The Nintendo Switch "Pro" - What if We're Wrong?

[DannyMcDannerton]

Numerous articles have popped up all over the place about the rumored "Switch Pro". While the OLED models debut is definitely a disaster for most, does it point to something potentially better?

 

The four main upgrades we received- the OLED screen, the kickstand, the speakers and the dock were lacking the main thing most of wanted; more power. But the one thing that seems to be confirmed is Nintendo's main priority, the gaming experience. Every upgrade the Switch has undergone has benefitted the user experience,  increasing battery life (the initial chip uograde in the OG Switch), and now the visual experience with the buily in screen. The Switch may just be too small to pack in 4k gaming power while maintaining battery life. So what options does Nintendo have?

External GPUs.

 

What if Nintendo released another dock with an external GPU built in, solely for the purpose of 4k output to the TV?

This would allow for lower cost, and it wouldn't impare the current experience with the Switch. While I certainly would like at a FHD display, the 720p screen has a huge advantage for battery life, and is sharp enough for enjoyable gameplay. 

As an optional accessory, an upgraded dock would allow for mass adoption for those either unwilling or unable to fork out the money for an entire new console.

 

What are your thoughts?

[Bl4ze_buoy]

Having an external gpu is not Nintendo's style BUT  Nintendo loves add ons and accessories. The amount of wii and ds accessories is more than infinity.

[jaslion]

34 minutes ago, Bl4ze_buoy said:

Having an external gpu is not Nintendo's style BUT  Nintendo loves add ons and accessories. The amount of wii and ds accessories is more than infinity.

I mean you had the extra processing in the star fox cart, the extra ram to add to your n64, the gba adapter for the gamecube,... nintendo is no stranger to changing hardware after the fact but an egpu dock is basically out of the question as you'd need a pcie link for the speeds needed for a egpu and the switch doesn't have that in the usb c.

[skywake]

Adding an external GPU isn't really practical or cost effective. The dock as it is currently is nothing much more than a USB dongle with a Display Port to HDMI adapter. I'm not even sure there are the PCIe lanes possible to make an eGPU possible. Even more to the point, the Switch isn't just lacking a decent GPU there's also the issue of CPU performance and memory bandwidth.

 

It's also worth noting that there was a hardware revision that improved the capabilities of the SoC in 2019. The current Switch SKUs including the new OLED SKU are on paper 30% faster than the original Switch. The problem is Nintendo underclocked the original Switch when docked by about 30% and then an additional 50% when in portable mode. The clocks of the original Switch remain on the SKUs they've released since. So on paper there is about a 60% gap between what the OLED & 2019 Switch SKUs can do when docked and what Nintendo actually allows. Nintendo could unlock that performance if they wanted to at pretty much any time.

 

Anyways, I don't think we'll have an "upgraded dock" to enable a performance boost. What we might get is an upgraded dock that supports HDMI 2.0, it's not entirely clear whether or not the OLED dock does support HDMI 2.0 or not at least on paper. It may do. What I expect we'll get is a new SKU next year when the silicon shortage slows down a bit. Nvidia has a new Tegra SoC they're planning to have available next year that's Ampere based. The current Switch SoC is Maxwell based so that should provide a bit of a bump