Wednesday, April 23rd 2025

Nintendo Switch 2's Chipset Reportedly Confirmed as Tegra "T239" Unit

An alleged partial close-up capture of the Nintendo Switch 2's chipset has leaked out; courtesy of Kurnal (@Kurnalsalts). This fresh leak is being hyped up as putting an end to all online debate regarding the upcoming hybrid console's technological underpinnings. Despite late 2024/early 2025 reports pointing to a custom NVIDIA "T239" SoC design, certain voices continued to produce conjecture about a more "cutting edge" solution. Surprisingly, Team Green's PR department did issue a statement about the Switch 2 being powered by: "a custom processor featuring an NVIDIA GPU with dedicated RT Cores and Tensor Cores for stunning visuals and AI-driven enhancements."

As expected, Nintendo staffers remained guarded during recent press junkets—in-depth tech talk was deferred in NVIDIA's general direction. Kurnal's sharing of a speculative "T239" partial die shot does not provide any major new revelations or insights—as discussed on the Nintendo Switch 2 Subreddit, tech enthusiasts continue to rely on specification details from the big hack of NVIDIA repositories (three years ago). Newer speculation has focused on Nintendo's choice of foundry—Digital Foundry's Richard Leadbetter continues to express his personal belief that Nintendo has selected a Samsung 8 nm DUV foundry node. In opposition, certain critics have persisted with a 5 nm EUV node process theory.
Sources: NintendoSwitch2 Subreddit, Kurnalsalts Tweet, Wccftech
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4 Comments on Nintendo Switch 2's Chipset Reportedly Confirmed as Tegra "T239" Unit

#1
lexluthermiester
T0@stDigital Foundry's Richard Leadbetter continues to express his personal belief that Nintendo has selected a Samsung 8 nm DUV foundry node.
Anything is possible. I personally doubt it. 8nm is unlikely to get the NS2 SOC to the power/performance profile Nintendo is aiming for, unless Samsung has a bit of secret sauce they're not talking about.
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#2
yfn_ratchet
5nm seems the more reasonable prospect, primarily for battery life (and to justify the cost of the device). If it was a straight up Jetson chip in there, maybe it'd still be on Samsung 8nm, but I doubt they'd take this long and not at least have refreshed the arch for a new node.
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#3
konga
lexluthermiesterAnything is possible. I personally doubt it. 8nm is unlikely to get the NS2 SOC to the power/performance profile Nintendo is aiming for, unless Samsung has a bit of secret sauce they're not talking about.
We already know what the power/performance profiles look like. 10W handheld, with worse performance than a Steam Deck, GPU runs at around 500mhz only, many games likely to run at 720p or below despite the 1080p screen (though several of Nintendo's launch games do run at 1080p or close to it in handheld mode). Docked mode is 40W, the GPU runs at 1GHz docked, with performance somewhere in the ballpark of a base PS4, but with more advanced rendering capabilities (DLSS, RT, mesh shaders, etc). This all sounds about right for Samsung 8nm. Keep in mind that the Steam Deck uses RDNA 2 on TSMC 6nm, and Ampere on 8nm was just a little bit behind RDNA 2 in power efficiency (if at all).
Posted on Reply
#4
lexluthermiester
kongaWe already know what the power/performance profiles look like. 10W handheld, with worse performance than a Steam Deck, GPU runs at around 500mhz only, many games likely to run at 720p or below despite the 1080p screen (though several of Nintendo's launch games do run at 1080p or close to it in handheld mode). Docked mode is 40W, the GPU runs at 1GHz docked, with performance somewhere in the ballpark of a base PS4, but with more advanced rendering capabilities (DLSS, RT, mesh shaders, etc). This all sounds about right for Samsung 8nm. Keep in mind that the Steam Deck uses RDNA 2 on TSMC 6nm, and Ampere on 8nm was just a little bit behind RDNA 2 in power efficiency (if at all).
So, you're done trolling and whining now?
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May 18th, 2025 18:38 CDT change timezone

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