Official: Nintendo Switch 2 Leveled Up With NVIDIA "Custom Processor" & AI-Powered Tech

[R0H1T]

I'll be mildly surprised if NVIDIA/Nintendo don't backport DLSS MFG or some form of FG just for the switch, although FSR is still there in which case it should be super duper xtra hot

 

[TSiAhmat]

Should be possible, yes. Not sure about both at the same time (no PC game does this afaik), but FSR 3 should run on it

hmmmm I think there was one game where you could combine DLSS & FSR but I think it was buggy Okay researched a bit & couldn't find anything... maybe I was just gaslighting myself.

 

[Prima.Vera]

Ampere can't do DLSS fake frames though, only FSR fake frames

Ampere can't only because nGreedia says so.
On a custom implementation, one can run DLSS 4 with the latest frame gens without any issues.

 

[Dr. Dro]

Ampere can't only because nGreedia says so.
On a custom implementation, one can run DLSS 4 with the latest frame gens without any issues.

I'm not sure it's that simple. Bryan Catanzaro did say in that interview that they were evaluating ways to do so, but it's possible that it won't get anywhere unless NV is threatened by AMD in some way. Frame generation at rates above 2x, however, is completely out of the question, even on Ada HW.

hmmmm I think there was one game where you could combine DLSS & FSR but I think it was buggy Okay researched a bit & couldn't find anything... maybe I was just gaslighting myself.

Not aware of any myself, although I suppose you could use Lossless Scaling or something with a third party upscaling solution combined with DLSS, perhaps even with DLSS FG on, as long as you don't know or care about what "quality" means

 

[HOkay]

I was wondering about the sudden $450,- price tag and I was wondering why, but all of the sudden I see that its an Nvidia SoC. Well, no surprises here anymore.
If Nintendo thinks it can squeeze the non-existing middle class for 500 bucks then I look forward for their next earnings call in 2026 or they sell it as a DIY Kit you
can solder yourself @ home for $150,-

I would love a serious Raytracing test of new games with 320px x 240px - so I can see them raytraced details finally on a 6" display!

And finally, mix green and red, what color do you get?

My prediction: this will be the best selling console of all time. Maybe not the fastest to get there, but over the next few years I think it will be. This also sets things up for a price drop of this version when an OLED model comes along. The OLED can then take this price point & everyone can say what a good guy Nintendo is for giving us more for the same price.

 

[notoperable]

My prediction: this will be the best selling console of all time. Maybe not the fastest to get there, but over the next few years I think it will be. This also sets things up for a price drop of this version when an OLED model comes along. The OLED can then take this price point & everyone can say what a good guy Nintendo is for giving us more for the same price.

Lets agree to disagree, I think it will be a major flop unless its cheaper

 

[OneMoar]

da fuck is a engineer-year

 

[HOkay]

Lets agree to disagree, I think it will be a major flop unless its cheaper

Agreed to disagree I accept that my work & friendship groups sit relatively high on the earnings spectrum, & I'm in the UK so no trade wars effect on these (afaik!), but almost everyone I know who's got a Switch is going to buy a Switch 2. Some will partake in the day 1 pre-order panic to order one, others will just wait until they're readily available, or maybe until a birthday / Christmas rolls around, but they'll get one within a year or so.
I totally see the trade wars dropping their sales a lot in America though!

da fuck is a engineer-year

Not sure if serious, but if so, it's the working hours for one engineer for one year.

 

[ilyon]

Ehhhh. Whoever wrote this needs to read "The Mythical Man-Month," because as the wikipedia page says oh so eloquently:

Just because you throw a lot of man-hours at a problem doesn't mean that it will either be released on time or be of higher quality. It just means that a lot of resources were thrown at it and coordinating a lot of resources is hard in and of itself. To me, this statement is 100% meaningless.

I must disagree, and by a lot™: we are talking about the JHH vergence in applied graphical effects. What if you add some spice of DLSS™ to this workforce ? It's called The Nintenvidia 1000 engineer-years Force.
For the Emperor.
Think about it...

 

[Rover4444]

The claims that this system will do 4K or 120 fps 1080p are quite grand. It was quite amusing to see the audience go nuts when they said that. While theoretically possible, only very simple games will be able to run at those targets with its hardware, which in all fairness, mostly works towards the intended audience for the Nintendo Switch, as long as they're happy playing games with a level of detail that was possible on the Nintendo Wii almost 20 years ago (and they are).

Nah, it's more like Nintendo is single-handedly forcing the entire market to dev games that can run well on low-end hardware. Can't wait to play 4k 120fps on a 6070!

 

[chrcoluk]

DLSS upscaling comes to switch platform then. I dont think they will do frame gen just the upscaling.

 

[Aquinus]

I must disagree, and by a lot™: we are talking about the JHH vergence in applied graphical effects. What if you add some spice of DLSS™ to this workforce ? It's called The Nintenvidia 1000 engineer-years Force.
For the Emperor.
Think about it...

With all due respect, I have absolutely no idea what you're trying to say. I'm talking about man-hours being a poor metric for quality or progress, otherwise every project would succeed if you just threw more people at it, which most definitely isn't the case. It's quite literally a claim that means absolutely nothing in my opinion. Simply put, the result should speak for itself.

 

[notoperable]

With all due respect, I have absolutely no idea what you're trying to say. I'm talking about man-hours being a poor metric for quality or progress, otherwise every project would succeed if you just threw more people at it, which most definitely isn't the case. It's quite literally a claim that means absolutely nothing in my opinion. Simply put, the result should speak for itself.

Dude, you assume some random human < 25 old has seen a real paperback book up close, and consumed it, secondly, which makes me actually sad, do you honestly believe that anybody knows what MMM aka Mythical Month Man is, and lastly - understood it? Thinking is pain, Reinstate your assumptions.

 

[Aquinus]

Dude, you assume some random human < 25 old has seen a real paperback book up close, and consumed it, secondly, which makes me actually sad, do you honestly believe that anybody knows what MMM aka Mythical Month Man is, and lastly - understood it? Thinking is pain, Reinstate your assumptions.

If you're into software engineering, then you should. Also for those "< 25 old" individuals, here is a PDF.

 

[notoperable]

If you're into software engineering, then you should. Also for those "< 25 old" individuals, here is a PDF.

Make it into an Audiobook first, otherwise its far too many pages, or let chatgpt make you an summary or even better- put r.c.bray voice into the summary = winner

 

[cvaldes]

We really don't know the details of the SoC. More clarity will come once the actual units start shipping in June and someone does a teardown.

However what I've read in several tech sites is that the putatively labeled "T239" SoC has Ampere generation architecture which means ML frame generation won't be available. Nintendo/Nvidia have already confirmed DLSS and raytracing.

Knowing Nintendo DLSS will not be a user selectable option. Nintendo doesn't let users twiddle with graphics performance settings.

It will be up each game developer to decide which DLSS mode will be used (if at all) and in what situation. Since there is a power draw impact to DLSS, my assumption is that most developers will not use DLSS in 1080p handheld mode but some may choose to use some level of DLSS in 4K@60 docked mode. Obviously the game devs have the ability to try different DLSS modes (Performance, Balanced, Quality, whatever) while prototyping the game and will ultimately make the decision how to ship the game.

Likewise raytracing might be enabled in docked mode but not handheld. Again this will be a choice made by the game developer.

There is zero reason to believe that DLSS nor raytracing will be a user-selected option. For a consumer-aimed handheld device, this is quite reasonable. After all, the (decent) developer already makes compromises and choices just in how they design their games to ensure it runs acceptably on their target devices. In the same way some modern games are unplayable on an RX 560 because the game developer decided to focus on a market that has more powerful hardware.

Cyberpunk 2077 is coming to Nintendo Switch 2 but there is zero chance the visuals will look like the same game running on an RTX 5090 with all graphics settings maxxed out at Ultra.

Another rumor I've read (again on tech sites, not Reddit or Tik Tok) is that this SoC has about 1500 CUDA cores, less than an RTX 3050. I don't find this particularly alarming as it is clear that Nintendo engineering certainly had access to a wide variety of hardware for prototyping and eventually arrived at this target CUDA core count for the Switch 2 based on their lab findings.

The most curious performance tidbit I've seen is that Star Wars Outlaws will be coming to Switch 2, a game that does not run on Steam Deck. That is possibly one point of reference about Switch 2's relative performance. I'm no graphics engineer so I don't know the reason for the game's unsatisfactory performance on Steam Deck but in the end, Joe Consumer doesn't need to know why.

There have been some additional comments (including some from Nintendo staffers) about how much better the enhanced versions of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom look on the Switch 2. Clearly both titles were at the upper edge of the performance envelope for Switch. And some games like Elden Ring and Cyberpunk 2077 were obviously beyond that threshold.

The short clips I've seen for these AAA titles look like they will run pretty well at 1080p. The jury is out about how they will fare at 4K@60 but my guess is that DLSS will have a major part in it.

 

[notoperable]

Cyberpunk 2077 is coming to Nintendo Switch 2 but there is zero chance the visuals will look like the same game running on an RTX 5090 with all graphics settings maxxed out at Ultra.

Don't you remember magic-o-marketing stuff like Mortal Kombat GameBoy or Doom on SNES? :] So close... but yet so far...

 

[cvaldes]

Different times. It's one thing to give some print media journalist a private jury rigged tech demo in 1995. It's something else to show something to tens of millions of viewers in 2025.

I'm confident that Nintendo's marketing team actually reviewed all the clips they assembled for the Switch 2 reveal and were assured that the games actually ran similarly on dev kits (or even pre-release units).

And hopefully CDPR learned their lesson from their disastrous Cyberpunk 2077 launch. For sure Nintendo will keep CDPR on an extremely short leash because of that bungling. I would expect Nintendo paid particularly close attention to that title. Nintendo is a much bigger company today than when they launched SNES. The stakes are way higher and they have many more eyes on them that are eager to point out any slight stumble, perceived or real.

Today people stream live gameplay on Twitch, YouTube, Tik Tok, etc. No one was doing that in 1995 so there was no audience of tens of thousands assessing whether or not the gameplay was legit.

Nintendo will not pass off pre-rendered video as actual gameplay. In 2025 no one can. In less than two months, people are going to confirm that what they saw in early April was real.

"Fake it until you make it" is NOT a legitimate business strategy. Elizabeth Holmes tried that and she's in prison.

 

[notoperable]

Can't argue with that, but I still see mortal Kombat on Gameboy. You are absolutely right though, it's all a different reality and hardly comparable (aside of marketing bs, this seems to be timeless in product launches)