Nintendo hasn’t said much about the specifics of the hardware in the Switch 2 yet, but Nvidia has come forward to boast about the tech behind the console.
In yesterday’s Switch 2 Direct, Nintendo made a bunch of claims aboutthe performance players can expect from the console, including its 120 Hz display with HDR and its support for 4K resolution in TV mode, but they didn’t get too much into the specifics of the hardware.
Nvidia, the developer of the processor powering the Switch 2, stepped up to pick up the slack in ablog postwhere they give us a deep dive into the technology they’ve packed into it.
The company makes the bold claim that the Switch 2 has “10x the graphics performance” of its predecessor.
It’s Surprisingly Packed With Tech
The processor powering the Switch 2 comes with a surprisingly robust assortment of Nvidia’s current graphical technology for such a compact package.
One unexpected claim is that the GPU on the processor will include dedicated ray tracing cores, and that the Switch 2 will support real-time ray tracing for lighting, reflections, and shadows, similar to Nvidia’s current desktop and laptop graphics cards, not to mention the PS5 and Xbox Series S|X.
It will also come with Tensor cores, allowing it to make use of Nvidia’s DLSS hardware-based AI-powered upscaling tech that boosts performance without sacrificing visual fidelity in games on PCs with the appropriate hardware, along with the face tracking and background removal seen inthe console’s GameChat feature.
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The hardware also supports Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) and Nvidia’s proprietary G-SYNC vertical sync technology to improve smoothness and reduce screen tearing.
Nvidia ends its blog post by saying that all this will make game development easier and more efficient, thanks to improved engines and their optimized APIs.
Their promise of more power-efficient hardware in particular is a big help for a handheld,especially considering what we’ve learned about its battery life, but evidently this beefier processor is the cause of its reduced battery life compared to the original Switch.
All that being said, the real-world impact of all this tech will depend on how developers actually make use of it in games, and how players actually end up benefiting from all this extra graphical power remains to be seen.
If nothing else, maybe all this explainswhy the console’s cost is as high as it is, if Nvidia’s promise of 10x the graphical muscle of the original Switch holds up.
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