All is confirmed the Nintendo Switch is powered by stock Nvidia Tegra X1, same chipset used in Shield TV. The most surprising is the retention of 4 Cortex A53 processor cores, which have no use in the Nintendo switch as they can't be operated at the same time when Cortex A57 cores are running due to the ARM big.little configuration setup.

After subsequent processing of the GPU from the Nintendo Switch, we have determined that the processor is the Nvidia Tegra T210. The T210 CPU features 4 Cortex A57 and 4 Cortex A53 processor cores and the GPU is a GM20B Maxell core.

http://techinsights.com/about-techinsights/overview/blog/nintendo-switch-teardown/

Nvidia Tegra X1 features

• 8 core CPU (4 x Cortex A57 and 4 x Cortex A53)
• GPU is a GM20B Maxell core

A comparison to Shield TV. Switch specs on the left, and Shield TV on the right. The clock speeds are reported from Eurogamer, which are very much true.

• RAM: 4GB vs 3GB
• CPU: 1Ghz vs. 2Ghz
• GPU: 3 modes:307.2Mhz/384Mhz/768Mhz vs 1Ghz

Shield TV is clocked higher initially in both CPU and GPU, but don't forget Shield TV can't keep these clock speeds up for long, it throttles down to the exact switch's dock clockspeeds. Which further supports a stock X1.

 

[ov3rkill]

Some people are still hung up on the spec-wars though. They should understand this is Nintendo we're talking about. For a very long time, they haven't competed on the most powerful gaming console. What's wrong IMO, is they blatantly lie to their fans, who kept on patronizing and supporting them. I think the Wii U was great, it was a proper innovative console. You can freakin' play a DS game, VC, draw from it, etc. I think it was in the right direction, it was just not well received or properly marketed and also the lack of games obviously. If they would've improved from there and build around it, maybe it would've truly bridged the gap from handheld to home console. Imagine backwards compatibility and future 3DS games you could play. Well, just wishful thinking.

FWIW though, they could possibly increase the clock speed in-game especially on the low fps areas of BOTW. That should be interesting enough on how they could come up in fixing those. I don't own a Switch but I do own a Wii U. I've read a lot of complaints about fps drops on the Switch. As for the Wii U, I didn't mind while playing BOTW because it was playable. I did get to enjoy it and still am.

 

[Spider_Man]

the specs do not seem to be outstanding ,but as long as the games run fine with those specs then all good i guess o-o'

que zelda botw and other games with terrible lag issues......

this is another cheap ass last gen revamp that nintendo are selling at an extortionate price.... fuck off £280 for this shit.

 

[WiiUBricker]

With regard to GC emulation, wouldn't it be much more possible on Switch than Shield TV as Switch isn't using some bloated Android OS?

It may be offset by the Switch's slower CPU clock speed.

 

[GerbilSoft]

What has all this to do with what i said? Nintendo blatantly lied about performance only to get people to believe that this thing will get big studio support. Big fat lie. Now it is exposed. I personally do not give the slightest of shits, because as an idiot gamer and nintendo fan will buy any bullshit they bring out. However, it is not me they should be targeting but the common Joe out there, its the general public they are trying to win and lying, then offering expensive (and needed) accessories is just another nail in the coffin. Where are all the IDIOTS now that believed this will be "close to XbOne performance"?

It has everything to do with whiners who would be the first to bitch about anyone using a PC that dares to have INTEGRATED GRAPHICS but are the first to line up for a game console with the same thing.

Incidentally, I can't find a source where Nintendo said it would be "close to Appbox One performance". Do you have a citation for this?

 

[Foxi4]

Hi foxi, been a while since i had a conversation with you.
Anyway are you able to calculate the gflops of the given Switch's clock speeds, both docked and un-docked.

I am. There's a number of ways you can do this, but most commonly people use the shader equation.

SIMD x Compute Unit x ALU per SIMD = Shaders

Shaders x Ops per cycle (normally 2, 1x Multiply + 1x Accumulate) x cycles per second = FLOPS (theoretical)

In this case we have the number of Shaders already, so we can skip Step 1.

256 Shaders x 2 Ops x 384MHz = 196.6GFLOPS

256 Shaders x 2 Ops x 768MHz = 393.2GFLOPS

This checks out as the standard X1 running at 1GHz does reach the correct 512GFLOPS value using this equation, as stated in the documentation:

256 Shaders x 2 Ops x 1GHz = 512GFLOPS

If the number of ALU's on-die is different in the Switch, the numbers might not match - I'm on a bus and don't have the time to zoom in and count them on the silicon.

Wii Mini and Baby SNES

Also the NES top loader. They only refrain from revising consoles that flopped. There's no point in improving a system that doesn't sell well, might as well use the resources towards a successor instead of patching a sinking boat.

 

[heartgold]

Does anyone have x-ray for tegra x1? Cause this does not match ue4 preset. @TheDarkGreninja So what does 4.15 say about the switch?

Someone at neogaf has a gif comparing the two.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=232127603&postcount=1

 

[TheDarkGreninja]

Does anyone have x-ray for tegra x1? Cause this does not match ue4 preset. @TheDarkGreninja So what does 4.15 say about the switch?

I dont think presets have changed much. I will say though, is the stock X1 even confirmed based on clocks etc.? Seems people are saying that based on limited info and dimensions which imo is stupid.

 

[geodeath]

Some people are still hung up on the spec-wars though. They should understand this is Nintendo we're talking about. For a very long time, they haven't competed on the most powerful gaming console. What's wrong IMO, is they blatantly lie to their fans, who kept on patronizing and supporting them. I think the Wii U was great, it was a proper innovative console. You can freakin' play a DS game, VC, draw from it, etc. I think it was in the right direction, it was just not well received or properly marketed and also the lack of games obviously. If they would've improved from there and build around it, maybe it would've truly bridged the gap from handheld to home console. Imagine backwards compatibility and future 3DS games you could play. Well, just wishful thinking.

FWIW though, they could possibly increase the clock speed in-game especially on the low fps areas of BOTW. That should be interesting enough on how they could come up in fixing those. I don't own a Switch but I do own a Wii U. I've read a lot of complaints about fps drops on the Switch. As for the Wii U, I didn't mind while playing BOTW because it was playable. I did get to enjoy it and still am.

It is not so much about a spec wars, it is about identifying the reasons why they do not get 3rd party support and that comes from many reasons, obvious to some, completely ignored by Nintendo themselves:

1. Architecture. While the whole industry is going x86 and for a good reason (speed of development, availability of good and cheap hardware, many providers etc yada yada)
2. Strangeness. Not everybody wants to tie their software around a strange controller or try to find new mechanics to justify a game on the WiiU etc.
3. Marketing. Nintendo really do not help their consoles at all. There was no single bit of marketing hype for the Switch in London at least. It was days after release (when every stock was already sold) that they put billboards up showing Zelda. Yeah, nice move! That will sell some consoles!
4. Power. Yes, power. Not specs. Power. As long as devs can easily bring the games to the console (a.k.a. financially sound investing) they simply will. They are not stupid, to limit their market for no reason. So, next time you do not see a multiplat on the Switch you know there is a good reason. It is simply too costly/prohibitive to do, in fears of not getting the investment back.

So, enough of the spec wars. This is a SOFTWARE WAR. But software runs on hardware. And if devs gather round a table and find out that with X amount of time they can develop for 80% of the market, they will not use X*2 times the amount of time to develop for 90%. If anybody fails to see the basic math behind this, its back to school time.

Obviously this is a general remark and not a reply towards you. I do not care about specs as long as the games keep coming. However, the links is there and it must be taken into perspective.

 

[Dork]

i just don't give a fuck anymore, nintendo can release any sort of dumb quirky stupid hardware they want, i just want to play nintendo games

 

[geodeath]

It has everything to do with whiners who would be the first to bitch about anyone using a PC that dares to have INTEGRATED GRAPHICS but are the first to line up for a game console with the same thing.

Incidentally, I can't find a source where Nintendo said it would be "close to Appbox One performance". Do you have a citation for this?

I do not care if something has integrated graphics or not. Why is this a point? I do not get it and i did not make it myself, so no interest in discussing it whatsoever. I never spoke about PCs anyway, i am talking about consoles only, i do not give a damn about what you can do on a pc.

I never said Nintendo said it. I said people did. Here, on this very forum. They kept insisting it is "80-90%" of the XbOne raw power.
And just to set the records straight, i do not care. Devs will though. That, i care about. The idiots that thought this will hit 80-90% of the XbOne, would simply flame everybody on this forum for saying it will never be so. Well, let's see what they say now. This is what this thread is about.

 

[GerbilSoft]

Nintendo blatantly lied about performance

I never said Nintendo said it. I said people did.

Thanks for admitting that you're FAKE NEWS.

1. Architecture. While the whole industry is going x86 and for a good reason (speed of development, availability of good and cheap hardware, many providers etc yada yada)

The "industry" is going ARM. The only reason Appbox One is x86_64 is because of Microsoft's attempt to push everyone towards Universally Worthless Programs. I'm not sure why Sony went with x86_64 instead of ARM, though.

 

[memoryman3]

This is a HANDHELD. Obviously a HANDHELD would not be on par with a console, especially when it's a lot smaller, and needs to keep cool and not consume too much electricity.

An X2 would have meant better battery life and no memory bandwidth bottleneck yes, but it simply wasn't ready. The X1 currently has the best mobile GPU on the market.

This is the first HD dedicated Nintendo handheld, and it's a huge leap over the 3DS, and smaller, more efficent than the Wii U. It has a lot of potential.

 

[Foxi4]

I like how the Nintendrones already "Switched" from "it's almost matching the XBO, it's fine" to "it doesn't matter, it's powerful enough for the games I want, graphics don't matter". This is a disaster for the Switch, I'm not sure if people quite grasp that yet.

 

[geodeath]

Thanks for admitting that you're FAKE NEWS.

Whoa there.

You are quoting 2 DIFFERENT THINGS.

Nintendo DID lie about performance by saying they are using a "custom" tegra processor. You can take this as simply custom or custom for a reason. People tend to do the second.

It is 2 completely different quotes taken out of context. Sorry for the confusion but i thought it was clear enough.

 

[Xzi]

I'm not really buying that it's a stock X1 with no changes or customization. Waiting for more benchmarks and analysis to come in rather than relying on a single source, as we've had other singular sources contradict this already.

Were it true I wouldn't be devastated though, Shield TV has been a great device for me.

 

[geodeath]

This is a HANDHELD. Obviously a HANDHELD would not be on par with a console, especially when it's a lot smaller, and needs to keep cool and not consume electricity.

An X2 would have meant better battery life and no memory bandwidth bottleneck yes, but it simply wasn't ready. The X1 currently has the best mobile GPU on the market.

And this is what we were saying all along. Yet nintendrones still kept babbling about how it will be so.

 

[leonmagnus99]

que zelda botw and other games with terrible lag issues......

this is another cheap ass last gen revamp that nintendo are selling at an extortionate price.... fuck off £280 for this shit.

it is worrying :/
i played Dragon Quest Heroes 1&2 and it drops down to 20fp which is pretty pathetic.

but maybe they can tweak it abit and put up some update to fix those horrid frame drops :l

that is my only worry, i hope that they optimize the upcoming games nicely for the console ,so that it wont have any frame drops etc.

 

[Foxi4]

This is a HANDHELD. Obviously a HANDHELD would not be on par with a console, especially when it's a lot smaller, and needs to keep cool and not consume too much electricity.

An X2 would have meant better battery life and no memory bandwidth bottleneck yes, but it simply wasn't ready. The X1 currently has the best mobile GPU on the market.

This is the first HD dedicated Nintendo handheld, and it's a huge leap over the 3DS, and smaller, more efficent than the Wii U. It has a lot of potential.

Weird. I remember it being hyped as a hybrid. Which one is it?

 

[memoryman3]

I like how the Nintendrones already "Switched" from "it's almost matching the XBO, it's fine" to "it doesn't matter, it's powerful enough for the games I want, graphics don't matter". This is a disaster for the Switch, I'm not sure if people quite grasp that yet.

Except that it's not? The thing isn't exactly weak...at least it has programmable modern shaders and API, unlike the Wii, which made some games IMPOSSIBLE to pull off.

It's running on an ARM arictecture because it's the most power efficent HANDHELD architecture....used in mobiles, tablets, and the 3DS/Vita.

The PS4 Slim consumes 70-80 watts of power...

 

[Foxi4]

I'm not really buying that it's a stock X1 with no changes or customization. Waiting for more benchmarks and analysis to come in rather than relying on a single source, as we've have other singular sources contradict this already.

I want to know the exact number of ALU's to run accurate math on this, someone will eventually count them on the die, but so far it doesn't look good.