It only supports OGLES 2.0, and with 3.0 being the standard for all new chips all nvidia are doing is slapping more cores down for performance instead of supporting new features in hardware.
It's going to be used to run Android, which as far as I'm aware doesn't use DirectX at all.
Do you mean OpenCL, because I'm pretty sure it has OpenGL support. Also, I'm not aware of many game developers using OpenCL, nor am I really sure what they'd be using it for.
So basically, they left out a lot of things that aren't going to be all that useful for them or their customers. Not that big of a deal.
Why?
I can understand wanting to play on your TV because it's a bigger panel, but you'd have to give up using multiple monitors, displays bigger than 1920x1080, and using the keyboard and mouse. While not everyone is running a multi-monitor setup, or has a really nice display that has more pixels, I can't understand why you'd want to use a controller over a keyboard/mouse.
There are a lot of games that would be straight up unplayable with a controller, and very few that might be anywhere as good. Never mind any other problems that might occur such as increased latency. You also give up the convenience of having a PC right there and all that brings. For example, what if I'm playing with friends and want to talk to them on Mumble? Can Shield support that?
I don't think the cost is worth the novelty of playing PC games from my couch, when I could already do that by hooking up my PC to my TV. And I could even plug in a USB controller if for whatever reason I don't want to use a keyboard/mouse.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6666/the-tegra-4-gpu-nvidia-claims-better-performance-than-ipad-4
Tegra 4's GPU looks to be marginally faster than the current A6X.
By the time Tegra 4 comes out, it'll be old news.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6666/the-tegra-4-gpu-nvidia-claims-better-performance-than-ipad-4
Tegra 4's GPU looks to be marginally faster than the current A6X.
By the time Tegra 4 comes out, it'll be old news.
It's chicken and egg. Also no unified shaders either. This is a very primitive GPU architecture for 2013.
Meh? Who cares if it doesn't have unified shaders? The only thing that matters is how it performs, not what's inside it (unless you're a game developer anyway).
And I want to point out again that people don't pick phone SoCs, they pick phones. It is extremely rare for a phone OEM to have the same model phone with a different SoC, and when these SoCs trade blows within 10-15% of each other, there are far larger differences, like how optimized the stock experience is, the build quality of the phone itself, how quickly will you get updates, and what kind of battery life do you get.
No one is going to care about the SoC that gets 100% improved performance compared to the competition if it gets 33% of the battery life
Keep in mind the difference between the Project SHIELD and a normal console is that developers don't have to do a bunch of extra work to target the handheld that they weren't already going to have to do to release an Android game on Google Play. Developers just need to create a few Tegra 4 optimizations and controller support, which many would have done already anyway. Plus, there will be plenty of Tegra 4 hardware including smartphones and tablets.
Apple is still doing OK using their tiny screen monster SoC formula that they use. True, nVidia's tiny SoC monster display is currently offering comparable battery life, but it is within the realm of possibilities that someone will release a Tegra 4 phone with a tiny screen and blow Apple's monstrosity of a SoC packing iP5 out of the water in terms of battery life.
The SGSIV is looking to ship with a slower GPU and comparable CPU to Tegra 4, the next iPhone isn't expected until Q3, so what exactly is making Tegra 4 old news? I know the people on this forum love to ignore the normal half year domination that Tegra parts normally have, but this time it looks like it could be even longer then that as the parts shipping much later don't even quite look up to par.
Apple uses the largest SoC by a rather large margin. They pair it with a tiny screen to get decent battery life.
Dedicated hardware is always faster then general purpose all else equal. Not sure that the big increase in power draw would be worth the die savings they would get going to unified. I've been posting here for a long time now, said the same thing back when unified shaders were supposed to be the big thing for desktop GPUs too(well, outside the power saving issues as they were non factors).
With current sales trends nVidia's SoCs are going to be outselling their GPUs before too long. They also have the most power efficient performance desktop parts at the moment, and they have the most power efficient performance laptop parts too. You should try a different approach when trying to hate on them, you don't pick on the company currently winning the performance/watt race in almost every single segment.
Apple is still doing OK using their tiny screen monster SoC formula that they use. True, nVidia's tiny SoC monster display is currently offering comparable battery life, but it is within the realm of possibilities that someone will release a Tegra 4 phone with a tiny screen and blow Apple's monstrosity of a SoC packing iP5 out of the water in terms of battery life.
I said it was within the realm of possibility. Considering how badly the iPhone 5 fairs against say the Maxx, I think that is more then reasonable.
~125mm vs ~80mm for Tegra 4. nVidia could double the on die GPU cores, obliterating the A6x in trivial fashion, in the same die space. But Apple's profit margins are really fat, so from a business point of view going with discount engineers is paying off for them and hard to argue against.
That still won't attract developers beyond zynga and rovio. Nvidia needs the same developers who make the big games for consoles and handhelds, otherwise it is all a waste of time. People will just play whatever game on their phone because the price is subsidized.
I said it was within the realm of possibility. Considering how badly the iPhone 5 fairs against say the Maxx, I think that is more then reasonable.
The Tegra 3 was out prior to the A6X, thus it was old news when it came out. Fail logic.
I could put a 400,000mAh battery with a 1" screen. I know Apple hires second rate engineers, but surely they realize reality exists in more then two dimensions.
I said it was within the realm of possibility. Considering how badly the iPhone 5 fairs against say the Maxx, I think that is more then reasonable.
~125mm vs ~80mm for Tegra 4. nVidia could double the on die GPU cores, obliterating the A6x in trivial fashion, in the same die space. But Apple's profit margins are really fat, so from a business point of view going with discount engineers is paying off for them and hard to argue against.
The fact that Nvidia is cramming that much performance in T4 (>50% less than A6X) silicon and still will match or surpass the A6X performance while reducing power consumption compared to T3 (>45%) should be a plus for battery life.The leaked GLBenchmark results are apparently from a much older silicon revision running no where near final GPU clocks.
Here's a better link that shows the actual results:
http://blog.gsmarena.com/alleged-fi...how-promising-results-but-not-as-good-as-a6x/
A6X still wipes the floor with Tegra 4. In fact, it's actually "marginally faster" compared to A6 only. A6X looks like it's still 2x as fast with certain tests.
So me thinks nVidia got ahead of themselves, or Apple chugged magic unicorn dusts into their SoC.