Homebrew Would Backwards-Compatibility be Possible with Homebrew?

[RikuKawai]

No. Maybe if you look at raw GHz. But not all GHz are created equal.

The CPU in the Switch is heavily downclocked from the normal X1, but I believe he is talking about the GPU. The Wii U GPU is about the same performance as the Switch in handheld mode, if not slightly faster in some areas.

But back to the CPU, the Wii U has about half the memory bandwidth and half the total RAM but it does have far more CPU cache. The fact that games like BotW are on both platforms and run pretty much the same supports this.

 

[Deleted User]

The CPU in the Switch is heavily downclocked from the normal X1, but I believe he is talking about the GPU. The Wii U GPU is about the same performance as the Switch in handheld mode, if not slightly faster in some areas.

But back to the CPU, the Wii U has about half the memory bandwidth and half the total RAM but it does have far more CPU cache. The fact that games like BotW are on both platforms and run pretty much the same supports this.

Yes that´s what i meant. Thanks. I think i heard it from an digital foundry video where they said the switch in handheld mode is downclocked compared to the docked mode to prevent overheating and save battery life.

 

[subcon959]

Yes that´s what i meant. Thanks. I think i heard it from an digital foundry video where they said the switch in handheld mode is downclocked compared to the docked mode to prevent overheating and save battery life.

It's a big underclock too, 768Mhz > 300Mhz.

 

[Praxis]

Hey everyone,

With used Wii U consoles costing about as much as their Switch counterpart, I was wondering whether or not a Wii U was worth it at this point. The recent news about the Switch not really replacing the other consoles in terms of backwards-compatibility has me rethinking this though. I currently only own a N3DS which covers most things handheld for Nintendo and I would love to play some Wii and Gamecube games. My guess is that the Switch cannot currently be considered a rival to the Wii U when it comes to "x-consoles-in-one". Could Homebrew theoretically change that once it becomes an option? Are there any revelations about the Switch I might have missed? I'd just like some input on this.

Thanks in advance

I'll try to answer this:

There's two cases:
(A) We unlock "Homebrew" on the Switch- custom code can run.
(B) We actually "Jailbreak" the system, such as a custom firmware, to run unsigned code (or sign our own code).

Scenario A allows emulators and the like.

Scenario B allows actual Nintendo games to be loaded, and thus piracy of Switch games and hacks of them, in addition to emulators.


In either situation, for the most part, the results are about the same: We can run emulators of old games, *IF* we ever get to this point.

We can assume the Switch will be able to easily emulate anything N64 and older. Can the Switch emulate GameCube, Wii, and Wii U?

The Wii U accomplished this easily, but the Wii U shared a CPU architecture. It didn't need to fully emulate the CPUs- it was basically like a VM. Emulating the CPU sucks out a lot of performance. You usually need, for a rough back of the thumb estimate, 10x the performance or more of the underlying system to emulate it. Look at how much gaming PCs struggle with Dolphin, for example.


I'm going to go out on a limb and say outright- no, the Switch will never be able to emulate a Wii U at full speed. And even if you could, a lot of the games would be unplayable due to only one screen.

Can it emulate a GameCube or Wii?

Maybe. We won't know until people write one. And it will be a lot of work. So maybe, maybe not.

Can the Switch emulate a DS or 3DS? Probably pretty easily, actually, since they use ARM processors like the Switch does.

 

[Praxis]

Good luck doing it without emulation. ARM and PPC are two different languages, two different processors. Why are people so hellbent on thinking a Switch can magically run Wii U games?

Yeah, I'm going to say it's impossible for the Switch to ever emulate a Wii U. You need a big performance lead to be able to emulate another architecture and run it's software at full speed.

GameCube and Wii are even questionable. The Wii U can run GC/Wii software because it shares the architecture- it's more like a VM than an emulator.

The Switch is obviously way, way more powerful than a GameCube, but is it sufficient enough to run a GameCube emulator?

People have run Dolphin on Android tablets (notably the NVidia Shield) with equal specs, so I'm going to say probably yes for GameCube, maybe for Wii.

 

[TheCyberQuake]

The CPU in the Switch is heavily downclocked from the normal X1, but I believe he is talking about the GPU. The Wii U GPU is about the same performance as the Switch in handheld mode, if not slightly faster in some areas.

But back to the CPU, the Wii U has about half the memory bandwidth and half the total RAM but it does have far more CPU cache. The fact that games like BotW are on both platforms and run pretty much the same supports this.

The wii u cpu managed to heavily bottleneck the gpu from what I've read. Even with higher clock it just sucks. It seems the switch is basically on par with wii u graphically.

 

[Nicro]

Thanks for the info. I'm sorry for upsetting people this much and the title could really have been worded better. Though it can only be changed by staff as far as I know. Anything else I could improve the thread with?