and 2023 will be MS/Sony's turn
It appears that 2022 will be the year when the Switch Pro (of whatever Nintendo is going to call it) will make its debut.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/report-nv...tch-tegra-chip
Originally Posted by PCMag
and 2023 will be MS/Sony's turn
What are the odds that the replacement chip will be BC with Switch games? I get the feeling Nintendo only wants to refresh the guts, not make a whole new machine. They're still selling every single Switch they make so they don't want to cut off a huge player base. Nintendo makes a fortune selling everyone the same games on every new platform but can they keep doing that with what Microsoft has been doing? Just sign into your account and a huge chunk of your purchased games are ready to be downloaded with better resolution and frame rates.
100% the new chip will be BC. If reports are to be believed, this is going to be more Switch Pro than Switch 2 in terms of branding, so BC is going to be a big part of it.
It does sound like a pretty big upgrade though. Ut seems like they're doing an Ampere-based refresh that can use DLSS to handle resolution scaling without the same loss of image quality.
Ampere is a bit ambitious for a Switch Pro. Even the least expensive RTX 3060 is $350. It'll be an Arm based SOC, with a seriously cut down GPU, which most likely won't be Ampere based. It'll likely be based on the architecture of the 1660 Ti (Turing), with lower clock speeds and a few tensor cores thrown in for DLSS.
Ampere is manufactured on Samsung's 5nm node and it looks like Nvidia is going to go back to TSMC for their next GPU, which could land near the end of 2021. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/nv...o-tsmc-in-2021
Also, Nvidia ceasing the production of Tegra X1, could be to retool for the next Tegra that'll probably be in the Switch Pro. Turning isn't a bad option, especially for a system that'll probably render games in 1080p/30 and get those games upscaled to 4K using DLSS. Or, we could see TSMC producing their 8nm version of a RTX 3050 Ti, which would be interesting.
Last edited by gamevet; 15 Mar 2021 at 08:41 PM.
Ampere is 8nm. TSMC has a lot of different process nodes but probably going to be 7 or 5. So yeah it could be a 7nm die shrink of Ampere or something, if you want to split hairs. Going back to Turing doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.
Obviously they're not gonna put all the RT stuff in this, but it does seem like we'll get tensor cores if we get DLSS.
I don't know where I kept hearing 5nm from Samsung.
Nvidia's low end GPUs are usually just rebranded hardware from the previous generation. Ampere's advantage is more cores per die, which allows GPUs like the RTX 3080 to have massive amounts of cores that consume less power, while something like an RTX 3050 Ti can just be a rebadged 2070 or 2060 Super with the lower binned chips. It'll work fine for a mobile device with the clocks turned down to reduce power consumption and heat, but the next Switch won't even need that much GPU power.
Yeah, and that's why I was leaning towards Turing's 1660 Ti. It's a rock solid 1080p card, and with Tensor cores, it could be great for upscaled 1080p to 4K. Even the vanilla 1660 would work well with 1080p gaming, plus it'll keep costs down.Obviously they're not gonna put all the RT stuff in this, but it does seem like we'll get tensor cores if we get DLSS.
That being said, what Rich from Reviewtechusa reported 6 months ago, sounds like a more realistic upgrade.
Last edited by gamevet; 17 Mar 2021 at 01:00 AM.
Bloomberg is reporting that Nintendo is starting production for the Switch Pro and that it might possibly be announced before E3.
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