Next-gen Nintendo handheld to use NVIDIA Tegra?

Cool! Now you can play the next Nintendo Dogs and Hannah Montana game with better graphics! :rolleyes:

Pass...
 
I question the power of the Tegra. All the hype reminds me of the hype of the Atom. I have to fix those computers all the time and the thing is super slow.
 
Staples said:
I question the power of the Tegra. All the hype reminds me of the hype of the Atom. I have to fix those computers all the time and the thing is super slow.
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Atom's performance/watt is quite impressive for an x86 CPU. Likewise Cortex A9 will not be 'fast' by today's desktop standards, but it will certainly blow every current mobile-scale CPU out of the water, and Tegra's advanced GPU and SIMD abilities gives it that extra edge. Cortex A9's performance/watt should exceed Atom's by a fair margin, though it may still be slower it will be in the same ballpark and should consume less power by half or more. Look at it this way - ARM has a commanding lead in the mobile space where performance/watt is the only thing that matters. A9 is significantly better than any previous ARM, and Tegra adds a huge amount of either SIMD or graphics ability.

Will it succeed on the desktop? Certainly not. Netbook? Doubful. But in next-gen mobile devices, it should enable all the 'cool stuff' and slick interfaces that we can't quite pull off today.

It's more akin to Intel going from NetBurst to Core. Significantly more processing grunt, similar or less power consumption.
 
Staples said:
I question the power of the Tegra. All the hype reminds me of the hype of the Atom. I have to fix those computers all the time and the thing is super slow.
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All that hype on the Atom assumed it would be paired with a halfway decent chipset which it was not. The chipsets are horrid and that is what opened up Ion.

Tegra is COMPLETELY different it is designed from the ground up to work right. Its not meant to work on somthing from Intel or AMD or whoever. It has no "Northbridge"
 
Staples said:
I question the power of the Tegra. All the hype reminds me of the hype of the Atom. I have to fix those computers all the time and the thing is super slow.
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That's because Atom is in-order, with a really stripped-down backend. Cortex-A9 on the other hand is "Out-of-order speculative issue superscalar", meaning in short that it will run circles around Atom. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture#ARM_cores for more information.

There's also no way in hell an x86 core with usable performance will ever be fitted into a ~500 mW power envelope, if only due to the humongous uOps decoder x86 is burdened with.
 
Just to get a handle on the power of the Tegra, sure it can decode 720p video but in comparison to how many polygons it can create, texture and light, is it even twice as powerful as the PSP which has been out for several years?
 
Staples said:
Just to get a handle on the power of the Tegra, sure it can decode 720p video but in comparison to how many polygons it can create, texture and light, is it even twice as powerful as the PSP which has been out for several years?
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Well it's not out yet and we only have a vague idea of what the processor is going to look like, but I would say definitely yes based on the information we have. The processor will probably be 4-5x faster at least. The graphics core is harder to judge, but I see no reason why the Tegra II's GeForce 9 core running at full clock speed would be bested by PSP's pair of 166MHz graphics cores.
 
Staples said:
Just to get a handle on the power of the Tegra, sure it can decode 720p video but in comparison to how many polygons it can create, texture and light, is it even twice as powerful as the PSP which has been out for several years?
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Its 1080P even for Tegra 1 Tegra 2's GPU is many times improved over PSPs as it is based on over a decade of fierce competition with AMD.

I would venture that the graphics will be closer to 360 (But of course a long way off) Than closer to PSP.
 
so what your basically saying is that the graphics are gonna shit on most of todays current 13.3" and below laptops? Im sorry i just find it hard to believe they will pack all this in a handheld and last even 1 hour, i mean 35fps with AA in quake 3 is very impressive at 800x480 BUT if that the best the graphics will be then yep i can see it in the next gen nintendo handheld. that would put it in line with geforce 2s or summats, id then expect the psp 2 to be in line with geforce 3 or 4. If they are better then great!!
 
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Rash said:
so what your basically saying is that the graphics are gonna shit on most of todays current 13.3" and below laptops?
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I wouldn't be at all surprised. If you're talking about netbooks, the Intel IGP in those is garbage at 3D, and as we've already discussed, the Cortex A9 should be of similar performance to the Atom. Tegra II should shit all over the 3D of the Intel 4500 graphics. Also don't forget that this is a console. Look at the specs of X360, they're really not impressive by today's standards and if you compared them to a PC you'd be shocked at what can be squeezed out of it. Same thing here.
 
keenan said:
I wouldn't be at all surprised. If you're talking about netbooks, the Intel IGP in those is garbage at 3D, and as we've already discussed, the Cortex A9 should be of similar performance to the Atom. Tegra II should shit all over the 3D of the Intel 4500 graphics. Also don't forget that this is a console. Look at the specs of X360, they're really not impressive by today's standards and if you compared them to a PC you'd be shocked at what can be squeezed out of it. Same thing here.
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no im talking about the core 2 duo laptops with 8400gts in them or the older ones than ran halflife 2 at a decent framerate at res 800x600 with the 9700pro graphics cards
 
Rash said:
so what your basically saying is that the graphics are gonna shit on most of todays current 13.3" and below laptops? Im sorry i just find it hard to believe they will pack all this in a handheld and last even 1 hour, i mean 35fps with AA in quake 3 is very impressive at 800x480 BUT if that the best the graphics will be then yep i can see it in the next gen nintendo handheld. that would put it in line with geforce 2s or summats, id then expect the psp 2 to be in line with geforce 3 or 4. If they are better then great!!
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Seems you are more interested in this future PSP2 beating this gameboy.. That is impossible unless they decided to fund a tegra like device at 28nm from scratch in less than 2 years...
 
Its really likely the Tegra chipset it will use a minimum of a 600mhz ARM cpu.So one core of that CPU would likely be at the very least 6x more powerfull than the one in the DS.Now thats just raw performance.Now say it has atleast one more cpu than thats alot of computational power for a handheld.Add in the Geforce 9 based GPU and you have one hell of a powerful device.I cant wait to see what the games they showcase with the device will look like let alone putting it in the hands of experienced devs.And if this is true you know Sony won't just stand there with their pants down.Its gonna be an exciting handheld market in 2011.Now if there was only a way to sleep till then...:D
 
With this deal in place it leads me to wonder if NVIDIA will be powering the next Nintendo home console. If they do stick to the dual screen concept I hope that it will be a large dual touch screen device (picture a mini-netbook with two screens instead of a keyboard on the bottom half) to really showcase the power of their new handheld. Makes me excited to see what's coming out of the land of the rising sun...
 
That's definitely something to think about in regards to the next Nintendo console.Its very likely that if this deal goes well then a Tegra like system could be the hardware in the next Wii.Though i wonder what they would do CPU wise?I mean we know that GPU wise the console could be a powerhouse with a GTX 200 or maybe even 300 series GPU.Then they could allow the devs to offload physics processing from the cpu onto the gpu allowing for insane levels of physics interaction.Then i guess you would just need something powerful enough to handle things like A.I ,net code etc.And certainly a multicore ARM cpu could easily handle that.Whatever happens i can see this deal being a very good direction for both Nvidia and Nintendo.Man I love speculating but i hate waiting for the answers.:p
 
DoomD said:
That's definitely something to think about in regards to the next Nintendo console.Its very likely that if this deal goes well then a Tegra like system could be the hardware in the next Wii.Though i wonder what they would do CPU wise?I mean we know that GPU wise the console could be a powerhouse with a GTX 200 or maybe even 300 series GPU.Then they could allow the devs to offload physics processing from the cpu onto the gpu allowing for insane levels of physics interaction.Then i guess you would just need something powerful enough to handle things like A.I ,net code etc.And certainly a multicore ARM cpu could easily handle that.Whatever happens i can see this deal being a very good direction for both Nvidia and Nintendo.Man I love speculating but i hate waiting for the answers.:p
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With Nintendo's long emphasis on elegance through simplicity in hardware, I highly doubt the big N would stuff a hot and power hungry GT200 or Fermi GPU inside their next console. Something along the lines of the GTX260M (40nm, DX10.1, 96 Cuda cores, 128-bit GDDR5) would be more up their alley. Still vastly more powerful than the G70 based RSX or the R500 derived Xenos though, and definitley more than enough for crisp 720p gaming. As for the CPU side, I would assume they would use a multicore Power based chip just like the competition since they are better performace per watt than most any X86 CPU for such applications, and even the most powerful ARM dual cores on the horizon only now compete with Intel Atom in raw horsepower. You simply have to look at their design philosophy from years past to see that Nintendo will not release a hot, powerful, power hungry system. Ever. Another Microsoft or Sony Nintendo definitely is not.
 
Oh i didn't mean they would actually shove a GTX 260 or 280 in their console.I just meant a GPU based on the architecture of that series.Now i do think like you said they will go with another Power based CPU from IBM.I was just thinking that if this deal went so well they would go with another Total system package provided by Nvidia.Not saying they would even think of going with even a Nvidia based GPU.Just merely speculating on possible directions they may take.For all we know the next console could be a very small upgrade in graphical prowess.Now i don't think thats likely but like i said at this point we really don't know anything.
 
Unless the PSP can push HD Video, the article is wrong :). There is very little chance that PSP's 5 year old hardware is a match for the *brand new* Tegra, I'm afraid.
 
And except for the fact that Nintendo released the most powerful system in the PS1/Saturn/N64 era and the second most powerful system in the PS2/DC/Xbox/GC era, you'd be right.

It's simply impossible to say what they're doing, particularly when you consider that they've been spending huge amounts on R&D ever since the Wii took off in crazy sales. I realize some people think those *billions* went into DSi, but let's face it: they're on crack :)
 
If it's tegra2 it will be lightyears ahead of the PSP...


Some of you guys are smoking crack.
 
Even if it's Tegra *1* it will be more powerful than PSP :). Anybody who seriously thinks that 5 year old hardware can match nVidia's most recent mobile powerhouse is out of their minds. You can't reason with fanboys though; whether they're convinced that 5 year old portables are as capable as brand new ones or whether they're convinced Wii games can be as pretty as PS3 and 360 games, there's just no possibility of getting them to see any kind of sense.

Mostly I just ignore them. It's easier, and I'm lazy :)
 
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