 Does how powerful the Nintendo Switch actually is in comparison to other consoles and other video game platforms really matter? That's the question we're posing today and what is a new series that we're calling Prime Debate? And the point of this series is to ask a question and get you guys debating about it down in the comments while I give you some context and possibly my side of the story and the way that I feel. And the reason we're talking about this today is because of a reddit thread that came up and I'm just going to throw it up here and read off what's going on. A lot of technical jargon and we're going to talk about it after the fact. So here we go. Here is an Excel spreadsheet I made to determine the performance difference per theoretical computation difference between Maxwell architecture and Polaris architecture Xbox One versus the Nintendo Switch. Initially, I took frame rates from 26 games comparing the RX 480 and the GTX 970. Using that data I found a performance difference between the RX 480 and GTX 970. I also took the theoretical compute performance difference between the RX 480 and the GTX 970. Using these values I created a unit of difference which gave the relative performance differences per theoretical power difference. Then I used this unit of difference multiplied by the theoretical power difference between the Xbox One and the Nintendo Switch and calculated the performance difference between the two consoles which ended up being 2.37. Meaning that the Xbox One is 2.37 times more powerful than the Nintendo Switch rather than 3.33 times as the theoretical computational power would suggest. To determine whether this method actually works I took frame rates of the GTX 950 in the same 26 games. I found that the unit of difference between the RX 480 and the GTX 950 then used that and multiplied the theoretical power difference to get a theoretical performance difference. I then compared this to the actual performance difference and obtained a percent error of 1.33 percent meaning that this method is pretty reliable. However, after further research I found the Xbox One uses a GCN-1 Tahiti architecture. So I found benchmarks for the Radeon HD 7970 however due to the age of this card I was only able to find matching benchmarks between the HD 7970 and the GTX 970 in four games. I made sure to obtain all the benchmarks from the same source and made sure all the settings used and benchmarks were the same. I also obtained the benchmarks from the four games that formed the unit of difference between the HD 7970 and the GTX 970 and multiplied that to the theoretical computation difference between the Xbox One and Nintendo Switch and obtained a performance difference of 1.78. Again I compared this with the GTX 950 and found a percent error of 26.98 percent. This percent error is very high because I only had the four data points to work with. To long and read, the Xbox One is about 1.8 times more powerful than the Nintendo Switch rather than 3.3 times more powerful as the theoretical computation power would suggest. So yeah, there's obviously some issues with this comparison and for those who don't understand the technical jargon obviously concludes that the Xbox One is 1.8 times more powerful. Whether or not the Xbox One is 3 times more powerful, 2 times or 1.8 times more powerful. The question still remains, does the power of this system really matter? And it's something that constantly comes up because as we know there are games coming up for this thing like DOOM and DOOM doesn't even run at 720p in handheld mode consistently. It has drafts out into 540p that have been confirmed, dynamic resolution, everything in general looks a bit blurrier almost like there's a filter over it but the game runs which is extremely impressive on portable hardware. Now setting all of that aside, we just have to talk about the power in general. I don't think the power really matters when it comes to the Nintendo Switch because I don't think anyone's buying the system expecting it to be super super powerful. Now in the space of mobile tech it is actually a pretty powerful chip. Now it is going to start getting outclassed, there's now that with the iPhone 8 and the iPhone X coming out there are CPUs and GPUs out there that are starting to outpace the Tegra X1, the Tegra X2 exists which obviously outpaces the Tegra X1. It's not exactly the maximum possible power potential for a portable device anymore. When it first came out back in March the power of this system would be considered close to top of the line or if not top of the line just like a hair below top of the line in the mobile tech space but that's not even true anymore and when you compare it to an Xbox One to PlayStation 4 you're almost not even in the same ballpark. Now it isn't the say of the Xbox One which is the weaker of those two platforms is significantly more powerful to the point that this thing's embarrassing but you know they have the Xbox One X coming out now that has six teraflops worth of performance this isn't touching that. So the question obviously comes back to does this matter? Does it matter to you? And it's obviously going to be a personal thing. I didn't buy the Switch because it was powerful just like I didn't buy the Wii U because it was powerful or the 3DS because it was powerful. You see this 3DS right here that I'm charging? I didn't get that thing because it's super powerful. I got it because of the content. Likewise I got the Switch because of the content and ended up falling in love with the hardware. The hardware being things like detachable Joy-Cons that can become two controllers. The fact that I can play it on the TV at home and on the go rather easily. The fact that games like Breath of the Wild and NBA 2K. Look at this. Look at this right now. I am launching a AAA game, multi-platform this year, NBA 2K18 in portal mode on a Nintendo Switch. So is this thing like the most powerful thing in the world? No, but it's powerful enough for me. But reality is that this system is capable of running AAA games if companies want to do it. It is capable of running anything Nintendo wants to throw at it. And reality is I bought it because it has the content I want to play. But that's just me. A lot of people out there are still going to debate on the power of it. Obviously every AAA port that comes to this system is going to be weaker than it is on its contemporaries. But does the Switch really have a contemporary? I mean you could argue that its closest contemporary is the 3DS. At least in terms of gaming specific platforms. Otherwise you could argue its other closest contemporaries are mobile phones and tablets. It's not an Xbox One. It's not a PlayStation 4. And I don't expect it to perform like one. And I don't think most people that buy it expected either. Now because it has so many excellent games on it like NBA 2K18 and Breath of the Wild and such. You're going to see people constantly debating about its capabilities and console level gaming on the go. Is it really console level gaming? If it's not as powerful as the current gen consoles. And this is where I just throw the debate back at you. How much does power matter to you in your Nintendo Switch? Is it even something that we should care about? Is it something we should even debate about? Should it even be a conversation? Should I even report on news when it eventually comes out that the Wolfenstein 2, the new Colossus runs at sub 720p and 30fps which we all know it's going to run basically the same as Doom does. But again, is it a conversation that matters? Based on the viewership numbers it's definitely something people care about here in general on YouTube but that might not necessarily be you guys. That could be a totally different fan base slashing onto those videos. So you guys let me know in the comments below. Again, this is our first ever Prime debate. I plan to get these out several times a week. Enjoy debating down in the comments and I can't wait to respond to you at the end of the week. As always folks, I am Nathaniel Ruffigance from Nintendo Prime. If you like this video you know what to do and if you dislike the video, hit that dislike button. Subscribe for more content just like this and if you haven't heard, we're giving away a copy of Super Mario Odyssey. If you go down in the description below there is a link to Gleam.io which will allow you to enter the only requirement is that you are subscribed to our YouTube channel and we hope you're doing that anyways because we have a lot of great content on the way. Alright folks, I'll catch you in the next one.