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

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ILikeFeet said:
Developers want am Infinite amount of ram and unlimited bandwidth. 12GB is a lot. I don't know if they make lpddr5 in such capacities that wouldn't take up a lot of board space for minimal cost
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I'm hoping for 12 but expecting 8GB. Nintendo could also do something like 8GB LPDDR5 and 2 or 4GB slower RAM module dedicated to OS level functionality.

My thinking is 8GB unified RAM will be a bit tight if you account for at least 1GB for OS and system level functions. No matter how light they make the OS, stuff like video recording will need more RAM. And I don't think OS functions needs the fast RAM.

Historically, Nintendo has tended to splurge on RAM, usually more than tripling its capacity from generation to generation. Granted Switch is a hard reset for them, 8GB would be double Switch's RAM and potentially less than double the 3 to 3.15GB accessible to games if the OS footprint is more than 1GB. If they can't get more than 8GB for LPDDR5 at a reasonable cost, it makes sense to have an OS pool of RAM separate from games.
 
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ILikeFeet said:
Developers want am Infinite amount of ram and unlimited bandwidth. 12GB is a lot. I don't know if they make lpddr5 in such capacities that wouldn't take up a lot of board space for minimal cost
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There are 6GB modules of LPDDR5 RAM


So they can do 2 chips like they did with the switch and occupy roughly the same amount of space (for the RAM).
 
Alovon11 said:
Well of course, when I am comparing against PS5/Series S|X, I am comparing versus their native internal resolution.

EX: Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart uses Temporal Injection to make 1440p into 4k a lot of the time, so I would be comparing post-DLSS TFLOP numbers to that native 1440p, not the 4k output the PS5 can do.

But the thing is when a game is running at a quarter of the pixels, that sort of thing has resulted in 2x improvements on performance most of the time versus the native output at that resolution on PC, and PC is unoptimized for the most part.

And I scaled DLSS Ultra Performance to 3X instead of 4X because of CPU Bottleneck falloffs despite it being beyond double the multiplier of DLSS Performance.

DLSS's final performance should be treated as a Range as it is highly dependant on the Optimization dev-side to get its full potential out of it in a system like Dane.

And NIS is a smaller multiplier overall due to it being simpler, and also less good than DLSS, but as a "Last step" upscale for 1440p to 4K, it should be adequate and should give a little "bump" to effective performance after Upscaling.

So, for example. a game does 720p to 1440p Performance DLSS, then uses NIS to push that to 4k.

The NIS in that instance would be pretty much Temporal Injection (In application) when using the Ratchet and Clank example, DLSS needing it to get to the PS5's 1440p internal, NIS pushing it the rest of the way to a 4K output.
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On image processing: temporal injection should be compared to DLSS, not NIS. NIS is just a rebrand of the Lanczos solution that already existed in Nvidia control panel. In comparison, both DLSS and temporal injection have the same major goals, which is to render semi-randomly jittered samples of the scene at a lower resolution, to warp them to their current position with motion vectors, and to filter and combine those samples to reconstruct the scene.

On computational cost: DLSS requires a lot of calculation. Neural networks at their core are just dot product engines: multiply the values in layer n-1 by weights, sum up all of the weighted values, then push what you get through an activation function to get the nth layer. That’s one of my main issues with treating DLSS as a multiplier in FLOPs, because it discards the computationally intensive nature of what DLSS is doing. Yes, PC GPUs can do this calculation fast enough that the cost is usually negligible, but that’s not going to be the case on the Switch.

On optimization: tensor calculations could be more optimized on Lovelace than on Ampere, but they won’t be more optimized on Switch than PC. I have written before about the potential of a lighter network architecture, but this would be a tradeoff in image quality and still would not make the calculations negligible. There’s no avoiding calculation in a neural network; you have to pay the piper.
 
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Would more RAM mean a more complex OS and longer video capture?
By complex OS I mean the ability to open multiple "things" at once. (about the folders I gave up :rolleyes:)

Anyway I was hoping that by now we would have some serious rumors about the memory support... now with the black friday I don't know if I should buy a new micro sd :unsure:
 
Teal'c said:
Would more RAM mean a more complex OS and longer video capture?
By complex OS I mean the ability to open multiple "things" at once. (about the folders I gave up :rolleyes:)

Anyway I was hoping that by now we would have some serious rumors about the memory support... now with the black friday I don't know if I should buy a new micro sd :unsure:
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TBH, unless if NVIDIA and Nintendo have a black magic solution to speed up SD cards to a ludicrous degree at no cost to the user, I feel mSD may be dead in the near future.
 
Alovon11 said:
TBH, unless if NVIDIA and Nintendo have a black magic solution to speed up SD cards to a ludicrous degree at no cost to the user, I feel mSD may be dead in the near future.
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Simplest workaround is faster internal storage with caching/installation like the other two. The speed or type of external storage medium, whether carts or micro SD or whatever, would be moot then. Course then there'd be some concern over write cycles for internal storage.
Teal'c said:
So do you think that with Switch Dane there may be an abandonment of eMMC and micro SD in favor of NVMe SSDs?
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Just a nitpick here cause I've seen it mentioned a lot without specificity, but NVMe is just a protocol. It could be referring to soldered chips like on iPhones, M.2 sticks, or little memory cards like CF Express and SD Express and such.

Ideal would be (micro) SD Express but it's early and the only card I've seen tested so far runs way too hot, the tech probably needs more time to settle before being feasible. I'm guessing most people are thinking of M.2 sticks, in which case it seems unlikely due to size and power but who knows. The smallest size one has been pointed out a bunch which might be possible, but it's still a good chunk larger than mSD, and still leaves power usage questions.
 
Terrell said:
Can we end this notion that 3rd-parties aren't part of Nintendo's equation, please? They're a business, and turning away ANY software from the platforms they release is bad business, PERIOD. ...
The hybrid approach was a smart business decision, but it also means that they have only one option for 3rd-party royalty money with no fallbacks.
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Great post (y)

Tangentially I'd add that I'm always scratching my head when I see the sentiment expressed wrt to Third-party software planning on Nintendo platforms, and arguments being framed in such a way as to portray companies as if they have some kind of personal grudge against Nintendo.

EA, Namco or even Falcom, for example.

No, those companies try to act rationally and maximize their limited financial and human resources. They have real fiduciary duty, not to mention towards the welfare of their employees, to make good decisions and not make decisions based on "I hate kidz and I hate Tingle so no Nintendo gamez mwahahahah". If I was a shareholder in a company whose leaders made decisions on those bases, those individuals gotta go, boot print on the ass and all. They would be betraying the best interests of the company's real stakeholders.

===
On topic,
As such, they will reach for as far as they can go within a reasonable TDP and bill of materials cost for their form factor to assist those developers, get the middleware tools running that devs will want running, consult with devs for feedback on planned hardware configs... y'know, do the things that a platform holder should do with their mutually-beneficial business partners to keep and grow that mutual benefit. Anything less is literally pissing all over everything they've been able to build so far with the Switch platform.
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Nintendo is also trying to make the most rational decisions, even when its funny to joke about the results ... but that said we really need their key third-party supporters to talk them off the "overly-conservative hardware ledge" sometimes.
Thinking straightaway to how Capcom saved the world by ensuring a RAM boost in the switch :p
 
Teal'c said:
Would more RAM mean a more complex OS and longer video capture?
By complex OS I mean the ability to open multiple "things" at once. (about the folders I gave up :rolleyes:)

Anyway I was hoping that by now we would have some serious rumors about the memory support... now with the black friday I don't know if I should buy a new micro sd :unsure:
Click to expand...
The amount of RAM and the OS features are not unrelated, but the simplicity of the Switch OS right now is, for better or worse, an explicit design choice.
uncleoptimus said:
Great post (y)

Tangentially I'd add that I'm always scratching my head when I see the sentiment expressed wrt to Third-party software planning on Nintendo platforms, and arguments being framed in such a way as to portray companies as if they have some kind of personal grudge against Nintendo.

EA, Namco or even Falcom, for example.

No, those companies try to act rationally and maximize their limited financial and human resources. They have real fiduciary duty, not to mention towards the welfare of their employees, to make good decisions and not make decisions based on "I hate kidz and I hate Tingle so no Nintendo gamez mwahahahah". If I was a shareholder in a company whose leaders made decisions on those bases, those individuals gotta go, boot print on the ass and all. They would be betraying the best interests of the company's real stakeholders.

===
On topic,

Nintendo is also trying to make the most rational decisions, even when its funny to joke about the results ... but that said we really need their key third-party supporters to talk them off the "overly-conservative hardware ledge" sometimes.
Thinking straightaway to how Capcom saved the world by ensuring a RAM boost in the switch :p
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Companies are not rational actors, they're collections of people with biases, and there's some pretty well documented anti-Nintendo and pro-Sony bias at least on the Japanese side. Like, this is an actual slide put out by a Japanese game dev:
003.jpg
 
japtor said:
Just a nitpick here cause I've seen it mentioned a lot without specificity, but NVMe is just a protocol. It could be referring to soldered chips like on iPhones, M.2 sticks, or little memory cards like CF Express and SD Express and such.

Ideal would be (micro) SD Express but it's early and the only card I've seen tested so far runs way too hot, the tech probably needs more time to settle before being feasible. I'm guessing most people are thinking of M.2 sticks, in which case it seems unlikely due to size and power but who knows. The smallest size one has been pointed out a bunch which might be possible, but it's still a good chunk larger than mSD, and still leaves power usage questions.
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I apologize for the error regarding NVMe.

I looked up something, you mentioned, on Amazon and I don't seem to see micro SD Express, that makes me think it's not a widely used standard.
As for the M.2's I understand the prices are good although I have some doubts about the actual size and how they might make it "easy" to fit in a slot.
 
Teal'c said:
I apologize for the error regarding NVMe.

I looked up something, you mentioned, on Amazon and I don't seem to see micro SD Express, that makes me think it's not a widely used standard.
As for the M.2's I understand the prices are good although I have some doubts about the actual size and how they might make it "easy" to fit in a slot.
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Again, I have suggested they go the Microsoft route and make "Proprietary" SSDs

In quotes as Nintendo would moreso be licensing out the form factor/shell, they use like Msoft will once the exclusivity deal with Seagate is up.
 
Alovon11 said:
Again, I have suggested they go the Microsoft route and make "Proprietary" SSDs

In quotes as Nintendo would moreso be licensing out the form factor/shell, they use like Msoft will once the exclusivity deal with Seagate is up.
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It's been years since I've seen Nintendo use proprietary memory expansions, but I imagine that with the right deals they can get back to it.

I'll have to restrain myself from buying a new 512GB micro sd then. :D
 
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I’m more convinced that Nintendo will opt to go for expandable storage in uSD, but has compatibility with UFS cards (which are faster than uSD)

The internal storage will, of course, be a tossup between eMMC 5.1 or a eUFS 2.1 or higher of xGB

Edit: this is a scenario in the chance they decide for faster storage like eUFS, that the expandable would be similar to the Steam deck where it has uSD cards.
 
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Dekuman said:
I'm hoping for 12 but expecting 8GB. Nintendo could also do something like 8GB LPDDR5 and 2 or 4GB slower RAM module dedicated to OS level functionality.

My thinking is 8GB unified RAM will be a bit tight if you account for at least 1GB for OS and system level functions. No matter how light they make the OS, stuff like video recording will need more RAM. And I don't think OS functions needs the fast RAM.

Historically, Nintendo has tended to splurge on RAM, usually more than tripling its capacity from generation to generation. Granted Switch is a hard reset for them, 8GB would be double Switch's RAM and potentially less than double the 3 to 3.15GB accessible to games if the OS footprint is more than 1GB. If they can't get more than 8GB for LPDDR5 at a reasonable cost, it makes sense to have an OS pool of RAM separate from games.
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I don’t think history is any guide when it comes to ram inchreases, because of the economics of it. Ram used to decrease in price a lot quicker than it does now.

PlayStation used to increase by 16x. Now it’s a mere 2x.
 
Hermii said:
I don’t think history is any guide when it comes to ram inchreases, because of the economics of it. Ram used to decrease in price a lot quicker than it does now.

PlayStation used to increase by 16x. Now it’s a mere 2x.
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Of course but Nintendo is also starting at a much lower amount. I merely pointed out RAM is one area they don't generally skimp on relative to everything else.
 
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Hmm, ram chip wise, what are the current options anyway...

Samsung: Still sampling only 6 GB 64-bit up to 5500 MT/s? Are they just being lax in updating that page?
SK Hynix: In the mobile category, 1 and 1.5 GB 16-bit up to 6400 MT/s are in production. In the PC category, 1 GB 16-bit up to 6400 MT/s is in production. I take it that 'ball' is pin count, but I don't know what pin count implies about the intended device. I'm assuming that 2 GB 16-bit chips in the mobile category is in sampling (that 18's gotta be a typo, right?).
Micron: Hmm, all 32-bit chips are still sampling. For 64-bit, there are 6, 8, and 12 GB chips in production. 4 GB 64-bit is in sampling.

(aside: if we're going solely by what it's in production right now, then the only possible vendor for Steam Deck's 16 GB, 128-bit setup is Micron)

Teal'c said:
So do you think that with Switch Dane there may be an abandonment of eMMC and micro SD in favor of NVMe SSDs?
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For a device that targets a power usage of single digit watts in handheld form, the natural/intended successor to eMMC and micro SD would be eUFS and UFS cards. They're designed to maintain the same low power usage as the older formats. eUFS as internal storage is something phones have moved on to, I believe. UFS cards on the other hand have yet to take off; I think that only Samsung makes and sells them right now? And only Samsung devices actually use them right now?
There is also SD Express, but as you've noticed, the availability's certainly a question mark right now. Also, the one review we've seen of an SD Express card revealed a disappointingly high power draw.

The thing about NVMe drives is that, comparatively speaking, they're not that power efficient actually. I think that on average (excluding outliers like the SK Hynix Gold P31), NVMe drives typically fall in the range of 500 to 700 MB/s per watt in sequential read in synthetic tests. 500-700 MB/s is faster than eMMC, sure. But when one sees 'NVMe', multi GB/s speeds are probably what comes to mind, and that takes multiple watts to do. In desktop space, several watts is a rounding error; nobody cares. In laptop space, it's a sort of a 'the cost is there, but it's worth it' thing (although, depending on which drive is used, battery life can vary significantly). But for the Switch in handheld mode? There's not enough power to spare to allow NVMe to stretch its legs.
Both eMMC and eUFS power consumption is hard for me to find...
Samsung's page for eMMC 5.1 claims a sequential read of up to 330 MB/s and power usage of 0.5 watts. So, 660 MB/s per watt, which is in the range of a decent NVMe drive.
Then looking at the data sheet for ISSI's eMMC 5.0... sequential read of up to 272 MB/s. Power consumption of... I'm not sure if I'm doing this right, but it's either 1.8v * 186 mA=0.3348 watts or 3.3v * 47 mA = 0.1551 watts. Uhh... let's go with 0.3348 watts for this post. Then it normalizes out to 812 MB/s per watt.
I haven't even found any power usage numbers for eUFS. We know that it's faster than eMMC. Presumably the power draw remains in the same area, ergo it's assumed that the speed per watt is much better. We do know that in practice, smartphones moved to/are moving to eUFS instead of NVMe.
 
On UFS, UFS memory cards definitely seem to be rare as hen's teeth right now.

Nintendo's licensing partnership with SanDisk as the "official" microSD for Switch would be in jeopardy, but if SanDisk isn't ready to provide what's necessary, so be it.

That said, even Samsung has seemingly run dry of UFS memory card inventory, since I can't find one for sale except on eBay. Perhaps that would change if they had a vendor looking to use them like Nintendo. But with so few electronics manufacturers using them and me not being sure that Samsung would go the licensed vendor route like SanDisk, Nintendo could potentially do "private label" production with Samsung and sell cards branded as solely a Nintendo product, which would practically be like having proprietary media without it actually being proprietary.

But with that rarity, it seems like UFS is up in the air unless Samsung manufactures more for Nintendo's needs. And it seems unlikely that they would go eUFS internally and microSD externally, wanting to get as close to parity read speeds across both storage options. Nor do I see them going UHS-II only for microSD.

One of the larger benefits of UFS memory cards is that Samsung sells a 128GB UFS card for $30, so it's not any more expensive than UHS-I microSD storage currently is, but with UHS-II speeds. Its only drawback in Samsung is currently the only manufacturer.
 
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Look over there said:
Hmm, ram chip wise, what are the current options anyway...

Samsung: Still sampling only 6 GB 64-bit up to 5500 MT/s? Are they just being lax in updating that page?
SK Hynix: In the mobile category, 1 and 1.5 GB 16-bit up to 6400 MT/s are in production. In the PC category, 1 GB 16-bit up to 6400 MT/s is in production. I take it that 'ball' is pin count, but I don't know what pin count implies about the intended device. I'm assuming that 2 GB 16-bit chips in the mobile category is in sampling (that 18's gotta be a typo, right?).
Micron: Hmm, all 32-bit chips are still sampling. For 64-bit, there are 6, 8, and 12 GB chips in production. 4 GB 64-bit is in sampling.

(aside: if we're going solely by what it's in production right now, then the only possible vendor for Steam Deck's 16 GB, 128-bit setup is Micron)
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Samsung mentioned starting mass production of 16 Gb LPDDR5-6400 DRAM based on the 1z process node on 30 August 2020. So I assume LPDDR5-6400 DRAM from Samsung is currently available, but Samsung didn't update the LPDDR5 product selector for some reason.

I don't think 18 GB is a typo on SK Hynix's part since smartphones usually use only one DRAM chip. And SK Hynix did confirm that the ASUS ROG Phone 5 is using SK Hynix's 18 GB LPDDR5-6400 DRAM.

And Micron's 64-bit 4 GB (32 Gb) LPDDR5 DRAM seems to actually be available.

Look over there said:
We do know that in practice, smartphones moved to/are moving to eUFS instead of NVMe.
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Apple seems to be the exception since iPhones seems to be using a custom NVMe controller for the internal flash storage going by the iPhone 6s.

~

Anyway, during an interview with WIRED, Mark Cerny mentioned at 3:04 that developers wanted a NVMe SSD with at least a sequential read speed of 1 GB/s. But Sony aimed for the sequential read speed for the PlayStation 5's custom SSD controller to be 5-10x faster than what developers have asked for. So I think that bodes well in terms of the internal flash storage options Nintendo can choose from for the DLSS model*.
 
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Terrell said:
On UFS, UFS memory cards definitely seem to be rare as hen's teeth right now.

Nintendo's licensing partnership with SanDisk as the "official" microSD for Switch would be in jeopardy, but if SanDisk isn't ready to provide what's necessary, so be it.

That said, even Samsung has seemingly run dry of UFS memory card inventory, since I can't find one for sale except on eBay. Perhaps that would change if they had a vendor looking to use them like Nintendo. But with so few electronics manufacturers using them and me not being sure that Samsung would go the licensed vendor route like SanDisk, Nintendo could potentially do "private label" production with Samsung and sell cards branded as solely a Nintendo product, which would practically be like having proprietary media without it actually being proprietary.

But with that rarity, it seems like UFS is up in the air unless Samsung manufactures more for Nintendo's needs. And it seems unlikely that they would go eUFS internally and microSD externally, wanting to get as close to parity read speeds across both storage options. Nor do I see them going UHS-II only for microSD.

One of the larger benefits of UFS memory cards is that Samsung sells a 128GB UFS card for $30, so it's not any more expensive than UHS-I microSD storage currently is, but with UHS-II speeds. Its only drawback in Samsung is currently the only manufacturer.
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Sure but I bet Samsung would love to license the tech in order to get some kind of traction.
Let's be honest here if Samsung are truly willing to negotiate in order to increase business, just as Nvidia is a great partnership for Nintendo Samsung would be the equivalent on the manufacturing side. Essentially Samsung becomes a one-stop shop almost for Nintendo since they can provide them with OLED screens, RAM, internal storage (eUFS), external storage (UFS card) and the actual production of their new SoC on top of all of that...
 
NineTailSage said:
Sure but I bet Samsung would love to license the tech in order to get some kind of traction.
Let's be honest here if Samsung are truly willing to negotiate in order to increase business, just as Nvidia is a great partnership for Nintendo Samsung would be the equivalent on the manufacturing side. Essentially Samsung becomes a one-stop shop almost for Nintendo since they can provide them with OLED screens, RAM, internal storage (eUFS), external storage (UFS card) and the actual production of their new SoC on top of all of that...
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While that's great for Samsung, Nintendo does have a habit of preferring parts they can shop around to alternate vendors whenever possible, not wanting to put all their production into a single basket. What I consider more likely is that Nintendo goes with Samsung for now but their utilization of UFS cards and eUFS internal storage motivates other vendors to compete for the contract, since UFS is a JEDEC standard that ANY of them could produce if they actively wished to.

That said, Samsung likely does wish to increase production of UFS memory cards and eUFS internal storage, so they'd likely still put in a competitive price, but it doesn't change the fact that Nintendo likes multiple vendors that price-compete. For example, with the OLED model, the eMMC in it is Samsung when Toshiba was the original vendor, while the RAM contract went from Samsung to Micron.
 
Terrell said:
While that's great for Samsung, Nintendo does have a habit of preferring parts they can shop around to alternate vendors whenever possible, not wanting to put all their production into a single basket. What I consider more likely is that Nintendo goes with Samsung for now but their utilization of UFS cards and eUFS internal storage motivates other vendors to compete for the contract, since UFS is a JEDEC standard that ANY of them could produce if they actively wished to.
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I don't know about UFS cards, but Kioxia and Western Digital have recently announced eUFS 3.1 chips, so I think Nintendo has plenty of options as far as eUFS is concerned.

ILikeFeet said:
do we know how many ram chips the Steam Deck is using? I don't think they removed the fan in the teardown video
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Four 32-bit 4 GB LPDDR5 DRAM chips since Valve mentioned "quad 32-bit channels".
 
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How likely is it that old third party games would get patches to improve performance on the new Switch? Say, would SE bother putting out a patch to bring DQXI on par with the PS4 version, for example?
 
Leo said:
How likely is it that old third party games would get patches to improve performance on the new Switch? Say, would SE bother putting out a patch to bring DQXI on par with the PS4 version, for example?
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Eh, would require rebuilding the game a bit, even the PC Port didn't get all the graphical stuff -readded back in (To turn some things on you even had to go into the engine.ini file to re-enable it)
 
Quoted by: Leo
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Leo said:
How likely is it that old third party games would get patches to improve performance on the new Switch? Say, would SE bother putting out a patch to bring DQXI on par with the PS4 version, for example?
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Here's my take...
I would say ... the longer it takes us to get a new switch... and the older the game... the LESS likely a developer would care to go back and update it.
I would think maybe games that release maybe within a 6 month window before the new device would probably be candidates.

Maybe there's a FEW outliers.
 
Leo said:
How likely is it that old third party games would get patches to improve performance on the new Switch? Say, would SE bother putting out a patch to bring DQXI on par with the PS4 version, for example?
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Improve performance? See above.

At best, they'd get patches to present the games as-is in 4K using DLSS, so long as it doesn't take too much programming work.

But first, Nintendo would have to make sure that the new SoC has compatibility with the Maxwell GPU driver stack to get those older games running on new hardware and see what that entails.
 
Leo said:
How likely is it that old third party games would get patches to improve performance on the new Switch? Say, would SE bother putting out a patch to bring DQXI on par with the PS4 version, for example?
Click to expand...
DQ11 isn't possible. that was more like the old school SNES/Genesis differences
 
Quoted by: Leo
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ILikeFeet said:
Developers want am Infinite amount of ram and unlimited bandwidth. 12GB is a lot. I don't know if they make lpddr5 in such capacities that wouldn't take up a lot of board space for minimal cost
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Besides the Orion NX... They've been doing it for flagship mobile for nearly year now at least, and Pixel 6 Pro has one..Also, Steam Deck is gonna use 16GB (they said 8GB would have been enough for games, and they considered 12, but went with 16 to "future proof" it). So there shouldn't be an issue when you consider their form factors are similar to Switch's. But then again we are getting DLSS hardware too 🤔. I'm sure it will be fine with 2 6GB modules.

8GB is gonna be enough for added video recording and perhaps a beefier OS that takes like 1-2GB (so 6GB free for games). I do hope their oS is beefier though, yet still as fast as switch start up. The more RAM the better though. More RAM will help out with multitasking such as resuspending several software. I would love to resuspend/quick resume 2 games at once. I'm hoping for 12, big will fine with 8, as long as it's lpddr5 and the bandwidth is 102GB/s at least.

I like dekuman's idea of 8GB for games and separate 2GB slower RAM for OS as well. Whatever we can do to match PS4 pro would be ideal though 🧐
 
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ShadowFox08 said:
Besides the Orion NX... They've been doing it for flagship mobile for nearly year now at least, and Pixel 6 Pro has one..Also, Steam Deck is gonna use 16GB (they said 8GB would have been enough for games, and they considered 12, but went with 16 to "future proof" it). So there shouldn't be an issue when you consider their form factors are similar to Switch's. But then again we are getting DLSS hardware too 🤔. I'm sure it will be fine with 2 6GB modules.

8GB is gonna be enough for added video recording and perhaps a beefier OS that takes like 1-2GB (so 6GB free for games). I do hope their oS is beefier though, yet still as fast as switch start up. The more RAM the better though. More RAM will help out with multitasking such as resuspending several software. I would love to resuspend/quick resume 2 games at once. I'm hoping for 12, big will fine with 8, as long as it's lpddr5 and the bandwidth is 102GB/s at least.

I like dekuman's idea of 8GB for games and separate 2GB slower RAM for OS as well. Whatever we can do to match PS4 pro would be ideal though 🧐
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suspend and quick resume is more of a function of the storage than the ram. more ram would mean longer video recording though
 
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I think it should be remembered though that the Steam deck is essentially laptop hardware in a console-like form factor. It still is a PC. A console environment is not the exact same as the PC environment, especially Windows and Proton.


The RAM situation is different for both. Switch has an ultra lean OS, Steam Deck would have a thick OS to it.
 
I'm probably going to get my third party ports on pc or the steam deck, honestly switch will be my first party machine.
 
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ReddDreadtheLead said:
I think it should be remembered though that the Steam deck is essentially laptop hardware in a console-like form factor. It still is a PC. A console environment is not the exact same as the PC environment, especially Windows and Proton.


The RAM situation is different for both. Switch has an ultra lean OS, Steam Deck would have a thick OS to it.
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I;ve said this for a while. Steam deck is a defensive move. I think there is indeed a segment of PC users who appearciate the flexibility Switch provides with indie titles and unchallenged Switch would eat into Steam's appeal as an indie platform. But it's hardly a direct competitor in the way some people have positioned it as and they'll end up disappointed by it both in terms of its reach and valve's ambition.

Steam deck's reveal and delayed launch also puts it in an awkward position where by the time it's available in any real numbers, Switch 2 would very likely have been announced and on its way, likely at the same cost if not slightly cheaper as the cheapest steamdeck SKU with more features and power.

The only way the ecosystem could remain appealing to the people positioning it as a Switch killer is with a Steamdeck Pro, which is just as unlikely given the first one isn't even out. someone compared the deck to Blackberry's iPad killer, which had great specs but launched late and by the time it was ready the technical advantages vis-a-vis iPads had evaporated. I wouldn't go that far, but it's market positioning as a direct Switch competitor isn't really there. I'd go as far to say it's not really trying to compete with Switch, some fanboys just want it that way because they dislike Nintendo succeeding.

And absolutely correct on the point that's it's a laptop PC in a Switch shell. it's direct competitor are GPD wins of this world, and the OS layer will be substantially heavier than the Switch 2s that a lot of memory and CPU power will be wasted servicing it as a windows device.
 
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Alovon11 said:
Eh, would require rebuilding the game a bit, even the PC Port didn't get all the graphical stuff -readded back in (To turn some things on you even had to go into the engine.ini file to re-enable it)
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ILikeFeet said:
DQ11 isn't possible. that was more like the old school SNES/Genesis differences
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Sorry, should have been more clear, I meant DQXIS on the PS4, not the original version. Should be an easy patch, since the PS4 version is the Switch version with a few touch ups and improved resolution.
 
Leo said:
Sorry, should have been more clear, I meant DQXIS on the PS4, not the original version. Should be an easy patch, since the PS4 version is the Switch version with a few touch ups and improved resolution.
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unfortunately, the game is old and "done selling". I don't see them going back to it to add a new performance mode. probably the same for a lot of games outside some constant sellers. games like Apex Legends could really use it given the game's popularity in japan
 
ILikeFeet said:
if it was a docked only unit, sure.
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Honestly if nintendo cared about power again they would just release a normal console, I think switch dane will be more powerful than the base model by a decent amount but I don't think they 100% care about having the most top of the line in power. After the GameCube they stopped caring about that and more care about making the device as cheap as possible and power comes second.
 
ILikeFeet said:
if it was a docked only unit, sure.
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In your opinion, what kind of graphic card equivalent in todays market that Nintendo would use on the next Switch hardware in 2023-2024? Is it possible to have 1650 performance with RT and DLSS technologies on the next hybrid Switch at $300-$350 price point?
 
bodokoh said:
In your opinion, what kind of graphic card equivalent in todays market that Nintendo would use on the next Switch hardware in 2023-2024? Is it possible to have 1650 performance with RT and DLSS technologies on the next hybrid Switch at $300-$350 price point?
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in 2023/2024? nothing, unless you shrink Orin AGX to 5nm. but you won't hit $300-$350. Atlan comes after Orin in 2025 and will be on 5nm. so maybe that.
 
lemonfresh said:
Honestly if nintendo cared about power again they would just release a normal console, I think switch dane will be more powerful than the base model by a decent amount but I don't think they 100% care about having the most top of the line in power. After the GameCube they stopped caring about that and more care about making the device as cheap as possible and power comes second.
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in a sense they do care about power, but more so in terms of featuresets and engine support. Switch was in a class of its own when it launched and the SoC is being pushed to do things no one expected it to back in 2017, All the impossible ports attest to that.

By staying with nvidia, Switch 2 will be a class of its own device again
 
Dekuman said:
in a sense they do care about power, but more so in terms of featuresets and engine support. Switch was in a class of its own when it launched and the SoC is being pushed to do things no one expected it to back in 2017, All the impossible ports attest to that.

By staying with nvidia, Switch 2 will be a class of its own device again
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Case in point, the system before DLSS and/or NIS occurs would slam the PS4 into the ground XD

After DLSS/NIS, well it would compete in the range of the Series S to PS5 power-wise.
 
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