Tom Warren seems to throw cold water on rumours of Switch 2 being as capable as PS4 Pro

Nintendo haters come out of the woodwork anytime it's time for Nintendo to destroy them again in sales, review score, and any other metric a healthy console should have.

Rest assured that while the gaming industry is falling to shambles around them
, Nintendo will stay the course and be the lodestar for the industry. Enjoy woke bullshit though, pretend graphics whores.

Who are you talking about? Both Playstation and Steam are doing great! This isn't to be questioned.
 
It will be PS4 with DLSS/ML SoC from Nvidia.

The main thing here is to create device that sells at a profit from the start that simultaneously can run for 4 hours and not melt your hands or hard cheap plastic case of Switch 2 in the process.
 
Last edited:
Nintendo haters come out of the woodwork anytime it's time for Nintendo to destroy them again in sales, review score, and any other metric a healthy console should have.

Rest assured that while the gaming industry is falling to shambles around them, Nintendo will stay the course and be the lodestar for the industry. Enjoy woke bullshit though, pretend graphics whores.
There's some pretty reasonable discussion in this thread. People disagreeing with one another aren't "haters" and we don't have to reduce things to console wars.
 
The APU is the T239, which is now confirmed from the shipping manifests. The leak was from the NVN2 API used to communicate with the APU, so it confirms that 1536 cores were available for the developer to access. It's not clear if that's a full chip. There is a DF article on the APU here:


From what I can find online, the A78C has a slightly higher IPC than Zen 2, but is clocked lower. On the other hand the Steam Deck only has 4 physical cores vs. 8 in the T239.
there's a reason why the deck goes with 4 instead of 8, because fewer cores at higher clock are enough for majority of games and will consume less power. you want to divert as much juice to the gpu as possible while controling the heat and battery drain. if that apu is the one used then definitely will be a cutdown version, especially if they want to run at approx 9w. let's not forget the screen, fan, memory and board need power too.

also, nvidia is known to charge a premium on their silicone, so it pretty much guarantees the cost has to be kept at a minimum if Nintendo wants to keep the margins on hardware.
 
there's a reason why the deck goes with 4 instead of 8, because fewer cores at higher clock are enough for majority of games and will consume less power. you want to divert as much juice to the gpu as possible while controling the heat and battery drain. if that apu is the one used then definitely will be a cutdown version, especially if they want to run at approx 9w. let's not forget the screen, fan, memory and board need power too.

also, nvidia is known to charge a premium on their silicone, so it pretty much guarantees the cost has to be kept at a minimum if Nintendo wants to keep the margins on hardware.
The T239 is designed specifically for Nintendo. The Switch 2 uses the T239 itself, not a cut down version.

T239 is a customised / cut down version of the T234.
 
Last edited:
6nyt5n8.png

Base PS4 LETS GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
 
Gotcha! My interest has been piqued. Because there's an obvious thermal limit that they have for this device. So......I'm very curious how much raw performance it'll have now, since it also has DLSS and RT hardware within it.

From what we know, does the Steamdeck or other PC handhelds have either of this extra hardware within it?
mhmmmm don't be deceived by buzzwords, a 3050 has double the tensor core count and uses about 100w... it's performance in rt is... well just look at some benchmarks. people thinking this will perform anywhere close to a ps4 are smoking the good shit 😂😂😂😂😂
 
Ps4 to ps4 pro hardware for 400 dollars is an abomination and embarrassment. No one wants to play 1080p at best 'it'll dip below that' at 30fps on a 4k screen man. This thing will be prehistoric tech wise on launch and will have an outdated LED screen on it too boot because they'll want to sell you an OLED version of it later lol. I know i'm being harsh but honestly it's the truth.

I'm not sure what you're expecting? Did you want the Switch 2 to be as powerful as a PS5 and easily run games at 4K60, while being reasonably priced?

If I was in charge of Nintendo, I would have made it as powerful as a series S with a 15 inch OLED display, but the cost of such a device would be easily over £700 and wouldn't sell to the masses.
 
there's a reason why the deck goes with 4 instead of 8, because fewer cores at higher clock are enough for majority of games and will consume less power. you want to divert as much juice to the gpu as possible while controling the heat and battery drain. if that apu is the one used then definitely will be a cutdown version, especially if they want to run at approx 9w. let's not forget the screen, fan, memory and board need power too.

also, nvidia is known to charge a premium on their silicone, so it pretty much guarantees the cost has to be kept at a minimum if Nintendo wants to keep the margins on hardware.
Well, the Zen 2 CPU has hyperthreading, unlike the A78C, so the number of threads is the same, and the A78C cores are expected to be clocked lower. Without an apples-to-apples comparison of the two CPUs at mobile power levels, I don't think we can know whether 4 x Zen 2 cores is more efficient than 8 x A78C cores. But it makes sense to me to include more cores to try to compensate for a lack of hyperthreading and lower clocks.

T239 is seemingly too big for 8nm at mobile clocks, as there is a minimum voltage that the chip will support, and decreasing clocks further will just result in throwing away performance for no gain in efficiency. If it was really 1024 cores, it would make a lot more sense at 8nm, and that's what everyone expected. However, it can't be cut down, based on the Nvidia leak, because the API was showing that all 1536 cores were available.

That's exactly why people think it is using a newer Samsung process, with reduced power consumption. Is that unreasonable from a cost perspective? Well, The APU in Steam Deck (Van Gogh) is 163mm^2, and T239 is estimated to be 200mm^2, or 25% bigger. (We would genererally expect Nvidia would to demand a greater margin than AMD, but by the same token the Switch 2 will be a much higher volume product).

However, if Nintendo are using a newer process, we would expect that Samsung has given them/Nvidia a very good deal, to make this worthwhile.
 
Last edited:
Ps4 to ps4 pro hardware for 400 dollars is an abomination and embarrassment. No one wants to play 1080p at best 'it'll dip below that' at 30fps on a 4k screen man. This thing will be prehistoric tech wise on launch and will have an outdated LED screen on it too boot because they'll want to sell you an OLED version of it later lol. I know i'm being harsh but honestly it's the truth.
Try 450 dollars.
 
But it makes sense to me to include more cores to try to compensate for a lack of hyperthreading and lower clocks.
Depending on the games, this is not an Android phone with lots of background tasks, it is actually the opposite (many games do not make awesome use of 8 HW threads let alone 8 cores).
 
We're in 2025 and 99% of the games are still cross gen, still will look like shit smeared in vaseline on the switch 2. There are real world handhelds that are more powerful than the switch 2 will be, we know what's the ceiling. I love my handhelds, but there's no way they perform as good as a ps4, much less a pro. The less we talk about "power" and focus on other cool features like portability, good controls, OLED screen, etc, the better chance to be excited when the new console arrives. Putting these stupid expectations is a recipe for putting it in a terrible light as soon as it comes out.

edit: gta5 is a ps3 game, never even released on the switch although it sold north of 100M units. What does it tell you?
this is correct, and people are too invested in DLSS fixing all the deficiencies. where do people expect DLSS to come into play? Is it going to make current-gen games playable upscaling from 300p -> 720p in handheld mode or 720p to 4k on the TV? can't really be both.
 
Last edited:
this is correct, and people are too invested in DLSS fixing all the deficiencies. where do people expect DLSS to come into play? Is it going to make current-gen games playable upscaling from 300p -> 720p in handheld mode or 720p to 4k on the TV? can't really be both.
Could it be 300p to 720p in handheld mode and 720p to 1080p when docked? (for current gen games).
 
Well, the Zen 2 CPU has hyperthreading, unlike the A78C, so the number of threads is the same, and the A78C cores are expected to be clocked lower. Without an apples-to-apples comparison of the two CPUs at mobile power levels, I don't think we can know whether 4 x Zen 2 cores is more efficient than 8 x A78C cores. But it makes sense to me to include more cores to try to compensate for a lack of hyperthreading and lower clocks.

T239 is seemingly too big for 8nm at mobile clocks, as there is a minimum voltage that the chip will support, and decreasing clocks further will just result in throwing away performance for no gain in efficiency. If it was really 1024 cores, it would make a lot more sense at 8nm, and that's what everyone expected. However, it can't be cut down, based on the Nvidia leak, because the API was showing that all 1536 cores were available.

That's exactly why people think it is using a newer Samsung process, with reduced power consumption. Is that unreasonable from a cost perspective? Well, The APU in Steam Deck (Van Gogh) is 163mm^2, and T239 is estimated to be 200mm^2, or 25% bigger. (We would genererally expect Nvidia would to demand a greater margin than AMD, but by the same token the Switch 2 will be a much higher volume product).

However, if Nintendo are using a newer process, we would expect that Samsung has given them/Nvidia a very good deal, to make this worthwhile.
200mm^2 is gigantic for the form factor we know the switch 2 to have.

Having Samsung providing the fabs makes perfect sense since TSMC would be extremely expensive and their capacity is in backorder for the majority of high performance chips. So actually Samsung could provide a lot of capacity at a better cost for sure. I still see the form factor and extremely low power profile as the major bottleneck here. It doesn't mean the product will be bad, as performance doesn't scale linearly to power, but comparing it to products that use orders of magnitude more power is just doing this console dirty.
 
Could it be 300p to 720p in handheld mode and 720p to 1080p when docked? (for current gen games).
this is assuming a really unrealistic performance difference between handheld and docked. even if they put a fan in the dock this time, it's not going to do miracles.
 
Last edited:
Could it be 300p to 720p in handheld mode and 720p to 1080p when docked? (for current gen games).
Definitely should be more than 300p, otherwise it would look horrible. upscaling needs a certain level of resolution to look good enough. Besides, are we really thinking they go with 720p screen resolution on an 8in screen? I sure as fuck hope not.
 
Depending on the games, this is not an Android phone with lots of background tasks, it is actually the opposite (many games do not make awesome use of 8 HW threads let alone 8 cores).
Well 4 hardware threads seems too little, so it's really a competition between 6 and 8, and the marginal die size cost of the extra two cores is likely not huge. Also, the Linux leak already confirms 8 cores (https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/switch-2-speculation.61414/post-2264377).
 
this is assuming a really unrealistic performance difference between handheld and docked. even if they put a fan in the dock this time, it's not going to do miracles.
Definitely should be more than 300p, otherwise it would look horrible. upscaling needs a certain level of resolution to look good enough. Besides, are we really thinking they go with 720p screen resolution on an 8in screen? I sure as fuck hope not.
Thank you, how do you see DLSS being used by Switch 2 then?
 
Thank you, how do you see DLSS being used by Switch 2 then?
the biggest win is going to be improving image quality on the tv compared to switch 1. based on the speculative reporting and what we already know about pc handhelds, I think cross-gen games like Elden Ring are going to be the peak of what the hardware can do credibly. even an older engine like in Titanfall 2 can still look really great.

another way to think about it: Switch 1 had "impossible ports" like Witcher 3 that ran with major nips and tucks. Switch 2 will actually run these games well.
 
Last edited:
the biggest win is going to be improving image quality on the tv compared to switch 1. based on the speculative reporting and what we already know about pc handhelds, I think cross-gen games like Elden Ring are going to be the peak of what the hardware can do credibly. even an older engine like in Titanfall 2 can still look really great.

another way to think about it: Switch 1 had "impossible ports" like Witcher 3 that ran with major nips and tucks. Switch 2 will actually run these games well.
Thank you. I do see Switch 2 getting some PS5/XBS games as well, though of course they won't run nearly as well as on the other consoles.
 
Well 4 hardware threads seems too little, so it's really a competition between 6 and 8, and the marginal die size cost of the extra two cores is likely not huge. Also, the Linux leak already confirms 8 cores (https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/switch-2-speculation.61414/post-2264377).
Steam Deck has 8 HW threads with 4 relatively wide CPU cores (SMT/HW can help a fair bit if you have several threads of work each of which is not maxing the execution units of one core). The ARM core mentioned before do not have SMT/HT so you have 8 HW threads spread on 8 CPU cores (not sure they are nearly as wide as Zen 2 cores). If we are talking about significantly lower clock we impact codes that is not or cannot be well parallelised by quite a lot.

Zen 2 cores are reasonably small, Valve could have gone to 6 or 8 cores at a lower clock, but like many other tradeoffs they made I think they landed on the best configuration at that time).
 
That's what I meant, so yeah? Some people believe every game including BC titles will utilize it automagically, which sounds unlikely to me.
 
Its not just unlikely. Its impossible for old games to use DLSS automatically.

They need to be patched.
Of course, let me rephrase: some people are expecting Nintendo and the other developers to patch all the old games. I wouldn't be surprised if Nintendo puts minimal effort into this but we'll see I guess.
 
Of course, let me rephrase: some people are expecting Nintendo and the other developers to patch all the old games. I wouldn't be surprised if Nintendo puts minimal effort into this but we'll see I guess.
I can see them patching the evergreens like Smash Ultimate and BOTW, but not niche things like Astral Chain.
 
I'm curious what battery capacity the Switch 2 will have. That could inform possible TDP limits. For Switch I'm seeing 16Wh battery, on the new and old versions. Nintendo lists handheld total system power consumption for BoTW on V2 and OLED as 4W. Can't find the OG Switch info. Max settings, real world battery life test for BoTW on newer V2 landed on 3hr53min., while the OG system hit 2hr28min. So for a 16Wh battery that would mean real world total system consumption of ~4.2W for V2, and ~6.4W for OG.

Deck OLED has a 50Wh battery, while LCD has a 40Wh battery. In a game like GoW or Spider-Man Remastered, using a 15W TDP limit in settings can result in ~25W total system consumption at max brightness. With a 30fps lock you can get ~20W. To get to the 15W total system mark with max brightness you need a 7-8W SoC TDP limit, and that can drop you below 30fps so you need FSR2 or XeSS 'Balanced' to get it back to ~30fps. Seeing ~5W between CPU and GPU at these settings.

Can a Switch 2 at 5W match a Steam Deck at 25W?
 
>You're wrong because it will be more powerful
>But actually it won't be more powerful in any meaningful way
>But I've at least sounded smart by saying literally nothing at all
He's saying it will be superior to PS4 Pro in some ways and inferior in other ways. Which is true.
 
Top Bottom