The Switch 2's performance still raises questions. Analysis of its Nvidia T239 chip gives us some initial answers.
Nintendo didn't go into technical details during the Switch 2 presentation, preferring to focus on practical uses. But a certain Kurnal took it upon himself to publish photos of a Switch 2 motherboard that he managed to obtain on the black market in China. This one isn't functional, but that's not necessary to analyze its components, including the Nvidia SoC that powers the console.
We already knew it, but it's confirmed: the Switch 2's SoC is based on Samsung's 8nm manufacturing technology. On the CPU side, there are eight ARM Cortex-A78C cores. As for the GPU, we have 1,536 CUDA cores. The Ampere architecture is used here, the same as for the RTX 30 generation graphics cards. But of course, that doesn't mean at all that we can achieve this level of performance. The chip, an Nvidia T239, has a surface area of 207 mm², about twice that of the 16 nm Tegra X1 chip in the Switch 1.
Is the Switch 2 seven times more powerful than the Switch 1?
YouTuber Geekerwan, who partnered with Kurnal, launched simulations from this data using an RTX 2050 to try to establish what the real performance of the Switch 2 is. Obviously, such a test is not completely accurate, but has the merit of giving us a vague idea of what to expect from the console, given that Nintendo does not talk about it (it was Nvidia who had to speak to quickly mention the technical aspect a few hours after the announcement of Big N).
https://twitter.com/Kurnalsalts/status/1920099293811351627
According to the results obtained by Geekerwan, the Switch 2 in docked mode and with DLSS enabled could offer performance comparable to that of a GTX 1050 Ti, an entry-level graphics card released in 2016. In portable mode, it would be more like a GTX 750 Ti, a model dating from 2014. The Switch 2 would be 7 to 7.5 times more powerful than the Switch 1, which is not so far from the 10x performance promised by Nvidia.
0 Comments