Hardware Is technology at a point where something close to as powerful as a PS4 could fit in a Switch?

[duffmmann]

This is the main thought I've really kept coming back to. I want to believe that our technology is at a point where we could fit something close to as powerful as a PS4 inside something the size of the Switch, but I have doubts about that. I mean if it were true, you'd think that the PS4 Slim and Xbone Slim would be signifcantly smaller than they are even with a disc drive. Beyond that, even if the technology really is there, I kind of have to imagine it wouldn't be inexpensive, and knowing Nintendo they're going to want to keep the device affordable somewhere at $300 to maybe $350 max. I'm just not sure that's all feasible with the technology we currently have. But I'm not the most knowledgeable man on the subject, nor do I know what breakthroughs may have been made behind closed doors. I guess I'm just curious what others think about the idea.

 

[fafaffy]

Sure you can have one at comparable size, but... Heat and battery life? Another issue on its own

 

[Enigma Hall]

How I will keep my breakfest heat while i play? Dont give ideas about cut functions please.

 

[foob]

like falaffy said, heat and battery life.
In fact, these two are the biggest things I am concerned about with the Switch, along with general reliability of the hardware due to heat stresses and battery stresses.

Just speaking from laptop experience, you tend to get thin laptops packing higher-end processors dying earlier than those entry-level units with lower thermals running low-end budget processors (and designed with larger bodies). In general I have always found this to be true. I think Nintendo have unnecessarily put themselves in a box by trying to be a home console and a portable. I think the longer-term reliability of the hardware will be underwhelming, particularly compared to their earlier hardware. But I hope to be proven wrong.

If it were possible to pack PS4-level stuff in a tiny box (and control thermals and battery life and cost), they'd do it at the first opportunity. As time goes on, this sort of stuff will be possible, but by then the goalposts would have moved for home consoles.

 

[driverdis]

If Nintendo would have used a dock with a faster GPU inside, then yes something as powerful as the PS4 could fit inside the switch, just not all in the tablet portion. This would have been ideal along with going Intel for the switch to compete with the PS4 and Xbox One.

 

[kutteke]

I think it will be possible. But the clockspeed, power consumption and heat would have to be cut back in portable mode. if the dock contains an extra fan it could be feasible. the portable screen is probably going to be lower resolution anyway so not the same amount of processing power will be needed in portable mode.

 

[Xzi]

What's in the first-gen PS4 is an APU, not a separate CPU/GPU setup. So yes, that hardware is on par with what you can find in a lot of mobile devices now. It's the same reason Sony and Microsoft kinda had their hands forced in releasing a new console iteration so quickly. In addition, Switch is using Nvidia tech, the other consoles are sticking with AMD, so the overall performance gap is sure to start narrowing quite a bit.

There are already laptops out there with full-featured 1000 series GPUs, and assuming they've integrated some Pascal features into the new custom Tegra chip, performance will not be a problem. Even Nvidia's 700 series gets a massive performance boost from their newest drivers.