On: Nintendo announces the Switch 2 [video]

[richrichardsson]

If you believe the leakers [1]:

    Full specs:
    
    CPU: Arm Cortex-A78C
    8 cores
    Unknown L1/L2/L3 cache sizes
    GPU: Nvidia T239 Ampere
    1 Graphics Processing Cluster (GPC)
    12 Streaming Multiprocessors (SM)
    1534 CUDA cores
    6 Texture Processing Clusters (TPC)
    48 Gen 3 Tensor cores
    2 RTX ray-tracing cores
    RAM: 12 GB LPDDR5

    Handheld Mode:
    
    CPU: 998.4 MHz
    GPU: 561 MHz (~1.72 TFLOPS)
    Memory Frequency: 4266 MHz
    Memory Bandwidth: 68.256 GB/s

    Docked Mode:
    
    CPU: 1100.8 MHz
    GPU: 1007.25 MHz (~3.09 TFLOPS)
    Memory Frequency: 6400 MHz
    Memory Bandwidth: 102.4 GB/s

Switch 2 in comparison with the original Nintendo Switch:

    Category    Nintendo Switch 2    Nintendo Switch
    CUDA Cores  1536                 256
    Bus Width   128-bit              64-bit
    Memory Size 12 GB                4 GB
    Memory Type LPDDR5X              LPDDR4
    SM Count    12                   2
    Bandwidth   120 GB/s             25.6GB/s
    Dimensions  206 x 115 x 14       173 x 102 x 13.9
    (LWD mm)

[1] https://thegamepost.com/nintendo-switch-2-full-specs-appears...

[eloisant → richrichardsson]

How would that compare to other consoles, like the PS4/PS4 Pro?

[ErneX → eloisant]

Just based on teraflops it sits between a PS4 and a PS4 Pro.

But teraflops isn’t the whole picture though, it has other modern features like AI upscaling (DLSS) plus others.

For a portable it’s pretty nice.

[evujumenuk → eloisant]

GPU performance should be somewhere between PS4 and PS4 Pro. More memory is a good sign that Nintendo's machine will allow a larger software catalogue than that of the Xbox Series S, where 10 GB has been a severe impediment to porting.

[rjzzleep → eloisant]

The biggest problem is the memory bandwidth. PS4 memory bandwidth is 176 GB/s. These specs are quite bad, It's supposed to be Ampere based, so RTX 30 series. It was released in Sep 2020. That's over 4 years ago. Part of the problem with NVIDIA is that they have been milking their architectures.

For comparison, the Steamdeck was released in Feb 2022, and RDNA2 was released in Nov 2020. So the architecture gap was 1.5 years for Steamdeck, but 4.5 years for the Switch 2.

I guess there might be a chance that they enable DLSS4 for this device, but it's still sad to watch this unfold.

[Dansvidania → eloisant]

I would guess much weaker, but IMO the switch's point is not raw performance but rather innovative gameplay and style

[jitl → eloisant]

pc vs cell phone

[mirsadm → jitl]

The iPhone is faster than most PCs

[ac29 → mirsadm]

Maybe on short duration single threaded CPU benchmarks.

But its not true if you are talking about sustained gaming performance compared to an equally priced new PC. Even for $800 (entry level iPhone) a PC will be a much better performer for gaming.

[jitl → mirsadm]

but quite different architectures