Digital Foundry destripa Nintendo Switch

[Tas]

Han podido contrastar con algunos desarrolladores informacion sobre las especificaciones tecnicas

Cita:Clock-speeds are a crucial piece of information required to get some idea of Switch's capabilities beyond the physical make-up of the Tegra processor. As many have speculated, the new Nintendo hardware does indeed feature two performance configurations - and the console is categorically not as capable in mobile form, compared to its prowess when docked and attached to an HDTV. And we can confirm that there is no second GPU or additional hardware in the dock itself regardless of the intriguing patents that Nintendo has filed suggesting that there might be. With battery life and power throughput no longer an issue, the docked Switch simply allows the GPU to run much faster. And to put it simply, there is a night and day difference here.

Where Switch remains consistent is in CPU power - the cores run at 1020MHz regardless of whether the machine is docked or undocked. This ensures that running game logic won't be compromised while gaming on the go: the game simulation itself will remain entirely consistent. The machine's embedded memory controller runs at 1600MHz while docked (on par with a standard Tegra X1), but the default power mode undocked sees this drop to 1331MHz. However, developers can opt to retain full memory bandwidth in their titles should they choose to do so.

As things stand, CPU clocks are halved compared to the standard Tegra X1, but it's the GPU aspect of the equation that will prove more controversial. Even while docked, Switch doesn't run at Tegra X1's full potential. Clock-speeds are locked here at 768MHz, considerably lower than the 1GHz found in Shield Android TV, but the big surprise from our perspective was the extent to which Nintendo has down-clocked the GPU to hit its thermal and battery life targets. That's not a typo: it really is 307.2MHz - meaning that in portable mode, Switch runs at exactly 40 per cent of the clock-speed of the fully docked device. And yes, the table below does indeed confirm that developers can choose to hobble Switch performance when plugged in to match the handheld profile should they so choose.

As things stand, a docked Switch features a GPU with 2.5x the power of the same unit running from battery. And while some questions surround the leaked specs above, any element of doubt surrounding these CPU and GPU clocks can be seemingly be discounted. Documentation supplied to developers along with the table above ends with this stark message: "The information in this table is the final specification for the combinations of performance configurations and performance modes that applications will be able to use at launch."
So how will this differential affect the games we play? The Switch handheld screen has a 720p resolution - so the gulf in GPU clocks means that in theory at least, there's overhead there to run a 720p mobile title at 1080p when docked. One developer source likens this to creating two different versions of the same game - almost like producing a PS4 game and a PS4 Pro variant. At the very least, QA will require titles to be tested thoroughly in both configurations, plus a lot of thought will be going into exactly how to utilise GPU power in each mode.

But perhaps the biggest takeaway from this is that those hoping for Switch to bring Nintendo back into contention with Microsoft and Sony's hardware should temper expectations. While there will be multi-platform projects (a point Nintendo made in its reveal with the Skyrim footage), we should not expect to see Switch versions of cutting-edge blockbusters

Mas en la fuente:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digita...c-analysis