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[Gambit2483]

Yup but peoples on social media already running with snapshot of graph and claiming its worse than Steam deck

Damage already done

Thankfully the games will do the talking soon enough

Was not around for couple of days but this is shocking stuff btw



WTF is this new model

The Power of DLSS is insane!


Spider-Man 2 at 360p

 

[Zathalus]

Imagine making a new design for a chip for nothing… That's not like moving lego pieces for god sake

It's still Ampere SM units. It was rumoured to have improved clock-gating from Ada, but the GPU feature set itself is still Ampere, so don't expect things like SER to make an appearance. Not that it is exactly useful in most cases for hardware of this level.

 

[buenoblue]

Cheap ass backwards tech Nintendo like usual

 

[Panajev2001a]

Not that it is exactly useful in most cases for hardware of this level.

Either you go even simpler and to save power and make it cheaper remove the RT HW or if you plan to use it you want it to be efficient. Using Ada or Blackwell improvements would make RT use more practical. Denoising (less rays needed), SER (less processing power wasted processing vastly divergent thread groups), etc… are efficiency measures.

 

[ShaiKhulud1989]

It's a clear generational leap from the Switch, which is all it needed to be. Don't really know what else there is to say, honestly

It's not about that, it's about the fact that this APU is dirt-cheap and in context of those specs Switch 2 is really expensive, especially considering the LCD screen.

Wouldn't call a 128-bit memory bus a generational leap either. If anything, it can be quite a stingy bottleneck in openworld games.

 

[Zathalus]

Either you go even simpler and to save power and make it cheaper remove the RT HW or if you plan to use it you want it to be efficient. Using Ada or Blackwell improvements would make RT use more practical. Denoising (less rays needed), SER (less processing power wasted processing vastly divergent thread groups), etc… are efficiency measures.

SER is meant to improve the efficiency of RT workloads that often involve high thread divergence, such as games using combinations like RT shadows, reflections, RTGI, and RTAO. Which in turn creates very heterogeneous workloads. It allows the GPU to reorder shader tasks dynamically so rays of a similar type are processed together. I don't see the Switch 2 having enough RT performance to go beyond one singular RT effect, so the impact of SER will be modest at best.

 

[Panajev2001a]

SER is meant to improve the efficiency of RT workloads that often involve high thread divergence, such as games using combinations like RT shadows, reflections, RTGI, and RTAO. Which in turn creates very heterogeneous workloads. It allows the GPU to reorder shader tasks dynamically so rays of a similar type are processed together.

Yes and the time I am actually concise in my life I get the full long sentence about it . Thanks, I know and I think we are saying the same thing there.

I do not think you need many effects to take advantage of SER. Ray tracing is inherently divergent and GPUs waste performance and thus power with divergent threads of operation when performing the actual shading: https://d29g4g2dyqv443.cloudfront.net/sites/default/files/akamai/gameworks/ser-whitepaper.pdf
You do not need lots of different RT workloads together to make SER useful.

Still it is beside the point because if you have RT cores at all… make them usable (Lovelace and Blackwell RT improvements backported or use a new arch as baseline for the next 8 years) or do what Sony got AMD to do with Zen 2 FPU and save power and die size.

 

[S0ULZB0URNE]

Yayyyyyy. Congratulations on beating a 3 year handheld. Actually 4 years if you remember that Steam Deck was supposed to release in 2021, but got delayed.

 

[Exede]

Nobody buys a Nintendo Console expecting to play on a cutting edge system (since Game Cube). That's PC for.
What i personally buy it for is, well, Nintendo games couse instead of the other companies i can't play them on PC (i don't emulate).

Some here ranting about the old tech in the Switch 2 are simply not the consoles audience.

 

[Zathalus]

Yes and the time I am actually concise in my life I get the full long sentence about it . Thanks, I know and I think we are saying the same thing there.

I do not think you need many effects to take advantage of SER. Ray tracing is inherently divergent and GPUs waste performance and thus power with divergent threads of operation when performing the actual shading: https://d29g4g2dyqv443.cloudfront.net/sites/default/files/akamai/gameworks/ser-whitepaper.pdf
You do not need lots of different RT workloads together to make SER useful.

Still it is beside the point because if you have RT cores at all… make them usable (Lovelace and Blackwell RT improvements backported or use a new arch as baseline for the next 8 years) or do what Sony got AMD to do with Zen 2 FPU and save power and die size.

While I absolutely agree that SER being present is better then no SER at all, I just don't think it would be that super impactful at the power level the Switch 2 operates at. Sure more performance is always good, but I'm not really sure how many games on the Switch 2 will use RT well. I actually think removing the RT cores entirely won't have any impact on the far majority of Switch 2 games that will release. But I suppose it will be neat for the handful of games that do attempt it, like Star Wars Outlaws or maybe Metro Exodus.

Now if Nintendo did go for an Ada GPU from the start it would have needed to be on 5nm at least, and the entire GPU would have likely been quite a bit more powerful due to that fact, and that combined with SER would have been very good for a handheld. But I think the issue there is that the Ada Tegra chipset was cancelled, and Nintendo probably didn't want to spend that much money on the SoC anyway.

 

[TheUnicornGuy]

Any tech savvy chaps, or chapettes, want to tell me if it's better or worse than my tablet or phone? They're a redmagic nova and a redmagic 10 pro respectively.

 

[jufonuk]

How many switches duct taped together is that?

 

[Panajev2001a]

While I absolutely agree that SER being present is better then no SER at all, I just don't think it would be that super impactful at the power level the Switch 2 operates at. Sure more performance is always good, but I'm not really sure how many games on the Switch 2 will use RT well. I actually think removing the RT cores entirely won't have any impact on the far majority of Switch 2 games that will release. But I suppose it will be neat for the handful of games that do attempt it, like Star Wars Outlaws or maybe Metro Exodus.

Now if Nintendo did go for an Ada GPU from the start it would have needed to be on 5nm at least, and the entire GPU would have likely been quite a bit more powerful due to that fact, and that combined with SER would have been very good for a handheld. But I think the issue there is that the Ada Tegra chipset was cancelled, and Nintendo probably didn't want to spend that much money on the SoC anyway.

Overall I agree, but even for simple RT effects it would save power or increase framerate and the former is useful, but what I agree on more is that the bigger "problem" is that Nintendo did not want to spend too much time and money getting vastly semi-custom designs from nVIDIA on a modern manufacturing node.

 

[apple_of_enlightenment]

Nvidia has already explicitly said it's 10X power of the Switch 1 chip. I don't know what all the noise is in here.

 

[Baemono]

How many switches duct taped together is that?

3

 

[jufonuk]

3

 

[Hyet]

Nvidia has already explicitly said it's 10X power of the Switch 1 chip. I don't know what all the noise is in here.

While I can believe that particular piece of information, Nvidia statements are not very reliable when it comes to this stuff.

 

[Baemono]

While I can believe that particular piece of information, Nvidia statements are not very reliable when it comes to this stuff.

I would've expect from them to declare it is the biggest technological leap ever

 

[justiceiro]

So 3050 striped down to run like 2050 and with clocks to match a 1050Ti at best... Oh boy...

 

[Hyet]

I would've expect from them to declare it is the biggest technological leap ever

Well, that could be true for Nintendo I guess.

 

[CartesianMan]

So Switch 2 is expensive for what it is?
I knew it right at the moment when I press the preorder button.
Thank you guys!

 

[GigaBowser]

crud replies will derstoy any handheld with dlss opertimized ports and custom processor even $1000 pc handhelds in lots games

 

[Xellos]

Good tech as expected. Only disappointment is going to be the battery life, but there will probably be a refresh to address that in 2-3 years.

 

[bender]

Switch 2 is a beast.

 

[The ninja farmer]

Good tech as expected. Only disappointment is going to be the battery life, but there will probably be a refresh to address that in 2-3 years.

Think you can count on that. if all goes well for the switch 2, that a die shrink, better battery. maybe a little faster memory and an oled screen will all be appearing a couple of years in. .

 

[Buggy Loop]

So 3050 striped down to run like 2050 and with clocks to match a 1050Ti at best... Oh boy...

The 1050 Ti benchmark make no sense and again, keep in mind that it's not APU what they are benchmarking but a desktop downclocked VRAM starved 2050 with windows OS and API bloat without the custom parts added to the T239 that make it look more like ADA SMs than Ampere or the decompression engine.

If the benchmark would be more akin to modern rendering techniques that shifted to compute shaders it would be also be skewed towards architectures from Turing onward. Mesh shaders come to mind :

If you tried to find a match for PS4 components on PC you would scratch your head why the likes of Uncharted 4 or TLoU part 2 are even possible. Closed platform. To the metal API unlike the dx12 turd « so called metal »

 

[mckmas8808]

So a 2022 Steam deck has a slightly better GPU and a significantly better CPU than the Switch 2 in handheld mode (DLSS will save the day), Samsung's 8-10nm manufacturing process in 2025 when consoles were already being manufactured at 7nm in 2020 is a bit of a stretch, even for Nintendo.

What does this mean when being compared to next-gen consoles in 2028? Do you guys think those will be built on 3nm tech?

 

[The ninja farmer]

What does this mean when being compared to next-gen consoles in 2028? Do you guys think those will be built on 3nm tech?

A variant of 3nm I think. Smaller if the cost allows (or apples doesn't want that node)

neither is going to be cheap I would think and during mark cerny's ps5 pro chat. He talked about a need for more low level cache memory and for it to be much, much faster than the options they have today. (I think he said magnitudes)

That will take us to a couple of years away from a switch 3 (a switch 2 oled and lower node version, is probably going to arrive around, or inbetween the Xbox consoles and ps6)

 

[Zacfoldor]

Glad I read this. Got me more hyped for Switch 2!!!! Just need to secure that preorder....

 

[Brucey]

If you doesn't know the difference between and RTX 3090 and a RTX 4090 when is come to architecture, is going to be really hard to explain for sure…

It's barely better than a gtx 750ti out of the dock bud...potato land. It's the switch pro delayed while og switch was milked to max until the udders ran dry.

 

[Kataploom]

It's barely better than a gtx 750ti out of the dock bud...potato land. It's the switch pro delayed while og switch was milked to max until the udders ran dry.

Not only you're basing on the conclusions of a badly done simulation, it's also that 750ti running CP2077 would probably melt before it finish running the intro at 1080p while keeping 30 fps

 

[LordOcidax]

It's barely better than a gtx 750ti out of the dock bud...potato land. It's the switch pro delayed while og switch was milked to max until the udders ran dry.

 

[FireFly]

Obviously I'm referring to docked mode, and yes, it would also be leaning heavily on DLSS to fill compute gaps.

Docked mode at maybe 50W (for the APU) using a laptop-class GPU. So basically.... a laptop?

 

[Variahunter]

Nobody buys a Nintendo Console expecting to play on a cutting edge system (since Game Cube). That's PC for.
What i personally buy it for is, well, Nintendo games couse instead of the other companies i can't play them on PC (i don't emulate).

Some here ranting about the old tech in the Switch 2 are simply not the consoles audience.

I agree with you but maybe, just maybe it shouldn't be priced as a cutting edge system then ?

 

[kevboard]

I agree with you but maybe, just maybe it shouldn't be priced as a cutting edge system then ?

it is a cutting edge system tho, at least compared to its competition in the handheld market.
AMD is years behind Nvidia, so even a 4 year old Nvidia GPU design easily competes with the newest AMD mobile hardware.

the Switch 1 was the same. even tho the Tegra X1 was already 2 years old at the time of the Switch 1 launch, it still basically outperformed any competition on the market that Nintendo could have used instead. even the newest and best Snapdragon chips in 2017 were outperformed by the Tegra X1 and would have been way more expensive on top of that.

the best Snapdragon mobile chip in 2017 was the Snapdragon 835, which released AFTER the Switch 1 in mid 2017, while the Switch released in the first quarter. the 835 has roughly the same GPU FLOPS (actually slightly less. 363 GFLOPS vs 393 GFLOPS) at its maximum rated clock speed of 710 Mhz.
so the 2015 Nvidia TX1 outperformed the latest and best APU from Qualcomm in 2017

it's not much different now. even the new Z2 Extreme from AMD is only maybe a tiny bit more powerful when running at clock speeds that don't empty the battery in less than 1h, but lacks decent ML acceleration and decent RT acceleration, while also only being available in systems that cost twice as much.

 

[yogaflame]

I hope too see some Switch 2 tear down once its launch.

 

[Furball]

I agree with you but maybe, just maybe it shouldn't be priced as a cutting edge system then ?

Because cutting edge price is atleast more than 1000 $ ?

With 450 $ u cant even buy a middle power card nowaday let alone other component like battery , screen , controller ,dock, OS ... with the size this small

 

[Kataploom]

it is a cutting edge system tho, at least compared to its competition in the handheld market.
AMD is years behind Nvidia, so even a 4 year old Nvidia GPU design easily competes with the newest AMD mobile hardware.

the Switch 1 was the same. even tho the Tegra X1 was already 2 years old at the time of the Switch 1 launch, it still basically outperformed any competition on the market that Nintendo could have used instead. even the newest and best Snapdragon chips in 2017 were outperformed by the Tegra X1 and would have been way more expensive on top of that.

the best Snapdragon mobile chip in 2017 was the Snapdragon 835, which released AFTER the Switch 1 in mid 2017, while the Switch released in the first quarter. the 835 has roughly the same GPU FLOPS (actually slightly less. 363 GFLOPS vs 393 GFLOPS) at its maximum rated clock speed of 710 Mhz.
so the 2015 Nvidia TX1 outperformed the latest and best APU from Qualcomm in 2017

it's not much different now. even the new Z2 Extreme from AMD is only maybe a tiny bit more powerful when running at clock speeds that don't empty the battery in less than 1h, but lacks decent ML acceleration and decent RT acceleration, while also only being available in systems that cost twice as much.

People misunderstand cutting edge with raw performance, some here has reacted with laughing emoji because I've said that Switch 2 had more advanced tech than even PS5, in other places they've said that I meant that it was more powerful, etc.

No, it means that whether it is more or less powerful, it does more with less, or does more that others can't.

Newer tech in every new generation isn't always shit raw power, we wouldn't have a new architecture every gen if it was the case, it's also making previous tasks cheaper to execute, it never was only about brute forcing alone.

 

[MoreJRPG]

First party will look incredible on the Switch 2. If you're buying this to play Hogwarts Legacy and Star Wars docked and were expecting cutting edge visuals and framerates....I don't know what to tell you.

 

[Haint]

Docked mode at maybe 50W (for the APU) using a laptop-class GPU. So basically.... a laptop?

The existing Switch 2 comes with a 60W power supply and is officially rated at 3 hours charge on it's 5200mah battery which suggests ~10W's for charging, so yes, they've already spec'ed the current unit to potentially reach those levels. I mean miser Nintendo went as far as to put an active cooling fan in the dock.

 

[Anthony Soprano]

Because cutting edge price is atleast more than 1000 $ ?

With 450 $ u cant even buy a middle power card nowaday let alone other component like battery , screen , controller ,dock, OS ... with the size this small

I believe roughly 57% of Steam users in April 2025 have a GPU that supports DLSS according to Steam Hardware & Software Survey.

So realistically, you just take your existing smartphone and PC, install Parsec and can play mobile without having to have bad graphics from ten years ago. Free after you buy a controller attachment, without having to buy the same game twice or a new console that you have to carry around.

 

[cartman414]

When do you guys think we can expect a price breakdown?

 

[Exede]

I agree with you but maybe, just maybe it shouldn't be priced as a cutting edge system then ?

I totally agree with you! I blame the new lead for this

 

[pulicat]

I agree with you but maybe, just maybe it shouldn't be priced as a cutting edge system then ?

$450 hybrid console with DLSS is a great value cutting edge price system is usually at $1000 for hybrid device.

 

[FireFly]

The existing Switch 2 comes with a 60W power supply and is officially rated at 3 hours charge on it's 5200mah battery which suggests ~10W's for charging, so yes, they've already spec'ed the current unit to potentially reach those levels. I mean miser Nintendo went as far as to put an active cooling fan in the dock.

The current dock delivers 42W to the unit, so after the 10W charging that would be 32W for the Switch 2 hardware, and probably <30W for the APU itself. That's in line with the Steam Deck and other handhelds. The placement of the fan seems to indicate it is intended to cool the dock, not the Switch 2. Nothing indicates the Switch 2 is designed to dissipate 70% more power!

At the current, already massively elevated power levels in docked mode, a move to Ada and TSMC 5nm, would be expected to get you roughly an extra 50% more performance per watt. That wouldn't even be enough to close the gap to the Series S, outside of DLSS. Even Blackwell is, generously, 10% more efficient. That's why you would need a much bigger GPU and significantly more power, even to reach half of the PS5's performance, outside of DLSS.

 

[Variahunter]

$450 hybrid console with DLSS is a great value cutting edge price system is usually at $1000 for hybrid device.

Because cutting edge price is atleast more than 1000 $ ?

With 450 $ u cant even buy a middle power card nowaday let alone other component like battery , screen , controller ,dock, OS ... with the size this small

it is a cutting edge system tho, at least compared to its competition in the handheld market.
AMD is years behind Nvidia, so even a 4 year old Nvidia GPU design easily competes with the newest AMD mobile hardware.

the Switch 1 was the same. even tho the Tegra X1 was already 2 years old at the time of the Switch 1 launch, it still basically outperformed any competition on the market that Nintendo could have used instead. even the newest and best Snapdragon chips in 2017 were outperformed by the Tegra X1 and would have been way more expensive on top of that.

the best Snapdragon mobile chip in 2017 was the Snapdragon 835, which released AFTER the Switch 1 in mid 2017, while the Switch released in the first quarter. the 835 has roughly the same GPU FLOPS (actually slightly less. 363 GFLOPS vs 393 GFLOPS) at its maximum rated clock speed of 710 Mhz.
so the 2015 Nvidia TX1 outperformed the latest and best APU from Qualcomm in 2017

it's not much different now. even the new Z2 Extreme from AMD is only maybe a tiny bit more powerful when running at clock speeds that don't empty the battery in less than 1h, but lacks decent ML acceleration and decent RT acceleration, while also only being available in systems that cost twice as much.

I hear your arguments.

But why is there such a difference with Japan prices then ? Switch 2 is 343$ there. Yes, the Yen is currently devaluated, but that argument doesn't matter when :

• We all know Nintendo never sell their console at a loss. NEVER.
• We all know Nintendo sells like gangbusters in Japan and are first on that market
• And we don't see the same difference in price between PS5 and Switch 2 in Japan compared to USA/EUROPE

So please explain to me why in Japan standard PS5 is ¥79,980 (559$) (original launch price was ¥66,980 (464$)), and the Switch 2 price is 49,980 yen (343$) ? Which is more than 200$ discrepancy.

In USA, standard PS5 was launched at 499$, now priced 549$. Switch 2 is priced 449$. So 100$ discrepancy.
In Europe, standard PS5 original price was 499€, now priced at 549€ and Switch 2 is 469€. So 80 € discrepancy.

You don't see a problem there ?

Even taking tariffs in consideration for USA market, there's no way a simple region lock could cost that much (of course) ? It's software, we all know that.

Only conclusion left is Nintendo is overpricing Switch 2 USA and Europe, because Japanese price is still sold with benefit.

Switch 2 is overpriced and absolutely not cutting edge. It's like saying 5080 is cutting edge because of DLSS frame gen and equivalent to 4090. Not even in your dreams. But at least Nvidia invested a lot in AI to implement DLSS. Not Nintendo.

 

[Woopah]

I hear your arguments.

But why is there such a difference with Japan prices then ? Switch 2 is 343$ there. Yes, the Yen is currently devaluated, but that argument doesn't matter when :

• We all know Nintendo never sell their console at a loss. NEVER.
• We all know Nintendo sells like gangbusters in Japan and are first on that market
• And we don't see the same difference in price between PS5 and Switch 2 in Japan compared to USA/EUROPE

So please explain to me why in Japan standard PS5 is ¥79,980 (559$) (original launch price was ¥66,980 (464$)), and the Switch 2 price is 49,980 yen (343$) ? Which is more than 200$ discrepancy.

In USA, standard PS5 was launched at 499$, now priced 549$. Switch 2 is priced 449$. So 100$ discrepancy.
In Europe, standard PS5 original price was 499€, now priced at 549€ and Switch 2 is 469€. So 80 € discrepancy.

You don't see a problem there ?

Even taking tariffs in consideration for USA market, there's no way a simple region lock could cost that much (of course) ? It's software, we all know that.

Only conclusion left is Nintendo is overpricing Switch 2 USA and Europe, because Japanese price is still sold with benefit.

Switch 2 is overpriced and absolutely not cutting edge. It's like saying 5080 is cutting edge because of DLSS frame gen and equivalent to 4090. Not even in your dreams. But at least Nvidia invested a lot in AI to implement DLSS. Not Nintendo.

Nintendo has sold consoles at a loss before, such as when they launched the Wii U. I wouldn't be surprised if they are taking a loss on that model in Japan.

As you say, it is a very important market for Nintendo. So it would be a major problem for them if the Switch 2 launch price was twice the Switch price.

$450 is a mass market price in the US and most of Europe but it isn't in Japan. The solution they've come up with is a good balance of the different factors.

I do think it would be a very smart move of Sony to make a language-locked PS5 for Japan that is noticeably lower in price.

 

[Variahunter]

Nintendo has sold consoles at a loss before, such as when they launched the Wii U. I wouldn't be surprised if they are taking a loss on that model in Japan.

As you say, it is a very important market for Nintendo. So it would be a major problem for them if the Switch 2 launch price was twice the Switch price.

$450 is a mass market price in the US and most of Europe but it isn't in Japan. The solution they've come up with is a good balance of the different factors.

I do think it would be a very smart move of Sony to make a language-locked PS5 for Japan that is noticeably lower in price.

Do you have a source for Wii U sold at a loss ?
I mean, 299$ at that time in late 2012 was gross considering the tech... and that was with the 8gb model ! 32 Gb was 350$...
PS4 price was 399$ at launch.
Even with the gamepad... I can't see how they were selling at loss.

 

[kevboard]

I hear your arguments.

But why is there such a difference with Japan prices then ? Switch 2 is 343$ there.

they probably sell it at a loss in Japan because they can't afford to lose market share.
which is also why they even have the cheaper Japan only variant.
outside of Japan they don't have to do that, and given the weak yen, they probably think they can make their losses back from international sales given the exchange rate.

 

[Woopah]

Do you have a source for Wii U sold at a loss ?
I mean, 299$ at that time in late 2012 was gross considering the tech... and that was with the 8gb model ! 32 Gb was 350$...
PS4 price was 399$ at launch.
Even with the gamepad... I can't see how they were selling at loss.

From Iwata: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20095125.amp

I think hardware costs more than people realise.