Gizmodo has found internal documents that may detail the processing power of the upcoming Nintendo handheld, the DS. While the unit is labeled as the ‘Nitro’, it is not (as many sites have reported) a name change. A spokesperson from Nintendo of Europe has reconfirmed that the name of the next Nintendo handheld will be ‘DS’ — at least for now.
The specs are interesting, to say the least. While not coming anywhere near the touted ‘Playstation 2 quality’ graphics of the upcoming Sony PSP, it appears that the DS will have processing power roughly equivalent to the Nintendo 64 — albeit with some more modern hardware and programmatic tricks to help it along. One source described the ‘Nitro’ specs as being “… 2xGBA plus 1xN64 [built] into a portable hardware, but without [those] strict ROM limits of the old consoles…”. The sheet also mentions a touchscreen.
While Gizmodo cannot validate the authenticity of these specifications, they do offer an starting point for some interesting speculation and hardware analysis, such as that found at the beyond3d.com hardware forums.
