Nintendo Switch SoC compute power

I've seen this discussion and misconceptions on Nintendo Switch's power far too often on this subreddit, so I thought it was time to lay out the facts.

Nintendo Switch's SoC is a stock Nvidia Tegra X1. No silicon-level customization, but there is probably some firmware customization (won't magically give it more power, but might make it more efficient). The clock speeds are known to be 768-921 MHz in docked mode and 307.2-384 MHz in portable mode, base/boost clock speeds. TX1's performance is well-known, so with those clock speeds, that puts Switch's compute power at 393-471 / 157-196 GFLOPs base/boost docked/undocked.

For comparison, the Wii U benchmarked close to 172 GFLOPs, but with specific custom features that helped it do a few things a little beyond that specification. Xbox One pulls 1300 GFLOPs and PlayStation 4 pulls 1800 GFLOPs.

When using common graphics APIs, Nvidia GPUs are known to pull 25%-50% better performance per FLOP than AMD GPUs, so a better levelized comparision against Xbox One puts Switch at about 50% of its performance when you adjust for Nvidia vs. AMD.

In docked mode, it could theoretically play Xbox One's 1080p titles in 720p when docked, 480p handheld, but given that most Xbox One multiplats run at 900p it's more likely that a fair bit more work would have to go into it than just scaling down the resolution. (Not to mention how many devs might scoff at 480p anything).

Submitted by QuantumElectronicsDu | #Specialdealer Special Offer Online Shopping Store 2016