Nintendo Switch Thread - Page 9

In an interview with Glixel, Bethesda Game Studios director and executive producer Todd Howard had plenty of positive things to say about Switch.

Howard was able to get a look at Nintendo’s new system at E3 in June. Whatever was presented, he said that it was “probably the best demo I’ve ever seen.”

Howard also said that Bethesda is “definitely going to be supporting it.” He made note of the fact that this is really the first time the company will be involved with a Nintendo platform since the NES days.

Finally, it was further suggested that The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim will be on Switch. That certainly makes sense, as it appeared in Nintendo’s announcement trailer for the console.

Nintendo Switch will be able to play GameCube games via its Virtual Console service, three separate sources have confirmed to Eurogamer.

GameCube support is already tested and working, we understand, and three Nintendo games have already been prepped for Switch.

Those games are Super Mario Sunshine, Luigi's Mansion and Super Smash Bros. Melee.

Wii, Wii U and 3DS have all offered a Virtual Console service for downloading games released on earlier Nintendo hardware. Switch will be no different.

And while the number of platforms to be offered on Switch's Virtual Console has yet to be nailed down, we've heard that there should be an upgrade programme similar to that available on Wii U, where earlier purchases of Virtual Console NES games can be 'upgraded' for a small fee rather than being bought again at full price.

We've also heard that Nintendo Switch's Virtual Console is being engineered by (Nintendo European Research and Development) NERD, the studio behind the recent NES Mini micro-console which sold out in many stores ahead of Christmas.

Spec reveals are never easy. Months - sometimes years - of anticipation build after initial teasers. Rumours circulate, patent applications are scoured for hints of what the platform holders might be planning, anonymous sources spring up telling us exactly what we want to hear - and then reality hits. Recently, Venturebeat essentially reconfirmed a Digital Foundry report from July, revealing that Nintendo Switch is based on Nvidia's Tegra X1, featuring a GPU based on second generation Maxwell technology. For those hoping for Xbox One power in a portable, it was a blow. Uncertainty remains on how Nintendo has customised the X1 processor, but we can go one step further today in revealing how the power of the console adjusts as Switch transitions from home console into a full portable.

But first, let's dissect the Venturebeat story a little and add our own flavour. In April this year, we first learned that Nvidia tech was 'inside' the Nintendo NX, as it was known then. Further sources came forward across the months to corroborate the story, then sometime in July, Nintendo of Europe held a large event at its Frankfurt HQ where the kit was demoed in action to a very large audience. Both Digital Foundry and Eurogamer now had all the confirmation required to run our stories. From our perspective, the next step was to push further and hammer down the final specification - but this was not easy.

In our story, we speculated that the March 2017 release would allow Nintendo to transition from the Tegra X1 to the more modern Tegra X2 utilising Pascal technology using a FinFET processor production technology, opening the door to better performance and/or longer battery life. Nvidia itself claimed that the custom processor in Switch is based on 'the same architecture as the world's top-performing GeForce gaming graphics cards' - seemingly a stone-wall indicator that Pascal was in Switch (all of the most powerful GPUs on the market when that statement was made were based on Pascal, after all).

Now, to be fair to Nvidia, Tegra X1's Maxwell was the final iteration of the architecture and does have technological aspects that are found in Pascal: specifically, double-rate FP16 support. We're also told that Switch has bespoke customisations that may involve pulling in other Pascal optimisations. And it's also worth noting that at the nuts and bolts level, Pascal and Maxwell are already very similar. So with that in mind, the main difference comes down to the process technology: 20nm in Maxwell, 16nm FinFET in Pascal. Regardless, behind the scenes, sources inform us that Nintendo continued to brief developers with a spec that is uncannily similar to this Twitter leak that actually surfaced before the official reveal - and in crucial areas, it's a match for a stock Tegra X1.

There are some anomalies and inconsistencies there that raise alarm bells though. Tegra X1 is a fully-featured HDMI 2.0 capable processor, so why is video output hobbled to HDMI 1.4 specs? What's the point of a 4K, 30Hz output? The X1 also has 16 ROPs, so why is pixel fill-rate mysteriously running at only 90 per cent capacity - the 14.4 pixels/cycle should be 16 were this a standard Tegra X1. Nvidia's chip also has four ARM Cortex A53s in combination with the more powerful A57s - so why aren't they on the spec too? (In fairness, the A53s didn't actually see much utilisation based on Tegra X1 benchmarks). Other areas of the spec have since been corroborated by Eurogamer: specifically, the 6.2-inch IPS LCD panel with a 720p resolution and multi-touch support, but there is the sense that this is an old spec, that there's a crucial part of the puzzle still missing.

CUDA core count and memory bandwidth are certainly in line with a standard Tegra X1, but critically, the leaked spec is extremely vague about the actual speed of the CPU and GPU, referring only to the maximum speeds seen on Nvidia's Shield Android TV micro-console. Assuming that Switch uses the same 20nm process technology as Shield, those clocks were never going to be attainable for a relatively small, handheld, battery-powered console. The Venturebeat story suggests that Switch is still using 20nm technology, but right now, this remains unconfirmed.

Clock-speeds are a crucial piece of information required to get some idea of Switch's capabilities beyond the physical make-up of the Tegra processor. As many have speculated, the new Nintendo hardware does indeed feature two performance configurations - and the console is categorically not as capable in mobile form, compared to its prowess when docked and attached to an HDTV. And we can confirm that there is no second GPU or additional hardware in the dock itself regardless of the intriguing patents that Nintendo has filed suggesting that there might be. With battery life and power throughput no longer an issue, the docked Switch simply allows the GPU to run much faster. And to put it simply, there is a night and day difference here.

Where Switch remains consistent is in CPU power - the cores run at 1020MHz regardless of whether the machine is docked or undocked. This ensures that running game logic won't be compromised while gaming on the go: the game simulation itself will remain entirely consistent. The machine's embedded memory controller runs at 1600MHz while docked (on par with a standard Tegra X1), but the default power mode undocked sees this drop to 1331MHz. However, developers can opt to retain full memory bandwidth in their titles should they choose to do so.

As things stand, CPU clocks are halved compared to the standard Tegra X1, but it's the GPU aspect of the equation that will prove more controversial. Even while docked, Switch doesn't run at Tegra X1's full potential. Clock-speeds are locked here at 768MHz, considerably lower than the 1GHz found in Shield Android TV, but the big surprise from our perspective was the extent to which Nintendo has down-clocked the GPU to hit its thermal and battery life targets. That's not a typo: it really is 307.2MHz - meaning that in portable mode, Switch runs at exactly 40 per cent of the clock-speed of the fully docked device. And yes, the table below does indeed confirm that developers can choose to hobble Switch performance when plugged in to match the handheld profile should they so choose.