Because its a system that must run in 5-10 watts, and the GDDR5 memories require 30-40 watts. But yes, this is THE weakest point of the Switch, at a point several of the Vulkan tier resources must be used in another context.
Mainly, as all the vulkan tier chips, there are those specialized tesselation units sitting between the vertex and pixel shader stages, that allow you to subdivide the model in realtime AFTER the system transformed the triangles, and most importantly AFTER the system fetched the triangles from the memory. On the PS4/PC etc, you use this for adding more bumpy details to the character on an absurd subdivision level. Now on the switch you use this for being able to use decent models in first place.
When comparing to the PS3, it's the equivalent to 50-60 "PS3 GBs/s" because as with all modern video chips, it support a full data compression that basically doubles the effective speed.
Also the tesselation cheat i mentioned above.
Jack Jackson
Polymodels don't take a lot of space in the first place
Brayden King
Everything's allowed What statist shithole do you live in?
Charles Hill
They take a bit of the bandwith. If for example you're using 4 million of indexed triangles, and supposing the indexes compress 1:3 (as by my personal experience is the case), if your vertices have X,Y,Z, UV and a couple of extra values for skinning, its 28 bytes per triangle, or 112MB/s per frame or 6.7GB/s at 60 fps.
Nicholas Stewart
Where do you store that tesselated data then?
Straight to framebuffer?
Either way polygons barely take any meaningful space.
Elijah Hernandez
I don't even see any confirmation anywhere. Why would Samsung even know
Anyone wanna search in the archives?
Joshua Martin
You are right that would be a lot of that 25GB/s, I ignored that and was just thinking in general with desktop tier memory bandwidths where that would be irrelevant tier
Nathaniel Rivera
Yep. As i said, its a quite interesting system because the memory is garbage, but it have a zillion of modern tricks to hide it.
I bet on some late life Switch games generating textures on the shaders just to avoid using the memory at all.
Isaac Wood
This is probably why zelda has no anisotropic filtering.
Andrew Perez
That's actually fairly up to date spec wise. Snapdragon 820 supports up to 28.8GB/s on it's memory controller so 25GB/s isn't bad, especially considering how underclocked everything else is rumored to be.
Robert Johnson
Why i have the slight impression that the switch PCB is significantly cheaper than the WiiU PCB?
Aaron Myers
>Damn, the Switch is underpowered >It's okay. It's powerful for a handheld. >Damn, the Switch is inconveniently large >It's a home console first. >Damn, the tablet and joycon gimmicks are unnecessary and annoying. >It's a portable system. >Damn, the battery life is awful. >But, it's a console!
Carter Evans
>procedural generation
No thanks.
Ayden Anderson
Yes it is. Anisotropic filtering requires a LOT of texture samples. They probably will come up with some post processing shader to hide the mip without having to resort to aniso, but right now you have to rely on trilinear.
Interestingly enough, TXAA actually DO fix the mip issues by just giving it the mips raw, but it cause some ghosting in the process.
Jeremiah Fisher
>its large What? It's not, especially when you compare it to tablets and laptops. It's around the size of the 3DS with the joycons removed, and the joycons are small enough that they can fit in pockets easily
>battery life is awful Yet the 3DS is a successful portable. Really makes me think, huh?
Colton Ramirez
It's weird but fun.
Isaac Kelly
Gets the noggin joggin
Mason Taylor
Power problems are not even an issue anymore since the damn thing uses a type C usb port
Anthony Roberts
>1/16th the bandwidth of PS4 >up to date
Lucas Hill
>Outdated fabrication node (allegedly) >No hardware supported backwards compatibility >1 SoC chip as opposed to the 3 points of failure bundle that was the espresso package >Less parts in general. I dunno you tell me.
Angel Foster
>1/16th You're terrible at math and any hope you should have had for it aiming for home console performance should have been dropped when that non-threatening white man in the trailer picked it up and went to meet his inoffensively diverse cast of friends. It's a mobile SoC, get over it.
Cooper Turner
Apparently the Tegra X1 as most mobile GPU chips is a tiled renderer. Which means it uses an internal fast as fuck but tiny memory to render the picture in 16x16 pixel blocks. This helps quite a lot with the memory bandwith*, but makes writing a driver for the thing annoying.
*Not applicable to texture fetches
Isaac Perry
>2017 hardware is cheaper to manufacture than 2012 hardware with roughly similar processing power
holy penis what a scoop
Tyler Hall
The tegra chip is a lot faster and more featured than the WiiU in pretty much all aspects. But it still consumes a lot less power, which means a lot less components for the regulation/decoupling.
Noah Ross
because it's just an overpriced tablet
Caleb Howard
To be fair, the WiiU is 2008 tech adapted to 2012 manufacture processes and the Switch is 2015 tech adapted to 2017 manufacture processes. There is some room for debate, Switch is probably still cheaper though.
Brayden Martin
Drones gonna drone.
Hudson Scott
The only other device with the same chip and a screen etc etc etc.. is the google pixel C, sold for $500 dollars and having half of the RAM of the switch. Of course, the screen is a lot better, it is made out of aluminum etc..
Michael Clark
You fucking what? How does that change the fact that is has a dogshit battery life for a portable system?
Joshua Gray
Unlike all other portable gaming systems released on the last 15 years or so, you can connect a regular power bank to the Switch and push its battery life for like 10-15 hours.
Connor Young
You fucking what? How does that change the fact that is has a dogshit battery life for a portable system? Your argument boils down to a car can have fucking terrible fuel consumption efficiency but it's fine because there are petrol stations everywhere. What the fuck, drone?
Blake Collins
Why are android tablets so dead anyway? Other than the occasional tegra tab, they all just have stock phone SoCs lazily slapped in them and they're about a year late to the party, just this week the first snapdragon 820 tablet i've seen yet was announced and the snapdragon 835 phones are just about to come out. They're so non-competitive Apple hasn't even bothered to release a tablet with their newest architecture because last year's apple tablets are still styling over anything on the android side.
Oliver Bell
Tablets exist in some weird position between phones and laptops, sales have been dropping for a few years now.
Colton Sanchez
Battery technology just isn't there. They literally shoved the biggest battery they could put without increasing product dimension.
Blake Reed
If Sony can release a handheld with a 2 hour battery life with the Vita while everyone defended it and yet Nintendo's releases something that is not only more powerful and has a better battery life and people complain?
Vita's minimum battery life was like 3.5 hours. It was even noted at the time to be impressively better than the 3ds in that.
Jack Garcia
You can't take petrol stations with you.
Noah Richardson
>Why are android tablets so dead anyway?
People who want to play Angry Birds on the bus just buy a big phone instead of a separate device. People who want productivity software get a Windows tablet or small laptop. This isnt limited to Android, have you seen those ads where Apple tries to peddle the iPad Pro as an actual computer replacement by pretending MS Office for iOS is just as good as the actual Office?
Matthew Watson
>you cannot connect a regular power bank to other handhelds I'm sorry what? Were you born yesterday or something?
Aiden Rivera
...
Jacob Watson
Can someone explain this to a tech layman?
Bentley Nelson
The Switch Doesn't Have PS4 Performance IV: The Leaks Get Redundanter
James Williams
BS. It doesn't even feature any QC tech whatsoever, The piece of shit takes three hours to charge. I have a marginally smaller phone battery charge by USB C in just over an hour.
Another corner cut by the kikes at nintendo to pad their bottom line.
Caleb Martinez
The fastest mobile memory, which translates to really slow.
Robert Gonzalez
It's the same as the 3DS
Isaiah Young
Can we finally say DF leak was real?
Isaac Sanchez
Bottlenecked RAM, though 25 GB/s should be okay for a nintendo console actually. Nintendo never was about AMAZING GRAFFIX and at 60 fps at non 4k res 25 GB should not be reached. It isstill notable that this limit is really low even compared to years old other console hardware.
Cooper Anderson
You can't directly compare to old consoles due the improvements in technology.
Here there are the juicy tegra specific bits: international.download.nvidia.com/pdf/tegra/Tegra-X1-whitepaper-v1.0.pdf
Maxwell and up have some quite advanced realtime memory compression technologies that basically double the effective bandwith by storing the data compressed in the memory, which also makes you be able to fit more shit in the same space if compared to an ancient WiiU for example.
You can only compare the switch directly with the PS4 and Xbone in terms of spec, where the switch readily loses.
Dominic Sullivan
>zelda last not even 2 hours and 30 minutes with just wifi on and full brightness >last like the 3ds
Ahahahahahahaa NO.
Connor Richardson
They're all about overcharging for the included hardware though.
Christian Phillips
Nigga i can play digimon sluts for 4 hours and 33 minutes and i know this because i test durarions with different games on the vita.
Anthony Sanchez
>play an expansive open world game at 720p at full brightness >2.5 hours >play a 480p mobile pocket monster game at 4.5 hours
Apples to apples right?
Hudson Young
But just imagine if they had gone with that 50GB/s bandwidth Tegra Pascal supported (so 4x1GB RAM modules)+all this compression tech
Samuel Garcia
what games?
Caleb Phillips
WAHOO BATTERY IS LOW BING BING [RED POWER LIGHT FLASHING INTENSIFIES] SO LONG GAY BOWSER
Robert Foster
So is it stronger than a Wii U or not?
Leo Collins
The only way they can do that is to use twice the chips or twice the clock.
Luke Rodriguez
Yeah Wii U has 12.8GB/s but it also has 32MB of some way faster DRAM
Though this 25GB/s is for docked mode as the RAM in the Switch runs a lot slower when portable
So probably a bit better than Wii U when handheld and a lot better (2x or more) when docked
Luis Peterson
>shit on the vita for battery >prove you wrong >b-but is not the same!
So suddenly now is not the same ey? Dont come here and be a smartass on throwing lies about a system battery if you arent prepared to be proven wrong. You said its a 2 hour battery and i shit you on that. Dont pull that bullshit now
Nathan Nelson
Tha's why put in parenthesis 4x1GB modules
124-bit bus on Pascal Tegra
This would have been quite good imo
Caleb Cook
128-bit but yeah
Owen Morgan
>want to compare the vita battery life with the switch >gets BTFO >muh apples and oranges now
sorry but you fucked up here. the vita doesnt last less than 3 hours with any game amd the switch already cries at 3 hours or less with moderated brightness and wifi off with its "system" seller. dont backpedal this hard now.
Ian Morgan
So this is like a Wii U tier device?
John Cox
Only in docked mode
Wii U: 352 Gflops Tegra X1@1000 MHz: 512 Gflops
Switch undocked is 307 MHz and docked is 768 MHz. Therefore
But Switch handheld runs zelda better than wii u, also mario kart and seems to run splatoon just fine
Camden Collins
>mind-boggingly vast world >relentlessly intriguing >go anywhere and do anything Literally what?
Brayden Thomas
>But Switch handheld runs zelda better than wii u No
Easton Ortiz
>gflops
Evidently not very useful in this situation as switch has demonstrated to run games better than wii u when handheld
Also maxwell tegra has that mixed precision meme
Robert Gonzalez
Tablets were always a meme and I hope they go extinct soon.
Anthony Hall
I don't get it, switch handheld runs zelda at 720p and way more stable 30fps than wii u
Brandon Young
Better RAM and CPU, and they probably tweaked the game here and there. End of the day it's still a downclocked Tegra X1.
Leo Jackson
At the end of the day Wii U is a piece of shit too
Adam Mitchell
But with higher gflops still
Cameron Green
Wrong picture, mr. Microsoft
Nolan Nelson
>AYMD flops
My R9 390 is a 5 tflops card and yet my 5.8 tflops GTX 1070 absolutely crushes it
Wyatt Fisher
The Switch has shit specs.
Jeremiah Martin
Well Sup Forums was all about X1's gflops until DF revealed the clock speed. Now it's a meme.
Ayden Carter
Can't wait for Digital Foundry making Wii U/Switch comparisons, though I wonder how they'll capture handheld footage
Matthew Nelson
I don't trust these specs. They don't match what the console is clearly able to produce. It seems quite a bit more powerful than what the specs suggest.
Oliver Robinson
Power consumption, die, RAM markings, samsung confirmation seem to suggest that the eurogamer specs are correct
>16Wh battery >2.5h zelda >6-7W consumption while handheld
Anthony Turner
And this 6-7W is for entire system
Jaxson Bennett
Remember all the 1080p/60fps Wii U game memes against PS4?
Elijah Green
Well the Switch sure is a piece of shit hardware vice but it seems to compare favorably to the even more piece of shit 2007 tech Wii U hardware
Jack Miller
Technerds explain this
If it's a Tegra X1 running at 1/3rd the full clock while portable and 2/3 full clock when docked, WHY DOES IT NEED THAT HEATPIPE AND FAN??
Colton Lee
Yes. Yes it does.
Blake Wood
The Shield TV needs an even bigger fan and heatpipe
Adam Carter
Yeah but it runs the GPU at 1GHZ and the CPU cores way faster too
Ryan Adams
Because ARM and NVIDIA.
The heatpipe should be enough for passive cooling, the fan for sure will be for when its docked.
Jeremiah Campbell
Looks about the same size really
Shield TV has higher consumption tho
Hunter Miller
No definitely a lot bigger. Power consumption is also used for the HDD.
Depends on the thermal-clockspeed curve probably. DF has recently revealed there's a hidden overclock mode to boost Switch's clockspeed a bit more but only to test thermal strain.
Alexander Edwards
>Switch >hard drive disk
You mean SSD?
Robert Ross
Not this user, but I'd like to see the source too.
Easton Torres
because no HBM2
Lucas Williams
I mean for the Shield TV when you say it has a higher power consumption