Give me some of what you had to drink last night so it can be examined
Even PS5 & Xbox consoles barely do 4k. Everything is upscaled
this will be a long text, just to make sure noone will hopefully misinterpret what I am saying:
Let's start with simple observations and realities:
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Targeting =/= Natively Rendering at
the PS4 Pro targeted 4K screens.
just like the Xbox One and Switch 1 targeted 1080p Screens.
The One X targeted 4K screens and was more successful at targeting 4K screens than the PS5 and Series X are currently. (cutting edge AAA titles of the time like RDR2 reaching native 4K without any upsampling)
Switch games targeted 720p in handheld mode, while often not reaching 720p.
Switch games in docked mode targeted 1080p, while often not reaching 1080p.
but many Switch games did indeed reach 900p or 1080p, even tho the Xbox One (a system 4x as powerful) targeted the same resolution and also often failed.
what do we learn from these observations? resolution target has nothing to do with hardware power. it's about target specs being used optimally to reach the target.
and even then, a target can still be missed.
the 6 TFLOPS Xbox One X did a better job reaching native 4K in cutting edge games than the 12 TFLOP Series X does.
while the PS4 Pro often had convincingly 4K like presentations in games like Deus Ex or Witcher 3 even tho it only rendered at half or below half of that resolution natively.
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with that being said, none of the above changes WHAT THE TARGET IS.
the target is looking acceptable on those target screens.
and to be able to do this while having 2 different screen targets, like it is the case for a hybrid such as the Switch and the Switch 2, you have to adjust the target clock speeds according to the difference in target output, so that each target gets served well.
on Switch 1 this TARGET (not necessarily native render res) difference was a 125% increase from Handheld to TV.
Nintendo clearly optimised for handheld clock speeds first, and then increased docked mode clock speeds according to this 125% target resolution increase.
if we assume they will do the same with the Switch 2 (and there is no reason to assume they won't do that), then they would need to take a 300% or 4x target resolution increase into account.
ergo, Nintendo would be well advised to not arbitrarily limit the clock speed of the Switch 2 like they did with the Switch 1.
the Switch 1 launched with 2 handheld profiles, a 307.2 MHz and a 384 MHz mode. developers could chose which one to use depending on their game's load.
Docked mode is 768 MHz.
which shows they basically looked at the target res difference and just locked the GPU down to that target.
(they did add a 460 MHz handheld profile very soon after launch, closing the gap even further without adjusting docked clock speeds accordingly)
meanwhile even the launch model Tegra X1 could have been pushed to ~1000 MHz.
and the CPU could have been pushed to ~1700 MHz but is permanently locked to 1020 MHz (except during loading screens).
so my hope is that Nintendo will not lock any clock speeds down arbitrarily. we know the cooling system of the Switch 1 can easily handle near max clock speeds, the OLED and revision models especially, and was locked down completely arbitrarily, maybe with the thought of "streamlining development" in mind.
what we have seen since the system launched was that basically no game has issues running on full clock speeds, which means this locking down of clock speeds didn't even really help game development, and we also have seen the rise of 30 and 60 fps modes in games.
so having Docked mode run the CPU, GPU and RAM as fast as their cooling system and/or SoC allows would be the best way forward.
this way, even if their handheld clock speeds limit a game to 30fps for example, the docked mode could increase this to 60fps + a res boost.
or if a game targets the same framerate in both docked and handheld mode, the docked mode can massively increase resolution.
Switch 1 games always targeted the same framerate in both modes. yet having the memory clocks only slightly faster in docked mode meant the handheld mode in many games actually ran smoother than the docked mode, because at those higher resolutions the system was bandwidth starved thanks to the low memory clock speeds, which could in theory have been bumped from the 1331 MHz in handheld mode, all the way to ~1860 MHz, but docked mode is locked down to 1600 MHz instead.
in conclusion:
1: the Switch 1 had a hard time reaching its target output and a hard time matching handheld performance while targeting a screen that's 125% higher res than its handheld screen.
even so, it often came close, with games like Zelda running at 900p, a resolution often associated with the more than 4x more powerful Xbox One.
2: in order to fix the issues the Switch 1 had (which were entirely self inflicted by Nintendo and not the fault of the hardware), Nintendo would be best off absolutely running the Tegra 239 at full blast in docked mode.
we know the T239 at full speed could reach a similar performance to the Series S (slightly below, but hard to 1:1 compare due to vast architectural differences), which would be most likely more than enough to boost games that target a 1080p PS4-esque handheld to a perceptibly 4k image quality.
just like the PS4 Pro was often able to do this with a mere 2.2x increase in raw GPU grunt, and barely any upgrade in Memory bandwidth.
3: in games that are ports of high end current gen titles, running at full blast would allow them to still look presentable, even if they will look very clearly sub-4K.
In the end THEY STILL HAVE TO TARGET 4K SCREENS because those are the screens people own now, so even if it's rendering far below 4K natively in demanding games, these still have to look at least ok on those TVs that people own. that's what TARGETING a screen resolution means. they have no choice but to target 4k, just like the Xbox One and Switch 1 had no choice but to target 1080p screens.
meanwhile in handheld mode, such games will be easily forgiven to run at far below native res, as low internal resolutions are less of an eyesore on small 7"~8" screens that you hold in your hand.
I am currently playing Ghostrunner 2 on the Deck, at FSR2 quality mode, which is ~480p native upsampled to 1280x800, and it still looks fine.
so, this was hopefully comprehensive enough.