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Rumor: 3DS tech specs leaked, Digital Foundry analyzes
IGN claims to have received the technical specs for Nintendo's 3DS. According to the site, the handheld will use the DMP PICA200 GPU, but running at a slowed-down 166MHz, along with two ARM11 CPUs, each running at 266MHz. That's quite a bit less powerful than the Nvidia Tegra chips once rumored to be in the device. According to IGN, it will also have 1.5GB of flash memory for storage. Okay, so IGN listed a bunch of names and some numbers -- along with the claim that "Numerous developers working on software for the platform have likened its graphical capabilities to current-generation consoles like the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, albeit on smaller, lower-resolution screens." But to find out what all those numbers mean, we turn to Digital Foundry. The parts "represent a massive step-up from the existing DSi," DF said, "while measuring up badly against the latest in smartphone technology." For example, the 64MB of RAM does not compare favorably to the iPhone 4's 512. However, DF notes that there's no iOS to hog resources, and in terms of the graphical capabilities, the relatively low resolution (compared to consoles) uses far less overhead. DF notes that the motherboard originally sent to the FCC appeared to use a Tegra chip, suggesting that Nintendo has changed the design since then. "Quite why Nintendo decided to switch suppliers and go with DMP remains something of a mystery," the site says, "especially bearing in mind just how much more modern and capable the Tegra IP is compared to the much older PICA-200." To get a better idea of what 3DS games look like than you'd get from people talking about numbers, investigate these screenshots of 3DS games.
Rumored Nintendo 3DS specs include two separate 266MHz ARM11 processors, 1.5GB storage
The mystery of what's actually under the hood of the Nintendo 3DS is likely to elude us until launch date, when the inevitable teardown commences. That isn't stopping IGN, however, from pooling together its rolodex of sources to report what it believes the specs are: two 266MHz ARM11 CPUs, a 133MHz GPU, 4MB dedicated VRAM, 64MB RAM, and 1.5GB flash storage (in addition to the previously-known SD card expansion). If based on ARM11 architecture, it'd certainly be in good (if not wildly disparate) company: iPhone (original and 3G), the first two generations of iPod touch, all Amazon Kindles, Palm Pixi, a plethora of Nokia handsets, and... the Kin One and Zune HD. Two separate processors isn't too far fetched, either, as the original DS had both a 67MHz ARM9 and a 33.5MHz ARM7 (quite an uptick, eh?). Digital Media Productions took credit for the GPU back in June, claiming its Pica200 would be the chip of choice. That's got a maximum speed of 200MHz, which according to this rumor is being underclocked. So, nothing that runs counter to the admittedly little we got via the 3DS' FCC leak, and still nothing to keep the Tegra 2 hopeful in check (poor souls). Those with a need to know so passionate it runs through their very being will, as we said before, probably have to wait until it hits retail. And we should find out when that is next week.
Nintendo 3DS uses DMP's PICA200 GPU
Instead of going with the rumored Nvidia Tegra chip to power the display in the 3DS, Nintendo has chosen a product from Digital Media Professionals. The Japanese hardware company announced last night that its PICA200 chip was selected by Nintendo as the GPU in the Nintendo 3DS. DMP boasts that the 200MHz chip can provide 15.3 million polygons a second, 800 million pixels a second, and can perform alpha blending, full-scene antialiasing, and other features that sound like they make nice graphics. Nintendo has yet to reveal the CPU or any of the other chips behind the 3DS, but at least we're starting to get an idea what's going on in there. After the break, check out a video made by DMP to show off the chip's abilities. Perhaps you can look at it on two monitors at once to get an idea of the 3D capabilities of the system, or wiggle your monitor back and forth.
DMP's Pica200 GPU is the power behind Nintendo 3DS (video)
We'd never heard of Digital Media Professionals until this very moment, but we'd guess the company won't have that problem in future -- according to a press release fresh off the Japanese wire, its Pica200 GPU is the one pushing pixels to Nintendo's autostereoscopic screen. While we don't know exactly how the tiny graphics unit works or what CPU it might be paired with in a system-on-a-chip, the company claims it supports per-pixel lighting, procedural textures and antialiasing among a host of other effects, and generates 15.3 million polygons per second at its native 200MHz. What's more impressive is the video after the break -- reportedly rendered entirely on the chip -- and of course, the 3DS itself, but you'll have to take our word on that.
