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

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Josh5890 said:
Again, I commend you for doing your due diligence and not rushing to make any quick claims. It is greatly appreciated!
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definitely agreed

I may spin everything into wildly speculative bullshit but I much prefer that than constantly being told things that are wrong
 
Linkie3 said:
If TOTK launches in April and there is no new hardware in sight, I think I'm gonna emulate the game instead of playing it on the Switch. I really want to play this game in the best way possible and not on 2017 hardware.
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Might be a opinion formed out of passion but I think the developers vision is always the best way to play the game and is not neccesarily determined by better specs. A bit like what old CRT could do for pixel-art compared to modern LCD/OLED now.
 
Heavy… I think I solved the riddle:
The Steam Deck is pretty heavy. Nintendo will move the EShop to the Steam Deck 2, stepping out of the hardware business.
 
Yavga said:
Might be a opinion formed out of passion but I think the developers vision is always the best way to play the game and is not neccesarily determined by better specs. A bit like what old CRT could do for pixel-art compared to modern LCD/OLED now.
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Kind of a moot point if often games get remastered with exactly the same improvements you'd see on an emulator
 
Yavga said:
Might be a opinion formed out of passion but I think the developers vision is always the best way to play the game and is not neccesarily determined by better specs. A bit like what old CRT could do for pixel-art compared to modern LCD/OLED now.
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„Please play our game the way it’s intended to, at 540p and 18 FPS“
- Gamefreak

(I get your point though)
 
Skittzo said:
It was, but that doesn't mean it will only be used by Nintendo and nobody else. It's possible they'll put it in a new Shield product like the TX1 and TX1+ was.
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I see. I wonder if there could be such an agreement that Nvidia would be allowed to use it in a Shield product before Nintendo launches their device.
ILikeFeet said:
it does, but that's not relevant to linux commits
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Ah, I understand.
 
ReddDreadtheLead said:
Other way around.

that it (1070) will outperform it (Drake).
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Alright then.

A note from my point of view: to everyone in this thread wanting to know how your favorite game would run on Drake, I'd suggest you find a second hand 750 Ti / GTX 480 and launch your game at 1080p on your monitor. A Drake title in docked mode would run at about the same framerate with everything at medium with the advantage of having some ray tracing (maybe) and DLSS (maybe, otherwise it would probably run said game at said settings at a lower resolution).

That's lowballing it but it isn't far from the actual expected final result.

Bear in mind also that we don't know anything about the clocks so I can be reaaaaaally wrong. Not to mention that ports would be optimized making my claims even more moot.
 
Truth be told, I'm unsure how Drake could really stack up against these cards mentioned on this page. Like in theory, if should surpass 650ti (1.3 tflops) easily in handheld, and surpass 1060 (4.4 tflops) after DLSS is factored, in docked mode in some performance scenarios.

We know the pure tflops numbers and that it's an older architecture (Maxwell or Pascal) vs Ampere, with Ampere bring more efficient per flop (if it was turing, it would be less efficient). But, these cards have VRAM and bandwidth in their graphics cards, which is separate from system RAM on a PC. Obviously both are used for gaming. Orion doesn't have VRAM, and will use pooled RAM. I wondered this before and asked how they could, but never got an answer. Maybe we'll never know, until after Drake is released and games are compared. And I'm under the assumption we're getting 2.5-3 tflops in docked and 1.0-1.5 in handheld mode with 8-12 GB of lpddr5x RAM with 102 GB of bandwidth.

Like how would a 3 tflops Drake compare to a a PC with 4.4 tflops 1060 card that has 6GB of VRAM (192 GB/s bandwidth), a similar CPU to Drake, and say.. 8 GB of lpddr4 system RAM? There's no way Drake would beat it in raster performance. But could a Drake at max 1.3GHz clocks come close in performance (4 TFLOPs), when you account for VRAM and on system RAM on a 1060??
 
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Kenka said:
Alright then.

A note from my point of view: to everyone in this thread wanting to know how your favorite game would run on Drake, I'd suggest you find a second hand 750 Ti / GTX 480 and launch your game at 1080p on your monitor. A Drake title in docked mode would run at about the same framerate with everything at medium with the advantage of having some ray tracing (maybe) and DLSS (maybe, otherwise it would probably run said game at said settings at a lower resolution).

That's lowballing it but it isn't far from the actual expected final result.

Bear in mind also that we don't know anything about the clocks so I can be reaaaaaally wrong. Not to mention that ports would be optimized making my claims even more moot.
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Drake would do the 750TI in portable mode without sweat.


Docked isn’t even comparable.
 
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ShadowFox08 said:
Like how would a 3 tflops Drake compare to a a PC with 4.4 tflops 1060 card that has 6GB of VRAM (192 GB/s bandwidth), a similar CPU to Drake, and say.. 8 GB of lpddr4 system RAM? There's no way Drake would beat it in raster performance. But could a Drake at max 1.3GHz clocks come close in performance 4 TFLOPs), when you account for VRAM and on system RAM on a 1060??
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I get where you're going, but it's really apples to oranges at that point. Like, Drake's raw ability to push pixels doesn't change with the amount of RAM, but how well an engine can use it does. So if we factor in the RAM, do we factor the CPU? And if we do, do we factor in that NVN2/Horizon is optimized for games in a way early DirectX12 drivers/Windows are not?

The place to reliably look for comparisons is the 8th generation Sony/MS consoles. Drake looks astonishingly like a second draft of the last gen. It has 12 GPU workqueues and 8 cpu cores, just like the Xbone. It's minimum RAM is the same. It's most likely clock speeds in docked mode for both the CPU and the GPU are in the same range as the Xbone.

It's microarchitecture is superior in almost every way, however. Both the CPU and the GPU in the 8th gen machines were from before AMD radically redesigned their chips to modernize. The Xbone underperformed on the GPU side, Ampere fixes that gap, PS4 had memory bandwidth struggles, the LPDDR5 fixes that issue, both machines were dragged down by CPU, the more modern Austin ARM CPUs fix that.

The 8th gen consoles needed to build big beefy 2x power Pro refreshes, and used all that power just to up the resolution to 4k, not to add anything extra to the image itself. DLSS only needs 1.2x the power to get to 4k, leaving any additional performance to make the picture prettier.

And while the 8th gen consoles continue to receive robust cross-gen support, they have to do so without ray tracing features. Drake provides ray tracing hardware that, at minimum, opens cross-gen multiplats up to ports that run similarly to their PS4 Pro/One X versions, but look better.

"Last Gen Plus" is comfortably within Drake's reach. Nintendo may undershoot that line, but the design seems built for it. Push far past that line, and Drake's design starts to break down in terms of weird performance bottlenecks and docked/handheld imbalanced. Undershoot by a fair margin, and you start to reach a point where you could have received the same performance and better battery life with a smaller, but higher clocked chip.

Who knows what tomorrow will bring, but every leak of hard data has pointed in this direction. This is where the ship was pointed as recently as February, and every drop of hard data since then has seemed to confirm that is still where it is pointed. Every attempt to reparse the data, or get wild with speculation has settled back pretty close to this performance range. I feel very good about it.
 
oldpuck said:
I get where you're going, but it's really apples to oranges at that point. Like, Drake's raw ability to push pixels doesn't change with the amount of RAM, but how well an engine can use it does. So if we factor in the RAM, do we factor the CPU? And if we do, do we factor in that NVN2/Horizon is optimized for games in a way early DirectX12 drivers/Windows are not?

The place to reliably look for comparisons is the 8th generation Sony/MS consoles. Drake looks astonishingly like a second draft of the last gen. It has 12 GPU workqueues and 8 cpu cores, just like the Xbone. It's minimum RAM is the same. It's most likely clock speeds in docked mode for both the CPU and the GPU are in the same range as the Xbone.

It's microarchitecture is superior in almost every way, however. Both the CPU and the GPU in the 8th gen machines were from before AMD radically redesigned their chips to modernize. The Xbone underperformed on the GPU side, Ampere fixes that gap, PS4 had memory bandwidth struggles, the LPDDR5 fixes that issue, both machines were dragged down by CPU, the more modern Austin ARM CPUs fix that.

The 8th gen consoles needed to build big beefy 2x power Pro refreshes, and used all that power just to up the resolution to 4k, not to add anything extra to the image itself. DLSS only needs 1.2x the power to get to 4k, leaving any additional performance to make the picture prettier.

And while the 8th gen consoles continue to receive robust cross-gen support, they have to do so without ray tracing features. Drake provides ray tracing hardware that, at minimum, opens cross-gen multiplats up to ports that run similarly to their PS4 Pro/One X versions, but look better.

"Last Gen Plus" is comfortably within Drake's reach. Nintendo may undershoot that line, but the design seems built for it. Push far past that line, and Drake's design starts to break down in terms of weird performance bottlenecks and docked/handheld imbalanced. Undershoot by a fair margin, and you start to reach a point where you could have received the same performance and better battery life with a smaller, but higher clocked chip.

Who knows what tomorrow will bring, but every leak of hard data has pointed in this direction. This is where the ship was pointed as recently as February, and every drop of hard data since then has seemed to confirm that is still where it is pointed. Every attempt to reparse the data, or get wild with speculation has settled back pretty close to this performance range. I feel very good about it.
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That sounds quite realistic, and I like the sound of things, but it also makes me think that this thing is coming sooner than later.

I think people might be doomposting a little about the word "heavy", because heavy also means substantial, solid, present, and a lot. Given the wording I'm taking it to mean the latter: it's not heavy as in sad. It's heavy as in a lot.
 
given what we know about the hardware, the only thing that could count as heavy is its cancellation. and I'd think Mochizuki would scream that from the mountaintops. aside from that, there's nothing about the hardware that would be major

now software, that's the potential. "x is coming to Drake" could rock headlines and start a lot of fires
 
ILikeFeet said:
given what we know about the hardware, the only thing that could count as heavy is its cancellation. and I'd think Mochizuki would scream that from the mountaintops. aside from that, there's nothing about the hardware that would be major

now software, that's the potential. "x is coming to Drake" could rock headlines and start a lot of fires
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You don’t know what Nate would define as heavy, and hardware is more than the soc. Maybe there’s a major new control gimmick he heard about. Maybe there’s a delay to 2024, Or maybe it’s something a lot more mundane. Only Nate knows.
 
Hermii said:
You don’t know what Nate would define as heavy, and hardware is more than the soc. Maybe there’s a major new control gimmick he heard about. Maybe there’s a delay to 2024, Or maybe it’s something a lot more mundane. Only Nate knows.
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never claimed I did. I just don't think it has to do with hardware
 
Heavy means the topic carries a lot of baggage. He wasn't saying any one piece of info was heavy, the entire subject is heavy.

That's how I read it anyway.
 
Switch Pro is the new Trickle Down Economics. Any time now... :p

Switch-Pro.jpg
 
"Heavy" could refer to anything. From delayed, to cancelled, to a new game... But I have the insight it is for announcement or reveal of this system. This sort of information looks like something you have to confirm(rapidly) and be really sure of what you heard in order to not have another OLED model-like situation. Saying this next Switch is delayed or some game is in preparation for it is big (for us but for the general public no) but will certainly not make as much noise as saying this thing would be announced in 2 months or something (even the general public will hear about this). You have to be really careful handling this kind of information. And I think Nate's behavior lines up with what I'm saying.
 
Hosermess said:
Heavy could just be talking about the weight of expectations for any piece of new info.

I was going to add something about the way Nate answered a couple Pro questions in his podcast a couple weeks ago, but after typing it all out it just seems so silly now lol
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I've answered the question the same all year. I have nothing new to share beyond what I said back in October 2021. The information shared in Oct 2021 was accurate when relayed to me in 2021.
 
Skittzo said:
Heavy means the topic carries a lot of baggage. He wasn't saying any one piece of info was heavy, the entire subject is heavy.

That's how I read it anyway.
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That's how I read it too. Idk where all this doom came from for no reason. I took it as him saying the topic is heavy because anything he says gets blasted all over the internet. So when he says something he wants it confirmed now
 
ReddDreadtheLead said:
Not the doomer era


That’s how you can tell it’s coming sooner
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At the current rate, we have a doomer era every five pages triggered by some insider or such saying an entirely innane statement people take to mean "DRAKE IS CANCELLED, PACK IT UP, NO SOUP FOR YOU!" 😆

I think people are extremely skittish about it at the moment, and I can understand why. Personally I'm feeling pretty bullish, as I continue to not see ANYTHING concrete that points to or even suggests a delay, while we have, maybe not a mountain, but a nice hillside of evidence it's coming sooner than later.

Edit:
Also congrats to everyone and welcome all to page 600!
 
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Linkie3 said:
If TOTK launches in April and there is no new hardware in sight, I think I'm gonna emulate the game instead of playing it on the Switch. I really want to play this game in the best way possible and not on 2017 hardware.
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Nintendo will most likely introduce a new Switch revision for TOTK so that first generation Switch will keep on selling and showcase the new switch summer 2024.

Either that or they will release the new switch at this time next year or near TOTK
 
Mr Swine said:
Nintendo will most likely introduce a new Switch revision for TOTK so that first generation Switch will keep on selling and showcase the new switch summer 2024.

Either that or they will release the new switch at this time next year or near TOTK
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So you’re saying it could come any time in 2023 or if not then 2024?
 
NateDrake said:
I've answered the question the same all year. I have nothing new to share beyond what I said back in October 2021. The information shared in Oct 2021 was accurate when relayed to me in 2021.
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Nate, you're probably tired of having trolls accuse you of lying or making things up, so I understand the hesitancy to respond and with your response above being oddly specific about the accuracy of the info you had last year which seems aimed at those trolls. But this set of wording really does suggest plans have changed and the Oct 2021 info, while accurate at the time, is no longer accurate. If that's the case , and in combination with your note that the info you have "heavy" we can only assume the worst.

If that's not the case and the Oct 2021 info is still broadly accurate TODAY then please just say so.
 
Damn, I can't even fathom how Nate feels when every time he talks about something, everybody goes crazy with the wording, the timing etc etc. I think we should let Nate relax a bit for the time being. He has told multiple times that he will report news the moment he feels confident about them.
 
barrend said:
Damn, I can't even fathom how Nate feels when every time he talks about something, everybody goes crazy with the wording, the timing etc etc. I think we should let Nate relax a bit for the time being. He has told multiple times that he will report news the moment he feels confident about them.
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I don't think there's even a small chance he cares about people spitballing
 
Mr Swine said:
Nintendo will most likely introduce a new Switch revision for TOTK so that first generation Switch will keep on selling and showcase the new switch summer 2024.

Either that or they will release the new switch at this time next year or near TOTK
Click to expand...


I think they'll just release a special edition OLED for TotK.
 
YolkFolk said:
So you’re saying it could come any time in 2023 or if not then 2024?
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I would love for it to come next year but as time passes it’s getting more unlikely for every passing month. I hope that Nintendo doesn’t think that they can cruise for another year with a TOTK Oled Switch or new revision

kimbo99 said:
I think they'll just release a special edition OLED for TotK.
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I think it would be more likely to release both TOTK Oled and a new revision than just a new Oled
 
MusicProposition said:
big question is, is it still accurate
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Nate nate has repeatedly said that the past info he said still be accurate over the months, and has not made any comments to the contrary or suggest bad news

famiboards.com

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

snip This part doesn’t make sense at all. There aren’t any 3GB modules that help add up to the 6GB and also fit the 128-bit interface. It makes no sense for these devs to be so shocked about this performance if Nintendo is the one giving them these dev kits and the ones that receive it are...
famiboards.com famiboards.com

https://famiboards.com/threads/future-nintendo-hardware-technology-speculation-st.55/post-372186

https://famiboards.com/threads/future-nintendo-hardware-technology-speculation-st.55/post-330915

https://famiboards.com/threads/future-nintendo-hardware-technology-speculation-st.55/post-300405

so please, let's not get negative news or enter a spiral of doomed. Normal for Nate to participate less and less in these conversations, if every time he speaks an apocalypse is generated.
 
Mr Swine said:
I would love for it to come next year but as time passes it’s getting more unlikely for every passing month. I hope that Nintendo doesn’t think that they can cruise for another year with a TOTK Oled Switch or new revision
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I love how you jumped to a conclusion about a whole 365 days of a year we aren’t even in yet.

A lot can happen in a few days, the world could end. Or it can start snowing for the first time in the East coast

But we aren’t getting news right now so now Drake is a Holiday 2024 product to you somehow? Thats quite a leap.






I beg Nintendo fans to just ignore this thread until like the end of next month for your own sanity, which will be a whole new year, and to just enjoy the holidays and video games. You’re not gonna get much of any whisper any time soon. And please do not take every word as dooming every scenario, care for your mental health before caring for this.

I don’t even know why I’m even addressing this because they should not be entertained with anything meaningful. Nate didn’t even say anything.


and somehow, through some miraculous level of gymnastics, we somehow land on the mat that says “doom the whole prospect of the device”.

Y’all put the doom in nintendoom 😂💀.



Chill out please. Go play a game. Persona 5 Royal is now available on all relevant platforms such as PlayStation 4 by Sony, XBox One by Microsoft, Nintendo Switch by Nintendo, Steam storefront by Valve, GamePass by Microsoft, XBox Series by Microsoft and PlayStation 5 by Sony for $59.99 (tax not included).


Or go play Splatoon 3, tried it for the first time and I really like it.

Tutorials and controls feel nice… first Splatoon…


And I’ll play Xenoblade X for the first time at some point. Gotta get the good stuff from the Wii U before the store closes. Got one not to long ago mainly for Xeno X.


Or go play Bayonetta 3 if performance doesn’t bother you.


Or Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope.


Or speculate about the Mario movie.

Or speculate about the sequel to the critically acclaimed title by Nintendo EPD The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, known as The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.


Not here in this thread of course, but just take your mind off of it. The speculation that goes on here has been going around in circles, if anything new develops we will talk about it. Or if someone is curious on something we discuss is. But the constant pendulum swing back and forth is… concerning to say the least. Like how does one manage to do this… dozens of times.. on the same thing.
 
Ultimately I actually think we’ll know by March if this thing is coming out any time soon. I think we’ll have a proper full on Zelda trailer and reveal around then. If it’s all on Switch with zero mention of a new system then we ain’t getting new hardware until late 2023 at the earliest. They won’t release Zelda in May and then the hardware in like June for example.
 
oldpuck said:
Because emotionally we’re all boom and bust cycles here.

Also - it’s not absolutely impossible that Nintendo would pull out and Nvidia would see the value in the chip design. It’s not like that hasn’t happened before (clears throat in PlayStation)

But the timeline seems pretty insane if that did occur.
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3DS anyone? Though I doubt there is anything out ther comparable to Drake in performance/power/cost.

NateDrake said:
I've answered the question the same all year. I have nothing new to share beyond what I said back in October 2021. The information shared in Oct 2021 was accurate when relayed to me in 2021.
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Can you tell us more or less what you meant with "heavy"? If you can't, can you give us a synonym for it?
 
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ILikeFeet said:
3DS wasn't custom. That was an off the shelf Tegra 2 that didn't pass power consumption


Whoa, let's not go crazy here. Things aren't that dire
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Oh, I know it wasn't custom, it was just another example of someone turning away from Nvidia and chosing another option. I believe that happened pretty late on the 3DS development, didn't it? At least there were options back there, I am not so sure there are this time around, not anything of Drake's calibre at least.
 
TonyBaduy said:
Oh, I know it wasn't custom, it was just another example of someone turning away from Nvidia and chosing another option. I believe that happened pretty late on the 3DS development, didn't it? At least there were options back there, I am not so sure there are this time around, not anything of Drake's calibre at least.
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Van Gogh? I'm sure Valve doesn't have the money to pay for exclusivity.

In theory, Intel with their Efficiency Cores and Xe

If you want to stick with ARM, Mediatek can make something now they have an RT capable gpu
 
little do you know that I post my interpretations of minute phrasing during my two minute splatoon queues
 
Orin was announced 2 years ago this month. The roadmap included a low power 15W variant.

In February, Nintendo and Nvidia were working on NVN2 for Drake. This was one month before Orin went into full production. The properties of the hardware were well known, and exceeding the performance-per-watt (a critical factor for Nintendo) of the roadmapped Orin.

In August, Linux drivers are dropped. These say that Drake as a File Decompression Engine, built for video games, and an ARM CPU built for video games.

Nvidia releases GPU documentation that mentions Drake. To Nvidia, despite the fact that there are a number of variants of Orin, they are all one system internally, and Drake is something else

There are strong indications that Drake is being manufactured starting in August.

In September, Orin Nano is released. Orin Nano is a 5-15W variant of Orin. Orin Nano doesn't use the ARM CPU known to be in Drake.

What does this mean?

Nvidia has a big multi-year Orin roadmap, and Drake isn't on it. The only slot on the roadmap that Drake could fill is filled by Orin Nano. Drake was built hand in hand with Nintendo for a console. Nintendo was still planning on using Drake in February, at a point when they had physical Orin to test with.

If Nintendo cancelled NuSwitch between February and August, that means Nvidia decided to make Drake anyway, despite the fact it has custom hardware they are unlikely to be able to use, and with no slots in their product line, instead of just taking the kill fee.

If Nintendo killed NuSwitch after chips came off the line, then in the last 2 months, Nintendo had a titanic, earth shattering issue, and would rather write off millions of dollars in R&D, commit to buying chips from Nvidia that they cannot use, and told 11 developers to wind down their NuSwitch porting teams right before Christmas, and not a peep of it made it to the outside world.

Are either of these impossible? No. But they represent a late game mind change that makes the Nintendo Playstation debacle seem like a measured and considered response.

Or, you remember that months and months ago Nate mentioned that he had info that he hadn't been able to confirm, and that he was going to dot the i and cross the t on every source before following up, and that since that time he has stood behind his previous reporting, and that saying the same thing months later likely doesn't indicate any change in the landscape.
 
0
Doom train needs to gtfo

It’s launching with or before TotK until we’ve concrete evidence to the contrary
 
TonyBaduy said:
3DS anyone? Though I doubt there is anything out ther comparable to Drake in performance/power/cost.


Can you tell us more or less what you meant with "heavy"? If you can't, can you give us a synonym for it?
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Significant.

Ojoloco said:
Nate nate has repeatedly said that the past info he said still be accurate over the months, and has not made any comments to the contrary or suggest bad news

famiboards.com

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

snip This part doesn’t make sense at all. There aren’t any 3GB modules that help add up to the 6GB and also fit the 128-bit interface. It makes no sense for these devs to be so shocked about this performance if Nintendo is the one giving them these dev kits and the ones that receive it are...
famiboards.com famiboards.com

https://famiboards.com/threads/future-nintendo-hardware-technology-speculation-st.55/post-372186

https://famiboards.com/threads/future-nintendo-hardware-technology-speculation-st.55/post-330915

https://famiboards.com/threads/future-nintendo-hardware-technology-speculation-st.55/post-300405

so please, let's not get negative news or enter a spiral of doomed. Normal for Nate to participate less and less in these conversations, if every time he speaks an apocalypse is generated.
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As most of those posts say: consider that info accurate until an update is given. That's all I'll say on the matter.
 
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NateDrake said:
Significant.
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Thank you, I think people can stop just assuming a negative connotation from that. I imagine there are some major things going on right now since we are approaching it's announcement date (sometime next year), hopefully you get what you need confirmed so that you can tell us what you found soon, but if not, we'll just have to wait.
 
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