Nintendo has been slowly increasing CPU and GPU speeds

[Punisher5.0]

This is a pretty interesting video. I had no idea this was going on.

 

[Flojomojo]

I seem to recall the PSP doing something similar. I know the Xbox One was holding back some power, too -- which they stopped doing after they abandoned Kinect.

 

It makes sense that Nintendo would want to be conservative with thermals and battery life in the beginning, until they had lots of field testing from real users.

 

The downside will be that battery life will be reduced by asking more of the system, and these things are getting older and might have reduced battery cycles by now as it is.

[Punisher5.0]

Yeah I remember Sony doing that too with the PSP.

 

I figured Nintendo has been getting temperature data from Switches and felt comfortable enough to increase clocks without reducing hardware life. I wonder where they will max out yet. Right now they are still a far amount below similiar packages.

[Lost Dragon]

God Of War was 1st title on PSP to use extra avaiable CPU time if my memory serves..

 

Nice to see Nintendo unlocking extra hardware potential.

[Flojomojo]

It was either that or Star Wars Renegade Squadron, or maybe both at the same time.

[Lost Dragon]

It was either that or Star Wars Renegade Squadron, or maybe both at the same time.

 

God Of War seemed to be the poster child for Sony

 

Lot of coverage at the time.

 

Comparison build video showcasing what the extra power allowed for:

 

https://youtu.be/TUj5GNryD5k

[Flojomojo]

Sony made a white PSP with Darth Vader on it. I don't remember which came first though. Was there a red one with Kratos, too?

[Tanooki]

I know what you're referring to with the PSP but that was from day one as they didn't get sneaky and lock stuff away. The system was designed to range from a general basic low speed threshold and that was for marketing purposes so they could say like under optimal conditions you'd get this and that and you'd get 6 hours of battery time out of it, but they'd allow for you to crank as a developer the main processor up far higher. The system woudl range from a lowly 20mhz up to 333mhz on the CPU, so for something needing so little like the menu itself and overly super basic programs, most would run at a general mid default 222mhz point, and those say like FF7 Crisis Core ran at 333 so it would chomp battery in like half that time.

 

Nintendo is taking two interesting directions with this and are similar. There's the general speed improvement they've worked up with it allowing the GPU to run a bit nicer and with not a notable ding to the battery. The other is that boost mode, and it can run the CPU end of the Tegra well over the typical cap without strain because the GPU is mostly parked during load screens. It's quite smart of them using collected information from owners systems and then finding creative ways to improve the capped hardware to a higher cap without destroying the longevity of the system stability and without just crushing the stated battery limits either.

[spacecadet]

God Of War was 1st title on PSP to use extra avaiable CPU time if my memory serves..

 

If you softmod a PSP, you can overclock it manually. I don't know what most games do if you do that, though; I think I've only tried it with emulators. I seem to remember reading that games like GTA:VC Stories run better/less choppy on an overclocked system, though.

[Austin]

God Of War was 1st title on PSP to use extra avaiable CPU time if my memory serves..

Interesting, I did not know that about God of War. I was really impressed by the first one on PSP and I guess now it makes sense why it seemed to do more (visually) than other PSP games.