That is entirely meaningless. That’s not how performance works, it has no bearing on anything.
In practice, they showed a whole bunch of footage of comparable games, including Elden Ring, Cyberpunk. Hitman, Star Wars Outcasts and Split Fiction. At a glance, it seems fairly comparable to the current batch of PC handheld APUs and seems to be mostly running cross-gen PC games at lower resolutions and framerates but pretty solidly otherwise.
That puts it in a weaker spot than next-gen PC handhelds, but on par with most of the current batch. Or at least as on par as the Steam Deck is.
So in terms of pricing for the hardware it seems pretty consistent with what we’re seeing elsewhere. The two Deck models seem to have the most comparable specs, and those are slightly cheaper for the LCD and slightly more expensive for the OLED. Other handhelds are marginally more powerful but also way more expensive. With the upcoing batch of high-end AMD APUs being also way more expensive than last gen, it seems the Switch 2 is price-competitive, at least until Valve decides it’s time and tries to make another custom deal with AMD for a more powerful APU at scale.
I understand what you were saying. I’m saying it doesn’t make a fundamental difference what architecture is being used and there are other aspects that impact performance, so you can’t make assumptions based on that. Plus the GPU is very PC-like, or at least it was on the first Switch. Porting to these things is actually surprisingly straightforward.
there are other aspects that impact performance, so you can’t make assumptions based on that
That is literally what I have been trying to say this whole time in response to you saying it looks comparable. I genuinely have no idea what you are arguing against at this point.
I said “considering how similar hardware on PC handhelds stacks up”, meaning the current batch of PC handhelds seem to get similar performance and visuals than what they showed today. You claimed that the hardware isn’t similar because the CPU is an ARM device.
If you meant that to mean that the performance is the same despite the different architecture you have to walk me through how you thought I was going to interpret that from you caveating that the architecture is different with no additional context, but I guess I’ll take it?
Your response was to Simple’s comment about price. From my reading it seemed that you were implying that the price was right because the performance was similar. I was agreeing with Simple and disagreeing with that perceived implication based on the fact that it uses a different and historically cheaper architecture. One that would typically make a dollar per hertz comparison useless, as you seem to have pointed out. Hence my confusion.
Yes, I am implying that the price is right because the performance is similar. ARM isn’t fundamentally cheaper than x64, I don’t know where you get that. The Switch was cheap because it was running a cheap, old, basically off-the-shelf part, not because that part had an ARM CPU. And indeed the Deck is running an older AMD APU as well at this point.
My laptop has an ARM CPU in it. I assure you it wasn’t any cheaper than the equivalent x64 version with the same performance.
Then it seems we got off on the wrong foot when you called my disagreement meaningless.
RISC has always been fundamentally cheaper than x86 which is one reason why Nintendo has used a RISC processor in all of their handheld consoles since the original GameBoy.
Your last sentence is pretty much my point though. There is no reason for that. Look at the iPad and the Mac Mini, look at the Raspberry Pi… there is no reason for a RISC machine to cost more than an x86 machine.
This conversation is kinda surreal and I think I want it to stop.
Even if you were correct about this, and you are not, especially in modern times, this only applies to one part of the APU. The GPU is still your run of the mill CUDA-based Nvidia GPU, effectively a PC part. And this is a handheld, a lot of the cost is stuck in the display, controllers, storage and the rest of the hardware package. The CPU component of the APU is not going to be what sets the baseline for cost unless you’re building in a super high-end part.
I can’t parse how you’re looking at this, but I assure you that it doesn’t counter the point that this thing seems to both perform similarly and cost about as much as the current batch of PC handhelds. I don’t know how this is a back-and-forth thing.
That is entirely meaningless. That’s not how performance works, it has no bearing on anything.
In practice, they showed a whole bunch of footage of comparable games, including Elden Ring, Cyberpunk. Hitman, Star Wars Outcasts and Split Fiction. At a glance, it seems fairly comparable to the current batch of PC handheld APUs and seems to be mostly running cross-gen PC games at lower resolutions and framerates but pretty solidly otherwise.
That puts it in a weaker spot than next-gen PC handhelds, but on par with most of the current batch. Or at least as on par as the Steam Deck is.
So in terms of pricing for the hardware it seems pretty consistent with what we’re seeing elsewhere. The two Deck models seem to have the most comparable specs, and those are slightly cheaper for the LCD and slightly more expensive for the OLED. Other handhelds are marginally more powerful but also way more expensive. With the upcoing batch of high-end AMD APUs being also way more expensive than last gen, it seems the Switch 2 is price-competitive, at least until Valve decides it’s time and tries to make another custom deal with AMD for a more powerful APU at scale.
Huh? I’m not sure you understand what I was saying so I am just going to leave these links here:
CISC
RISC
I understand what you were saying. I’m saying it doesn’t make a fundamental difference what architecture is being used and there are other aspects that impact performance, so you can’t make assumptions based on that. Plus the GPU is very PC-like, or at least it was on the first Switch. Porting to these things is actually surprisingly straightforward.
That is literally what I have been trying to say this whole time in response to you saying it looks comparable. I genuinely have no idea what you are arguing against at this point.
I said “considering how similar hardware on PC handhelds stacks up”, meaning the current batch of PC handhelds seem to get similar performance and visuals than what they showed today. You claimed that the hardware isn’t similar because the CPU is an ARM device.
If you meant that to mean that the performance is the same despite the different architecture you have to walk me through how you thought I was going to interpret that from you caveating that the architecture is different with no additional context, but I guess I’ll take it?
Your response was to Simple’s comment about price. From my reading it seemed that you were implying that the price was right because the performance was similar. I was agreeing with Simple and disagreeing with that perceived implication based on the fact that it uses a different and historically cheaper architecture. One that would typically make a dollar per hertz comparison useless, as you seem to have pointed out. Hence my confusion.
Yes, I am implying that the price is right because the performance is similar. ARM isn’t fundamentally cheaper than x64, I don’t know where you get that. The Switch was cheap because it was running a cheap, old, basically off-the-shelf part, not because that part had an ARM CPU. And indeed the Deck is running an older AMD APU as well at this point.
My laptop has an ARM CPU in it. I assure you it wasn’t any cheaper than the equivalent x64 version with the same performance.
Then it seems we got off on the wrong foot when you called my disagreement meaningless.
RISC has always been fundamentally cheaper than x86 which is one reason why Nintendo has used a RISC processor in all of their handheld consoles since the original GameBoy.
Your last sentence is pretty much my point though. There is no reason for that. Look at the iPad and the Mac Mini, look at the Raspberry Pi… there is no reason for a RISC machine to cost more than an x86 machine.
This conversation is kinda surreal and I think I want it to stop.
Even if you were correct about this, and you are not, especially in modern times, this only applies to one part of the APU. The GPU is still your run of the mill CUDA-based Nvidia GPU, effectively a PC part. And this is a handheld, a lot of the cost is stuck in the display, controllers, storage and the rest of the hardware package. The CPU component of the APU is not going to be what sets the baseline for cost unless you’re building in a super high-end part.
I can’t parse how you’re looking at this, but I assure you that it doesn’t counter the point that this thing seems to both perform similarly and cost about as much as the current batch of PC handhelds. I don’t know how this is a back-and-forth thing.