Nintendo 3DS specs reportedly leaked

By Fred Dutton Published 22 September, 2010

1.5GB of flash memory rumoured.

The 3DS will boast 1.5GB of flash memory, 64MB of RAM and two 266MHz ARM11 CPUs, if specs leaked to IGN are to be believed.

The anonymous source added that the forthcoming handheld will also have 4MB of dedicated VRAM.

Early iPhone models and Microsoft's Zune also used the ARM11, while the DSi had 256MB of flash memory.

We've contacted Nintendo for confirmation or denial and will of course update should it chime in.

Nintendo is yet to announce any technical specifications for its new handheld since its unveiling at E3 this year. It's due to officially announce more information at an event on 29th September.

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About Fred Dutton

Fred Dutton is Eurogamer's US news editor, based in Washington DC.

Read more articles from Fred by visiting the Fred Dutton archive page.

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Comments (42) Latest comment 2 years ago

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  • Toadie48 #1 2 years ago

    Wow, if this romour is true, the 3DS is going to have fairly decent specs. Hopefully you can also expand the memory with an SD card for storing plenty of music and taking a few pictures, oh and a hanedehld version of the virtual console would be awesome!!! Classic Gameboy Color games anyone?

    Edit for spelling
    Edited by Toadie48 at 22/09/10 @ 09:08

  • Essien #2 2 years ago

    I think the most recent iphone has 256MB of RAM.

    Still, power isn't everything.

  • Zomoniac #3 2 years ago

    The most recent iPhone has 512MB RAM and a 1GHz CPU (no doubt underclocked, but nobody seems to know exactly what to).

  • neilka #4 2 years ago

    I thought it wasn't going to require specs?

    /coat

  • carrotcake #5 2 years ago

    No, iPhone 3GS has 256 MB RAM. iPhone 4 has 512.

    Yes, the 3DS's 64 is paltry by comparison, but then it doesn't cost as much as an iPhone does without a contract.

    edit: beat me to it
    Edited by carrotcake at 22/09/10 @ 09:01

  • Zomoniac #6 2 years ago

    I thought it wasn't going to require specs?

    Bravo :D

  • GamesProgrammer Verified Games Team Programmer, Eutechnyx Ltd. #7 2 years ago

    To be fair we dont know what its gonna cost, and im pretty dissapointed with that spec to put it into more perspective, the PSP has a 333mhz chip and since the psp2000 theyve had 64meg of ram, yes i know this the extra psp ram wasnt accessible by game developers but in terms of whats in the hardware i was hoping for a little more from the 3DS.

    Update:
    I understand being rated down cos a lot of people are looking forward to the 3DS i am also one of them, i was just hoping for more under the bonnet so that it will be a bit more future proof going forward.

    I know it didn't effect the profitability of the wii starting from a lower spec than there competitors, but i do think it effected them heavily in terms of 3rd party support as games had to be cut down a lot to deliver multi platform releases. And also effected the ability to bring new features through firmware updates.
    Edited by GamesProgrammer at 22/09/10 @ 09:41

  • abigsmurf #8 2 years ago

    You cannot fairly compare to an iphone on pure specs.

    The iphone has to keep IOS in memory at all times, as well phone functionality. The 3DS' OS will take up tiny amounts of ram and unload as much of itself as possible when gaming.

    The iPhone has a much faster CPU but again it deals a lot with IOS and phone overhead and it isn't customised for gaming (the DS' ARM for example had a lot of custom commands that added gaming related boosts). The architecture of the 3DS will be optimised for gaming, it'll likely have faster bus speeds than the iPhone or more bandwidth available.

    Most importantly. The iPhone will drain it's batteries in 90 minutes under full load. Nintendo have had a long standing policy of using 6 hours battery life as a base point when designing their consoles (and it's one of the reasons they've won every handheld generation so far).

    The iPhone is very likely significantly more powerful but it comes at a financial and longevity cost. Not to mention there is little incentive for lots of companies to produce big budget games on the platform.

  • FeralGamer #9 2 years ago

    @GamesProgrammer
    The 3DS will have two 266mhz processors, not just one 333mhz like the PSP. Two 266 are better than one 333.
    Edited by FeralGamer at 22/09/10 @ 09:19

  • toy_brain #10 2 years ago

    4 MB of VRAM seems a little stingy, even for a portable.
    The PSP only just about struggles by with 2 MB, The PS2's graphics were somewhat 'defined' by only having 4 MB (and not always in a good way), whereas the Dreamcast had 8 MB and seemed to do rather well with it.

    Well, I'm not a games programmer, so I could be talking shit. Still, with RAM being so cheap these days, why skimp on it?

  • Zomoniac #11 2 years ago

    @FeralGamer

    Not when you're working in 3D. If you have to render every image twice, you need a lot more power.

  • Zomoniac #12 2 years ago

    Still, with RAM being so cheap these days, why skimp on it?

    I would imagine that the price of desktop/notebook RAM and the price of tiny, low-power-consumption RAM for a pocket device aren't necessarily linked.

  • GamesProgrammer Verified Games Team Programmer, Eutechnyx Ltd. #13 2 years ago

    @Feralgamer

    Yeah isee that so yes it is more but it does have 2 screens, one of which is 3d so multiprocessor was a must, but the cynic in me tells me that when i pick up the 3DS i need to only really look forward to the first party games but on that note im sure as usual they wont let me down no matter what the spec.

  • wizlon #14 2 years ago

    Seems odd to have two equal powered CPU's, especially since the top one is a higher resolution (it's wide-screen) and has to do twice the work for the 3D. Unless dev's will use both CPU's for the top screen and the bottom simultaneously.

  • Maldoror #15 2 years ago

    Leave it to Nintendo to take some fairly basic technology and create something fantastic, that's going to sell a gazillion units. Just look at the Wii.
    I've tried the 3DS and it really works, good 3D, graphics on par with a PS2, the MGS demo looked a lot like Snake Eater on PS2.

  • abigsmurf #16 2 years ago

    Toy Brain: The xbox had no dedicated vram and did ok texture-wise. So long as the GPU has some access to the main ram, the vram won't be a huge issue.

  • MENTAL1ST Verified Senior Software Engineer, Picsel UK Ltd. #17 2 years ago

    @Zomaniac you need more GPU power for that, not usually very much more CPU power.

    Dual (or a dual-core) CPUs are quite unusual in the mobile device space, Although the DS has always had two, though one of them was partly there for GBA compatibility. I guess people are used to writing multi-core engines on home consoles, so it makes reasonable sense.

    Individually, though, these chips are significantly underpowered. 256MHz Arm 11s are equivalent to the sorts of chips Nokia was putting into its N-series phones in about 2006 or 2007. Not only are the current top-tier smartphones and tablets running 1GHz chips, they're of the next generation Arm Cortex architecture. Mind you, the DS itself was ludicrously underpowered on paper, and is capable of producing games that can match or better the original iPhone in terms of graphics and complexity so I'm sure the 3DS will do just fine at producing gamecube or Xbox 1 equivalent graphics.

  • mkreku #18 2 years ago

    toy_brain: Still, with RAM being so cheap these days, why skimp on it?

    There's RAM and there's RAM. For example, the eDRAM in the Xbox 360 is extremely expensive. The few MB of SRAM cache on a processor is ludicrously expensive. This is only referred to as VRAM so it's difficult to say anything more than that it's video related, but if it's anything like eDRAM or SRAM, it'll still cost a bit.

  • Luckyjim #19 2 years ago

    @Essien

    But that's to run a fully fledged operating system and a phone - as well as other non-game related stuff.

  • Zomoniac #20 2 years ago

    Leave it to Nintendo to take some fairly basic technology and create something fantastic. Just look at the Wii.

    Very good :)

    (I assume you were joking?)

  • Basoy #21 2 years ago

    Devs have been saying that the 3DS graphics rival the PS360. (Google it)

    It may seem ridiculous but the PS360 have to output to HDTVs while the 3DS has to output to a tiny screen...

  • light&shadow #22 2 years ago

    'boasts' 1.5 GB of flash ! Cmon, even the PSP Go has 16 GB of flash.

    I'm not saying the 3ds specs are low or anything, I'm very well aware nintendo is putting its budget on the 3d screen here, but EG systematic slam over the PSP seems even more misplaced when looking at specs like this on the 3ds.

    Looking forward to playing games on the 3ds though, I'm exited enough with the 3d screen and not expecting the world in term of rendering capabilities. Rumoured PS360 caps... that's just silly. It's a fixed graphics pipeline ffs.

  • MENTAL1ST Verified Senior Software Engineer, Picsel UK Ltd. #23 2 years ago

    Devs have been saying that the 3DS graphics rival the PS360.

    Yeah, people have been saying that about the Epic Citadel iOS demo, too, and in both cases it's bullshit. I think people have forgotten just how good the previous generation of consoles could look:

    here's a few pages of screenshots:

    [link url=http://www.eurogamer.net/gallery.php?game_id=4517&article_id=59920#anchor
    ]http://www.eurogamer.net/gallery.php?gam...[/link]
    [link url=http://www.eurogamer.net/gallery.php?game_id=3172&article_id=54916#anchor
    ]http://www.eurogamer.net/gallery.php?gam...[/link]
    [link url=http://www.eurogamer.net/gallery.php?game_id=2370&article_id=55702#anchor
    ]http://www.eurogamer.net/gallery.php?gam...[/link]
    [link url=http://www.eurogamer.net/gallery.php?game_id=4814&article_id=59306#anchor
    ]http://www.eurogamer.net/gallery.php?gam...[/link]
    http://www.eurogamer.net/gallery.php?art...

  • toy_brain #24 2 years ago

    @abigsmurf
    Doesn't sound like they are going with the Xbox / Xbox360 method of shared RAM though - not if they already have 4 MB of dedicated VRAM.
    There are probably some ways around it, but I do wonder what sort of impact running 2 screens (or three if you count the 3d display as 2... sort of) will have.

    Still, like I said, I'm totally not a games pogrammer, so I could be talking utter, utter shit.

  • Cosmopolitan #25 2 years ago

    My bet is on £199 starting price. Hence the low specs.
    The DS launched at $149 innit.

  • Skurmedel #26 2 years ago

    Costs matter when your are producing a couple of million units, a one pound component suddenly becomes very expensive.

  • fknetwork #27 2 years ago

    "You cannot fairly compare to an iphone on pure specs."

    You can as they both play games, I have an iphone 4 which is jailbroken, even with the iOS running and all required services (phone, messaging etc) it still has 368mb of ram free (512mb total) for apps and games, epic citadel uses 256mb of ram on that game and looks stunning, I honestly have no idea how the 3DS will be able to handle decent graphics and textures with so little ram and cpu power specially in 3D, seems like a huge oversight?

    I'm not bashing the 3DS as it looks cool, just not sure on these specs.


    P.S, the person who said the iphone 4 drains its batteries in 90 minutes under load seriously has no idea, I get 4 and a half hours running epic citadel with brightness on full when i tested it for touch arcade, on less demanding games I get up to 9 hours gaming per charge
    Edited by fknetwork at 22/09/10 @ 11:26

  • Sonic_D #28 2 years ago

    The main thing is that it is an actual games machine made with games in mind by a company known for making top games, not a gadget used by posers who think 59p mini-games are the best thing ever.

  • Stuz359 #29 2 years ago

    Why is everyone shocked? We all know that Nintendo's priority when it comes to handheld gaming is battery life. We also know that graphically, all the handhelds they have released are a generation behind. GB was less than Nes standard, GBA was SNES standard, DS was N64 Standard and the 3DS will be PS2/Xbox/GC/Wii standard. Why is it such a big deal to everyone though? I could tell it was about on a par with a previous generation home console from screenshots, now that it's confirmed (even though it isn't) people are complaining it isn't powerful enough for them. Crazy.

  • SpaceMonkey77 #30 2 years ago

    Not at all surprised by these 3DS tech specs. Nintendo are renowned for vastly under powering their consoles. They say its to cut costs but after many years, that's a poor excuse. and 1.5 gb, what's wrong with 4gb? You can pick up cards that size for 5-8 pounds.

    It will be easier for developers to create games for than DS, but should be better than it is. I can still see a lot of developers not bothering with it. If iPhone can run the likes of Rage, why would you develop for another gimped Nintendo hand held like 3DS?

    I can almost see the Sony suits luaghing at this spec, as they prep PSP2 for the future.

  • Kami #31 2 years ago

    Sounds like a pretty nice setup.

    "I thought it wasn't going to require specs?"

    I award you +1 internetz, neilka.

  • coyote37 #32 2 years ago

    @Spacemonkey- like they did when looking at the original DS specs while preparing PSP? That worked out brilliantly for them didn't it?

  • ThePissartist #33 2 years ago

    I'm disappointed, I expected more.

    Roll on PSP2.

  • ndbsolar #34 2 years ago

    People here are forgetting something. Even if the 3DS had the same specs as the DS, the screen will change everything and things will look amazing...

    Also, Mhz mean NOTHING!
    Edited by ndbsolar at 22/09/10 @ 12:40

  • 32768Colours #35 2 years ago

    @SpaceMonkey77: why would you develop for another gimped Nintendo hand held like 3DS?

    ...perhaps because you'd have a potential audience of over 100 million customers? I'm almost glad in a way that the current DS is "under-powered" because it forces developers to try something different, like Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney for example.

    Before we all get upset about the specs of 3DS (whatever they end up being), don't forget just how good some of the previous generation of games looked. I won't pretend to understand the finer technical points of one processor over another, but if I can play something as nice looking as Black on a handheld - and in Stereoscopic 3D no less - then I'll be more than happy!
    Edited by 32768Colours at 22/09/10 @ 13:03

  • SpaceMonkey77 #36 2 years ago

    @coyote

    Might seem like nothing to you, mate, but developer can tell a lot of what they'll be able to do with a system just by such specs. If you mean a DS to PSP comparison, that was then, when both were new, but what we have now is a new ball game, especially since the unexpected entry of iPhone.

    A two horse race turns to three, and suddenly, devs have more choice. With foruth horse PSP2, potentially going down a more mish mash PSP/DS route, good spec will matter more to those making games, but not necessarily to some gamers. You also forget, coyote, that PSP and DS game development has been pretty low in the west (mor eportable games come from eastern devs), with more devs focusing on home consoles efforts. When hand held systems get up to Xbox 360 like spec (in the next few years if not sooner), more games will come to them from western devs.

  • TonyHarrison #37 2 years ago

    People seem to be ignoring that you can get more out of a handheld console with the same specs as a home console due to having a smaller display to work with. So if this is around GC/PS2/Xbox power, it should actually translate to something slightly above that level taking that into account...

  • arcam #38 2 years ago

    In theory you're right, but the 3DS actually has a higher res (854x480) than PS2 or Xbox. So in this case you'll actually you'll get less out of the same horsepower.

  • Bluetooth #39 2 years ago

    My ARM is bigger than your ARM

  • Maldoror #40 2 years ago

    @Zomoniac
    No, I'm not joking. The Wii revolutionised the gaming industry and they are the direct reason you are now seeing Microsoft and Sony playing catch up, to a much lower specced console. Then it's up to the beholder if this was a positive or negative revolution.
    Don't get me wrong, I'm a gamer and I never really play my Wii. PC Master Race reporting in, with my X360 being my main console and I also have a PS3. But I can clearly understand why the Wii has sold so many units and I applaud Nintendo for that feat.
    tl;dr Nintendo = $$$

  • Skurmedel #41 2 years ago

    The DS had two processors as well, a slower auxiliary one which I think was used for GBA back-compatability. I also remember reading somewhere that licensed (non-homebrew) games weren't allowed to use the second processor, might be bullshit though. It would make it easier to port/run any DS game on a newer platform though.

  • Kinkster #42 2 years ago

    Are the people guessing at £199 factoring in that VAT will be 20% by the time it comes out over here?