A VentureBeat article is saying that two anonymous sources have confirmed that Nintendo's Switch will use Nvidia’s last-generation Maxwell graphics-processing instead of their newer Pascal architecture. What that means is real world ability is that Switch will be behind even the 3 year old PS 4 processing power.
"...The custom Maxwell Tegra (which uses a 20nm process as opposed to the more efficient 16nm process of the Pascal) in the machine is still powerful enough to play Nintendo-style games that rely on quality art over horsepower, but don’t expect Switch software to match the graphical fidelity of the highest-end PS4 games." ~ VB
It appears that most of the reason Nintendo when with the older architecture was timing. The Switch needs to come out to take over for the floundering Wii U soon. And Pascal architecture is too new, as came out only last year, so the ability to design around it wasn't possible for Nintendo. On the practical side, it is alleged that Nvidia's Pascal architecture requires more cooling even though it is more efficient. As a handheld unit, that might have been too much of a design conundrum with more moving parts and more space needed. Moreover, It can be assumed that Pascal architecture is so new that yields are low and thus the price per chip was still high. Nintendo is nothing else can be described as frugal, cautious, and very conservative in design needs.
My opinion is this doesn't really matter. Was anyone seriously 'betting' on Switch being as powerful as PS4 or Xbox One? No, they were betting it would be better than Wii U, and from all appearances it is that. We have seen running Zelda and ist looks good, so it looks just fine for a Nintendo system running Nintendo games.
On the other hand, in another thread, we see that someone found more Nintendo patents that ARE about Switch. And in other ways Switch will have thing like a touch screen and various movement sensors...that is good news even if the GPU is older. If the patents are about "the device" they will put out, things look okay for Switch.
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