free next gen patches or a price cut and $10 upgrades, I'm choosing the price cut and $10 upgrades.

 

[Lugia667]

we done for now? Keep having to scroll through like 10 pages every time I leave lol

 

[ReddDreadtheLead]

This is more of a product of early RT implementation, but the PS5 and X don’t make extensive use of RT, and have RT issues but have a good amount of compute.

Drake would be the opposite, having a (relatively) good RT performance in theory but lacking sufficient compute to handle all that.


The duality…

 

[Darknut85]

If I did that the 6950XT would only be half the performance of the 3090, which we know isn’t true outside of Ray Tracing.

The 6950XT has 80CUs and the 3090 has 82 active SMs. The whole architecture of the 6950XT has it perform very closely to the 3090. Note I said the whole architecture.

But here the console with the better architecture is Switch 2. We aren’t comparing Ampere and RDNA 2, but Ampere and GCN. Also Ampere GPUs are generally clocked lower than RDNA 2 ones, while Switch 2 will be clocked higher than PS4 Pro docked.

 

[kingman]

Alright fine...

DBZ Cell Saga layman terms

SSJ2 Gohan: PS5 Pro
Super Perfect Cell: X Series X
Cell Jr: Xbox Series S
Ascended SSJ Goku: Switch 2
Ascended Vegeta: Xbone X
Ascended Trunks: PS4 Pro
Piccolo: PS4
Android 16: Switch

Okay. That's more like it.

 

[GrandDemand]

Apologies if this has already been asked and answered, but do we know if the UFS 3.1 module used is one or two lanes?

 

[Aether]

* Hidden text: cannot be quoted. *

SJ (StaklenaJagoda)

Have fun with it

50 minutes?? I find GVG to be pretty alright so hopefully they didn't feed their viewers "It's a portable Series S!". I'd be pretty disappointed if so.

edit: 10 minutes in. Not too bad... but they brought up the Capcom increasing the Switch's ram story lol.

They got some wild takes. 3gb OS??? Dock with expandable storage?? They don't seem to know about the MicroSD Express stuff.

Steve seems pretty convinced the OS will need to be big for social features like VC, messaging, etc. Imo, I don't see Nintendo adding those features in for awhile. It's a big safety hazard for children and, maybe this is just a personal anecdote, most people just use 3rd party apps to communicate anyway.

Ok honestly there's not much to this video at all. Watched it at 1.5x speed. I think I'm gonna make a forum post asking a question about a major part of this video tho.

Yeah, it's mostly just discussion and musing like most of the time here.

3GB seems high, but if features as streaming, game suspension, etc are added I could see it. I still think it will be 1,5-2gb at most. Freeing space that was not used later on is always an option.

MicroSD express: I still haven't seen a single device that supports it. I'm not convinced. And an SSD in the doch would be the cheapest reasonable way I guess.

personally if it looks even adjacent to PS4 in practice I'll be surprised

In a good or bad way?

 

[ReddDreadtheLead]

Apologies if this has already been asked and answered, but do we know if the UFS 3.1 module used is one or two lanes?

Should be two lanes, no? 1 lane being for the UFS 3.0 card, right?

 

[Ojoloco]

Curious to see if NG Switch will give us an option to play games in Graphics/Performance mode or Nintendo will be strict and force games to only run in a particular mode.

There are games on witch with graphics/performance modes, like Darksiders or Borderlands 3

 

[ReddDreadtheLead]

But here the console with the better architecture is Switch 2. We aren’t comparing Ampere and RDNA 2, but Ampere and GCN.

The general basics would still apply, and would require Drake having a significantly higher bandwidth too. But it doesn’t have that. Keep that in mind!

 

[OTBWY]

SWITCH 2!!!

 

[lowbattery]

Jokes aside, this thread really has been a ride to come back to. Back to my hole I go. I'm hyped about UFS 3.1 though, even with external storage this console should be a beast.

 

[HankyPanky]

Is it wrong that I think though that, when Docked, it'll certainly be on par with a Series S?

I heavily emphasize the "on par". It won't look that way on paper. For one thing the Switch 2 will have a more modern feature-set and more RAM, but the Series S has it's own advantages. With DLSS however, where the Switch 2 can't reach the XSS on paper, it "should" in the actual playing experience. From what I understand of the nitty gritty, the boost clock that was revealed in the Nvidia leak was 1.38GHz (4.24TFLOPs) which is slightly higher than the XSS. It has 20CU's and the Switch 2 has 12SM or 24 CU's...

That seems to be the consistent analogy that I've seen when it comes to Switch 2 rumors: portable will be basically a PS4 and Docked will be closer to a PS4 Pro...but because it'll punch significantly higher than it's weight with a much better CPU than the old Jaguars, file decompression like the PS5, super fast I/O, DLSS, and so-on and so-forth as a ninth generation console and not an eight-gen console like the PS4 or PS4 Pro...when it's all said and done, it'll effectively be like having Nintendo's version of an Xbox Series S.

It's got slightly different stuff (more RAM, less internal storage space, etc), but the stuff puts it within the same league. At least when it's Docked. In Portable though, it's more like having a souped up PS4 with none of weaknesses. That seems to be the impression that's constantly emphasized.

if those test clocks from the leak end up being indicative of what we're getting you can just about kiss goodbye to 8nm (pls Nintendo)

 

[Bonejack]

Whew, done with catching up the 10 pages since my posts yesterday, still have to catch up on "the ride" start.

Just wanna say to all those who found this stuff that you have my deepest thanks and respect.

Man, Nintendo's internal games and the ones from Monolithsoft will be something else on that device. Heck, i can't wait to see what Capcom can tickle out of it.
And i'm not even talking graphics. Imagine the physics wizardry possible with such performance, in the hands of the people who made TotK's various gameplay systems.

Omg you're Harrison Ford? Can i have an autograph?

They are using generic terminology in communication -- both in meetings and in documentation.

Not saying that is the code name or not (the code name really has no significance). Just saying they are not referring to it by that name in any communication or documentation.

"NateDrake confirmed Nintendo using 'The succ' in official communication!"

;D Just kidding.

 

[Revolsin]

You can say that.


Zen 2 cores seem to be beat it in single core performance by a good amount, or at least the A78s in Orion. While multi core is better on A78s. Will be interesting to see how A78cs perform.


Best case scenario for us I think is 2GHz CPU cores. I dunno if they can do that with a 1.6 handheld 4 docked GPU TFLOPs. Safe to say current gen x series and PS5 will be at least twice as fast in CPI

Alright fine...

DBZ Cell Saga layman terms

SSJ2 Gohan: PS5 Pro
Super Perfect Cell: X Series X
Cell Jr: Xbox Series S
Ascended SSJ Goku: Switch 2
Ascended Vegeta: Xbone X
Ascended Trunks: PS4 Pro
Piccolo: PS4
Android 16: Switch

ayo i haven't been to this thread before and i don't know technical specs but i do know dragon ball

isn't that like completely insane? switch 2 docked is comparable to between XSX and XSS? that sounds like drastically beyond any expectations i've heard for it

 

[TLZ]

SWITCH 2!!!

Nani?

 

[Raccoon]

In a good or bad way?

in a good way of course

 

[Darknut85]

The general basics would still apply, and would require Drake having a significantly higher bandwidth too. But it doesn’t have that. Keep that in mind!

This also isn’t a 1:1 comparison, Switch 2 will support tile rendering (like Switch), which PS4 Pro doesn’t, and will need less bandwidth that way. Also it won’t have a storage limited by a weak CPU (it‘ll even have its own memory compression engine) and more cache. Switch 2 will be more than able to compensate for it.

 

[BreakAtmo]

It's strange that no one ever seems to discuss the "horsepower" comparison criteria, it's true that we are most likely inferior to the ps4pro when it comes to floating point performance, but we all seem to recognize that the new graphics features (dlss) as well as ray tracing bring us 9th gen advanced rendering and lighting technology, .The only "horsepower" comparison criteria left seems to be polygon count, since the switch2 has fewer shaders compared to 9th gen consoles like the xss, but I really don't think the switch2 will have less polygons than the ps4pro.

I figured docked Switch 2 would beat the PS4 Pro in raster - 4.2 Polaris TF vs 3.5-3.9 Ampere TF.

 

[ShadowFox08]

That codename is not the codename for T239. The codename for T239 is Drake.

Not related... Let's call x Series S Drake, and Kendrick Lamar, Switch 2

ayo i haven't been to this thread before and i don't know technical specs but i do know dragon ball

isn't that like completely insane? switch 2 docked is comparable to between XSX and XSS? that sounds like drastically beyond any expectations i've heard for it

Nervously stretches shirt by the neck side. Let's just say in this scenario that SPC is roughly 3x stronger than Cell Jr, and Goku is somewhat weaker than cell Jr, but has better fighting skills.

 

[Aether]

in a good way of course

Ah fine. I had an opposite thought:
While I expect PS4 power, seeing how well even nicer automata was already ported on base switch I would hope for better then PS4 simply cause the CPU is so much better, so much more ram and a more modern feature set.

But yeah, even if it's "just" PS4 portable I'm fine.

 

[WestEgg]

Have there been any other server outages in the past 4 hours or so? Noticed the site visitor account was high and that other news dropped, so just looking to assess if the issues came back, since they’ve usually been happening midday ET.

 

[KeijiKG]

Who cares what the fastest storage solution on the market is? Do you want fast storage, or do you want a badass handheld that costs less than 500 dollars.

Sure, there are ultrafast SSDs on the market - I have a whole array of them in my database cluster at work - that doesn't mean they're useful in a video game console. With only a tiny number of high end PCs with ultra fast SSDs, no video game depends on those speeds.

Ratchet and Clank and Spider-man 2 are the poster children for "SSD games" but people have tested them with the lowest end SATA SSD on the market, and they still have instant loading. SATA SSDs are pushing 500MB/s, eUFS 3.1 is 1450MB/s.

I'd rather Nintendo spend that 20 bucks on RAM, please and thank you

Here's to hoping this statement puts an end to that "grass is greener from Cerny's side of the fence" thinking about SSD technology I tend to see in the topic.

As someone who runs a STEAM library on a SATA SSD with games like FF7 Intergrade and Star Ocean 4, I can vouch that Nintendo will be sitting pretty with what they have. It may not be NVMe, it may not be PS5's ultrafast SSD, but it'll load its games worlds better than Switch 1 did.

 

[Semi Lazy Gamer]

Have there been any other server outages in the past 4 hours or so? Noticed the site visitor account was high and that other news dropped, so just looking to assess if the issues came back, since they’ve usually been happening midday ET.

The site has been having issues for at least 24 hours. I think the mods have said it's a server side thing and out of their hands.

 

[WestEgg]

The site has been having issues for at least 24 hours. I think the mods have said it's a server side thing and out of their hands.

I said that. I’m looking to see if, aside from the verification, there have been recent outages within the last 4 hours.

 

[Aufhebung RPG]

I figured docked Switch 2 would beat the PS4 Pro in raster - 4.2 Polaris TF vs 3.5-3.9 Ampere TF.

I have my doubts about this, considering there is a 30% raster performance gap between both switch2 and steam deck in portable mode, I don't think docking will allow drake to have raster performance that is comparable to ps4pro, there is a specification gap here on a physical level.

 

[Lugia667]

4 am 177 members and over 1000 guests. I see

 

[Revolsin]

Not related... Let's call x Series S Drake, and Kendrick Lamar, Switch 2

Nervously stretches shirt by the neck side. Let's just say in this scenario that SPC is roughly 3x stronger than Cell Jr, and Goku is somewhat weaker than cell Jr, but has better fighting skills.

we take those. after hearing it was going to be essentially Switch 1.5 for a while this is so far beyond expectations im in awe

 

[Bonejack]

4 am 177 members and over 1000 guests. I see

"Mr. Furukawa, those nerds (love you guys) at that one online forum have done it again, they parsed through customs and shipment data and found information again! And worse, it's not only spreading, that forum itself sees a massive rise in activity!"

 

[Gerald]

I have my doubts about this, considering there is a 30% raster performance gap between both switch2 and steam deck in portable mode, I don't think docking will allow drake to have raster performance that is comparable to ps4pro, there is a specification gap here on a physical level.

Polaris is from 2016, where Ampere is from 2020, it will easily beat Polaris in everyway

 

[kingman]

Nervously stretches shirt by the neck side. Let's just say in this scenario that SPC is roughly 3x stronger than Cell Jr, and Goku is somewhat weaker than cell Jr, but has better fighting skills.

Yeah and we all saw how much good that did for him..

 

[Aether]

This is more of a product of early RT implementation, but the PS5 and X don’t make extensive use of RT, and have RT issues but have a good amount of compute.

Drake would be the opposite, having a (relatively) good RT performance in theory but lacking sufficient compute to handle all that.


The duality…

Less but better is what I want, simply cause you can use it for key moments and assets.

Just thinking what Nintendo can do to add ray tracing either as a flair to settings or use if fore some weird gameplay mechanics with ray casting...

Here's to hoping this statement puts an end to that "grass is greener from Cerny's side of the fence" thinking about SSD technology I tend to see in the topic.

As someone who runs a STEAM library on a SATA SSD with games like FF7 Intergrade and Star Ocean 4, I can vouch that Nintendo will be sitting pretty with what they have. It may not be NVMe, it may not be PS5's ultrafast SSD, but it'll load its games worlds better than Switch 1 did.

Yeah, 3.1 ufs should be fine in 99% of the cases and was my ideal scenario, ufs3.1@256GB sound like the best balance, big enough to fit any game, fast enough for almost all usecases, cheap enough to not explode in cost.

 

[7hatDeadCat]

I said that. I’m looking to see if, aside from the verification, there have been recent outages within the last 4 hours.

nah only thing ive noticed was sometimes verification would break and id have to do the thing where i go back a page and refresh

 

[Aufhebung RPG]

Polaris is from 2016, where Ampere is from 2020, it will easily beat Polaris in everyway

I don't know if anyone in that thread argued how much the drake specs at the physical level vs the ps4pro gap would make a difference and would mask the architecture gap, but since Red rehashed the matter I chose to reserve my opinion.

 

[MissingNo.]

All the technical stuff goes way over my head so I'm pretty much only watching from the sidelines, but it's still nice to see things are moving in the background. Feels exciting to have reached this stage in speculation again, especially with developments over the last ~24 hours.

 

[Reinhard Schneider]

There are games on witch with graphics/performance modes, like Darksiders or Borderlands 3

Grid Autosport is the most notable one for me. But yeah, in any case, performance modes are a thing on Switch, just not as extended as they should.

 

[chocolate_supra]

I said that. I’m looking to see if, aside from the verification, there have been recent outages within the last 4 hours.

On the contrary, past few hours have been when the site finally started acting normal for me again. Up until maybe three hours or so ago I couldn't even access the site on mobile because the verification thing would somehow force every page to time out while loading.

 

[ShadowFox08]

Yeah and we all saw how much good that did for him..

He was tired from fighting Cell too

 

[kingman]

He was tired from fighting Cell too

I thought he healed himself with a senzu bean?

 

[Revolsin]

I thought he healed himself with a senzu bean?

gave that one to cell lol

 

[N 2 Deep]

SWITCH 2!!!

Inshallah this is the name and not Switch Attach

 

[Lugia667]

Do you guys think maybe Microsoft is gonna reveal the handheld next month as a sort of "Break glass" thing? Or is it still too early in development for that?

 

[Raccoon]

I'd have been into Switch Attach...

the two minutes between first seeing it and finding out it's almost 100% not it was the most hopeful moment I've had since the 8" rumors started