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[Thick Thighs Save Lives]

• 0:00:00 Introduction
• 0:00:50 News 1: Switch 2 motherboard leaks - with possible 8nm SoC
• 0:27:47 News 2: Nintendo patent hints at Switch 2 upscaling
• 0:43:45 News 3: High quality GTA 6 trailer reveals new details
• 0:55:35 News 4: Wukong developer says Series S holding back Xbox port
• 1:07:41 News 5: AI update - new GPTs, game tech
• 1:19:38 Supporter Q1: Does it make sense to pair an AMD CPU with an Intel GPU for a budget build?
• 1:26:02 Supporter Q2: Will Sony ship games like Marvel's Spider-Man on Switch 2?
• 1:31:23 Supporter Q3: Are you saving some performance-challenged Switch games for Switch 2?
• 1:35:26 Supporter Q4: Is this the most exciting Q1 in gaming history?

After a one week hiatus, Digital Foundry Direct Weekly returns! The truth is, we were hoping to rest the show for a second week but the barrage of Switch 2 leaks and news put paid to our plans to more casually ease ourselves into 2025. Kicking off the show is our reaction to the reveal of a fully populated Switch 2 mainboard, photographed on both sides, at various angles. The photos are almost certainly genuine - and it's the reveal of the handheld's main processor that has caused the most controversy with confirmation that it's Samsung handling production duties based on an Nvidia design.

Quite why this news is so important comes down to ongoing discussions since the Switch 2's T239 processor was first leaked. Renowned - and highly reliable - leaker kopite7kimi revealed way back in 2022 that Nintendo and Nvidia were developing a T239 processor for its next-gen handheld. Seemingly a cut-down version of the massive, hulking T234 used in the automotive industry, kopite7kimi believes it is fabricated on the Samsung 8nm process, as used for T234 and Nvidia's entire range of RTX 30-series consumer GPUs. At 455mm2, T234 is just too vast and power-hungry for a handheld and yet the motherboard shots reveal that it's clearly a Samsung processor within Switch 2. If it's another 8nm chip, this has serious implications for either performance or battery life - especially when the battery compartment looks much smaller than Steam Deck's.

I'd estimate the new SoC is around 200-220mm2 based on the size of the surrounding memory modules, believed to be in the region of 196mm2. This is much, much higher than Steam Deck LCD's 163mm2 and the OLED revision's 131mm2. While some believe that Samsung 8nm is not dense enough to contain the logic in a 200-220mm2 area, I'd beg to differ. Switch 2 apparently has 1536 Nvidia CUDA cores while Nvidia's RTX 3050 crams in 2560 of them into a 200mm2 chip. Cut back the CUDA cores, expand the footprint of the chip and I think it is quite feasible to fit Switch 2's CPU, GPU, media and file decompression logic onto the chip we've seen leaked. That said, there are theories that another Samsung process may be in effect, perhaps 5nm. Hands-on with final hardware, we may get some idea via power consumption metrics but ultimately, the whole 8nm question will only be categorically answered when the likes of TechInsights have thoroughly analysed the product.

Whichever way you slice it, the news of a Samsung chip does put the Switch 2 at an efficiency disadvantage up against Steam Deck and the vast array of Windows PC handhelds out there. These are based on fabrication technologies from TSMC - the most successful chip maker in the business right now. With a Samsung chip, clock speeds will be lower and power efficiency won't be as good. However, equally, I'd argue that Switch 2 has its own 'secret sauce' that none of these devices have: the power of a fixed platform.

Last year, the DF team took a look at the best tech from Switch 1 games, coming up with a range of extremely impressive first and third party offerings. This year, it is a whole decade since the Tegra X1 mobile processor was announced and yet, from 2017 onwards, that same processor - downclocked significantly from standards specs - delivered hit after hit on the Switch platform, to the point where we coined the 'impossible port' phrase when we first saw Doom 2016 running on it. I'd also point you towards Oliver Mackenzie's remarkable video comparing the existing Switch to iPhone 15 Pro. True, it's an actively cooled chip up against a thermally challenged, fanless design, but even so, the veteran processor holds up rather well, all things considered, bearing in mind its vintage.

There's no reason why a Switch 2 with a Samsung-produced processor won't do the same throughout its lifespan, particularly as the fundamental Nvidia technologies are so good. Eight ARM A78C cores pair with Nvidia's Ampere architecture to deliver machine learning features and even ray tracing. Expect loading times to be considerably reduced owing to the inclusion of a custom file decompression block.

Another advantage Switch 2 has over its predecessor is that T239 is specifically built for the purpose at hand - even if there are challenges with the process technology, they would have been factored into the design and thoroughly tested during the simulation phase before the first chip was manufactured. Ultimately, we need to trust that Nintendo and Nvidia know what they are doing - but this is still a better place to be compared to Switch 1, where Nintendo effectively had zero input into the chip design. And let's not forget the negative reaction/outrage when we revealed the original Switch's clock speeds: 150m unit sales later, everything turned out fine.

In this week's Direct, we also tackle the online discourse surrounding the idea that Switch 2 will offer performance in line with PS4 Pro (when docked, at least). I'm not entirely sure where this notion came from, but in a world where AMD's top-of-the-line Strix Point processor, running on the latest TSMC process, is nowhere near Pro's rasterisation performance, I'd say that this is wishful thinking - which often surrounds new console speculation. Think more along the lines of base PS4 graphics performance, augmented with modern GPU features and solid ray tracing support. I'd also expect Nvidia DLSS to be doing a lot of heavy lifting.

Speaking of which, this week's Direct also tackles Nintendo's upscaling patent which - on the face of it, at least - looks to be a thorough description of Nvidia DLSS, which is certainly an interesting take on the Nintendo/Nvidia partnership. However, as Alex Battaglia discusses, there's much more to it - it's a kind of grab-bag of various upscaling techniques for various scenarios, none of which seem to be particularly new or patent-worthy. However, there is one very interesting element to it that's worth discussion.

In my T239 simulation tests using a (very) low-power Nvidia laptop GPU, the computational cost of DLSS proved challenging. DLSS isn't a free lunch, processing time scales with output resolution. In my tests with Death Stranding, while DLSS upscaling from 720p to 1080p and even 1440p were viable for a 30fps game, 4K was off the table. DLSS cost was around 18ms to upscale to 4K - in excess of the 16.7ms frame-time to run at 60fps, and over half the frame-time budget for a 30fps experience. The patent is interesting in that it accepts that machine learning-based upscaling is challenging and suggests that the complexity of the AI model could scale according to target frame-rate.

I'd expect to see Switch 2 announced soon and it'll certainly be interesting to see third-party developers break cover with product announcements. If you watch the video above, you'll see that ballpark GPU performance can run a great many games at highly respectable quality levels - and I suspect that based on my projections, a vast array of PS4-era ports will appear in addition to Nintendo's first-party fare - and I wouldn't rule out ray tracing support in certain games. I'd also expect current-gen titles targeting 60fps to somehow find their way across to Switch 2, likely running at 30fps instead. The next few months should prove fascinating.

In the meantime, do enjoy this week's Direct-that-almost-never-was. There's a lot of great topics up for the discussion - the unearthing of a higher quality version of the GTA 6 trailer and what we've learned from it, Oliver's thoughts on the latest innovations in the AI technology space, plus reaction to the comments from Game Science that Black Myth: Wukong poses too many issues to run on Xbox Series S. There's a certain amount of logic that contradicts that statement based on the PC version, but at the same time, the PS5 version suggests that Game Science had issues with that port. If memory isn't an issue as the PC version suggests, why was texture quality degraded on PS5 when no such reductions were needed on 8GB PC graphics cards? It's a bit of a mystery.

DF Weekly: What does the Switch 2 motherboard leak say about system performance?

Digital Foundry breaks down the latest leaks surrounding Nintendo's upcoming Switch 2.

www.eurogamer.net

 

[Wooxsvan]

8nm. lololol.

 

[Moses85]

8nm. lololol.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

I was told 8mm was impossibruh and Nintendo wouldn’t cheap out….

 

[Moses85]

I was told 8mm was impossibruh and Cheaptendo wouldn’t cheap out….

Fixed it

 

[Zathalus]

If 8nm I think the GPU clock will probably be around the 500-550Mhz mark. That number is an educated guess as Nvidia's own tooling indicates Orin was most efficient at that frequency range. Which will mean a bit under what the Steam Deck offers.

 

[spons]

They're planning to sell 100 million of these devices and they can't get NVIDIA to make them on a smaller process.
That's fucking insane.

 

[daclynk]

who cares about Specs. i want to see GAMES

 

[PeteBull]

Oh wow, that sounds like switch2 will have a micropenis in terms of performance, rip any nintendofan who hoped for something decent, not even good but decent...

 

[Horseganador]

I wasn't expecting a cutting-edge manufacturing process from Nintendo, but 8nm when consoles were already being manufactured at 7nm in 2020...it's disappointing, especially when it comes to a portable system.

 

[Bojji]

There we go:

In this week's Direct, we also tackle the online discourse surrounding the idea that Switch 2 will offer performance in line with PS4 Pro (when docked, at least). I'm not entirely sure where this notion came from, but in a world where AMD's top-of-the-line Strix Point processor, running on the latest TSMC process, is nowhere near Pro's rasterisation performance, I'd say that this is wishful thinking - which often surrounds new console speculation. Think more along the lines of base PS4 graphics performance, augmented with modern GPU features and solid ray tracing support. I'd also expect Nvidia DLSS to be doing a lot of heavy lifting.

Anyone still expecting PS4 Pro performance level?

 

[spons]

There we go:



Anyone still expecting PS4 Pro performance level?

I'm sure most people compare Switch 2 as being upscaled by DLSS compared to PS4 Pro output.

Either that or they're all in on some kind of elaborate prank.
Honestly, I'm more disappointed by the process size than raw performance. It means worse battery life.

 

[mansoor1980]

8nm?

 

[kazuyamishima]

For the launch price, it was expected that the Switch 2 won’t be as powerful as many try to believe to.

This was said months ago.

 

[cireza]

PS4 Pro = wishful thinking. Enough said. They went for the cheapest possible route to make a profit on hardware sale. Anybody who believed otherwise was delusional anyway.

Back to taking down all these emulators out there !

 

[Wooxsvan]

they also say ps4 pro results in dock mode are a pipe dream and they expect ps4 base level more likely

 

[spons]

For the launch price, it was expected that the Switch 2 won’t be as powerful as many try to believe to.

This was said months ago.

What's the launch price?

 

[hinch7]

8nm?

Not just 8nm. 8nm Samsung which closer to 10nm TSMC with some efficiency improvements

 

[StereoVsn]

8nm. lololol.

8nm in 2025 through probably 2027 then which is ridiculous.

 

[kazuyamishima]

What's the launch price?

The rumoured launch price is $399 with Nintendo wanting decent profits per unit since day one.

 

[Moses85]

My PC will be ready to emulate my Switch 2 Games

 

[Three]

I was told 8mm was impossibruh and Nintendo wouldn’t cheap out….

mm?

 

[diffusionx]

In my T239 simulation tests using a (very) low-power Nvidia laptop GPU, the computational cost of DLSS proved challenging. DLSS isn't a free lunch, processing time scales with output resolution. In my tests with Death Stranding, while DLSS upscaling from 720p to 1080p and even 1440p were viable for a 30fps game, 4K was off the table. DLSS cost was around 18ms to upscale to 4K - in excess of the 16.7ms frame-time to run at 60fps, and over half the frame-time budget for a 30fps experience. The patent is interesting in that it accepts that machine learning-based upscaling is challenging and suggests that the complexity of the AI model could scale according to target frame-rate.

Hope this throws some cold water on the people who expect DLSS to do major heavy lifting in this console. It's highly doubtful we are going to see 4K DLSS output on this console even in docked. We likely won't see it at all in handheld.

 

[Sebastian1295]

Ps4 performance for a new 400 dollar console releasing in 2025 is an embarrassment and no one should defend this crap not even nintendo fans. The switch 2 is essentially going to be a 400 dollar underpowered and insanely over-priced tablet that runs games that will look like crap on your tv because the hardware inside of it isn't capable enough. Thanks nintendo.

 

[Three]

Back to taking down all these emulators out there !

I'm convinced this is why they've been so heavyhanded with it recently. This thing is likely going to be emulated in no time if people aren't threatened.

 

[Woopah]

There we go:



Anyone still expecting PS4 Pro performance level?

I'd say close to PS4 Pro could be possible after DLSS in docked mode (though it won't be as powerful as the Pro in raw specs).

Hope this throws some cold water on the people who expect DLSS to do major heavy lifting in this console. It's highly doubtful we are going to see 4K DLSS output on this console even in docked. We likely won't see it at all in handheld.

It would be a complete waste in handheld since I doubt this thing comes with a 4k screen.

 

[Sebastian1295]

Hope this throws some cold water on the people who expect DLSS to do major heavy lifting in this console. It's highly doubtful we are going to see 4K DLSS output on this console even in docked. We likely won't see it at all in handheld.

This thing won't even 1080p most of the time. I expect 900p and below if this is the hardware they're putting in it.

 

[spons]

My PC will be ready to emulate my Switch 2 Games

Doubt that, the developers who did the heavy lifting on these emulators were politely asked to stop doing so by Nintendo.
There might be forks and clones but none of them have decent dev activity where it matters.

 

[Fake]

1 minute of video and DF already giving the fanboys a little cold water bath.


Keep your damn expectations in check. With luck Nintendo Switch 2 will be a base PS4.

There we go:

In this week's Direct, we also tackle the online discourse surrounding the idea that Switch 2 will offer performance in line with PS4 Pro (when docked, at least). I'm not entirely sure where this notion came from, but in a world where AMD's top-of-the-line Strix Point processor, running on the latest TSMC process, is nowhere near Pro's rasterisation performance, I'd say that this is wishful thinking - which often surrounds new console speculation. Think more along the lines of base PS4 graphics performance, augmented with modern GPU features and solid ray tracing support. I'd also expect Nvidia DLSS to be doing a lot of heavy lifting.

Anyone still expecting PS4 Pro performance level?

I told so.

And IDK where this is came from. Nintendo fanboys are so delusional. NS2 be a base PS4 would be more than fine, would be perfect.

Base PS4 is an amazing 1080p machine and if Nintendo put DLSS into a base PS4 machine would do wonders to their first party games.

Will be day one for me.

 

[Bojji]

1 minute of video and DF already giving the fanboys a little cold water bath.


Keep your damn expectations in check. With luck Nintendo Switch 2 will be a base PS4.



I told so.

And IDK where this is came from. Nintendo fanboys are so delusional. NS2 be a base PS4 would be more than fine, would be perfect.

Base PS4 is an amazing 1080p machine and if Nintendo put DLSS into a base PS4 machine would do wonders to their first party games.

Pretty much. And with better CPU, way more RAM and DLSS it will give significantly better results than standard PS4.

More ports wille possible from PS5 (vs S1) but of course not all games will be ported.

 

[BlownUpRich]

Hardly a base PS4 with a stronger CPU & more RAM, that’s about it. More hardware holding back this generation, and this thing will sell a lot so 3rd party devs cannot leave it alone so they’d have to adjust the baseline of their games to be closer to what the Switch 2 is capable of, sadly

 

[Fake]

Pretty much. And with better CPU, way more RAM and DLSS it will give significantly better results than standard PS4.

More ports wille possible from PS5 (vs S1) but of course not all games will be ported.

I can only imagine this:

- 900p at 60 fps, reaching 1080p or 4k via DLSS
- Games that already run at 1080p60, either 4k via DLSS or if consumers have a 1080p screen, DLSS only act as a AA (most of the first party games don't use AA at all, so DLSS would be a game changer).

 

[Sebastian1295]

Pretty much. And with better CPU, way more RAM and DLSS it will give significantly better results than standard PS4.

More ports wille possible from PS5 (vs S1) but of course not all games will be ported.

Just because you can port a game dosen't mean you should. The switch 2 will get alot of ps5 ports that will look like vaseline was smeared on your screen while also running at low framerates. Devs will port the games anyway looking to make a profit off of the user base.

 

[Bojji]

I can only imagine this:

- 900p at 60 fps, reaching 1080p or 4k via DLSS
- Games that already run at 1080p60, either 4k via DLSS or if consumers have a 1080p screen, DLSS only act as a AA (most of the first party games don't use AA at all, so DLSS would be a game changer).

I don't think 60fps will be common outside nintendo games.

 

[Fake]

I don't think 60fps will be common outside nintendo games.

There are base PS4 games running at 60, mostly CoD from last gen. IDK, will depends. Doors will be open to port games that missed out from Nintendo Switch.

For me will be cool if DLSS add AA to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.

 

[Skifi28]

Ps4 performance for a new 400 dollar console releasing in 2025 is an embarrassment and no one should defend this crap not even nintendo fans. The switch 2 is essentially going to be a 400 dollar underpowered and insanely over-priced tablet that runs games that will look like crap on your tv because the hardware inside of it isn't capable enough. Thanks nintendo.

Isn't that what the Steam deck is? Performance was never going to be cutting edge in a handheld. Granted it's worse than expected, but it couldn't have been that much better anyway. Considering the original Switch still sells like crazy despite the obsolete hardware tells Nintendo all they need to know, GAF tantrum aside.

 

[HerjansEagleFeeder]

My PC will be ready to emulate my Switch 2 Games

 

[asdasdasdbb]

BTW, Samsung marketing says that even just Samsung 7 nm offers 40% better logic density and half the power.

 

[pulicat]

Ps4 performance for a new 400 dollar console releasing in 2025 is an embarrassment and no one should defend this crap not even nintendo fans. The switch 2 is essentially going to be a 400 dollar underpowered and insanely over-priced tablet that runs games that will look like crap on your tv because the hardware inside of it isn't capable enough. Thanks nintendo.

You were expecting $400 portable device from Nintendo to surpass PS4 pro when more expensive portable devices like ROG Ally and Lenovo Go failed to match up against PS4 pro raw power lol.

Steam deck 256gb version that ran PS4 at lower resolution is price at $400.

 

[kevboard]

Ps4 performance for a new 800 dollar console releasing in 2025 is an embarrassment and no one should defend this crap not even Asus fans. The ROG Ally X is essentially going to be a 800 dollar underpowered and insanely over-priced tablet that runs games that will look like crap on your tv because the hardware inside of it isn't capable enough. Thanks Asus.

do you still agree with your statement in the way I adjusted it?
especially after comparing the prices here as well

or do you realise how absolutely nonsensical it is?

 

[Sebastian1295]

Isn't that what the Steam deck is? Performance was never going to be cutting edge in a handheld. Granted it's worse than expected, but it couldn't have been that much better anyway. Considering the original Switch still sells like crazy despite the obsolete hardware tells Nintendo all they need to know, GAF tantrum aside.

Steam deck also came out in 2022 and was pretty good at the time. The only reason nintendo are launching a console this underpowered and going to charge a ridiculous price for it is because they know they can get away with it and they want to make as much of a profit as possible off of junk hardware. 8nm is an embarrassment in 2025 especially at the price they're going for.

 

[Fake]

Ps4 performance for a new 400 dollar console releasing in 2025 is an embarrassment and no one should defend this crap not even nintendo fans. The switch 2 is essentially going to be a 400 dollar underpowered and insanely over-priced tablet that runs games that will look like crap on your tv because the hardware inside of it isn't capable enough. Thanks nintendo.

Its Nintendo LOL.

Must remind you that the regular Nintendo Switch use a technology from a 2010 2015 Nvidia Shield, right?

 

[eNT1TY]

My estimate of performance in the past was equivalent to xbox one S and i still think so.

 

[Parazels]

Maybe Nintendo is going to release a Switch 2 Pro this time?

 

[Mr Moose]

Adam will be waiting a long time for that apology.

 

[Woopah]

Its Nintendo LOL.

Must remind you that the regular Nintendo Switch use a technology from a 2010 Nvidia Shield, right?

It used 2015 technology no?

 

[pulicat]

Its Nintendo LOL.

Must remind you that the regular Nintendo Switch use a technology from a 2010 Nvidia Shield, right?

Nvidia Tegra X1 2015 for Switch and Switch 2 is using Nvidia Orin a 2022 technology.

 

[Sebastian1295]

do you still agree with your statement in the way I adjusted it?
especially after comparing the prices here as well

or do you realise how absolutely nonsensical it is?

8nm in 2025 isn't cutting it. Nintendo could've taken a loss on the hardware in exchange for putting better hardware inside of the switch 2. 8nm tells us that they wanna make a profit on launch day and will essentially handicap their first party devs the entire generation because of that decision. Nintendo are a big enough corporation to cut a better deal in terms of producing the chip necessary to produce a more powerful console than asus are with the ROG ALLY X.

 

[spons]

Maybe Nintendo is going to release a Switch 2 Pro this time?

It's kinda jarring that I already wish for a Switch 2 Pro at this point.

 

[Sebastian1295]

You were expecting $400 portable device from Nintendo to surpass PS4 pro when more expensive portable devices like ROG Ally and Lenovo Go failed to match up against PS4 pro raw power lol.

Steam deck 256gb version that ran PS4 at lower resolution is price at $400.

I expected better tech than 8nm. I don't find that unreasonable.