Last week, we reported on the hardware specifications of the Nintendo Switch 2, which, according to multiple sources, have been finalized. Nintendo has decided to opt for a cost-effective solution, the NVIDIA Tegra T239 fabbed on the Samsung 8nm process. This relatively dated processor delivers performance comparable to the Sony PS4 Pro, or so claims “Moore’s Law is Dead” in a recent video.
According to MLID, the NVIDIA Ampere-based GPU powering the Switch 2 will perform similarly to the PS4 Pro in docked mode. The handheld may be comparable to the Xbox Series S, especially if DLSS-based upscaling methods are employed.
Courtesy of the Ampere graphics microarchitecture, the Switch 2 will likely offer superior ray-tracing performance, although the final shader count will eventually decide the average output. The Steam Deck, which features an AMD RDNA 2-based iGPU with 8 CUs (512 cores) @ 1GHz to 1.6GHz, should be notably slower, especially in CPU-intensive titles.
The octa-core Zen 2 CPU on the Deck is another weak point, falling behind Intel Skylake-based designs due to its non-unified L3 cache and the associated latency penalty. The octa-core Arm A78C CPU powering the Switch 2 should be much faster, especially in first-party titles.
Unlike the Steam Deck, which features a 60Hz display (90Hz for the OLED version), the Switch 2 will target 30 FPS performance at a similar resolution (720p-900p). It’s unclear whether Nintendo will opt for 12GB or 16GB of LPDDR5 memory, but it should easily beat the 88GB/s offered by the Deck. The Tegra T239 SoC has a stock memory bandwidth of 102GB/s, courtesy of a 128-bit bus.
