New rumors have surfaced regarding the hardware specifications of the New 3DS.
Nintendo themeselves revealed that New 3DS received a significant increase in power, so much so that it would be receiving some games that the older 3DS architecture will not be capable of rendering. The first game of this kind will be a port of Xenoblade Chronicles. It will also have highly improved stereoscopic 3D, allowing players to see the effect consistently from any viewing angle.
The New 3DS has apparently been codenamed Snake, and has three times the CPU clockspeed and twice the RAM speed of the original. It also has L2 cache, but the GPU and VRAM are the same.
Our source claims to have received information about the New 3DS, because Nintendo has already been sharing this information to developers. We cannot vouch for the veracity of this source beyond that, but until Nintendo reveals the specs itself, this is all the information we have.
This rumor seems to contradict earlier statement from AMD. AMD teased that they were working on a new GPU for the 3DS successor. However, it is entirely possible that this 3DS successor AMD were hinting at is not the New 3DS, and they really are working with Nintendo on its successor.
The 3DS’ current GPU is the PICA200, made by Japanese company DMP. However, AMD did work with Nintendo for the GPU of the Wii U, Latte, and AMD has indicated that they have experienced success making GPUs for console companies, so it is possible that they have been contracted for Nintendo’s next portable.
If New 3DS did retain the PICA200 as its GPU, having multilevel caches, as well as bugs to CPU and RAM speed are still significant improvements to the hardware. When you add in Nintendo’s claims that the 3D has been improved, we may see a more technically impressive library of 3DS games, designed to justify Iwata’s vision of stereoscopic portable 3D, in the coming years.
