Nintendo NX ARM SoC May Offer Xbox One Performance

Last week, we heard that the Nintendo NX might be powered by a Tegra SoC from Nvidia. This ran contrary to previous rumours that suggested that Nintendo would choose to go with AMD for their next console. In the latest report to come out, industry insider Emily Rogers is reporting that the NX will not be x86 like the Xbox One and PS4 and will offer performance closer to the Microsoft console than Sony’s.

The non-x86 rumour reinforces the earlier report about Tegra as Nvidia’s SoC uses ARM rather than x86. The performance claim also makes a lot of sense if we look at Tegra. The current Tegra chip, the X1, only offers 256 Maxwell CUDA cores. This is nowhere near the Xbox One. With the new Parker SoC, Nvidia may double performance at least and with the move to Pascal, that will bring the SoC close to the Xbox One. There is also the possibility that Nvidia may have done a custom Tegra SoC for Nintendo.

Rogers also dismissed the Polaris rumours as wacky and obviously wacky but I honestly don’t see why they would be. Of course, these rumours don’t shut out AMD completely. Even with lower performance, Polaris would likely scale down to that level. AMD is working on their own K12 ARM SoCs, likely paired with Polaris, which would also fit the non-x86 narrative.

If this report is true, the NX won’t be competing at all with the new Xbox and PS4 Neo that are rumoured to significantly improve performance. Either way, we’ll have quite a wait on our hands till Nintendo shows their hand later this year.