Nintendo reveals more specs for the Switch except for the ones that matter? That's not good....

[Master Disaster]

4 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

You wanna know something?

 

My phone might not be able to run Batman Arkham knight or Skyrim or GTA V. But the games it does play, it probably plays them at like 30 fps (or 60 in lesser demanding titles) at 720p. All whilst using Direct X 9 on a phone chipset.

 

Now tell me how the Switch's performance is acceptable and we should be praising our Japanese overlords.

Sorry to break it to ya but your phone isn't using DX9. Its more than likely using OpenGL, if its a newer model then it will support Vulkan and if its Apple its using Metal.

 

Even Windows Phone uses OpenGL as its primary GPU API.

[manikyath]

1 minute ago, AluminiumTech said:

You wanna know something?

 

My phone might not be able to run Batman Arkham knight or Skyrim or GTA V. But the games it does play, it probably plays them at like 30 fps (or 60 in lesser demanding titles) at 720p. All whilst using Direct X 9 on a phone chipset.

 

Now tell me how the Switch's performance is acceptable and we should be praising our Japanese overlords.

because the switch, under the hood, is the same architecture as your phone, if it would me my guess to what's actually going on in the switch, it'll be a big arm thing when you plug it in the dock, and it'll be a very downclocked big arm thing to have a battery carryable by the younger half of nintendo's marketshare last a sensible amount.

 

and you're expecting big titles to run at twice the performance of your phone (running more phone-oriented games), with an acceptable battery life for a handheld which is WAY beyond what any phone can do on that performance level.

[Master Disaster]

3 minutes ago, manikyath said:

because the switch, under the hood, is the same architecture as your phone, if it would me my guess to what's actually going on in the switch, it'll be a big arm thing when you plug it in the dock, and it'll be a very downclocked big arm thing to have a battery carryable by the younger half of nintendo's marketshare last a sensible amount.

 

and you're expecting big titles to run at twice the performance of your phone (running more phone-oriented games), with an acceptable battery life for a handheld which is WAY beyond what any phone can do on that performance level.

Not 100% accurate. AFAIK theres only 1 phone that uses a Tegra SoC in existence and even that is the lesser powered K variant. The Tegra X is used mainly in Nvidia Shield TVs, I don't know of anything else that uses it (until the Switch launches)

[manikyath]

1 minute ago, Master Disaster said:

Not 100% accurate. AFAIK theres only 1 phone that uses a Tegra SoC in existence and even that is the lesser powered K variant. The Tegra X is used mainly in Nvidia Shield TVs, I don't know of anything else that uses it (until the Switch launches)

but it's all ARM at the base, in essence all where tegra differs from what's in all phones out there, is that nvidia tried to squeeze as much gaming performance out a low power platform as they could, adding their own secret sauce GPU to the mix and such. (not that nvidia adding their GPU means much different, because all phones have GPUs, and all phones are constrained by power draw)

[AlTech]

5 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Sorry to break it to ya but your phone isn't using DX9. Its more than likely using OpenGL

I'm pretty damn sure that Windows Phones use DirectX exclusively.

 

6 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Even Windows Phone uses OpenGL as its primary GPU API.

And how have you come to that conclusion?

[AlTech]

3 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Not 100% accurate. AFAIK theres only 1 phone that uses a Tegra SoC in existence and even that is the lesser powered K variant. The Tegra X is used mainly in Nvidia Shield TVs, I don't know of anything else that uses it (until the Switch launches)

He was talking about ARM. ARM is still ARM. It doesn't matter how much Apple or Nvidia mess with it. It's still ARM.

 

They are of the same architecture.

[porina]

39 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Which era of computing are you talking about how? Because back when Quake 3 was the shit, people were aiming for 60+ FPS too. That was at the time when "32bit color support!" was a major feature for graphics cards (like the Voodoo5).

That was in early 2000.

Way before that. Mid 90's, if I'm not showing my age too much, To put a date estimate, it was before FF7 PC, which looking up happened in '97. FF7 was the reason I finally bought a serious 3D card for the first time, as software rendering mode was in 320x240, and a 3D card enabled 640x480.

 

I'm not saying we should accept graphical quality of Pong, but certainly you can't fail a tablet/console for not being PCMR.

[AlTech]

@Master Disaster Even StackOverflow seems to agree with me on this. Trust me. I know what I'm preaching. You can make Direct X games for Windows (and Windows Phone) using templates Microsoft creates in Visual Studio. Why would they not do the same thing for OpenGL if that was supported?

 

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13483179/can-i-use-opengl-es-in-a-windows-phone-8-app

[DELTAprime]

Looking at prices and capacity of SD cards and MicroSD cards tonight it would have been nice to have SD support instead of MicroSD to get higher capacity at a better cost per GB.

[Natsoup]

5 hours ago, manikyath said:

i dont freaking care what fps it runs at. i care the games are fun.

 

which is exactly the reason the most recent console on my shelf is an original wii, because the games were fun, and pretty much since then nintendo became seriously mehh for me, and the other two options started measuring dick size by shallow performance numbers.

 

besides, the original wii ran games at 24/30FPS, because guess what, that's what the TV its made to connect to runs at, never seen anyone complain about FPS on the original wii

Plenty of people DO care though, and find them hard to look at. Graphics matter to most people who know what graphics are, especially on this forum...

Besides, no one complains about the wii because that's simply not true. I can't find any evidence of a 24/30fps lock on the wii. Please provide a source, I'll apologize if you prove me wrong.

[Natsoup]

5 minutes ago, DELTAprime said:

Looking at prices and capacity of SD cards and MicroSD cards tonight it would have been nice to have SD support instead of MicroSD to get higher capacity at a better cost per GB.

I'd think they'd have done it to save space, would they not?

[manikyath]

18 minutes ago, Natsoup said:

Plenty of people DO care though, and find them hard to look at. Graphics matter to most people who know what graphics are, especially on this forum...

Besides, no one complains about the wii because that's simply not true. I can't find any evidence of a 24/30fps lock on the wii. Please provide a source, I'll apologize if you prove me wrong.

the freaking port on the back of the wii is 24/30 depending on region. it's not voodoo

 

EDIT: this is gonna sound like a huge copout but i actually went to grab my wii to check... and the only controller i can find refuses to pair because its paired to my BT stick, and i'm not about to go trough pairing that thing again.

 

[manikyath]

1 minute ago, Natsoup said:

I'd think they'd have done it to save space, would they not?

and because micro SD is actually much more available, when excluding the extremely large sizes, which are probably out of reach of / dont apply to most of their marketshare.

 

.. would be my guess.

[DELTAprime]

2 minutes ago, manikyath said:

the freaking port on the back of the wii is 24/30 depending on region. it's not voodoo

Then why did we have 50hz and 60hz options in games on the Wii if it was locked to 24/30?

[Sauron]

45 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

Some people are saying that Tegra X1 had a special SATA controller for developers....

either way having a mechanical drive in a portable device seems like a very bad idea to me. They are heavy, delicate (remember that kids are part of the audience for this) and slow. Maybe putting it in the dock could make sense though.

[Hunter115]

350.95182   dollar in th eu  wtf

[manikyath]

8 minutes ago, Sauron said:

either way having a mechanical drive in a portable device seems like a very bad idea to me. They are heavy, delicate (remember that kids are part of the audience for this) and slow. Maybe putting it in the dock could make sense though.

and they would most likely use as much power as the rest of the device when on battery

[treeroy]

1 hour ago, manikyath said:

have you played south park stick of truth? (i'm asking this in good hope seeing your avatar)

That is a rare exception in which it may be justified for the sole reason that the game is trying to emulate exactly a TV show that runs at 24fps. However, I felt very sick playing a lot of the game and would have vastly preferred it at 60 or higher.

 

1 hour ago, AluminiumTech said:

"High Framerates"? You must be new around here.

 

120 or 144fps is considered "High Framerates". 60fps is just acceptable, nothing more.

Sorry, I wrote my post poorly - I meant to say that high framerates such as 144fps are not new. There have always been counter-strike players hitting that 300fps for the best response time. And I meant that incidentally 60fps is not an achievement that requires new demanding hardware.

 

I completely agree, 60fps should be the accepted baseline. As it is in line with monitor refresh rates standard. It's not impressive that a game can run at 60fps, it should be the bare minimum.

[manikyath]

21 minutes ago, manikyath said:

the freaking port on the back of the wii is 24/30 depending on region. it's not voodoo

 

EDIT: this is gonna sound like a huge copout but i actually went to grab my wii to check... and the only controller i can find refuses to pair because its paired to my BT stick, and i'm not about to go trough pairing that thing again.

 

@Natsoup i stand corrected, composite supports 50/60Hz (and this is what the wii outputs), but here's the catch, it's interlaced, so you're only getting half a refresh each frame, essentially meaning you have either half the res (which means half of 480 or 576 lines) or half frequency (24/30), depending on which way you look at it.

 

i guess thats where the "off memory 24/30hz" comes from

 

to put it in readable terms:

- the system runs at 50/60hz but only needs to push half the "lines" (mind you, this is an analog signal, so it's lines)

- you're seeing all the lines, but they only refresh 24/30 times per second.

 

and i'm not about to do testing on the smoothness of this, because the scart inputs on my tv have a healthy second of delay.

[manikyath]

3 minutes ago, treeroy said:

That is a rare exception in which it may be justified for the sole reason that the game is trying to emulate exactly a TV show that runs at 24fps. However, I felt very sick playing a lot of the game and would have vastly preferred it at 60 or higher.

no, rather, south park: stick of truth is an exception because it is an extremely slow paced game, with very little movement.

 

it's the sort of game where the higher fps numbers have really no benefit at all. if it was about nausea stick of truth is equally suceptible as any other similar style platformer, the difference between SoT and those titles where you so vastly prefer 60FPS is the speed of the game.

[treeroy]

3 minutes ago, manikyath said:

no, rather, south park: stick of truth is an exception because it is an extremely slow paced game, with very little movement.

 

it's the sort of game where the higher fps numbers have really no benefit at all. if it was about nausea stick of truth is equally suceptible as any other similar style platformer, the difference between SoT and those titles where you so vastly prefer 60FPS is the speed of the game.

utterly wrong on every level... not even gonna respond to this.

[manikyath]

4 minutes ago, treeroy said:

utterly wrong on every level... not even gonna respond to this.

since it's actually partially on topic, i'd rather you do respond.

[dragosudeki]

23 minutes ago, Natsoup said:

Plenty of people DO care though, and find them hard to look at. Graphics matter to most people who know what graphics are, especially on this forum...

If this was true, then wouldn't the PS Vita have done better than the Nintendo 3DS, considering the PS Vita should technically be more powerful than the Nintendo 3DS?

 

20 minutes ago, treeroy said:

I completely agree, 60fps should be the accepted baseline. As it is in line with monitor refresh rates standard. It's not impressive that a game can run at 60fps, it should be the bare minimum.

Technically, doesn't the developer be the one that chooses what kind of frame rates that they would target? We all should know that the PS4(Xbox One sometimes) is capable of outputting 60fps, yet there are still many games launching that still are locked at 30fps. Hell, apparently the PS4 Pro doesn't necessarily play all games at 60fps, as it is still the devs that choose how it runs on the better console.

[manikyath]

1 minute ago, dragosudeki said:

If this was true, then wouldn't the PS Vita have done better than the Nintendo 3DS, considering the PS Vita should technically be more powerful than the Nintendo 3DS?

 

Technically, doesn't the developer be the one that chooses what kind of frame rates that they would target? We all should know that the PS4(Xbox One sometimes) is capable of outputting 60fps, yet there are still many games launching that still are locked at 30fps. Hell, apparently the PS4 Pro doesn't necessarily play all games at 60fps, as it is still the devs that choose how it runs on the better console.

i know someone who just got two vita's for something like 100 buckaroo's, in full working order, appareantly they're still stunning little devices..

 

i think that would make sense, except you forget this is nintendo, and nintendo kinda has a vice on their platform, so i wouldnt be surprised if they have very strict regulations for what developers can and cant do.

[dragosudeki]

2 minutes ago, manikyath said:

i know someone who just got two vita's for something like 100 buckaroo's, in full working order, appareantly they're still stunning little devices..

 

i think that would make sense, except you forget this is nintendo, and nintendo kinda has a vice on their platform, so i wouldnt be surprised if they have very strict regulations for what developers can and cant do.

They're good devices, but not nearly as successful as the 3DS. If specs were the only thing that mattered, then according to that same logic, the PS Vita should have been more successful because it was more powerful.

 

Also, there are a couple of games that sometimes run past the 30fps on Nintendo 3DS. I find it hard to believe that Nintendo would say "30fps games only" when there are many games that reach higher rates (disregarding the stupid 3D feature).