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Still super dumb, I was willing to throw down for it if it was Pascal but now it'd be pretty pissweak and is comparable to the drat Wii U. Someone at Nintendo basically asked the question of what was the cheapest solution to get everything important inside the Wii U's controller with comparable if slightly better performance, and the Switch was produced. Guess I'll go with a windows tablet then or just stick with my phone.
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Dec 21, 2016 20:02
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PerrineClostermann posted:I think it's best to see it as a 3DS successor. And the exit of Nintendo from the console market, I suppose. I mean, at least the Wii/U could get around their anemic specs by leveraging something truly unique (the motion controller) to create compelling and enjoyable gaming experiences. The 3DS has, well, 3d. The Switch has...nothing.
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Dec 21, 2016 20:15
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In all honesty too, considering what gaming fun they can get out of the chips they have running the 3DS (even the NEW one), a X1 is more than enough power to do good Docked (as long as Devs don't "ignore" the higher clock speed, which I would think could just be used for 1080P TV gaming if anything). And Portable 720P while low for cell phone use, should be just fine for most Nintendo gaming. Still, their absolute goal to always run on already obsolete hardware, and then detune it to make it more obsolete, is a weird sort of self inflicted handicap. Also that Vaporchill talk got me thinking back. Man I wanted one of those years ago to mess with, but I doubt it would be a good DD sort of cooling solution even if a fridge can run for years with it, could a CPU? Hmm
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Dec 21, 2016 20:17
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As if anyone in their right mind bases hardware choices on the hardware itself as opposed to what games run on it. Hey, here's a hint: I'm a PC gamer because of the wide, wide variety of games available on the platform.
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Dec 21, 2016 20:39
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DrDork posted:Kinda confused as to why they'd even bother with this instead of just publishing mobile games: they're effectively doing the same thing here, but with a self-limited market segment of maybe 10-20M at best instead of the entire mobile gaming market. Yeah, they probably should have just sold mobile games. Their failure to make their system use the latest hardware is probably a consequence of them being a smaller company serving a smaller niche and not having enough manpower/skrilla for development. I love how in one computer chip thread we have posters complaining about how Intel is this giant corporation not catering to their niche home server market, but then we have the same posters here in the other computer chip thread whine about how Nintendo, who is probably doing their best to provide a niche product for these posters, isn't as big as Apple or Samsung and can't bankroll hardware development like those two companies. You just can't please some people. silence_kit fucked around with this message at 20:51 on Dec 21, 2016 |
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Dec 21, 2016 20:40
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AVeryLargeRadish posted:As if anyone in their right mind bases hardware choices on the hardware itself as opposed to what games run on it. Hey, here's a hint: I'm a PC gamer because of the wide, wide variety of games available on the platform.
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Dec 21, 2016 20:41
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AVeryLargeRadish posted:As if anyone in their right mind bases hardware choices on the hardware itself as opposed to what games run on it. Hey, here's a hint: I'm a PC gamer because of the wide, wide variety of games available on the platform. One problem Nintendo has had though is 3rd party devs, losing interest or flat out being unable to develop for a platform due to hardware limitations. How many games that were announced for the WiiU got cut because they just couldn't get the game to run at least 30FPS without nuking the graphics details immensely?
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Dec 21, 2016 20:42
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EdEddnEddy posted:One problem Nintendo has had though is 3rd party devs, losing interest or flat out being unable to develop for a platform due to hardware limitations. nVidia is probably helping with this, providing toolchain and libs and stuff optimized/compiled for ARM. Didn't they more or less port the Source engine to Shield so it could run Portal?
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Dec 21, 2016 20:51
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Josh Lyman posted:I mean, a lot of people bought the PS3 so Yeah, and they bought it because there were games they wanted to play on it that they could not play elsewhere, the point stands. EdEddnEddy posted:One problem Nintendo has had though is 3rd party devs, losing interest or flat out being unable to develop for a platform due to hardware limitations. I'll agree that hardware limiting games that can be made for or ported to the platform is a problem, but I was addressing posters who were talking about how they will not buy a platform because of the speed of the hardware it runs on, which is really silly.
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Dec 21, 2016 20:51
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AVeryLargeRadish posted:I was addressing posters who were talking about how they will not buy a platform because of the speed of the hardware it runs on, which is really silly. One directly correlates to the other. Why do you think Nintendo has such a hard time getting "adult" third-party games on their platform? Because the hardware they settle on is always vastly inferior to current generation hardware, and few AAA developers think it worth the hassle to backport to inferior hardware. It's a self perpetuating problem -- because developers don't want to produce games for the platform, gamers in that target audience don't want to buy the platform, leading to poor sales for those who did bother porting it. Whereas if they offered modern hardware with comparable architectures, reducing the barrier to porting games, you'd have a larger selection. And before you say something like "well they're just different target audiences, people who want to buy adult games won't get a Nintendo console", bear in mind that the average customer would really not have to buy 3 different consoles to play different titles if he could help it. If a serious Nintendo fan also happens to like mature AAA games, don't you think he'd rather play them all on the Switch (not to mention the whole portability thing!) and not have to buy a PS4/Xbox One? This is where they're losing target audience by sticking to low spec hardware. Because there's so much inertia going against Nintendo for third parties, developers who do end up doing a port do it based on the assumption of very low sales and assign small teams/low effort ports if there's any hope of maintaining a profit margin. Using antiquated hardware does not help at all with the "low effort" part. e: vvvvvv So I guess you're saying that consumers are unable to extrapolate that low hardware clocks = lower odds of third party games and ports? Jan fucked around with this message at 21:28 on Dec 21, 2016 |
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Dec 21, 2016 21:08
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Jan posted:One directly correlates to the other. Why do you think Nintendo has such a hard time getting "adult" third-party games on their platform? Because the hardware they settle on is always vastly inferior to current generation hardware, and few AAA developers think it worth the hassle to backport to inferior hardware. It's a self perpetuating problem -- because developers don't want to produce games for the platform, gamers in that target audience don't want to buy the platform, leading to poor sales for those who did bother porting it. Whereas if they offered modern hardware with comparable architectures, reducing the barrier to porting games, you'd have a larger selection. Yes, I already said I acknowledge that point. But the people I was addressing were on about how they would not buy the hardware because of the loving clock speed it runs at, not "Oh man, that slow hardware will limit their third party developer support.", which would be an actual valid point.
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Dec 21, 2016 21:16
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I pretty much hate my PS3 and have relegated it to a lovely media player, but the purchase was entirely justified with Red Dead Redemption, The Last of Us, Demon's Souls, and the Uncharted series. I guess I can throw the slightly disappointing MGS4 in there too. Except, as noted, pretty much all of them are more 'adult' titles and rely on some cutting-edge hardware/software capabilities. And for all of it's former glory, the PS3's hardware hasn't exactly aged gracefully.
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Dec 21, 2016 21:20
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Jan posted:Whereas if they offered modern hardware with comparable architectures, reducing the barrier to porting games, you'd have a larger selection. I suspect that the reason why Nintendo isn't using the latest hardware has nothing to do with them being stupid or lazy. I suspect that it has more to do with the fact that, being a small company serving a more niche market, they don't have the manpower/skrilla to do the rapid development necessary to use the latest tech and/or they can't promise their component suppliers that they'll be able to move enough units to help bankroll the large, up-front cost of the newest hardware technology.
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Dec 21, 2016 21:28
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Jan posted:One directly correlates to the other. Why do you think Nintendo has such a hard time getting "adult" third-party games on their platform? Pretty much this. Frankly, I don't care much in the abstract what exact hardware a system uses or how many jigawatz it has so long as the end result is a compelling and enjoyable gaming experience. To that end, once Nintendo drops a new Mario/Zelda/Metroid game on the Switch, a bunch of people will buy it just to play those three games. The part that makes me sad is the opportunities left on the table: the opportunity to invite back some 3rd party developers and see what sort of cool games they can make, or the opportunity to make Mario/Zelda/Metroid that much bigger and better. Their hardware choices over the last few generations have defacto boxed them into a little corner without much to show for their efforts. In the past Nintendo could at least count on 3rd party and indy developers to flesh out a game catalog. The GameCube, for example, had close to 700 games. But no longer: the Wii U had only about 150 (don't talk to me about eShop-only games. They are almost without fail terrible). silence_kit posted:...and/or they can't promise their component suppliers that they'll be able to move enough units to help bankroll the large, up-front cost of the newest hardware technology. This was easy to accept when they were clearly going their own way and doing Something Different (Wii, 3DS). The Switch, though, is 90% off-the-shelf components. Literally the technology already exists, in fact an entirely new generation of technology already exists and is sitting there on the same shelf. DrDork fucked around with this message at 21:32 on Dec 21, 2016 |
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Dec 21, 2016 21:29
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silence_kit posted:I suspect that the reason why Nintendo isn't using the latest hardware has nothing to do with them being stupid or lazy. I suspect that it has more to do with the fact that, being a small company serving a more niche market, they don't have the manpower/skrilla to do the rapid development necessary to use the latest tech and/or they can't promise their component suppliers that they'll be able to move enough units to help bankroll the large, up-front cost of the newest hardware technology. They might not have the vertical integration that Sony and Microsoft have, but I assure you their console department has comparable capability. While the tools on WiiU weren't quite mature, the same can be said of Sony and Microsoft's tools leading up to release. By the time we shipped Darksiders II WiiU (which went on to sell a whopping 150k copies  ), they had a decent GPU debugger comparable to PIX and GPAD at the same time. It just so happened that the GPU being debugged was inexplicably slower in some aspects than the much older Xbox 360. My personal take on it is that they know very well their profit margins on hardware are going to be small, but have a steady enough user base and first party IP selection that they'd rather actually make a little profit on said hardware. Whereas Sony and Microsoft were selling the PS3 and Xbox 360 at a loss early on in the product cycle. Incidentally, having vertical integration also means that Sony and Microsoft can afford that more easily and let their other non-gaming products compensate to an extent. e: I don't think vertical integration is the right term, or horizontal -- I'm lost in translation here, what's the term for a company that has a bunch of wholly different/unrelated product lines?
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Dec 21, 2016 21:44
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DrDork posted:This was easy to accept when they were clearly going their own way and doing Something Different (Wii, 3DS). The Switch, though, is 90% off-the-shelf components. Literally the technology already exists, in fact an entirely new generation of technology already exists and is sitting there on the same shelf. Is that how it really works though? I honestly don't know--I'm not in that business. Can anybody buy one of these chips and design them into their systems, or were these new chip developments bankrolled by the major system companies, some of which are competitors of Nintendo, and therefore nVidia is compelled to not make the technology available to everybody who wants it?
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Dec 21, 2016 21:53
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Jan posted:what's the term for a company that has a bunch of wholly different/unrelated product lines? conglomerate
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Dec 21, 2016 21:54
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silence_kit posted:Is that how it really works though? I honestly don't know--I'm not in that business. Can anybody buy one of these chips and design them into their systems, or were these new chip developments bankrolled by the major system companies, some of which are competitors of Nintendo, and therefore nVidia is compelled to not make the technology available to everybody who wants it? Licensing deals are always a fun time in terms of you-can-sell-to-us-but-no-one-else, but that doesn't seem to be the case here, because the X1 does not seem to be being sold to any exclusive party (nor should it, as it's 18+ months old now). So in that sense, yeah, anyone willing to ink a deal with NVidia could probably do so provided they came to the table with the appropriate amount of money. That it's an 18+ month old chip would be disappointing enough, but it's actually a de-tuned 18 month old chip. As in, it will run slower than the chips that were released a year and a half ago. To that end Nintendo could absolutely have just said "give us a normal chip" and gotten it. Frankly, I would expect that the X1s are all physically capable of the higher stock clocks, and are firmware downclocked in order to hit some specific mobile battery life target.
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Dec 21, 2016 22:07
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Also Nintendo of any company could easily spend 2X on making the hardware more poweful and let the game sales cover the cost, easily. It is a question of why don't they do this? If they made a PS4/XboxOne level hardware platform, and let the AAA devs make some AAA games with graphics limitations at that level, it would sell like hotcakes especially if they sell it at a loss at first at $250 or so, and the games remain classic Nintendo A+ for the few launch titles with a consistent supply every 6 months or so. God knows that every "good" Nintendo game remains $40-60 for what seems like until the platform dies before it goes on sale. However with the hardware limits and sort of Niche Market they keep trying to build and target (Wii style, now with the Switch a mix of portable/docked/co-op with a single device sorta thing) while neat, really isn't quite the problem they are having. They make good games, stop shoehorning it into bloody lovely hardware. At least with the Nvidia X1, while it is older Maxwell, is there any ARM CPU/GPU combo that competes with it directly yet? I do like using my Shield TV as for an Android powered device, the thing flat out does fly and no Android game can bring it to it's knees. (Except War Thunder, still no tanks.  )I wonder what bean counter at Nintendo keeps pulling the strings to handicap them like this each generation. Not like the Switch doesn't look like it could be potentially good, but coming out of the gate with an older, smaller horse isn't a great start to a race that is currently on the 2nd lap and passing the baton to even bigger faster horses. Also has nobody posted about the new Galax Single Slot 1070? While pretty neat, I wonder how loud that drat blower must get. I am guessing they just took the cooling tech that would be used to cool a mobile 1070 chip, and just designed around that to make this cooler. Effective to say the least. EdEddnEddy fucked around with this message at 22:18 on Dec 21, 2016 |
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Dec 21, 2016 22:16
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I just installed my new GPU, is there any software I could/should run to make sure it's okay? Like memtest for RAM or something, I dunno.
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Dec 21, 2016 22:35
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silence_kit posted:Is that how it really works though? I honestly don't know--I'm not in that business. Can anybody buy one of these chips and design them into their systems, or were these new chip developments bankrolled by the major system companies, some of which are competitors of Nintendo, and therefore nVidia is compelled to not make the technology available to everybody who wants it? For the 360 and PS3 both were heavily customized systems, the PS3 moreso. The 360 had a simple 3 core PowerPC (designed by IBM) based CPU and a really nice for the time ATi chip with EDRAM. Sony had a CPU that was SUPPOSED to do rendering initially and had all kinds of vector processing power that was a huge bitch (initially) to program for. It was also designed by IBM basically 4 times because Sony's leadership were a bunch of cunts. They slapped an nVidia G70 based GPU on it when they came to their loving senses and realized that software rendering was stupid and that fixed function hardware hopelessly outperformed it. The current designs for the XBONE and PS4 are based on the same simple AMD Jaguar cores with Radeon GCN GPUs. The XBONE has some EDRAM still and less GPU cores but they're pretty similar otherwise. Since Nintendo decided to go with an ARM device they had a ton of options available to them, but IMO only Imagine (PowerVR) and Nvidia make gaming worthy GPUs. Nvidia already had a product ready to go top to bottom and mature SDKs etc. Not that Imagine doesn't have an SDK, but almost every dev house that makes non-smartphone games has experience with an Nvidia GPU. They're probably getting them for a good price too since it's mature tech and nVidia probably wanted to sell many more than they did.
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Dec 21, 2016 23:02
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Mystic Stylez posted:I just installed my new GPU, is there any software I could/should run to make sure it's okay? Like memtest for RAM or something, I dunno. You can use a demo version of 3DMark to benchmark it a bit, but unless you plan on pushing it to the edge with overclocking, no, not really. Video cards are usually pretty conspicuous when they fail.
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Dec 21, 2016 23:43
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Right, I should have also posted a news source about the Switch: https://www.pcper.com/reviews/Systems/Nintendo-Switch-News-and-Rumor-Round Oh yeah, and there's your weekly RX 490 rumour, too: http://wccftech.com/polaris-12-vega-10-rra-certification-rx-490/
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Dec 22, 2016 00:07
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Jan posted:So I guess you're saying that consumers are unable to extrapolate that low hardware clocks = lower odds of third party games and ports? How do the 3DS and Wii U compare on clocks and titles?
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Dec 22, 2016 01:16
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Subjunctive posted:How do the 3DS and Wii U compare on clocks and titles? I know the 3DS still isn't even using anywhere close to an HD screen. The screens on the n3DS are 2*400x240 whereas the WiiU gamepad uses 854x480. The Wii U uses an AMD Radeon R600/700 comprised of tech from the HD 2000 and the HD 4000 series running at 500Mhz. The majority of Wii U releases run at either 720/60 or 720/30 with few titles even going for 1080/30 or 1080/60. Edit: Just reading this back, I have doubts of Nintendo even putting a 720p screen in the Switch.
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Dec 22, 2016 01:52
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SlayVus posted:I know the 3DS still isn't even using anywhere close to an HD screen. The screens on the n3DS are 2*400x240 whereas the WiiU gamepad uses 854x480. The Wii U uses an AMD Radeon R600/700 comprised of tech from the HD 2000 and the HD 4000 series running at 500Mhz. The majority of Wii U releases run at either 720/60 or 720/30 with few titles even going for 1080/30 or 1080/60. That's cool to know, but doesn't really answer my question, or address my implication.
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Dec 22, 2016 02:28
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Subjunctive posted:That's cool to know, but doesn't really answer my question, or address my implication. The 3DS and Wii U are in completely different market segments, so direct comparisons aren't particularly informative to begin with. Clock speeds and jiggawats don't directly matter to the consumer, but the restrictions they effectively impart in terms of what developers can do (and, more likely, what developers will look at, laugh at, and then not develop for), does.
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Dec 22, 2016 02:51
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Yea to be clear my gripe with the hardware is the implied limitations on capability to support a large and new library, not that the specifics of the hardware matter much. 256 Maxwell cores running at ~300Mhz (because battery life) implies sub GT 740/R7 250 performance, actually closer to low end Fermi and VLIW5 power and probably not much if at all a step up from the Wii U. Which means it won't be able to port anything newer. Like I'm sure for shits and giggles it could probably run Crysis and BF3 on low settings 720p30, but I was really hoping for 512 Pascal cores running at 600-900Mhz (roughly similar to the PS4) and being able to keep up with even current 3rd party games, even if running in lower settings. Newer games + Nintendo exclusives +portability would have been an instant lock for me, but alas.
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Dec 22, 2016 03:18
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http://wccftech.com/amd-vega-lineup-radeon-hbm2-gddr5x/quote:AMD is reportedly preparing an entirely new top-to-bottom lineup of Radeon graphics cards based on its next generation Vega architecture. The new family, which I’ll refer to as the Radeon 500 series from here on out for the sake of simplicity, will feature second generation high bandwidth memory as well as GDDR5/X memory.
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Dec 22, 2016 19:33
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beepsandboops posted:
So is death.
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Dec 22, 2016 20:53
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I can't wait to get the vega fury 2 to play big pharma on my 1080p screen and brag about benchmarks in my spare time
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Dec 22, 2016 20:56
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Wistful of Dollars posted:So is death.
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Dec 22, 2016 22:27
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AMD has until May to do something. I'm getting my 3 year upgrade itch. If they don't welp I guess I buy a GTX1070.
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Dec 22, 2016 22:29
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AMD isn't magically going to come up with something as good as the 1070 for the same pricerange in that timeframe. If you have the need, buy it now and you can enjoy it well before May.
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Dec 23, 2016 06:46
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Wow I really cant believe how much interest there is in the Nintendo thing. I guess my attitude could be indicative of their problem. I assumed it would be uninteresting hardware because... it always is.
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Dec 23, 2016 08:08
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Because it's poo poo hardware! For the first time since the 3DS, Nintendo has the makings of a truly transformative device on their hands, even if it *is* a rebranded NVidia shield. Here are the good points: * Hot-dockability * Shift to flash memory because capacities are now cheap and fast enough to surpass optical media in a small form-factor * Use of carts to lower power usage by not requiring a motor to spin a disc or power a laser I don't even particularly *mind* that they're using a 720p screen anyways, my cell phone is allegedly 1440p. do I actually care? No, in fact, a lot of the time I'm watching videos on 480p because it does less of a number on my data plan, and at arm's length, _I can't tell that it's not 1080p or 1440p to begin with_. What gets my goat is that Nintendo refuses to offer hardware that is competitive with their competition. This is more important than you might think, because the gimpy hardware means Nintendo seems to set a marker for the visual fidelity of their games, and say "HERE AND NO FURTHER", which is basically saying, "we refuse to accept the fact that consoles in TYOOL2016-2017 set performance floors. We believe that consoles set performance ceilings, and that PCs setting performance ceilings are a myth perpetuated by western media," an attitude that, frankly, means that the likelihood of your favorite 3rd party developer's title arriving on a Nintendo platform is inversely proportional to the amount of time that has pased since the Nintendo console's launch, shuts out a lot of people considering buying a Nintendo device because of a lack of 3rd party titles, shuts out a lot of devs from considering porting to the device, and creates this poo poo ouroboros that Nintendo just doesn't want to break. Just... look. In January of 2014, when the PS4 and XBone launched, according to Steam's hardware survey, the most common VRAM sizes were one (36.54%) and two GB (12.01%) of VRAM, with four, the current "bare minimum" of VRAM required to play games at the time, a mere .87% of all machines polled. (I would note that 1 GB is the default allocation of VRAM for laptops using Intel integrated graphics, so the number is artificially inflated and does not distinguish between mobile and desktop platforms. Nonetheless,) Despite this, the PS4 and XBone both came out with 8 GB of unified RAM, both a massive step up from the 512MB of their predecessors. Since then, PC hardware, as it now presently stands according to the most recent version of the Steam Hardware Survey:  Again, 1 GB is incredibly high, and probably artificially inflated thanks to Intel integrated graphics. But look at how 2 and 4 GB have changed with time, rising because the floor is now climbing commensurate with the XBone and PS4's 8 GB. This gives the consoles an actual lifespan. Nintendo switch? 4 GB. Shared between all resources. If new games start to use more resources to deliver a better experience, guess which console won't be able to use expand into memory it might not be using to its fullest just yet? Admittedly, the use of flash memory decreases the need for large amounts of RAM, but it isn't making the process of porting games to a Switch without issue. And frankly, it's just illogical. Gunpei Yokoi was a great man, but this slavish adherence to, and watch me show off how much of a loving weeb I am, Kareta Gijutsu no Suihei Shiko ("Lateral Thinking of Withered Technology") is the kind of poo poo that creates religious zealots. SwissArmyDruid fucked around with this message at 11:34 on Dec 23, 2016 |
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Dec 23, 2016 08:31
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SwissArmyDruid posted:I don't even particularly *mind* that they're using a 720p screen anyways, my cell phone is allegedly 1440p. do I actually care? No, in fact, a lot of the time I'm watching videos on 480p because it does less of a number on my data plan, and at arm's length, _I can't tell that it's not 1080p or 1440p to begin with_. Also dont understand the point of going past 1080p for a phone screen. More resolution equals less battery life.
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Dec 23, 2016 08:35
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TheRationalRedditor posted:AMD isn't magically going to come up with something as good as the 1070 for the same pricerange in that timeframe. If you have the need, buy it now and you can enjoy it well before May. That seems to be awfully pessimistic. Vega is 2017H1 at the very worst.
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Dec 23, 2016 08:44
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SlayVus posted:Also dont understand the point of going past 1080p for a phone screen. More resolution equals less battery life. yeah totally and 144hz is pointless because you cant even see over 24fps. Using 1080p is using the wrong metric for phones anyways, look at ppi Fauxtool fucked around with this message at 08:59 on Dec 23, 2016 |
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Dec 23, 2016 08:50
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If there is one company we don't give poo poo about for 60 FPS, it's Nintendo. poo poo like Smash doesn't work unless it's at least 60 FPS.
SwissArmyDruid fucked around with this message at 09:01 on Dec 23, 2016 |
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Dec 23, 2016 08:54
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