While a handful of relative certainties are already on the schedule – The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Fire Emblem: Engage, and Kirby’s Return to Dreamland Deluxe – there are plenty more giant question marks filling out their schedule. Nintendo has experience shipping add-on hardware for its home consoles in Japan-like the Famicom Disk System (which added more power and extra sound channels), the BS Satellaview (which added RAM), and the 64DD (which added a co-processor).Its 2023 plans are no different. First, the rumor of higher CPU clocks and more RAM on the base unit suggests that Nintendo plans to roll out an entirely new system, as opposed to add-on hardware that would boost the base. My completely speculative guess is the latter for a couple of reasons. Are we looking at a "split-motherboard" scenario, as we've seen on both Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5, where the TV-plugged dock takes on certain heat-generating elements like a block of tensor cores? Or will the Switch Pro's base hardware include tensor cores on its own SoC? Assuming that DLSS in this scenario requires dedicated tensor cores, we're currently left wondering where Nvidia will slap said cores. AdvertisementĪ DLSS-equipped "Switch Pro" (not a final name), as described by Bloomberg, would reach resolutions of up to 4K when docked and connected to a television. Where else might those all be useful? Hmm. Nintendo Switch doesn't have exclusive license on lower amounts of VRAM, lower clock speeds, and rendering scenarios with limited die sizes and thermal envelopes to work with. DLSS's savvy on upscaling doesn't just reduce needs for clock speed and processing cores it also translates lower-resolution textures with more fidelity, so you can arguably hop, skip, and jump past high VRAM requirements. That wash has substantially higher frame rates and lower processing requirements for the DLSS side, since the traditional GPU grunt work is not only pixel-bound but also texture-bound. Side-by-side comparisons of lower-res DLSS and higher-res TAA show strengths and weaknesses, but as of 2021, it's become a wash. While DLSS's initial launch left a few things to be desired, the system has matured to a point where moving 3D images with DLSS processing generally looks better than their higher-resolution, temporal anti-aliasing (TAA) counterparts. The shape of diagonal lines, the leaves on swaying tree branches, and even the letters and words on a street sign are all arguably easier to predict-at least when fueled by a lower-pixel base-than a StarCraft player's reaction to a Zerg rush. This works in part because DLSS is focused on a relatively nonvolatile prediction scenario: what a lower-resolution image would look like if it had more pixel depth. The idea being, RTX cards come with a slab of "tensor cores" baked onto the silicon, and these are dedicated to the mathematical grunt work of tasks like image interpretation and translation. No extra CPU, RAM, or other peripherals required. ![]() As a consumer-grade offering, DLSS requires Nvidia's "RTX" graphics cards that ( theoretically) cost as little as $329-and nothing else. Making smoother gaming-arguably easier than Tom Cruise’s faceīut those tests are usually run with a supercomputer managing those troves of data. ![]() Nvidia has a much bigger plan for the future of average users' computing than they've publicly let on. Since that report went live, I've done some thinking, and I can't shake a certain feeling. Nvidia, Nintendo's exclusive SoC provider for existing Switch models, will remain on board for this refreshed model, Bloomberg said, and that contribution will include the tantalizing, Nvidia-exclusive "upscaling" technology known as Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS). ![]() What made the report so interesting was that it had a technical answer to that seemingly impossible rendering challenge. but jumping all the way to 4K resolution would need a massive bump from the 2016 system's current specs. The latest report on Tuesday teased a vague bump in specs like clock speed and memory, which could make the Switch run better. Aurich Lawson / Ars Technica reader comments 89Įarlier this week, Bloomberg Japan's report on a rumored Nintendo Switch "Pro" version exploded with a heavy-duty allegation: all those rumors about a "4K" Switch might indeed be true after all.
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