Nvidia has the power for any next-gen Vita or PS4 Portable?

The venerable SGX543MP4+ in the Vita and the quad core A9 ARM CPU do a great job for gaming on the go, but are starting to show its age compared to the screaming mobile processors doing the rounds now. Enter the latest Tegra X1 from Nvidia unveiled at CES, capable of 1 teraflop of computer power at low power and high efficiency.

Considering the Vita is around as powerful as the Samsung Galaxy S4 and the Nvidia Shield portable (despite being a lot older), Sony will only upgrade when it has to, if ever. However, Nvidia reckons this will double the power of the Shield, and you can bet it will feature in a new model, plus endless smartphones. With the PS4 only managing to turn out 1.8 teraflops, any new portable could be a lot closer in performance levels, HD graphics, visual effects and so on.




That would suggest Sony needs to get a move on to stay with the market, even if only in Japan, and with all things mobile, these processors are also less expensive than previous generations.

The Nvidia X1 is a scaled down PC Maxwell architecture with a 256-core GPU and an 8-core CPU that is powerful enough to run Unreal's Elemental technology. How can the Vita compare with that, even while the likes of Freedom Wars looks good, raw processing power is holding the Vita back and lack of HD isn't helping.

Even if, for compatibility reasons, Sony sticks with ARM and Imagination's GPUs, in the A-15 or later models, these should be nearing the teraflop bar too. It remains possible that Sony will never upgrade the low-selling Vita, it remains a poor and near-broke company. However, it is always planning ahead, and even if what comes next is a PlayStation 4 Portable remote-play device, it will need the latest power and graphics to compete with the glut of portable devices on the shelves.