Nvidia Prepping a Shield Product Powered by the 20nm Tegra X1 SoC

The Tegra X1 SoC is truly a remarkable creation. It smokes its competition by a very large margin (dont believe me, check out leaked benches) and is absolutely lethal in terms of graphic horsepower. So it only makes sense that Nvidia deploy its flagship mobility chip onto its primary handheld product: the Shield.

Nvidia prepares Tegra X1 based Shield Gaming Handheld

Sweclockers.com has published a report detailing the device. The shield is a primarily android gaming product from Nvidia that boasts (currently) ahead of its generation features such as full support for the dektop Unreal Engine 4 renderer and AEP (Android Extension Pack) among other things. This means that the horsepower produced by the chip can actually be utilized to create beautiful eye candy.

Basically Maxwell will be landing on mobile, not to mention the chip being fabricated on the 20nm process. The Tegra X1 is a fully DirectX 12 capable, 256 Core, OpenGL 4.5 chip with OpenGL ES 3.1 and AEP support. On the CPU side it rocks an Octa Core configuration of 64 bit ARM configuration is split into a 4+4 design with four Cortex A57 cores with 2MB L2 Cache and four Cortex A53 cores with 512 KB L2 Cache. Tegra X1 also supports the H.265 decoder, VP9 4K 60fps playback and nearly all the codecs that the Industry can throw at it. It supports displays upto 4K @ 60Hz or 1080p at 120 Hz over HDMI 2.0 (HDCP 2.2).

I wont lie, this device if priced correctly, is shaping up to be one hell of a contender in the hand held gaming market. Nvidia has always tried to be ahead of the curve but the difference between it and its competitors was never as stark as it is with the Tegra X1. If in the future the gaming Industry can properly utilize AEP and Unreal Engine 4 renderer, I see absolutely immense potential for this device, with it evolving from an ‘android handheld’ to a true mobile gaming console.