There are experiences at the moment that Nintendo held behind closed doorways Swap 2 demos for potential sport builders on the Gamescom 2023 present in Germany final month. Each VGC and Eurogamer have apparently heard this from their very own sources—presumably the builders themselves—with the previous claiming the next-gen handheld console will once more be working Nvidia {hardware}.
The demo included an up to date model of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, designed to benefit from the improved {hardware}, working at each the next body fee in addition to the next decision. Although everybody appears to be eager to level out this was solely a tech demo and never some indication {that a} remaster was on the playing cards. Although, y’know, it is easy cash, proper?
However the extra attention-grabbing factor for us PC players, might be the suggestion that Nintendo was demoing the {hardware} working Epic’s The Matrix Awakens Unreal Engine 5 tech demo.
The unique demo was constructed to focus on the facility of the Microsoft Collection X and PlayStation 5, and the capabilities of Epic’s UE5 tech in creating virtually photorealistic photographs on these consoles.
Apparently, the demo was apparently working ray traced visuals, and was utilising Nvidia’s Deep Studying Tremendous Sampling (DLSS) with a purpose to provide playable body charges that can make enabling such fancy results really worthwhile.
The unique Swap, and subsequent updates, used Nvidia’s Tegra X1 and X1+ SoCs. These are the chips you will discover within the Defend Android TV bins, they usually pack ARM Cortex A57 CPU cores in addition to a smattering of Maxwell-based CUDA cores. That is the GPU structure behind the basic GeForce GTX 980 et al.
The Tegra line has been discontinued, nevertheless, so what customized Nvidia chip Nintendo can be utilizing continues to be unknown. There have been some rumours that it might be utilizing the Ampere structure, and the one Nvidia SoC that makes use of the {hardware} behind the RTX 30-series playing cards is the Orin line launched on the finish of 2022.
The highest chip of that vary homes 12 Arm Cortex A78 cores together with 2,048 CUDA cores. That may put it effectively beneath an RTX 3050, however then the AMD 780M GPU powering the perfect handheld gaming PCs is, too.
Nvidia cancelled the Atlan SoC final 12 months, which was the next-gen SoC to make use of the present Ada structure, however has introduced a successor, codenamed Thor, although the expectation is that will not be out there till 2025. Although the rumours are Nintendo is pegging a late 2024 launch for the Swap 2 console, so perhaps Nvidia would possibly work a bit faster to get some tasty new {hardware} into its solely video games console.
If the Swap 2 is certainly able to real ray tracing efficiency, and the kind of visuals and body charges corresponding to the current-gen Microsoft and Sony consoles, then we might effectively be a brand new SoC. I would additionally like to suppose if Nvidia’s creating such succesful gaming {hardware} that perhaps it won’t restrict it to only a Nintendo console…
A brand new Defend handheld might be a tantalising prospect with that kind of efficiency.
