Sneak Peak of Tegra 4 (Codename Wayne)

[BenSkywalker]

..

 

[MrX8503]

March 2011 is the A5
March 2012 is the A5X

Tegra 3 is late 2011 and had a faster CPU, but its GPU is slower than both the A5 and A5X.

Nvidia hasn't released anything in a long time and there's even more powerful SoC's currently.

 

[BenSkywalker]

..

 

[MrX8503]

Mflops. You can see it in the table in the Anandtech review you posted. T3's gpu is theoretically slower.

T3 has better visuals due to nvidia working closely with Devs, nothing to do with hardware and more to do with optimizations.

You don't see high performance of the T3 in tablet retina games. The T3's GPU is slower.

 

[Bateluer]

Not to be a stickler here, but you still aren't refuting my point. I said we still aren't going to see an integrated solution until the end of next year. Icera was likely working on LTE chips, which is really nothing new (and didn't require nVidia to buy them), but including an LTE baseband on die means it's an entirely separate SKU from Wayne (which is why it's being released much later).

I wasn't trying to refute you. As far as the average customer goes, it doesn't matter whether Nvidia has a Tegra 4 + Icera on the PCB or a Tegra 4x with both integrated onto a single die. They need working LTE right out of the gate without having to rely on the leftovers from Qualcomm.

I assume it's only a matter of time until Apple and Samsung are building their own LTE basebands as I'm sure Samsung hated using the Snapdragon S4 in the American Galaxy S III, whereas the MDM9615 IP block was already in MSM8960, and Apple had to wait for MDM9615 before shipping the iPhone 5. No company wants to be willingly caught in such a vice grip.

This is what I meant. Apple, Nvidia, Samsung are all working on LTE modems of their own.

 

[BenSkywalker]

..

 

[sontin]

A small update:
The leak was spot on. But even after the press conference there are no real news available.

 

[BenSkywalker]

..

 

[Roland00Address]

Probably get some later today when other companies have their own wares up for display, or perhaps nVidia will have Shield kicking around at their booth so people can play around with it, maybe drop us a couple of benchmarks.

Looking forward to Shield, if they can achieve the 199 or 249 price point, I will be buying one.

 

[nycdude]

what looks promising to me is the "nVidia Shield" announcement. That looks cool and promising.

 

[cmdrdredd]

what looks promising to me is the "nVidia Shield" announcement. That looks cool and promising.

Thing that I don't like about it is not the hardware. We need some real games for android for it to be worth it. I mean serious titles from big console or PC gaming studios. Not time wasters for free or $.99 without ads. We need some real killer titles to compete with the DS and Vita. The streaming games from steam thing sounds dumb to me when you are required to be on the same local network as your PC. If I have to be in my house to stream PC games why wouldn't I just play on my PC with a mouse for fps games and a Xbox controller for action games? Especially when I could be playing at 2560x1440. I don't even want to think about the input lag and such.

So from a streaming standpoint I think it won't be special but if studios step it up and start releasing titles to rival those offered on the vita and ds but tailored for the shield, it could have serious potential.

 

[Red Storm]

Thing that I don't like about it is not the hardware. We need some real games for android for it to be worth it. I mean serious titles from big console or PC gaming studios. Not time wasters for free or $.99 without ads. We need some real killer titles to compete with the DS and Vita. The streaming games from steam thing sounds dumb to me when you are required to be on the same local network as your PC. If I have to be in my house to stream PC games why wouldn't I just play on my PC with a mouse for fps games and a Xbox controller for action games? Especially when I could be playing at 2560x1440. I don't even want to think about the input lag and such.

So from a streaming standpoint I think it won't be special but if studios step it up and start releasing titles to rival those offered on the vita and ds but tailored for the shield, it could have serious potential.

Well one thing needed to really get "serious" gaming moving is a standardized platform (controller) that developers can count on, so this could potentially be that.

I think the streaming is really neat. My Steam library is not made up of 50 Call of Duty type games. I have Trine and Mark of the Ninja and Rayman and other games like that. I don't always want to be sitting at my desk in my room to play these games. It's the main reason why I bought Bastion on the iPad Mini rather than on Steam.

The input lag wasn't all that bad with OnLive, and this is local network streaming, so it should be much better.

 

[Mopetar]

Thing that I don't like about it is not the hardware. We need some real games for android for it to be worth it. I mean serious titles from big console or PC gaming studios. Not time wasters for free or $.99 without ads. We need some real killer titles to compete with the DS and Vita.

There're certainly more efforts than ever before to get more compelling games on mobile platforms, but it's still going to take a while. The customer base generally isn't willing to pay $20 for games when they're surrounded by $.99 ones. Even if they compromise at $10 or $5, they can't spend all that much money developing the title before the sales numbers need to become insane to justify the cost of developing the game.

I'd be really interested to know how many copies of BG:EE were sold on iOS and how many they sell on Android when that version ships. I have a feeling that the market is smaller than we think.

 

[nycdude]

I am wondering which will have more legs, The Shield project or the OUYA project since they cater to almost the same audience although the hardware aspect and more functionality favors nVidia.

 

[Bateluer]

I am wondering which will have more legs, The Shield project or the OUYA project since they cater to almost the same audience although the hardware aspect and more functionality favors nVidia.

I think Shield just killed OUYA. Shield is where all the professional level developers will go, where the marketing dollars will go, and what people will see on the shelves at stores.

 

[Mopetar]

I think Shield just killed OUYA. Shield is where all the professional level developers will go, where the marketing dollars will go, and what people will see on the shelves at stores.

I don't think either will have any long term success, but I'd bet on the Ouya doing better. Shield seems overly gimmicky and incredibly niche, where as the Ouya is a much simpler conceptually, will probably be a lot less expensive, and have a broader market to target. Also, Shield streams over WiFi, which is probably going to result in a substandard experience for a lot of people.

 

[Red Storm]

I don't think either will have any long term success, but I'd bet on the Ouya doing better. Shield seems overly gimmicky and incredibly niche, where as the Ouya is a much simpler conceptually, will probably be a lot less expensive, and have a broader market to target. Also, Shield streams over WiFi, which is probably going to result in a substandard experience for a lot of people.

The streaming is something that OUYA doesn't even offer, it's only on Shield.

OnLive managed at least tolerable latency over the internet, so I would imagine LAN only to be better.

I think out of the two Shield will be more successful because they are more likely to draw in the bigger devs.

 

[you2]

Everyone is mentioning performance but how is tegra 4 (relative to the competition) with regards to power consumption and memory bw ?

 

[sontin]

Tegra 4 has 2 32bit memory controller and supports up to LP-DDR3 Memory.

Power consumption is unknown but it should be much longer with low performance tasks like video playback, reading, listen to music...

 

[dagamer34]

Thing that I don't like about it is not the hardware. We need some real games for android for it to be worth it. I mean serious titles from big console or PC gaming studios. Not time wasters for free or $.99 without ads. We need some real killer titles to compete with the DS and Vita. The streaming games from steam thing sounds dumb to me when you are required to be on the same local network as your PC. If I have to be in my house to stream PC games why wouldn't I just play on my PC with a mouse for fps games and a Xbox controller for action games? Especially when I could be playing at 2560x1440. I don't even want to think about the input lag and such.

So from a streaming standpoint I think it won't be special but if studios step it up and start releasing titles to rival those offered on the vita and ds but tailored for the shield, it could have serious potential.

Play PC games on my TV without having to run a stupidly long HDMI cable.

 

[Mopetar]

I think out of the two Shield will be more successful because they are more likely to draw in the bigger devs.

No one is going to specifically develop for it. It just plays the PC version of the game. I don't think many people are going to specifically develop for Ouya either. They'll just port their already existing Android phone/tablet version of the game to work with it.

Shield basically gives you a console experience if you don't have a console. You could already do that if you hooked up your PC to the TV. Of course, if you already can get the PC experience, I don't know why you'd want to go with anything else.

Honestly, I think Shield is more of a showcase of nVidia hardware than it is anything that serves an actual use. But given that I don't expect either of these to make a big impact, Shield could very well be "more successful" than the Ouya.

 

[Red Storm]

No one is going to specifically develop for it. It just plays the PC version of the game. I don't think many people are going to specifically develop for Ouya either. They'll just port their already existing Android phone/tablet version of the game to work with it.

Shield basically gives you a console experience if you don't have a console. You could already do that if you hooked up your PC to the TV. Of course, if you already can get the PC experience, I don't know why you'd want to go with anything else.

Honestly, I think Shield is more of a showcase of nVidia hardware than it is anything that serves an actual use. But given that I don't expect either of these to make a big impact, Shield could very well be "more successful" than the Ouya.

The PC streaming is half of it. It's also a handheld console, running stock Android, and can also be hooked up to your TV to make it a home console as well.

 

[Aikouka]

My biggest question is whether or not Shield has the capability to turn off the screen when it's not really necessary. If you're just mirroring the content to an external device, why waste battery power on the screen? I don't think you'll leave the controller plugged in all the time when playing it like that (although, that may be possible), so saving battery power would be nice!

The only reason I could see to leave the screen on would be if nVidia takes a page out of Nintendo's book, and offers the ability to present different visuals on each screen. However, that sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen.

The streaming games from steam thing sounds dumb to me when you are required to be on the same local network as your PC.

One interesting thing that it can do is serve as a pass-through device to play a game on your TV in your living room that's actually running on your PC in another room. In some ways, it helps alleviate the need for a gaming-capable HTPC.

I do understand what you mean about controls, but if you keep your gaming to some of the games that are designed around controllers (Steam now denotes this), it should be much better.

 

[Red Storm]

I do understand what you mean about controls, but if you keep your gaming to some of the games that are designed around controllers (Steam now denotes this), it should be much better.

Hmm, wonder if you could use that micro USB port to connect a keyboard and mouse. It is an Android device after all.

 

[Aikouka]

Hmm, wonder if you could use that micro USB port to connect a keyboard and mouse. It is an Android device after all.

I don't see why not. The only thing that may stop you is if it's treated as a dedicated charging port rather than a true USB port. Although, that would be a rather inane decision, so I doubt it!

However, I don't know if that will make a difference. Anandtech's article on it stated that, much like remote desktop software, button presses will be sent to the host machine. If the Shield software is not designed to grab anything other than the built-in controls, then it will not matter what devices you attach.